Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/267

“Suppose, for once, you were Cinna, and take this seat.”

“Oh! oh! oh!” shouted the others, looking at the floor to see if it would not open and swallow up the philosopher. Meanwhile the Jew let himself fail into the arm-chair, and was just going to cry out at its hardness, when he remembered that it was one which he himself had sold Colline for a deputy’s speech. As the Jew sat down, his pockets re-echoed with a silvery sound; melodious symphony, which threw the four friends into a reverie of delight.

“The accompaniment seems pretty,” said Rodolphe aside to Marcel; “now for the air!”

“Monsieur Marcel,” said Medicis, “I have merely come to make your fortune; that is to say, I offer you a superb opportunity of making your entry into the artistic world. Art, you know, is a barren route, of which glory is the oasis.”

“Father Medicis,” cried Marcel, on the tenter-hooks of impatience, “in the name of your reverend patron, St. Fifty-per-cent., be brief!”

“Here it is,” continued Medicis; “a rich amateur, who is collecting a gallery destined to make the tour of Europe, has charged me to procure him a series of remarkable works. I come to offer you admission into this museum—in a word, to buy your ‘Passage of the Red Sea.’”

“Money down?” asked Marcel.

“Specie,” replied the Jew, making the orchestra of his pockets strike up.

“Do you accept the specious offer?” asked Colline.

“Of course I do!” shouted Rodolphe, “don’t you see, you wretch, that he is talking of ‘tin’? Is there nothing sacred for you, atheist that you are?”

Colline mounted on a table and assumed the attitude of Harpocrates, the God of Silence.