"I never sell my sketches. It is the plan for a picture."
"Ah!" said he, picking up the paper with the tips of his long yellow fingers.
He took a lens from his waistcoat pocket and began to study the design in silence.
The sun was now shining obliquely into the garret. Van Spreckdal never said a word; the hook of his immense nose increased, his heavy eyebrows contracted, and his long pointed chin took a turn upward, making a thousand little wrinkles in his long, thin cheeks. The silence was so profound that I could distinctly hear the plaintive buzzing of a fly that had been caught in a spider's web.
"And the dimensions of this picture, Mister Vénius?" he said without looking at me.
"Three feet by four."
"The price?"
"Fifty ducats."
Van Spreckdal laid the sketch on the table, and drew from his pocket a large purse of green silk shaped like a pear; he drew the rings of it——
"Fifty ducats," said he, "here they are."