"Sir, you purchase drawings. I have these to sell. Will they suit you?"
The man took them up without deigning to look at the person who had accosted him, and turning them over in his hand, "One, two, three, hum; there is half-a-dozen. What do you expect for them?"
"I am not acquainted with the prices of these things."
The printseller, hearing this, thought, by managing well, to get them for what he liked, and throwing them over with an air of contempt, resumed—
"And pray, where may the views be taken?"
"They are recollections of scenes in Germany."
"Ah!" replied the man, "mere drugs! I wish, honest friend, you could have brought subjects not quite so threadbare, and a little better executed; they are but poor things! But every dauber nowadays sets up for a fine artist, and thinks we are to pay him for spoilt paper and conceit."
Insulted by this speech, and, above all, by the manner of the printseller, Thaddeus was snatching up the drawings to leave the shop without a word, when the man, observing his design, and afraid to lose them, laid his hand on the heap, exclaiming—
"Let me tell you, young man, it does not become a person in your situation to be so huffy to his employers. I will give you a guinea for the six, and you may think yourself well paid."
Without further hesitation, whilst the count was striving to subdue the choler which urged him to knock him down, the man laid the gold on the counter, and was slipping the drawings into a drawer; but Thaddeus, snatching them out again, suddenly rolled them up, and walked out of the shop as he said—