“A Burgomaster at Breakfast.  Originally in the collection of Mynheer Van Grubb.  Amsterdam.  A rare example of the master.  Not engraved.  The chiar’oscuro in this extraordinary work is of a truly sublime character.  Price, Two Hundred Guineas.”

I got five pounds for it.  I suppose Mr. Pickup got one-ninety-five.

This was perhaps not very encouraging as a beginning, in a pecuniary point of view.  But I was to get five pounds more, if my Rembrandt sold within a given time.  It sold a week after it was in a fit state to be trusted in the showroom.  I got my money, and began enthusiastically on another Rembrandt—­“A Burgomaster’s Wife Poking the Fire.”  Last time, the chiar’oscuro of the master had been yellow and black, this time it was to be red and black.  I was just on the point of forcing my way into Mr. Pickup’s confidence, as I had resolved, when a catastrophe happened, which shut up the shop and abruptly terminated my experience as a maker of Old Masters.

“The Burgomaster’s Breakfast” had been sold to a new customer, a venerable connoisseur, blessed with a great fortune and a large picture-gallery.  The old gentleman was in raptures with the picture—­with its tone, with its breadth, with its grand feeling for effect, with its simple treatment of detail.  It wanted nothing, in his opinion, but a little cleaning.  Mr. Pickup knew the raw and ticklish state of the surface, however, far too well, to allow of even an attempt at performing this process, and solemnly asserted, that he was acquainted with no cleansing preparation which could be used on the Rembrandt without danger of “flaying off the last exquisite glazings of the immortal master’s brush.”  The old gentleman was quite satisfied with this reason for not cleaning the Burgomaster, and took away his purchase in his own carriage on the spot.

For three weeks we heard nothing more of him.  At the end of that time, a Hebrew friend of Mr. Pickup, employed in a lawyer’s office, terrified us all by the information that a gentleman related to our venerable connoisseur had seen the Rembrandt, had pronounced it to be an impudent counterfeit, and had engaged on his own account to have the picture tested in a court of law, and to charge the seller and maker thereof with conspiring to obtain money under false pretenses.  Mr. Pickup and I looked at each other with very blank faces on receiving this agreeable piece of news.  What was to be done?  I recovered the full use of my faculties first; and I was the man who solved that important and difficult question, while the rest were still utterly bewildered by it.  “Will you promise me five and twenty pounds in the presence of these gentlemen if I get you out of this scrape?” said I to my terrified employer.  Ishmael Pickup wrung his dirty hands and answered, “Yesh, my dear!”

Our informant in this awkward matter was employed at the office of the lawyers who were to have the conducting of the case against us; and he was able to tell me some of the things I most wanted to know in relation to the picture.