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Rubens followed orders and wrote Signor Chieppo at great length, giving a minute account of every incident and detail of the journey and of his reception at Madrid. While at the Court he kept a daily record of happenings, which was also forwarded to the Secretary.

These many letters have recently been given to the public. They are in Italian, with a sprinkling here and there of good honest Dutch. All is most sincere, grave and explicit. Rubens deserved great credit for all these letters, for surely they were written with sweat and lamp-smoke. The work of the toiler is over all, but we must remember that at that time he had been studying Italian only about a year.

The literary style of Rubens was Johnsonese all his life, and he made his meaning plain only by repetitions and many rhetorical flounderings. Like the average sixteen-year-old boy who sits himself down and takes his pen in hand, all his sprightliness of imagination vanished at sight of an ink-bottle. With a brush his feelings were fluid, and in a company grace dwelt upon his lips; but when asked to write it out he gripped the pen as though it were a crowbar instead of a crow’s-quill.

But Chieppo received his reports; and we know the embassy was a success–a great success. The debonair Fleming surprised the King by saying, “Your Majesty, it is like this”–and then with a few bold strokes drew a picture.

He modestly explained that he was not much of a painter–“merely used a brush for his own amusement”–and then made a portrait for the Minister of State that exaggerated all of that man’s good points, and ignored all his failings. There was a cast in the Minister’s eye, but Rubens waived it. The Minister was delighted, and so was the King. He then made a portrait of the King that was as flattering as portraits should be that are painted for monarchs.

Among his other accomplishments the Fleming was a skilful horseman; he rode with such grace and dash that the King took him on his drives, Rubens riding by the side of the carriage, gaily conversing as they rode.

And so with the aid of his many talents he won the confidence of the King and Court and was initiated into the inner life of Spanish royalty in a way that Iberta, the Mantuan Resident, never had been. The King liked Rubens, and so did the Man behind the Throne.

Mortals do not merely like each other because they like each other; such a bond is tenuous as a spider’s thread. I love you because you love the things that I love. One woman won my heart by her subtle appreciation of “The Dipsy Chanty.” Men meet on a horse basis, a book basis, a religious basis, or some other mutual leaning; sometimes we find them uniting on a mutual dislike for something. For instance, I have a friend to whom I am bound by the tie of oneness because we dislike olives, and have a mutual indifference to the pretended claims of the unpronounceable Pole who wrote “Quo Vadis.” The discovery was accidentally made in a hotel dining-room: we clasped hands across the board, and since then have been as brothers.

The more points at which you touch humanity the more friends you have–the greater your influence. Rubens was an artist, a horseman, a musician, a politician and a gourmet. When conceptions in the kitchen were vague, he would send for the cook and explain to him how to do it. He possessed a most discriminating palate and a fine appreciation of things drinkable. These accomplishments secured him a well-defined case of gout while yet a young man. He taught the Spanish Court how to smoke, having himself been initiated by an Englishman, who was a companion of Sir Walter Raleigh, and showed them how to roll a cigarette while engaged in ardent conversation. And the Spaniards have not yet lost the art, for once in Cadiz I saw a horse running away, and the driver rolled and lighted a cigarette before trying to stop the mad flight of the frantic brute.