ate skill blends with Correggio's art; or, again, compare it
with Leonardo da Vinci's _Charles VIII._, and the picture would scarcely
lose. The four pearls are equal; there is the same lustre and sheen, the
same rounded completeness, the same brilliancy. Art can go no further
than this. Art has risen above Nature, since Nature only gives her
creatures a few brief years of life.

Pons possessed one example of this immortal great genius and incurably
indolent painter; it was a _Knight of Malta_, a Templar kneeling in
prayer. The picture was painted on slate, and in its unfaded color and
its finish was immeasurably finer than the _Baccio Bandinelli_.

Fra Bartolommeo was represented by a _Holy Family_, which many
connoisseurs might have taken for a Raphael. The Hobbema would have
fetched sixty thousand francs at a public sale; and as for the Durer, it
was equal to the famous _Holzschuer_ portrait at Nuremberg for which the
kings of Bavaria, Holland, and Prussia have vainly offered two hundred
thousand francs again and again. Was it the portrait of the wife or
the daughter of Holzschuer, Albrecht Durer's personal friend?--The
hypothesis seems to be a certainty, for the attitude of the figure in
Pons' picture suggests that it is meant for a pendant, the position of
the coat-of-arms is the same as in the Nuremberg portrait; and, finally,
the _oetatis suoe XLI._ accords perfectly with the age inscribed on
the picture religiously kept by the Holzschuers of Nuremberg, and but
recently engraved.

The tears stood in Elie Magus' eyes as he looked from one masterpiece to
another. He turned round to La Cibot, "I will give you a commission of
two thousand francs on each of the pictures if you can arrange that I
shall have them for forty thousand francs," he said. La Cibot was amazed
at this good fortune dropped from the sky. Admiration, or, to be more
accurate, delirious joy, had wrought such havoc in the Jew's brain, that
it had actually unsettled his habitual greed, and he fell headlong into
enthusiasm, as you see.

"And I?----" put in Remonencq, who knew nothing about pictures.

"Everything here is equally good," the Jew said cunningly, lowering his
voice for Remonencq's ears; "take ten pictures just as they come and on
the same conditions. Your fortune will be made."

Again the three thieves looked each other in the face, each one of them
overcome with the keenest of all joys--sated greed. All of a sudden
the sick man's voic