Part 22

"What has become of Coco?" asked we of an _orefice, three years later_, on finding ourselves a second time in Naples, and nothing doubting, as he had not been to visit us, that he was doing Baron Trenck, and exercising his ingenuity in prison. We were surprised, therefore, to learn that he now kept a smart shop, and was a sort of joint householder with a respectable man, and that nothing particular had occurred to tarnish his reputation for now nearly a year! The shop we had already noticed as one of promise on the outside; for, as yet, we had not found time to visit its interior. It stood half-way up the Toledo, on the left hand side as you go to the Studii. Etruscan jars were painted on all the shutters, and bits of statues and bas-reliefs _bossaged_ and projected from the house front. In face of each window was an enormous shelving tray, full of all sorts of odds and ends, from the Flood downwards, the whole under protection of a strong iron _grillage_. In one corner of the shop (we had _now_ gone forth to visit it) sat a pretty young woman, in spectacles, reading Manzoni, or sleeping over him (the aforesaid spectacles prevented our noticing which) as he lay open in her lap; while on another chair, in the opposite corner, an old man, almost in his dotage, looked wistfully round his shop, not suppressing an anxious sigh when the scrutiny was done. In an inner room of _his_ palace--for such, in derision of its owner, was the house called--busy in preparing and cleaning the specimens that were about to be transferred into the shop, lurked, like some keen-eyed tarantula, the industrious _Coco_ himself, with such an eye to business, and such an ear, that we were no sooner turned in from the street than he, too, had turned in, and was beside us.--"Well, Coco, _bon giorrio_, &c. &c. &c., 'tis said you have become an _honest_ man at last; how does this _new_ trade answer?" "Not at all," sighed the old man behind us. "Nonsense!" rejoined Coco; "whoever heard of a man's making money all at once? Nothing stake, nothing make--there's no mending where there's no spending. '_Necesse est facere sumptum qui quaerit lucrum_, dice bene il Plauto.'" "Allegro though you be, Coco, I am not. With you nothing can go ill, for you have nothing to lose, either in money or in character; but to me, who am old, bankruptcy and a prison are not matters of jest." "Nonsense, again, you are not going to prison _yet_!" "Not _at all_, I hope, Coco," said the poor little lazy woman in the corner. "If I had my 5000 ducats, and my vineyard, again, at Sorrento, that you persuaded me to sell for your _Scavi_ at Calvi, which never brought me any thing but a few lamps, and _lots of lachrymatories_!" "Basta, 'tis too late to talk about what you _would do_ if you had it to do over again. Let bygones be bygones. Who knows what this gentleman may come to buy of us? and he never would have come to you but from his previous acquaintance with _me_. Isn't it so, sir? Ah, there are some pretty things _there_," continued he, following our eyes into a placarded recess. "Antichi Sono?" and we look into his face; "I'd as lief sell my own flesh and blood, as any thing _here_ that was not. Think, sir, of my position. I am the _responsible_ head of this firm. That good old gentleman, having begun antiquities late in life, does not know much about them. The signora there has taste, plenty; but it is not a lady's business to know the prices of things she may value or take an interest in; for suppose, now, she should wish to make money by the sale of _Coco_, she would hardly know what to ask for him." The old man fidgeted; Coco shot a glance at the blue spectacles, which were raised at this sally. But the signora, who sat behind them, said nothing. "Whence came these same things?" we inquire, for on going close up to them, they seemed not unfamiliar to us. Before Coco could coin the forthcoming lie, the old man had told us whence they came. "From Baroni's shop!" adding that they had cost 700 ducats. This confirmed the story we had heard from the beginning to its end. Our clever scoundrel had contrived, it seems, to engage the old man in a speculative excavation at Calvi; from which a few lachrymatories turning up, the old man's cupidity was excited; and, on the false representations made to him by Coco, he sold his estate; left the country; and hiring the expensive shop in which we see him, _leaves Coco to stock it_! which he does by the purchase of such merchandise as _his friends_ have to dispose of--"When," says he, "they don't sell them too dear!" The old man admits that his employer is very clever; but says quietly, that he has not much _fiducia_ in his honesty. Coco says, on his side, that his employer is mean in his conduct towards him, and pays his activity and zeal in a very niggardly manner. Thus neither is satisfied with the other. Meantime the public are saying, that in less than a year the shop will be again for sale; that Coco will have bolted; and that the old man, if he be alive, will be fretting his soul out in St Elmo! Nobody speculates upon what is to become of the lady with the blue spectacles. _We_ predict, that should she be alive, and the old man dead, in the course of another year, she will have entirely given up her taste for things old and curious, and have become curious to try something new and comely; if, indeed, Coco shall have left her any money to indulge in such a fancy.

