sale and rescued the carved panels out
of the clutches of the Paris dealers, while their heads were running
on china and inlaid furniture.--'I did not do much myself,' he went on,
'but I may make my traveling expenses out of _this_,' and he showed me
a what-not; a marvel! Boucher's designs executed in marquetry, and with
such art!--One could have gone down on one's knees before it.--'Look,
sir,' he said, 'I have just found this fan in a little drawer; it was
locked, I had to force it open. You might tell me where I can sell
it'--and with that he brings out this little carved cherry-wood
box.--'See,' says he, 'it is the kind of Pompadour that looks like
decorated Gothic.'--'Yes,' I told him, 'the box is pretty; the box might
suit me; but as for the fan, Monistrol, I have no Mme. Pons to give the
old trinket to, and they make very pretty new ones nowadays; you can buy
miracles of painting on vellum cheaply enough. There are two thousand
painters in Paris, you know.'--And I opened out the fan carelessly,
keeping down my admiration, looked indifferently at those two exquisite
little pictures, touched off with an ease fit to send you into raptures.
I held Mme. de Pompadour's fan in my hand! Watteau had done his utmost
for this.--'What do you want for the what-not?'--'Oh! a thousand
francs; I have had a bid already.'--I offered him a price for the fan
corresponding with the probable expenses of the journey. We looked each
other in the eyes, and I saw that I had my man. I put the fan back into
the box lest my Auvergnat should begin to look at it, and went into
ecstasies over the box; indeed, it is a jewel.--'If I take it,' said I,
'it is for the sake of the box; the box tempts me. As for the what-not,
you will get more than a thousand francs for that. Just see how the
brass is wrought; it is a model. There is business in it.... It has
never been copied; it is a unique specimen, made solely for Mme. de
Pompadour'--and so on, till my man, all on fire for his what-not,
forgets the fan, and lets me have it for a mere trifle, because I have
pointed out the beauties of his piece of Riesener's furniture. So here
it is; but it needs a great deal of experience to make such a bargain
as that. It is a duel, eye to eye; and who has such eyes as a Jew or an
Auvergnat?"

The old artist's wonderful pantomime, his vivid, eager way of telling
the story of the triumph of his shrewdness over the dealer's ignorance,
would have made a subject for