al
deformity!"

"And look at that," said the gilt Cordovan leather, with a
contemptuous glance at a broad piece of gilded leather spread out
on a table. "They will sell him cheek by jowl with me, and give
him my name; but look! _I_ am overlaid with pure gold beaten thin
as a film and laid on me in absolute honesty by worthy Diego de
las Gorgias, worker in leather of lovely Cordova in the blessed
reign of Ferdinand the Most Christian. _His_ gilding is one part
gold to eleven other parts of brass and rubbish, and it has been
laid on him with a brush--_a brush!_--pah! of course he will be
as black as a crock in a few years' time, whilst I am as bright
as when I first was made, and, unless I am burnt as my Cordova
burnt its heretics, I shall shine on forever."

"They carve pear-wood because it is so soft, and dye it brown,
and call it _me_!" said an old oak cabinet, with a chuckle.

"That is not so painful; it does not vulgarize you so much as the
cups they paint to-day and christen after _me_!" said a Carl
Theodor cup subdued in hue, yet gorgeous as a jewel.

"Nothing can be so annoying as to see common gimcracks aping
_me_!" interposed the princess in the pink shoes.

"They even steal my motto, though it is Scripture," said a
_Trauerkrug_ of Regensburg in black-and-white.

"And my own dots they put on plain English china creatures!"
sighed the little white maid of Nymphenburg.

"And they sell hundreds and thousands of common china plates,
calling them after me, and baking my saints and my legends in a
muffle of to-day; it is blasphemy!" said a stout plate of Gubbio,
which in its year of birth had seen the face of Maestro Giorgio.

"That is what is so terrible in these _bric-a-brac_ places," said
the princess of Meissen. "It brings one in contact with such low,
imitative creatures; one really is safe nowhere nowadays unless
under glass at the Louvre or South Kensington."

"And they get even there," sighed the _gres de Flandre_. "A
terrible thing happened to a dear friend of mine, a _terre cuite_
of Blasius (you know the _terres cuites_ of Blasius date from
1560). Well, he was put under glass in a museum that shall be
nameless, and he found himself set next to his own imitation born
and baked yesterday at Frankfort, and what think you the
miserable creature said to him, with a grin? 'Old Pipe-clay,'--that
is what he called my friend,--'the fellow that bought _me_ got
just as much commission on me as the fellow