Fra Bartolommeo was represented by a Holy Family, which many connoisseurs might have taken for a Raphael. The Hobbema would have fetched sixty thousand francs at a public sale; and as for the Durer, it was equal to the famous Holzschuer portrait at Nuremberg for which the kings of Bavaria, Holland, and Prussia have vainly offered two hundred thousand francs again and again. Was it the portrait of the wife or the daughter of Holzschuer, Albrecht Durer's personal friend?—The hypothesis seems to be a certainty, for the attitude of the figure in Pons' picture suggests that it is meant for a pendant, the position of the coat-of-arms is the same as in the Nuremberg portrait; and, finally, the oetatis suoe XLI. accords perfectly with the age inscribed on the picture religiously kept by the Holzschuers of Nuremberg, and but recently engraved.
The tears stood in Elie Magus' eyes as he looked from one masterpiece to another. He turned round to La Cibot, "I will give you a commission of two thousand francs on each of the pictures if you can arrange that I shall have them for forty thousand francs," he said. La Cibot was amazed at this good fortune dropped from the sky. Admiration, or, to be more accurate, delirious joy, had wrought such havoc in the Jew's brain, that it had actually unsettled his habitual greed, and he fell headlong into enthusiasm, as you see.
"And I?——" put in Remonencq, who knew nothing about pictures.
"Everything here is equally good," the Jew said cunningly, lowering his voice for Remonencq's ears; "take ten pictures just as they come and on the same conditions. Your fortune will be made."
Again the three thieves looked each other in the face, each one of them overcome with the keenest of all joys—sated greed. All of a sudden the sick man's voice rang through the room; the tones vibrated like the strokes of a bell:
"Who is there?" called Pons.
"Monsieur! just go back to bed!" exclaimed La Cibot, springing upon Pons and dragging him by main force. "What next! Have you a mind to kill yourself?—Very well, then, it is not Dr. Poulain, it is Remonencq, good soul, so anxious that he has come to ask after you! —Everybody is so fond of you that the whole house is in a flutter. So what is there to fear?"
"It seems to me that there are several of you," said Pons.
"Several? that is good! What next! Are you dreaming!—You will go off your head before you have done, upon my word!—Here, look!"—and La Cibot flung open the door, signed to Magus to go, and beckoned to Remonencq.
"Well, my dear sir," said the Auvergnat, now supplied with something to say, "I just came to ask after you, for the whole house is alarmed about you.—Nobody likes Death to set foot in a house!—And lastly, Daddy Monistrol, whom you know very well, told me to tell you that if you wanted money he was at your service——"