Note 30 — Chapter VIII

A few weeks ago,[30] when rummaging among old papers, documents, memoranda, etc., I came upon some stray leaves of a catalogue of a picture sale at the Hôtel Bullion[31] in 1845. I had marked the prices realized by a score or so of paintings signed by men who, though living at that time, were already more or less famous, and many of whom have since then acquired a world-wide reputation. There was only one exception to this—that of Herrera the Elder, who had been dead nearly two centuries, and whose name was, and is still, a household word among connoisseurs by reason of his having been the master of Velasquez. The handiwork of the irascible old man was knocked down for three francs seventy-five centimes, though no question was raised as to the genuineness of it in my hearing. It was a saint—the catalogue said no more,—and I have been in vain trying to recollect why I did not buy it. There must have been some cogent reason for my not having done so, for "the frame was no doubt worth double the money," to use an auctioneer's phrase. Was it suspicion, or what? At any rate, two years later, I heard that it had been sold to an American for fourteen thousand francs, though, after all, that was no guarantee of its value.