"And yet it is annoying not to know the difference between the works of those Paduan brothers, of a recent century, and such as really belong to the old Roman mint;" saying which we began to study them afresh, as a policeman would do to a rogue, whom he expected to meet again. "Is this knowledge, dear Dedomenicis, to be acquired 'per càrita?' let us not waste our time, if it be not." "Lei lo sapra! it will come in good time. Pazienza! be patient! you know our proverb—'time and straw ripen medlars,' and your judgment will mature in time, just as the medlars do."
Crude as an unripe medlar though our judgment certainly then was, still the prospect of its mellowing into unsoundness at last was by no means consolatory; and so we told him, pocketing our false coins, and going home to consult the memorandum of their price,—here it is! Eccola! as it was most ingeniously registered by us at the time—"Nov. 7, 1840—Bought to-day of a peasant on his way from Ricci to Rome, two beautiful coins, a Pertinax and a Pescennius Niger, in perfect preservation! only paid £5 for the two!! the simple contadino, who can't read the epigraphes, asks whether they are not Nero's!!"[54]
A ring at the bell, and our courier has announced Signor Dedomenicis. "By all means, show him in then,"—for he had come, a year later, to see coins we had picked up during our summer trip to Sicily. "There," said we gaily, and to put him in a good humour at once, (for the remark showed we had made ourselves master of his physiognomy),—"there, Dedomenicis, is a Ptolemy Evergetes, who was, to judge by his coins, your very prototype—it is your nose—your chin—your"——
"Suppose you make it mine altogether then," said he slily; but we "prized it too much, on this very account, to part with it!" After which we go to the nearest cabinet in the room—unlock the door, take out drawer No. 1, marked Sicilian, and rare; and in the pride of our young beginnings, and little knowing what we were to bring upon ourselves in so doing,—
"Midst hopes, and fears that kindle hopes.
A pleasing anxious throng;
And shrewd suspicions often lull'd,
But now returning strong,"—
we hand over the tray to Dedomenicis, whose running commentary, as soon as he had brought it into the field of his spectacles, was really appalling; and he plied it as destructively as a Sikh battery, or a Perkins's steam gun.
Prepared to see him take out the first coin in the row, to subject it to his magnifier, to turn it round, now on this side, now on that, and then to pause, ere he could decide upon it, little could we have supposed that in a second his battery was to commence fire; and that in less than a minute, he would have passed a summary sentence upon every coin of the lot.
"One—two—three."—Thus it began; "roba commune—common as blackberries; (four, five, six,) niente di buono—good for what you can get for them; (seven, eight, nine,) Idem; (ten, eleven, twelve,) Idem; thirteen, not of Messina, as it pretended to be; and here had sold us a Neapolitan cat in place of a Sicilian hare!" "Come! a cat?" (for we called to mind what each of puss's nine lives had cost us, and determined to die game for it), "that coin a counterfeit?" "Sī—Sīg-nō-rĕ!" in that sort of sing-song gamut twang in which one Roman answers another's incredulity—"anzi falsīssimo," with a most provoking lengthening out of the second syllable of that most provoking superlative; he knew all about its fabrication; the gentleman who made these coins was an acquaintance—not a friend of his; the original coin being in request, and somewhat expensive, he had contrived to get up a new issue of the Messina Hare,[55] which was much in vogue, and seemed, like Gay's Hare, to court an extensive acquaintance, and many friends. "That Himera[56] hen is of a brood that never lays golden eggs, and the sooner you can get rid of her the better. Time was when such poultry fetched its price; now, thanks to the prolific process of our modern hatchings, we see her as often in the market as widgeon, snipe, or plovers. That's a fine lion; 'tis a pity you've no lioness to match him; but one such real Rhegium leone is worth a host of counterfeits,—'unus, sane, at Leo'. As to your Ptolemies' eagles here, at least they are well preserved, and that always should give a coin some claim to a place in a beginner's collection; though to us dealers, who see many of them, these eagles at last become somewhat uninteresting and vulgar birds. What a collection is here of Hieros[57] on horseback, all in good plight too! Well, I might have bought in or out of these ranks myself; but I should not, I think, like you, have purchased the whole troop—of course you paid but little for them." "Yes," said we timidly, "not overmuch, not more than they were worth perhaps, six pauls a-piece," and we coughed nervously, and expected him to speak encouragingly; but he said nothing, and proceeded with his scrutiny of our box. "Per Bacco! What a quantity of cuttlefish! Methinks Syracuse has rather overdone you with her Lobigo, but that at least is genuine, for 'tis too cheap to make money of by imitation. This of Naxos will do. This of Tarentum, va bene! this of Locri, corresponde." A faint "bravo!" escapes him on taking up an Athenian Tetradrachm, with the Archer's name on the field; but he takes no note, has no "winged words" to throw away upon our winged horses, though every nag of them, we know, came from Corinth or from Argos.
