"In the galleries, you know.

I know a charwoman that scrubs the floors of the Arenberg Palace, and she lets me in sometimes to look; and you are just like those great gentlemen in the gold frames, only you have not a hawk and a sword, and they always have.

I used to wonder where they came from, for they are not like any of us one bit, and the charwoman--she is Lisa Dredel, and lives in the street of the Pot d'Etain--always said.

'Dear heart, they all belong to Rubes' land: we never see their like nowadays.' But _you_ must come out of Rubes' land; at least, I think so, do you not ?" He caught her meaning; he knew that Rubes was the homely abbreviation of Rubens that all the Netherlanders used, and he guessed the idea that was reality to this little lonely fanciful mind.
"Perhaps I do," he answered her with a smile, for it was not worth his while to disabuse her thoughts of any imagination that glorified him to her.

"Do you not want to see Rubes' world, little one?
To see the gold and the grandeur, and the glitter of it all ?--never to toil or get tired ?--always to move in a pageant ?--always to live like the hawks in the paintings you talk of, with silver bells hung round you, and a hood all sewn with pearls ?" "No," said Bebee, simply.