ne so honestly earned in the
first instance in business--"

"In the drug business," broke in Popinot; "you ask how I can continue to
interest myself in things that are a drug in the market--"

"No," returned the foreign visitor, "no, but how do you find time to
collect? The curiosities do not come to find you."

"My father-in-law owned the nucleus of the collection," said the young
Vicomtess; "he loved the arts and beautiful work, but most of his
treasures came to him through me."

"Through you, madame?--So young! and yet have you such vices as this?"
asked a Russian prince.

Russians are by nature imitative; imitative indeed to such an extent
that the diseases of civilization break out among them in epidemics. The
bric-a-brac mania had appeared in an acute form in St. Petersburg,
and the Russians caused such a rise of prices in the "art line," as
Remonencq would say, that collection became impossible. The prince who
spoke had come to Paris solely to buy bric-a-brac.

"The treasures came to me, prince, on the death of a cousin. He was very
fond of me," added the Vicomtesse Popinot, "and he had spent some forty
odd years since 1805 in picking up these masterpieces everywhere, but
more especially in Italy--"

"And what was his name?" inquired the English lord.

"Pons," said President Camusot.

"A charming man he was," piped the Presidente in her thin, flute tones,
"very clever, very eccentric, and yet very good-hearted. This fan that
you admire once belonged to Mme. de Pompadour; he gave it to me one
morning with a pretty speech which you must permit me not to repeat,"
and she glanced at her daughter.

"Mme. la Vicomtesse, tell us the pretty speech," begged the Russian
prince.

"The speech was as pretty as the fan," returned the Vicomtesse, who
brought out the stereotyped remark on all occasions. "He told my mother
that it was quite time that it should pass from the hands of vice into
those of virtue."

The English lord looked at Mme. Camusot de Marville with an air of doubt
not a little gratifying to so withered a woman.

"He used to dine at our house two or three times a week," she said; "he
was so fond of us! We could appreciate him, and artists like the
society of those who relish their wit. My husband was, besides, his one
surviving relative. So when, quite unexpectedly, M. de Marville
came into the property, M. le Comte preferred to take over the whole
collection to save it from a sale by auction; a