increased tenfold during
the last twenty years in this city of Paris, whither all the curiosities
in the world come to rub against one another. And for pictures there are
but three marts in the world--Rome, London, and Paris.

Elie Magus lived in the Chausee des Minimes, a short, broad street
leading to the Place Royale. He had bought the house, an old-fashioned
mansion, for a song, as the saying is, in 1831. Yet there were sumptuous
apartments within it, decorated in the time of Louis XV.; for it had
once been the Hotel Maulaincourt, built by the great President of the
Cour des Aides, and its remote position had saved it at the time of the
Revolution.

You may be quite sure that the old Jew had sound reasons for buying
house property, contrary to the Hebrew law and custom. He had ended, as
most of us end, with a hobby that bordered on a craze. He was as miserly
as his friend, the late lamented Gobseck; but he had been caught by the
snare of the eyes, by the beauty of the pictures in which he dealt. As
his taste grew more and more fastidious, it became one of the passions
which princes alone can indulge when they are wealthy and art-lovers. As
the second King of Prussia found nothing that so kindled enthusiasm as
the spectacle of a grenadier over six feet high, and gave extravagant
sums for a new specimen to add to his living museum of a regiment, so
the retired picture-dealer was roused to passion-pitch only by some
canvas in perfect preservation, untouched since the master laid down
the brush; and what was more, it must be a picture of the painter's best
time. No great sales, therefore, took place but Elie Magus was there;
every mart knew him; he traveled all over Europe. The ice-cold,
money-worshiping soul in him kindled at the sight of a perfect work
of art, precisely as a libertine, weary of fair women, is roused from
apathy by the sight of a beautiful girl, and sets out afresh upon the
quest of flawless loveliness. A Don Juan among fair works of art, a
worshiper of the Ideal, Elie Magus had discovered joys that transcend
the pleasure of a miser gloating over his gold--he lived in a seraglio
of great paintings.

His masterpieces were housed as became the children of princes; the
whole first floor of the great old mansion was given up to them.
The rooms had been restored under Elie Magus' orders, and with what
magnificence!

The windows were hung with the richest Venetian brocade; the most
splendid carpets fro