The bearded corn of Metapontus, with Ceres or Mars on the reverse: Arion on his dolphin—that beautiful, most beautiful of coins—were, together with sundry others, all too common for his antiquarian eye to take pleasure in; he sought something less frequently presented to it, and at last he found it in a Croton coin with a rare reverse, which, "would we sell him, he would take at twenty dollars, and pay us in living silver." A bow told him we were not disposed to part with it. And now he comes to what we consider to be our finest piece,—our Lipari bronze! And on it is a fat dolphin sporting on a green sea. Dedomenicis' manner is vastly discouraging, and we are prepared for new disappointment, yet we could have sworn that that coin was genuine. But if false, as he believes it to be, why then not have done with it? why put it down to take it up again? why ask whether we don't repute it false, when he knows we know nothing of the matter? And why mouse it so closely under his keen eye, and look round the rim of it, and examine the face of it, and appear as if he would penetrate into its very soul,[58] and get at its history? Oh! 'tis all right, then; if "he may be mistaken," doubtless he is so: and this is confirmed by his now proposing—thinking an exchange no robbery, of course—to exchange it for us. Ingenuous man! who hadst twice invoked the saints and the Madonna in our behalf when thou heardest the price we paid for our unlucky Hare; and when thou knewest how C—— had beguiled us into taking, and paying for a Roman, the price of an Etruscan "As;" and now thou wouldst have robbed us of our best coin, have deprived us of the very Delphin classic of our collection; it won't do! Our Messenian hare is welcome, but, old æruscator, we cannot let you swim away on our dolphin; and we rise to replace him in our monetaro accordingly.
A third interview with Dedomenicis is recorded in our entry-book of such matters.—"Here are the coins, Signor, which you gave me to clean last week: they are ten in number, for which you owe me as many pauls.—Eccole!" "Ah," said we, "you have not made much of them, I fear." "Look and see," was the laconic reply. By which time we had taken up the first, and were pleased to find that an Augustus, whose lineaments we could hardly recognise, when we gave him to Dedomenicis to scale, had come back to us perfectly restored. "Why, Dedomenicis," said we, "this is a restitution better than Trajan's, of this very Emperor's coinage; for that, after all, was but the imitation of an old mint; but yours the restoration of the old one itself. Henceforth I prefer Dedomenicis' restituit to Trajan's restituit." "Well, then, when you have looked over the others, you will, I dare say, pay these and them at the same rate, as if they had been the issues of that Emperor."[59] We were indeed surprised at what we saw, so much had all our coins gained by the process to which Dedomenicis had subjected them. The second we took up represented the Ostian harbour, (Portus Ostiensis.) We had given it to him with a foul bottom—it was restored to us with its basin cleared out, and with all its shipping, just as it used to look in the days of Nero; in another, the whole arena of the Colosseum had been disencumbered; in another, Antonine's column shone bright from top to bottom; here we saw Honos et Virtus (honour and military prowess) again taking the field; here the scales of Justice once more appeared, and librated freely in her hand; here Hope resumed her green trefoil; Pudicity unveils her face; and there sat Fecundity on a curule seat, with all her family about her; lastly, there were those three scandalous sisters of Caligula—the Misses Money (Moneta,)[60]—standing together with their arms intertwined, and their names at their backs. All these ten restitutions cost only ten pauls! "And how did you manage to clean then so well, Dedomenicis?" "Col tempo ed il temperino,"—with time and a penknife: "Ma ci vuo il genio,"—you must have a talent for it.