es, walking
up and down the gallery where they hung in their glory. He would dust
everything himself, furniture and pictures; he never wearied of
admiring. Then he would go downstairs to his daughter, drink deep of a
father's happiness, and start out upon his walks through Paris, to
attend sales or visit exhibitions and the like.

If Elie Magus found a great work of art under the right conditions,
the discovery put new life into the man; here was a bit of sharp
practice, a bargain to make, a battle of Marengo to win. He would pile
ruse on ruse to buy the new sultana as cheaply as possible. Magus had
a map of Europe on which all great pictures were marked; his
co-religionists in every city spied out business for him, and received
a commission on the purchase. And then, what rewards for all his
pains! The two lost Raphaels so earnestly sought after by Raphael
lovers are both in his collection. Elie Magus owns the original
portrait of _Giorgione's Mistress_, the woman for whom the painter
died; the so-called originals are merely copies of the famous picture,
which is worth five hundred thousand francs, according to its owner's
estimation. This Jew possesses Titian's masterpiece, an _Entombment_
painted for Charles V., sent by the great man to the great Emperor
with a holograph letter, now fastened down upon the lower part of the
canvas. And Magus has yet another Titian, the original sketch from
which all the portraits of Philip II. were painted. His remaining
ninety-seven pictures are all of the same rank and distinction.
Wherefore Magus laughs at our national collection, raked by the
sunlight which destroys the fairest paintings, pouring in through
panes of glass that act as lenses. Picture galleries can only be
lighted from above; Magus opens and closes his shutters himself; he is
as careful of his pictures as of his daughter, his second idol. And
well the old picture-fancier knows the laws of the lives of pictures.
To hear him talk, a great picture has a life of its own; it is
changeable, it takes its beauty from the color of the light. Magus
talks of his paintings as Dutch fanciers used to talk of their tulips;
he will come home on purpose to see some one picture in the hour of
its glory, when the light is bright and clean.

And Magus himself was a living picture among the motionless figures on
the wall--a little old man, dressed in a shabby overcoat, a silk
waistcoat, renewed twice in a score of years, and a very di