and these were sold in bundles--the very sweat of his brain for years.
Then he was turned into the streets.

But Hendrickje Stoffels still clung to him, his only friend. Rembrandt's
proud heart was broken. He found companionship at the taverns; and to get
a needful loaf of bread for Hendrickje and his boy, made sketches and
hawked them from house to house.

Fashions change and art is often only a whim. People wondered why they
had ever bought those dark, shadowy things made by that Leyden artist,
What's-his-name! One man utilized the frames which contained "Rembrandts"
by putting other canvases right over in front of them.

Rembrandt's son Titus tried his skill at art, but with indifferent
success. He died while yet a youth. Then Hendrickje passed away, and
Rembrandt was alone--a battered derelict on the sea of life. He lost his
identity under an assumed name, and sketched with chalk on tavern-walls
and pavement for the amusement of the crowd.

He died in Sixteen Hundred Sixty-nine, and the expense of his burial was
paid by the hands of charity.

The cost of the funeral was seven dollars and fifty cents.

In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-seven, there was sold in London a small
portrait by Rembrandt for a sum equal to a trifle more than thirty-one
thousand dollars. But even this does not represent the true value of one
of his pictures--for connoisseurs regard a painting by Rembrandt as
priceless.