rty pair of
trousers, with a bald head, a face full of deep hollows, a wrinkled,
callous skin, a beard that had a trick of twitching its long white
bristles, a menacing pointed chin, a toothless mouth, eyes bright as
the eyes of his dogs in the yard, and a nose like an obelisk--there he
stood in his gallery smiling at the beauty called into being by
genius. A Jew surrounded by his millions will always be one of the
finest spectacles which humanity can give. Robert Medal, our great
actor, cannot rise to this height of poetry, sublime though he is.

Paris of all the cities of the world holds most of such men as Magus,
strange beings with a strange religion in their heart of hearts. The
London "eccentric" always finds that worship, like life, brings
weariness and satiety in the end; the Parisian monomaniac lives
cheerfully in concubinage with his crotchet to the last.

Often shall you meet in Paris some Pons, some Elie Magus, dressed
badly enough, with his face turned from the rising sun (like the
countenance of the perpetual secretary of the Academie), apparently
heeding nothing, conscious of nothing, paying no attention to
shop-windows nor to fair passers-by, walking at random, so to speak,
with nothing in his pockets, and to all appearance an equally empty
head. Do you ask to what Parisian tribe this manner of man belongs? He
is a collector, a millionaire, one of the most impassioned souls upon
earth; he and his like are capable of treading the miry ways that lead
to the police-court if so they may gain possession of a cup, a
picture, or some such rare unpublished piece as Elie Magus once picked
up one memorable day in Germany.

This was the expert to whom Remonencq with much mystery conducted La
Cibot. Remonencq always asked advice of Elie Magus when he met him in
the streets; and more than once Magus had lent him money through
Abramko, knowing Remonencq's honesty. The Chaussee des Minimes is
close to the Rue de Normandie, and the two fellow-conspirators reached
the house in ten minutes.

"You will see the richest dealer in curiosities, the greatest
connoisseur in Paris," Remonencq had said. And Mme. Cibot, therefore,
was struck dumb with amazement to be confronted with a little old man
in a great-coat too shabby for Cibot to mend, standing watching a
painter at work upon an old picture in the chilly room on the vast
ground floor. The old man's eyes, full of cold feline malignance, were
turned upon her, and La Cib