Part 28

If you would see the perfection to which the painter attained (armed as he was with triple power), go to the Louvre and look at the Baccio Bandinelli portrait; you might place it beside Titian’s Man with a Glove, or by that other Portrait of an Old Man in which Raphael’s consummate skill blends with Correggio’s art; or, again, compare it with Leonardo da Vinci’s Charles VIII., and the picture would scarcely lose. The four pearls are equal; there is the same lustre and sheen, the same rounded completeness, the same brilliancy. Art can go no further than this. Art has risen above Nature, since Nature only gives her creatures a few brief years of life.

Pons possessed one example of this immortal great genius and incurably indolent painter; it was a Knight of Malta, a Templar kneeling in prayer. The picture was painted on slate, and in its unfaded color and its finish was immeasurably finer than the Baccio Bandinelli.

Fra Bartolommeo was represented by a Holy Family, which many connoisseurs might have taken for a Raphael. The Hobbema would have fetched sixty thousand francs at a public sale; and as for the Durer, it was equal to the famous Holzschuer portrait at Nuremberg for which the kings of Bavaria, Holland, and Prussia have vainly offered two hundred thousand francs again and again. Was it the portrait of the wife or the daughter of Holzschuer, Albrecht Durer’s personal friend?--The hypothesis seems to be a certainty, for the attitude of the figure in Pons’ picture suggests that it is meant for a pendant, the position of the coat-of-arms is the same as in the Nuremberg portrait; and, finally, the oetatis suoe XLI. accords perfectly with the age inscribed on the picture religiously kept by the Holzschuers of Nuremberg, and but recently engraved.

The tears stood in Elie Magus’ eyes as he looked from one masterpiece to another. He turned round to La Cibot, “I will give you a commission of two thousand francs on each of the pictures if you can arrange that I shall have them for forty thousand francs,” he said. La Cibot was amazed at this good fortune dropped from the sky. Admiration, or, to be more accurate, delirious joy, had wrought such havoc in the Jew’s brain, that it had actually unsettled his habitual greed, and he fell headlong into enthusiasm, as you see.

“And I?----” put in Remonencq, who knew nothing about pictures.

“Everything here is equally good,” the Jew said cunningly, lowering his voice for Remonencq’s ears; “take ten pictures just as they come and on the same conditions. Your fortune will be made.”

Again the three thieves looked each other in the face, each one of them overcome with the keenest of all joys--sated greed. All of a sudden the sick man’s voice rang through the room; the tones vibrated like the strokes of a bell:

“Who is there?” called Pons.

“Monsieur! just go back to bed!” exclaimed La Cibot, springing upon Pons and dragging him by main force. “What next! Have you a mind to kill yourself?--Very well, then, it is not Dr. Poulain, it is Remonencq, good soul, so anxious that he has come to ask after you!--Everybody is so fond of you that the whole house is in a flutter. So what is there to fear?”

“It seems to me that there are several of you,” said Pons.

“Several? that is good! What next! Are you dreaming!--You will go off your head before you have done, upon my word!--Here, look!”--and La Cibot flung open the door, signed to Magus to go, and beckoned to Remonencq.

“Well, my dear sir,” said the Auvergnat, now supplied with something to say, “I just came to ask after you, for the whole house is alarmed about you.--Nobody likes Death to set foot in a house!--And lastly, Daddy Monistrol, whom you know very well, told me to tell you that if you wanted money he was at your service----”

“He sent you here to take a look round at my knick-knacks!” returned the old collector from his bed; and the sour tones of his voice were full of suspicion.

A sufferer from liver complaint nearly always takes momentary and special dislikes to some person or thing, and concentrates all his ill-humor upon the object. Pons imagined that some one had designs upon his precious collection; the thought of guarding it became a fixed idea with him; Schmucke was continually sent to see if any one had stolen into the sanctuary.

“Your collection is fine enough to attract the attention of chineurs,” Remonencq answered astutely. “I am not much in the art line myself; but you are supposed to be such a great connoisseur, sir, that with my eyes shut--supposing, for instance, that you should need money some time or other, for nothing costs so much as these confounded illnesses; there was my sister now, when she would have got better again just as well without. Doctors are rascals that take advantage of your condition to--”

“Thank you, good-day, good-day,” broke in Pons, eying the marine store-dealer uneasily.

“I will go to the door with him, for fear he should touch something,” La Cibot whispered to her patient.

“Yes, yes,” answered the invalid, thanking her by a glance.

La Cibot shut the bedroom door behind her, and Pons’ suspicions awoke again at once.

She found Magus standing motionless before the four pictures. His immobility, his admiration, can only be understood by other souls open to ideal beauty, to the ineffable joy of beholding art made perfect; such as these can stand for whole hours before the Antiope--Correggio’s masterpiece--before Leonardo’s Gioconda, Titian’s Mistress, Andrea del Sarto’s Holy Family, Domenichino’s Children Among the Flowers, Raphael’s little cameo, or his Portrait of an Old Man--Art’s greatest masterpieces.

“Be quick and go, and make no noise,” said La Cibot.

The Jew walked slowly backwards, giving the pictures such a farewell gaze as a lover gives his love. Outside on the landing, La Cibot tapped his bony arm. His rapt contemplations had put an idea into her head.

“Make it four thousand francs for each picture,” said she, “or I do nothing.”

“I am so poor!...” began Magus. “I want the pictures simply for their own sake, simply and solely for the love of art, my dear lady.”

“I can understand that love, sonny, you are so dried up. But if you do not promise me sixteen thousand francs now, before Remonencq here, I shall want twenty to-morrow.”

“Sixteen; I promise,” returned the Jew, frightened by the woman’s rapacity.

La Cibot turned to Remonencq.

“What oath can a Jew swear?” she inquired.