"Yes, all originals."

"Between ourselves, tell me what he made you pay for those I shall
point out to you."

Together they walked round the gallery. The guests were amazed at the
gravity in which the artist proceeded, in company with the host, to
examine each picture.

"Three thousand francs," said Vervelle in a whisper, as they reached
the last, "but I tell everybody forty thousand."

"Forty thousand for a Titian!" said the artist, aloud. "Why, it is
nothing at all!"

"Didn't I tell you," said Vervelle, "that I had three hundred thousand
francs' worth of pictures?"

"I painted those pictures," said Pierre Grassou in Vervelle's ear,
"and I sold them one by one to Elie Magus for less than ten thousand
francs the whole lot."

"Prove it to me," said the bottle-dealer, "and I double my daughter's
'dot,' for if it is so, you are Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Gerard
Douw!"

"And Magus is a famous picture-dealer!" said the painter, who now saw
the meaning of the misty and aged look imparted to his pictures in
Elie's shop, and the utility of the subjects the picture-dealer had
required of him.