under Elie Magus' orders, and with what
magnificence!

The windows were hung with the richest Venetian brocade; the most
splendid carpets from the Savonnerie covered the parquetry flooring.
The frames of the pictures, nearly a hundred in number, were
magnificent specimens, regilded cunningly by Servais, the one gilder
in Paris whom Elie Magus thought sufficiently painstaking; the old Jew
himself had taught him to use the English leaf, which is infinitely
superior to that produced by French gold-beaters. Servais is among
gilders as Thouvenin among bookbinders--an artist among craftsmen,
making his work a labor of love. Every window in that gallery was
protected by iron-barred shutters. Elie Magus himself lived in a
couple of attics on the floor above; the furniture was wretched, the
rooms were full of rags, and the whole place smacked of the Ghetto;
Elie Magus was finishing his days without any change in his life.

The whole of the ground floor was given up to the picture trade (for
the Jew still dealt in works of art). Here he stored his canvases,
here also packing-cases were stowed on their arrival from other
countries; and still there was room for a vast studio, where Moret,
most skilful of restorers of pictures, a craftsman whom the Musee
ought to employ, was almost always at work for Magus. The rest of the
rooms on the ground floor were given up to Magus' daughter, the child
of his old age, a Jewess as beautiful as a Jewess can be when the
Semitic type reappears in its purity and nobility in a daughter of
Israel. Noemi was guarded by two servants, fanatical Jewesses, to say
nothing of an advanced-guard, a Polish Jew, Abramko by name, once
involved in a fabulous manner in political troubles, from which Elie
Magus saved him as a business speculation. Abramko, porter of the
silent, grim, deserted mansion, divided his office and his lodge with
three remarkably ferocious animals--an English bull-dog, a
Newfoundland dog, and another of the Pyrenean breed.

Behold the profound observations of human nature upon which Elie Magus
based his feeling of security, for secure he felt; he left home
without misgivings, slept with both ears shut, and feared no attempt
upon his daughter (his chief treasure), his pictures, or his money. In
the first place, Abramko's salary was increased every year by two
hundred francs so long as his master should live; and Magus, moreover,
was training Abramko as a money-lender in a small way. Abra