welry, 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 increased
tenfold during the last twenty years in this city of Paris, whither
all the curiosities in the world come to rub against one another. And
for pictures there are but three marts in the world--Rome, London, and
Paris.

Elie Magus lived in the Chausee des Minimes, a short, broad street
leading to the Place Royale. He had bought the house, an old-fashioned
mansion, for a song, as the saying is, in 1831. Yet there were
sumptuous apartments within it, decorated in the time of Louis XV.;
for it had once been the Hotel Maulaincourt, built by the great
President of the Cour des Aides, and its remote position had saved it
at the time of the Revolution.

You may be quite sure that the old Jew had sound reasons for buying
house property, contrary to the Hebrew law and custom. He had ended,
as most of us end, with a hobby that bordered on a craze. He was as
miserly as his friend, the late lamented Gobseck; but he had been
caught by the snare of the eyes, by the beauty of the pictures in
which he dealt. As his taste grew more and more fastidious, it became
one of the passions which princes alone can indulge when they are
wealthy and art-lovers. As the second King of Prussia found nothing
that so kindled enthusiasm as the spectacle of a grenadier over six
feet high, and gave extravagant sums for a new specimen to add to his
living museum of a regiment, so the retired picture-dealer was roused
to passion-pitch only by some canvas in perfect preservation,
untouched since the master laid down the brush; and what was more, it
must be a picture of the painter's best time. No great sales,
therefore, took place but Elie Magus was there; every mart knew him;
he traveled all over Europe. The ice-cold, money-worshiping soul in
him kindled at the sight of a perfect work of art, precisely as a
libertine, weary of fair women, is roused from apathy by the sight of
a beautiful girl, and sets out afresh upon the quest of flawless
loveliness. A Don Juan among fair works of art, a worshiper of the
Ideal, Elie Magus had discovered joys that transcend the pleasure of a
miser gloating over his gold--he lived in a seraglio of great
paintings.

His masterpieces were housed as became the children of princes; the
whole first floor of the great old mansion was given up to them. The
rooms had been restored