but was it honourable, or just, to pledge this Mionnet to affix
such prices for rare and better specimens, (such as I have the honour to
show you here!) when both they and he knew them to be preposterous, and
then to launch forth this misguiding book as a guide? This precious
book, sir, was in the hands of all M----'s myrmidons, and the only book
of appeal then extant; _this_--(thumping his fist, by way of emphasis,
upon our copy of it)--this, which has been the ruin of Italy, and is the
degradation of France! I only wish you could hear my friend _Sestini_
(quel _numen_ degli numismcatici) inveigh against this man and his
prices, with less reluctance, I assure you, than I feel in doing it, and
much more powerfully too, because he knows so much more; but come now,
if you _won't_ think me vain, I will show you the difference between
honesty and dishonesty. I wish it was of some one else I was about to
speak, but truth compels me here to introduce my own name. Last week
that pleasant countryman of yours, Lord X----,--do you know him? (we did
for a goose!)--comes to buy some gold coins of me; one of the lot he
fixed upon was a Becker, and so of course only worth what it weighed. He
had purchased it for fifty Napoleons of me, and we went to his bankers
together for the payment. There, having duly received the money, I
requested him to let me see once more the coins he had just purchased of
me--there might have been a dozen--and instantly picking out the Becker,
I pushed him over his fifty Napoleons again, and said, "Milord, I cannot
let you have that coin." "Why?" says he, alarmed and in anger. "Because
_it is false, Milord_!--and I was quite grieved," added our ingenuous
informant, "to see how much Lord X---- was disconcerted at this
disclosure." "You did not let so pretty a coin go a-begging, I dare say?"
said we with laudable curiosity and interest. "No, two days ago in comes
Coco--you know Coco?" we smiled. Know Coco! did we know St Peter's? did
we know the Pope? for whom did Rusca take us, we wonder? "He came,"
prosecuted Signor R----, "to see if I had by me any first-rate
imitations from the antique, for he knew a gentleman who might fancy
something of the sort; and, as soon as he had set eyes upon this Becker,
he must have _it_; _it_ was just the thing to tempt Lord X----; and so I
let him have it for _five times_ its supposititious value, but not for a
_tenth_ of what Lord X---- would, I knew, buy it for a second time a