And Magus himself was a living picture among the motionless figures on the wall—a little old man, dressed in a shabby overcoat, a silk waistcoat, renewed twice in a score of years, and a very dirty pair of trousers, with a bald head, a face full of deep hollows, a wrinkled, callous skin, a beard that had a trick of twitching its long white bristles, a menacing pointed chin, a toothless mouth, eyes bright as the eyes of his dogs in the yard, and a nose like an obelisk—there he stood in his gallery smiling at the beauty called into being by genius. A Jew surrounded by his millions will always be one of the finest spectacles which humanity can give. Robert Medal, our great actor, cannot rise to this height of poetry, sublime though he is.
Paris of all the cities of the world holds most of such men as Magus, strange beings with a strange religion in their heart of hearts. The London “eccentric” always finds that worship, like life, brings weariness and satiety in the end; the Parisian monomaniac lives cheerfully in concubinage with his crotchet to the last.
Often shall you meet in Paris some Pons, some Elie Magus, dressed badly enough, with his face turned from the rising sun (like the countenance of the perpetual secretary of the Academie), apparently heeding nothing, conscious of nothing, paying no attention to shop-windows nor to fair passers-by, walking at random, so to speak, with nothing in his pockets, and to all appearance an equally empty head. Do you ask to what Parisian tribe this manner of man belongs? He is a collector, a millionaire, one of the most impassioned souls upon earth; he and his like are capable of treading the miry ways that lead to the police-court if so they may gain possession of a cup, a picture, or some such rare unpublished piece as Elie Magus once picked up one memorable day in Germany.
This was the expert to whom Remonencq with much mystery conducted La Cibot. Remonencq always asked advice of Elie Magus when he met him in the streets; and more than once Magus had lent him money through Abramko, knowing Remonencq’s honesty. The Chaussee des Minimes is close to the Rue de Normandie, and the two fellow-conspirators reached the house in ten minutes.
“You will see the richest dealer in curiosities, the greatest connoisseur in Paris,” Remonencq had said. And Mme. Cibot, therefore, was struck dumb with amazement to be confronted with a little old man in a great-coat too shabby for Cibot to mend, standing watching a painter at work upon an old picture in the chilly room on the vast ground floor. The old man’s eyes, full of cold feline malignance, were turned upon her, and La Cibot shivered.
“What do you want, Remonencq?” asked this person.
“It is a question of valuing some pictures; there is nobody but you in Paris who can tell a poor tinker-fellow like me how much he may give when he has not thousands to spend, like you.”
“Where is it?”
“Here is the portress of the house where the gentleman lives; she does for him, and I have arranged with her—”
“Who is the owner?”