The thief dropped the candle and threw his arms wide with a gesture of
supreme longing.

"If I could carry it all away! All, all! Every beautiful thing! To sell
some--the less beautiful, and to live with the others all my days!"

And now a madness came over the thief. So little a part of all these
things could he bear away with him; yet all were his--his for the
taking--even the huge carved presses and the enormous vases of solid
silver, too heavy for him to lift--even these were his: had he not found
them--he, by his own skill and cunning? He went about in the rooms,
touching one after the other the beautiful, rare things. He caressed the
gold and the jewels. He threw his arms round the great silver vases; he
wound round himself the heavy red velvet of the curtain where the
griffins gleamed in embossed gold, and shivered with pleasure at the
soft clinging of its embrace. He found, in a tall cupboard,
curiously-shaped flasks of wine, such wine as he had never tasted, and
he drank of it slowly--in little sips--from a silver goblet and from a
green Venice glass, and from a cup of rare pink china, knowing that any
one of his drinking vessels was worth enough to keep him in idleness for
a long year. For the thief had learnt his trade, and it is a part of a
thief's trade to know the value of things.

He threw himself on the rich couches, sat in the stately carved chairs,
leaned his elbows on the ebony tables. He buried his hot face in the
chill, smooth linen of the great bed, and wondered to find it still
scented delicately as though some sweet woman had lain there but last
night. He went hither and thither laughing with pure pleasure, and
making to himself an unbridled carnival of the joys of possession.

In this wise the night wore on, and with the night his madness wore
away. So presently he went about among the treasures--no more with the
eyes of a lover, but with the eyes of a Jew--and he chose those precious
stones which he knew for the most precious, and put them in the bag he
had brought, and with them some fine-wrought goldsmith's work and the
goblet out of which he had drunk the wine. Though it was but of silver,
he would not leave it. The green Venice glass he broke and the cup, for
he said: "No man less fortunate than I, to-night, shall ever again drink
from them." But he harmed nothing else of all the beautiful things,
because he loved them.

Then, leaving the low, uneven ends of the candles still alight, he