admiring. Then he would go downstairs to his daughter, drink deep of
a father's happiness, and start out upon his walks through Paris, to
attend sales or visit exhibitions and the like.

If Elie Magus found a great work of art under the right conditions, the
discovery put new life into the man; here was a bit of sharp practice, a
bargain to make, a battle of Marengo to win. He would pile ruse on ruse
to buy the new sultana as cheaply as possible. Magus had a map of Europe
on which all great pictures were marked; his co-religionists in every
city spied out business for him, and received a commission on the
purchase. And then, what rewards for all his pains! The two lost
Raphaels so earnestly sought after by Raphael lovers are both in his
collection. Elie Magus owns the original portrait of _Giorgione's
Mistress_, the woman for whom the painter died; the so-called originals
are merely copies of the famous picture, which is worth five hundred
thousand francs, according to its owner's estimation. This Jew possesses
Titian's masterpiece, an _Entombment_ painted for Charles V., sent by
the great man to the great Emperor with a holograph letter, now fastened
down upon the lower part of the canvas. And Magus has yet another
Titian, the original sketch from which all the portraits of Philip II.
were painted. His remaining ninety-seven pictures are all of the same
rank and distinction. Wherefore Magus laughs at our national collection,
raked by the sunlight which destroys the fairest paintings, pouring in
through panes of glass that act as lenses. Picture galleries can only be
lighted from above; Magus opens and closes his shutters himself; he is
as careful of his pictures as of his daughter, his second idol. And well
the old picture-fancier knows the laws of the lives of pictures. To hear
him talk, a great picture has a life of its own; it is changeable,
it takes its beauty from the color of the light. Magus talks of his
paintings as Dutch fanciers used to talk of their tulips; he will come
home on purpose to see some one picture in the hour of its glory, when
the light is bright and clean.

And Magus himself was a living picture among the motionless figures
on the wall--a little old man, dressed in a shabby overcoat, a silk
waistcoat, renewed twice in a score of years, and a very dirty pair of
trousers, with a bald head, a face full of deep hollows, a wrinkled,
callous skin, a beard that had a trick of twitching its long whit