n salesrooms or in the
shops of well-known dealers; Pons was not aware that his treasures had
any commercial value.

The late lamented Dusommerard tried his best to gain Pons' confidence,
but the prince of bric-a-brac died before he could gain an entrance to
the Pons museum, the one private collection which could compare with
the famous Sauvageot museum. Pons and M. Sauvageot indeed resembled each
other in more ways than one. M. Sauvageot, like Pons, was a musician;
he was likewise a comparatively poor man, and he had collected his
bric-a-brac in much the same way, with the same love of art, the same
hatred of rich capitalists with well-known names who collect for the
sake of running up prices as cleverly as possible. There was yet another
point of resemblance between the pair; Pons, like his rival competitor
and antagonist, felt in his heart an insatiable craving after specimens
of the craftsman's skill and miracles of workmanship; he loved them as
a man might love a fair mistress; an auction in the salerooms in the
Rue des Jeuneurs, with its accompaniments of hammer strokes and brokers'
men, was a crime of _lese-bric-a-brac_ in Pons' eyes. Pons' museum was
for his own delight at every hour; for the soul created to know and
feel all the beauty of a masterpiece has this in common with the
lover--to-day's joy is as great as the joy of yesterday; possession
never palls; and a masterpiece, happily, never grows old. So the object
that he held in his hand with such fatherly care could only be a "find,"
carried off with what affection amateurs alone know!

After the first outlines of this biographical sketch, every one will
cry at once, "Why! this is the happiest man on earth, in spite of
his ugliness!" And, in truth, no spleen, no dullness can resist the
counter-irritant supplied by a "craze," the intellectual moxa of a
hobby. You who can no longer drink of "the cup of pleasure," as it has
been called through all ages, try to collect something, no matter what
(people have been known to collect placards), so shall you receive the
small change for the gold ingot of happiness. Have you a hobby? You have
transferred pleasure to the plane of ideas. And yet, you need not
envy the worthy Pons; such envy, like all kindred sentiments, would be
founded upon a misapprehension.

With a nature so sensitive, with a soul that lived by tireless
admiration of the magnificent achievements of art, of the high rivalry
between human toil and