eighteenth-century books of illustrations, miniatures, and so forth.

But the real masterpiece, the marvel, the gem, the pearl of great price,
stood upon an easel veiled from public view. It was a _Coronation of the
Virgin_ by Fra Angelico, an exquisitely delicate thing in gold and blue
and pink. Pere Guinardon was asking a hundred thousand francs for it.
Upon a Louis XV chair beside an Empire work-table on which stood a vase
of flowers, sat the fair Octavie, broidery in hand. She, having left her
glistering rags behind her in the garret in the rue Princesse, no longer
presented the appearance of a touched-up Rembrandt, but shone, rather,
with the soft radiance and limpidity of a Vermeer of Delft, for the
delectation of the connoisseurs who frequented the shop of Papa
Guinardon. Tranquil and demure, she remained alone in the shop all day,
while the old fellow himself was up aloft working away at the deuce
knows what picture. About five o'clock he used to come downstairs and
have a chat with the habitues of the establishment.

The most regular caller was the Comte Desmaisons, a thin, cadaverous
man. A strand of hair issued from the deep hollow under each cheek-bone,
and, broadening as it descended, shed upon his chin and chest torrents
of snow in which he was for ever trailing his long, fleshless,
gold-ringed fingers. For twenty years he had been mourning the loss of
his wife, who had been carried off by consumption in the flower of her
youth and beauty. Since then he had spent his whole life in endeavouring
to hold converse with the dead and in filling his lonely mansion with
second-rate paintings. His confidence in Guinardon knew no bounds.
Another client who was a scarcely less frequent visitor to the shop was
Monsieur Blancmesnil, a director of a large financial establishment. He
was a florid, prosperous-looking man of fifty. He took no great interest
in matters of art, and was perhaps an indifferent connoisseur, but, in
his case, it was the fair Octavie, seated in the middle of the shop,
like a song-bird in its cage, that offered the attraction.

Monsieur Blancmesnil soon established relations with her, a fact which
Pere Guinardon alone failed to perceive, for the old fellow was still
young in his love-affair with Octavie. Monsieur Gaetan d'Esparvieu used
to pay occasional visits to Pere Guinardon's shop out of mere curiosity,
for he strongly suspected the old man of being a first-rate "faker."

And then that do