Gothic.’—­’Yes,’ I told him, ’the box is pretty; the box might suit me; but as for the fan, Monistrol, I have no Mme. Pons to give the old trinket to, and they make very pretty new ones nowadays; you can buy miracles of painting on vellum cheaply enough.  There are two thousand painters in Paris, you know.’  —­And I opened out the fan carelessly, keeping down my admiration, looked indifferently at those two exquisite little pictures, touched off with an ease fit to send you into raptures.  I held Mme. de Pompadour’s fan in my hand!  Watteau had done his utmost for this.  —­’What do you want for the what-not?’—­’Oh! a thousand francs; I have had a bid already.’—­I offered him a price for the fan corresponding with the probable expenses of the journey.  We looked each other in the eyes, and I saw that I had my man.  I put the fan back into the box lest my Auvergnat should begin to look at it, and went into ecstasies over the box; indeed, it is a jewel.—­’If I take it,’ said I, ’it is for the sake of the box; the box tempts me.  As for the what-not, you will get more than a thousand francs for that.  Just see how the brass is wrought; it is a model.  There is business in it. . . .  It has never been copied; it is a unique specimen, made solely for Mme. de Pompadour’—­and so on, till my man, all on fire for his what-not, forgets the fan, and lets me have it for a mere trifle, because I have pointed out the beauties of his piece of Riesener’s furniture.  So here it is; but it needs a great deal of experience to make such a bargain as that.  It is a duel, eye to eye; and who has such eyes as a Jew or an Auvergnat?”

The old artist’s wonderful pantomime, his vivid, eager way of telling the story of the triumph of his shrewdness over the dealer’s ignorance, would have made a subject for a Dutch painter; but it was all thrown away upon the audience.  Mother and daughter exchanged cold, contemptuous glances.—­“What an oddity!” they seemed to say.

“So it amuses you?” remarked Mme. de Marville.  The question sent a cold chill through Pons; he felt a strong desire to slap the Presidente.

“Why, my dear cousin, that is the way to hunt down a work of art.  You are face to face with antagonists that dispute the game with you.  It is craft against craft!  A work of art in the hands of a Norman, an Auvergnat, or a Jew, is like a princess guarded by magicians in a fairy tale.”

“And how can you tell that this is by Wat—­what do you call him?”

“Watteau, cousin.  One of the greatest eighteenth century painters in France.  Look! do you not see that it is his work?” (pointing to a pastoral scene, court-shepherd swains and shepherdesses dancing in a ring).  “The movement! the life in it! the coloring!  There it is—­see! —­painted with a stroke of the brush, as a writing-master makes a flourish with a pen.  Not a trace of effort here!  And, turn it over, look!—­a ball in a drawing-room.  Summer and Winter!  And what ornaments! and how well preserved it is!  The hinge-pin is gold, you see, and on cleaning it, I found a tiny ruby at either side.”