“The Corsican. Next to the masters, I’ve a passion for things genuinely Napoleonic. The hussar is by Meissonier and the skirmish by Detaille.”
“How much is this corner worth?”
“I can’t say, except that I would not part with those objects for a hundred thousand; and there 197 are friends of mine who would pay half that sum for them—behind my back. This is a Da Vinci.”
Half an hour passed. Jane honestly tried to be thrilled by the splendour of the names she heard, but her eye was always travelling back toward the slippers and the buckle. The Empress Josephine! Romance and gallantry in the old, old days!
“The painting in your cabin is by Holbein. It cost me sixteen thousand. Now let us go out and look at the rug. That is the apple of my eye. It is the second finest example of the animal rug in the world. A sheet of pure gold, half an inch thick, covering the rug from end to end, would not equal its worth.”
Jane admired the rug, but she would have preferred the gold. Her sense of the beautiful was alive, but there was always in her mind the genteel poverty of the past. She was beginning to understand. To go in quest of the beautiful required an unlimited purse and an endless leisure; and she would have never the one nor the other.
“How much gold would that be?” she inquired, naïvely.
“Nearly eighty thousand. Have you kept in mind the sums I have given you?”
“Yes. Let me see—good heavens, a quarter of a million! But why do you carry them about like this?” 198
“Because I’m something of a rogue myself. I could not enjoy the rug and the paintings except on board. The French, the Italian, and the Spanish governments could confiscate every solitary painting except the Meissonier and the Detaille, for the simple reason that they were stolen. Oh, I did not steal them myself; I merely purchased them with one eye shut. If I hadn’t bought them they would have gone to some other collector. Do you get a glimmer of the truth now?”