deft dab of hybrid waxy paste, peculiar in its
composition to the Hotel, to the knocked down
object, and one-handed to the more or less
exalted purchaser.

An open space before the desk, partitioned
from the public by a range of tables stretching
across the room, is the stage of the crier and
the expert. The crier fills the first speaking
role after the auctioneer, who is supported by
him, to whom he gives the antistrophe. He has
the eyes of Argus, the ear of Dionysius, the
lungs of a Stentor, the mouth of Chrysostom.
He reverses the Eastern proverb; his speech is
golden, and his silence in calculated pauses is
silvern. In the pond of faces before him, he
fishes for bids. His practised eye suspects under
the strenuously placid countenance, the swelling
purpose and even the unconsciously rising desire
to buy. He has the tempting article—pretty
picture or what not—held up to you, plays about
you with flying word-baits, brings you to the
surface and hooks you as it were with a glance. There
is a celebrated crier, an old man known to fame
only by the name of Jean, so skilful in this art of
angling, that he not unfrequently catches simple
gudgeons who, rather than struggle to get clear
against the laughter of the whole house, quietly
pay for what they did not want.

Higher in rank is the expert. He is a man—
if a being of such sui-generical qualities can be
called a man—who sees below the surface of
all sorts of things, into their origin and history
and intrinsic and market value. In the fine arts,
for example, he is learned in schools and
familiar with masters: with their early manner
and second manner and last but one and last
manner; with their pupils and imitators and
copyists; with originals and undoubted originals
and attributed originals and copies of the period;
with touch and re-touch and tone and colour
and varnish—especially varnish; with drawing
and grouping and composition; with all the
grounds—fore, back, and middle, and with the
"Corregiosity of Corregio " generally.
Sometimes he makes mistakes between liquorice-juice
of modern application and the mellow dimness
of antiquity. One day, in an invoice of Italian
pictures was a crucifix with the legend Salvator
Mundi, which the expert commended to
amateurs as a work of the namesake and rival in
genius of Salvator Rosa.

Humbler in the Hotel hierarchy is the
commissionnaire, though he, too, is a privileged, and
in some sort official person; like all such in
France, he wears a uniform; a short jacket of
a fixed cut and colour, with buttons after their
kind, and a cap after its kind, more than civil,
but less than military. He receives the object
from the hands of the expert, puts it on the
table, holds it up to the scrutiny of the assembly.
Also he diligently watches the game, points out
and faithfully brings to the notice of the crier
an unexpected bidder timidly breaking cover.
Lowly and coarse-habited as he looks, curse not
the commissionnaire. Peradventure, he is grown
a practical connoisseur by long experience, and
rich by little investments and devestments of his
own, watchfully made at the curious ebbs and
flows of the course of trade here. The good will
of his place is worth five thousand francs—a much
larger sum, or value, at any rate, in Paris than
in London.

Need I include in the census of the fixed
population, those respectable gentlemen clothed
in proportion to their authority, in long-skirted
coats, with straight meagre swords of justice by
their sides, the instruments of French providence,
watchful tutors of the paternal government's
restless children? Are we not in Paris? And
are they not the sergents de Napoleonville?

For the numerous and mixed habitual populations
of the Hotel, in their tribes and families,
you will find hints towards a nomenclature in a
chapter of Southey's Doctor. Here, as in other
centres of human activity, the Gettites and
Haveites abound, and the children of Terade
and Mammon. If you venture into the rooms
on the ground floor, you will think you have
fallen among Philistines, mingled with a winning
tribe of Israelites and Hittites and veritable
Haggites. There are professional dealers in all
second-hand merchandise, Marchands de Meubles,
Marchands de Tableaux, Marchands de Bric-a-
brac, Marchandes de Toilette. They are specially
to be avoided and not to be (voluntarily) met
with, within the borders of miscellaneous sales of
cheap articles. Recognising as I do the pervading
urbanity of the French, I bear witness to these
as an ocular, olfactory, and costal witness, that
they are an inelegant, unpolished, unfragrant
folk. Their raiment is uncomely, their unbated
breath is the breath of garlic eaters, the elbows
of them are rigid and pungent, and the fingers
and the nails thereof are as the claws of unclean
birds. Among them are many who, interpreted by
their outer garb, should be women, but of whom
the fierceness of greed and the flavour are epicene.
Real and pretended connoisseurs and amateurs
are Geshurites when they are lucky, often enough
Manassites. They are mainly attendant upon
sales of pictures, engravings, articles of vertu.
They are a special folk, including many varieties,
with curious manners and customs, that shall be
spoken of hereafter. I will only mention in
passing, the Amorites, a very feeble people, who
attend the sales of furniture, jewels, &c., sent
in by actresses, more celebrated for their high
skirts and misdemeanours than for their
histrionic merits, or by other female "celebrities,"
to buy at high prices either memorials of them
or presents for rivals.

An important class, in number, are the idlers
and spectacle-loving flaneurs—the Gadites and
the Gazeites. Their time is not money. They
come to exchange it for any cheap return of amusement;
to get rid of themselves. You may see
such with their feet at the register, of a cold day,
chatting low with their antipodes, or quietly gone
—amid the stirring goings—fast asleep. Of these
are they who haunt the public libraries and other
places of gratis warmth, in dull winter days. It
was one of them who, entering the reading-room
of the Bibliothèque Impériale one chilly morning,
and finding all the chairs beset, asked for a