Upon the denticulated shelves of several sideboards glittered im¬mense Japanese dishes with red and blue designs relieved by gilded hatching; side by side with enameled works by Bernard Palissy, rep¬resenting serpents, frogs, and lizards in relief.
From disemboweled cabinets escaped cascades of silver-lustrous Chi¬nese silks and waves of tinsel, which an oblique sunbeam shot through with luminous beads; while portraits of every era, in frames more or less tarnished, smiled through their yellow varnish.
The striped breastplate of a damascened suit of Milanese armor glit¬tered in one corner; Loves and Nymphs of porcelain; Chinese Gro¬tesques, vases of celadon and crackle-ware; Saxon and old Sevres cups encumbered the shelves and nooks of the apartment.
The dealer followed me closely through the tortuous way contrived between the piles of furniture; warding off with his hands the hazardous sweep of my coat-skirts; watching my elbows with the uneasy attention of an antiquarian and a usurer.
It was a singular face that of the merchant:— an immense skull, pol¬ished like a knee, and surrounded by a thin aureole of white hair, which brought out the clear salmon tint of his complexion all the more strikingly, lent him a false aspect of patriarchal bonhomie, counteracted, however, by the scintillation of two little yellow eyes which trembled in their orbits like two louis-d`or upon quicksilver.
Oriental or Jewish type
The curve of his nose presented an aquiline silhouette, which suggested the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands—thin, slender, full of nerves which projected like strings upon the finger-board of a violin, and armed with claws like those on the terminations of bats` wings—shook with senile trembling; but those convulsively agitated hands became firmer than steel pincers or lobsters` claws when they lifted any precious article— an onyx cup, a Venetian glass, or a dish of Bohemian crystal.
This strange old man had an aspect so thoroughly rabbinical and cabalistic that he would have been burnt on the mere testimony of his face three centuries ago.
“Will you not buy something from me to-day, sir? Here is a Malay kreese with a blade undulating like flame: look at those grooves con¬trived for the blood to run along, those teeth set backwards so as to tear out the entrails in withdrawing the weapon—it is a fine character of ferocious arm, and will look well in your collection: this two-handed sword is very beautiful—it is the work of Josepe de la Hera; and this colichemarde, with its fenestrated guard—what a superb specimen of handicraft!”
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