.
Their faces and expressions were a little more natural here, and did not
display that fictitious desire to be subservient which is so marked in
the Russian shop-keeper when he stands before a customer in his shop.
Here they stood upon no ceremony, although the saloons were full of
those very aristocrats before whom, in any other place, they would have
been ready to sweep, with reverence, the dust brought in by their feet.
They were quite at their ease, handling pictures and books without
ceremony, when desirous of ascertaining the value of the goods,
and boldly upsetting bargains mentally secured in advance by noble
connoisseurs. There were many of those infallible attendants of auctions
who make it a point to go to one every day as regularly as to take their
breakfast; aristocratic connoisseurs who look upon it as their duty not
to miss any opportunity of adding to their collections, and who have no
other occupation between twelve o'clock and one; and noble gentlemen,
with garments very threadbare, who make their daily appearance without
any selfish object in view, but merely to see how it all goes off.

A quantity of pictures were lying about in disorder: with them were
mingled furniture, and books with the cipher of the former owner, who
never was moved by any laudable desire to glance into them. Chinese
vases, marble slabs for tables, old and new furniture with curving
lines, with griffins, sphinxes, and lions' paws, gilded and ungilded,
chandeliers, sconces, all were heaped together in a perfect chaos of
art.

The auction appeared to be at its height.

The surging throng was competing for a portrait which could not but
arrest the attention of all who possessed any knowledge of art. The
skilled hand of an artist was plainly visible in it. The portrait, which
had apparently been several times restored and renovated, represented
the dark features of an Asiatic in flowing garments, and with a strange
and remarkable expression of countenance; but what struck the buyers
more than anything else was the peculiar liveliness of the eyes. The
more they were looked at, the more did they seem to penetrate into the
gazer's heart. This peculiarity, this strange illusion achieved by the
artist, attracted the attention of nearly all. Many who had been bidding
gradually withdrew, for the price offered had risen to an incredible
sum. There remained only two well-known aristocrats, amateurs of
painting, who were unwilling to fore