The frames of the pictures, nearly a hundred in number, were
magnificent specimens, regilded cunningly by Servais, the one gilder
in Paris whom Elie Magus thought sufficiently painstaking; the old Jew
himself had taught him to use the English leaf, which is infinitely
superior to that produced by French gold-beaters. Servais is among
gilders as Thouvenin among bookbinders--an artist among craftsmen,
making his work a labor of love. Every window in that gallery was
protected by iron-barred shutters. Elie Magus himself lived in a
couple of attics on the floor above; the furniture was wretched, the
rooms were full of rags, and the whole place smacked of the Ghetto;
Elie Magus was finishing his days without any change in his life.
The whole of the ground floor was given up to the picture trade (for
the Jew still dealt in works of art). Here he stored his canvases,
here also packing-cases were stowed on their arrival from other
countries; and still there was room for a vast studio, where Moret,
most skilful of restorers of pictures, a craftsman whom the Musee
ought to employ, was almost always at work for Magus. The rest of the
rooms on the ground floor were given up to Magus' daughter, the child
of his old age, a Jewess as beautiful as a Jewess can be when the
Semitic type reappears in its purity and nobility in a daughter of
Israel. Noemi was guarded by two servants, fanatical Jewesses, to say
nothing of an advanced-guard, a Polish Jew, Abramko by name, once
involved in a fabulous manner in political troubles, from which Elie
Magus saved him as a business speculation.
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