"Did any person tell you these were devils trampling on the cross?" I made bold to ask.
"What else are they doing?" he answered evasively. "Look at the crosses under their feet!"
"But they are not devils," I insisted; "and those cross-pieces were put under their feet simply to give equilibrium."
He said nothing, but looked disappointed; and I felt a little sorry for him. Devils trampling on the Cross, as a display line in some London poster announcing the arrival of "josses from Japan," might certainly have been relied on to catch the public eye.
"This is more wonderful," I said, pointing to a beautiful group, —Maya with the infant Buddha issuing from her side, according to tradition. Painlessly the Bodhisattva was born from her right side. It was the eighth day of the fourth moon.
"That's bronze, too," he remarked, tapping it. "Bronze josses are getting rare. We used to buy them up and sell them for old metal. Wish I'd kept some of them! You ought to have seen the bronzes, in those days, coming in from the temples,—bells and vases and josses! That was the time we tried to buy the Daibutsu at Kamakura."
"For old bronze?" I queried.
"Yes. We calculated the weight of the metal, and formed a syndicate. Our first offer was thirty thousand. We could have made a big profit, for there's a good deal of gold and silver in that work. The priests wanted to sell, but the people wouldn't let them."
"It's one of the world's wonders," I said. "Would you really have broken it up?"
"Certainly. Why not? What else could you do with it?… That one there looks just like a Virgin Mary, doesn't it?"