Soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real Goya and the copy of the fresco “La Vendimia.”  His acquisition of the real Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested interests and passions which mesh the bright-winged fly of human life.  The real Goya’s noble owner’s ancestor had come into possession of it during some Spanish war—­it was in a word loot.  The noble owner had remained in ignorance of its value until in the nineties an enterprising critic discovered that a Spanish painter named Goya was a genius.  It was only a fair Goya, but almost unique in England, and the noble owner became a marked man.  Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture which, independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder principle that one must know everything and be fearfully interested in life, he had fully intended to keep an article which contributed to his reputation while he was alive, and to leave it to the nation after he was dead.  Fortunately for Soames, the House of Lords was violently attacked in 1909, and the noble owner became alarmed and angry.  ‘If,’ he said to himself, ’they think they can have it both ways they are very much mistaken.  So long as they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation can have some of my pictures at my death.  But if the nation is going to bait me, and rob me like this, I’m damned if I won’t sell the lot.  They can’t have my private property and my public spirit-both.’  He brooded in this fashion for several months till one morning, after reading the speech of a certain statesman, he telegraphed to his agent to come down and bring Bodkin.  On going over the collection Bodkin, than whose opinion on market values none was more sought, pronounced that with a free hand to sell to America, Germany, and other places where there was an interest in art, a lot more money could be made than by selling in England.  The noble owner’s public spirit—­he said—­was well known but the pictures were unique.  The noble owner put this opinion in his pipe and smoked it for a year.  At the end of that time he read another speech by the same statesman, and telegraphed to his agents:  “Give Bodkin a free hand.”  It was at this juncture that Bodkin conceived the idea which salved the Goya and two other unique pictures for the native country of the noble owner.  With one hand Bodkin proffered the pictures to the foreign market, with the other he formed a list of private British collectors.  Having obtained what he considered the highest possible bids from across the seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the private British collectors, and invited them, of their public spirit, to outbid.  In three instances (including the Goya) out of twenty-one he was successful.  And why?  One of the private collectors made buttons—­he had made so many that he desired that his wife should be called Lady “Buttons.”  He therefore bought a unique picture at great cost, and gave it to the nation.  It was “part,”