e time had she any other thought than the combination of
various plans to this end. The faculty of self-concentration seen in
rough, uneducated persons, explained on a previous page, the reserve
power accumulated in those whose mental energies are unworn by the daily
wear and tear of social life, and brought into action so soon as that
terrible weapon the "fixed idea" is brought into play,--all this was
pre-eminently manifested in La Cibot. Even as the "fixed idea" works
miracles of evasion, and brings forth prodigies of sentiment, so greed
transformed the portress till she became as formidable as a Nucingen
at bay, as subtle beneath her seeming stupidity as the irresistible La
Palferine.

About seven o'clock one morning, a few days afterwards, she saw
Remonencq taking down his shutters. She went across to him.

"How could one find out how much the things yonder in my gentlemen's
rooms are worth?" she asked in a wheedling tone.

"Oh! that is quite easy," replied the owner of the old curiosity shop.
"If you will play fair and above board with me, I will tell you of
somebody, a very honest man, who will know the value of the pictures to
a farthing--"

"Who?"

"M. Magus, a Jew. He only does business to amuse himself now."

Elie Magus has appeared so often in the _Comedie Humaine_, that it is
needless to say more of him here. Suffice it to add that he had retired
from business, and as a dealer was following the example set by Pons
the amateur. Well-known valuers like Henry, Messrs. Pigeot and Moret,
Theret, Georges, and Roehn, the experts of the Musee, in fact, were but
children compared with Elie Magus. He could see a masterpiece beneath
the accumulated grime of a century; he knew all schools, and the
handwriting of all painters.

He had come to Paris from Bordeaux, and so long ago as 1835 he had
retired from business without making any change for the better in his
dress, so faithful is the race to old tradition. The persecutions of the
Middle Ages compelled them to wear rags, to snuffle and whine and groan
over their poverty in self-defence, till the habits induced by the
necessities of other times have come to be, as usual, instinctive, a
racial defect.

Elie Magus had amassed a vast fortune by buying and selling diamonds,
pictures, lace, enamels, delicate carvings, old jewelry, and rarities of
all kinds, a kind of commerce which has developed enormously of late, so
much so indeed that the number of dealers has