When the old Croesus
dies, France ought to spare seven or eight millions of francs to buy
the gallery. For curiosities, my collection is good enough to be
talked about--"
"But how, busy as you are, and with a fortune so honestly earned in
the first instance in business--"
"In the drug business," broke in Popinot; "you ask how I can continue
to interest myself in things that are a drug in the market--"
"No," returned the foreign visitor, "no, but how do you find time to
collect? The curiosities do not come to find you."
"My father-in-law owned the nucleus of the collection," said the young
Vicomtess; "he loved the arts and beautiful work, but most of his
treasures came to him through me."
"Through you, madame?--So young! and yet have you such vices as this?"
asked a Russian prince.
Russians are by nature imitative; imitative indeed to such an extent
that the diseases of civilization break out among them in epidemics.
The bric-a-brac mania had appeared in an acute form in St. Petersburg,
and the Russians caused such a rise of prices in the "art line," as
Remonencq would say, that collection became impossible. The prince who
spoke had come to Paris solely to buy bric-a-brac.
"The treasures came to me, prince, on the death of a cousin. He was
very fond of me," added the Vicomtesse Popinot, "and he had spent some
forty odd years since 1805 in picking up these masterpieces
everywhere, but more especially in Italy--"
"And what was his name?" inquired the English lord.
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