The windows were hung with the richest Venetian brocade; the most splendid carpets from the Savonnerie covered the parquetry flooring.  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.  Abramko, porter of the silent, grim, deserted mansion, divided his office and his lodge with three remarkably ferocious animals—­an English bull-dog, a Newfoundland dog, and another of the Pyrenean breed.

Behold the profound observations of human nature upon which Elie Magus based his feeling of security, for secure he felt; he left home without misgivings, slept with both ears shut, and feared no attempt upon his daughter (his chief treasure), his pictures, or his money.  In the first place, Abramko’s salary was increased every year by two hundred francs so long as his master should live; and Magus, moreover, was training Abramko as a money-lender in a small way.  Abramko never admitted anybody until he had surveyed them through a formidable grated opening.  He was a Hercules for strength, he worshiped Elie Magus, as Sancho Panza worshiped Don Quixote.  All day long the dogs were shut up without food; at nightfall Abramko let them loose; and by a cunning device the old Jew kept each animal at his post in the courtyard or the garden by hanging a piece of meat just out of reach on the top of a pole.  The animals guarded the house, and sheer hunger guarded the dogs.  No odor that reached their nostrils could tempt them from the neighborhood of that piece of meat; they would