"M. le Comte, you possess treasures indeed," remarked a distinguished foreigner.
"Oh! as to pictures, nobody can hope to rival an obscure collector, one Elie Magus, a Jew, an old monomaniac, the prince of picture-lovers," the Count replied modestly. "And when I say nobody, I do not speak of Paris only, but of all Europe. When the old Croesus dies, France ought to spare seven or eight millions of francs to buy the gallery. For curiosities, my collection is good enough to be talked about—"
"But how, busy as you are, and with a fortune so honestly earned in the first instance in business—"
"In the drug business," broke in Popinot; "you ask how I can continue to interest myself in things that are a drug in the market—"
"No," returned the foreign visitor, "no, but how do you find time to collect? The curiosities do not come to find you."
"My father-in-law owned the nucleus of the collection," said the young Vicomtess; "he loved the arts and beautiful work, but most of his treasures came to him through me."
"Through you, madame?—So young! and yet have you such vices as this?" asked a Russian prince.
Russians are by nature imitative; imitative indeed to such an extent that the diseases of civilization break out among them in epidemics. The bric-a-brac mania had appeared in an acute form in St. Petersburg, and the Russians caused such a rise of prices in the "art line," as Remonencq would say, that collection became impossible. The prince who spoke had come to Paris solely to buy bric-a-brac.
"The treasures came to me, prince, on the death of a cousin. He was very fond of me," added the Vicomtesse Popinot, "and he had spent some forty odd years since 1805 in picking up these masterpieces everywhere, but more especially in Italy—"
"And what was his name?" inquired the English lord.