“My picture gallery,” he said.
The walls were covered with canvases on which Beautrelet recognized the most famous signatures. There were Raphael’s Madonna of the Agnus Dei, Andrea del Sarto’s Portrait of Lucrezia Fede, Titian’s Salome, Botticelli’s Madonna and Angels and numbers of Tintorettos, Carpaccios, Rembrandts, Velasquez.
“What fine copies!” said Beautrelet, approvingly.
Lupin looked at him with an air of stupefaction:
“What! Copies! You must be mad! The copies are in Madrid, my dear fellow, in Florence, Venice, Munich, Amsterdam.”
“Then these—”
“Are the original pictures, my lad, patiently collected in all the museums of Europe, where I have replaced them, like an honest man, with first-rate copies.”
“But some day or other—”
“Some day or other, the fraud will be discovered? Well, they will find my signature on each canvas—at the back—and they will know that it was I who have endowed my country with the original masterpieces. After all, I have only done what Napoleon did in Italy.—Oh, look, Beautrelet: here are M. de Gesvres’s four Rubenses!—”
The knocking continued within the hollow of the Needle without ceasing.