m the Savonnerie covered the parquetry flooring.
The frames of the pictures, nearly a hundred in number, were magnificent
specimens, regilded cunningly by Servais, the one gilder in Paris whom
Elie Magus thought sufficiently painstaking; the old Jew himself had
taught him to use the English leaf, which is infinitely superior to that
produced by French gold-beaters. Servais is among gilders as Thouvenin
among bookbinders--an artist among craftsmen, making his work a labor
of love. Every window in that gallery was protected by iron-barred
shutters. Elie Magus himself lived in a couple of attics on the floor
above; the furniture was wretched, the rooms were full of rags, and the
whole place smacked of the Ghetto; Elie Magus was finishing his days
without any change in his life.

The whole of the ground floor was given up to the picture trade (for the
Jew still dealt in works of art). Here he stored his canvases, here also
packing-cases were stowed on their arrival from other countries; and
still there was room for a vast studio, where Moret, most skilful of
restorers of pictures, a craftsman whom the Musee ought to employ, was
almost always at work for Magus. The rest of the rooms on the ground
floor were given up to Magus' daughter, the child of his old age, a
Jewess as beautiful as a Jewess can be when the Semitic type reappears
in its purity and nobility in a daughter of Israel. Noemi was guarded by
two servants, fanatical Jewesses, to say nothing of an advanced-guard,
a Polish Jew, Abramko by name, once involved in a fabulous manner
in political troubles, from which Elie Magus saved him as a business
speculation. Abramko, porter of the silent, grim, deserted mansion,
divided his office and his lodge with three remarkably ferocious
animals--an English bull-dog, a Newfoundland dog, and another of the
Pyrenean breed.

Behold the profound observations of human nature upon which Elie Magus
based his feeling of security, for secure he felt; he left home without
misgivings, slept with both ears shut, and feared no attempt upon his
daughter (his chief treasure), his pictures, or his money. In the first
place, Abramko's salary was increased every year by two hundred francs
so long as his master should live; and Magus, moreover, was training
Abramko as a money-lender in a small way. Abramko never admitted anybody
until he had surveyed them through a formidable grated opening. He was
a Hercules for strength, he worshiped Elie Ma