On returning from this visit to our hotel, about an hour later, we found Coco under the gateway, and on the look-out for us. _More solito_, he had something to show us. The porter looked after us inquiringly, as we bid him follow up-stairs; but was surprised by a counter look, and by our calling him by his _name_. Even on the stairs, he could not forbear sundry short ejaculations, by way of preparing us for what we were to see presently. "_Ah! che bella roba!_ Ah, what flowers of the mint I have brought you to see to-day!--bought for a song--at three Carlini a-piece! You shall have them at three and a half--I content myself with small gains. But you, sir, who are discreet, and know the value of these things, shall judge whether I have told you a falsehood or no." By this time we were in our room. The dirty bag was untied; and there leaped out of it, not indeed a cat, but a large heap of consular coins, with which we seemed forthwith to be vastly familiar; and no wonder; since, on inspecting them, we found that the whole had been ours not twelve hours before, we having disposed of them to a refiner for their weight in silver, to melt. "Take them all, sir, _tutti quanti_, at three Carlines and a half a-piece." "No; nor yet for two Carlines, Coco," said we, putting the paper from us. Upon which the cunning fellow hoped _he_ had not been taken in; having certainly purchased them in the persuasion of reselling them, as a catch, to us. "The _Italian marquis_, of whom he had bought them, assured him, on his honour, that he had made a rare bargain with him." "Are the coins your own, Coco?" "To my cost are they, signor, unless you re-purchase them." "I sold them only this morning, Coco, for the weight of the silver; you must try somebody else." Upon which Coco, with admirable presence of mind, replaced them in his bag, and said "he had made a _mistake_!" "We regretted that he had not purchased them from us at the rate of one Carline and a-half per piece; in place of having been duped into paying three and a-half." Though he saw plainly, from our manner, that we were aware of his roguery, he was not put out; but shrugging his shoulders, and twitching the angles of a mouth remarkable for its mobility, he merely said--"Pazienza! a bargain's a bargain; we grow wiser as we grow older," and speedily withdrew.

BIRBONE III.

BASSEGGIO.

"Unde habeas quaerit nemo, sed oportet habere." "Fidarsi e bene, ma non fidarsi e meglio."--_Italian Proverb._

Near a fountain in one of the main streets of the west end of Rome, in which a recumbent figure bends over his ever-gushing urn; his body half hid from sight, and slowly dissolving in the water, under protection of a dimly lit shrine of a gaily painted Madonna; a tarnished brass plate with the word B---- engraved thereon, is inserted into the panels of a dingy-looking door, out of which a long piece of dirty string dangles through a hole. If you touch the electric cord, the shock is instantly transmitted to the other end, and the importunate tinkling of a well-hung bell is responded to by a clicking of the latch, when an invisible arm pulls back the door, and your entrance is secured into a passage encumbered with broken busts and bas-reliefs, tier above tier, and a series of marble tablets, with _Dis manibus_ inscriptions, let into the wall on either side. If, now, you pick your way amid the many stumbling-blocks that beset it, till you have reached the stair, (a narrow stair and dark, and encumbered like the passage, with numerous relics of antiquity,) a female voice, loudly shrilling from above, demands your business--"_Chi c'e?_"--you answer of course "_Amico_," and are bid to mount accordingly. Arrived at the summit of the stair, that same voice, the high-pitched key of which startled you from below, sounds less disagreeable, now that you are close beside the fair proprietress of it, who at once greets you affably, begs you to be seated, has seated herself beside you, and, premising that her "_marito_" will appear anon, has begun to ask you a hundred questions, some of which you are relieved from answering by the actual advent of Signor B----, who makes his politest bow, while Madame introduces you as an old acquaintance. You see at a glance _this_ part of Signor B----'s history, that he has bought a young and pretty wife out of many years' traffic in antiquities. Whatever else he may at any other time have purchased, was with intention to dispose of afterwards, a suitable opportunity offering. But this pretty wife he keeps like an inedited coin, or fancies that he keeps to himself entirely. Few antiquaries have shown more enterprise than B----. Possessed of little, very little money in his youth, he did not, like many other Roman youths of this day, squander it away in cigars, and was under twenty when he undertook his first commercial expedition. He went into Egypt, could not buy the Pyramids, they were too large for his portmanteau; then into Greece; then to Sicily. He sailed to Syracuse, landed at Naxos, sacked Taormina and Catania; came back and sold his curiosities well; went abroad again, and again returned like an industrious bee laden with spoils. Enriched at length by these numerous journeys, he was able to purchase a vineyard, and to plant it. His next step was to build a villa upon it, and to marry an ancient dame, who, dying shortly, left him at liberty to marry again. The lady whom he now calls his own being at the time poor, his treasures soon won her heart, while his house flattered her ambition, and so they made a match of it; and she now accompanies him in most of his antiquarian prowling excursions during the summer; and the _menage_, on the whole, for an Italian menage, goes on well enough.

One day--(this was when, by much frequentation of the premises, we had become intimate with its inmates)--one day we had just been _ringing_ an Etruscan vase, and liked the sound thereof; and examining the painting, we liked that too; and therefore, agreeing as to price, completed the purchase, and were sitting between old husband and young wife, round a brazier mounted on an ancient tripod, with a handful of gems, _loculis quae custoditur eburnis_, talking carelessly, and taking our _impressions_ of them, and of the stones, as we talked. It was a fete day, and, now we came to notice it, Madame B---- was en _grande toilette_, and had been hearing Padre S---- preach, as she informed us, at St Carlo's in the Corso. When she heard we had not been there, she sighed for our sakes--"Our friend _should_ have heard Padre S---- to-day, is it not so?" to her husband, who assented to this good opinion of the Padre: "It was such a good sermon! all about doing as you would be done by--no loophole for a self-deceiver to escape by. I only wish A---- had been there to hear it." "Bagatello!" said Signor B----, stirring the brazier, "Do you think he would not have cheated Lord V---- just the same in this head of Medusa, which he palmed off upon him for an antique, knowing it was a Calandrelli? Good sermons are thrown away upon some people." "Well," sighed the lady, looking up to the ceiling, and then taking a second dose of it--"well, at least we may apply it _to ourselves_." "Not a bit of it. _We_ never apply any thing to ourselves. Do you think, for instance, when I married you, I sought to mate me with a lark, or a nightingale--_risponde_." She had no difficulty in doing so. "And was I not a lark till my poor sister died--_poverella_--eighteen months ago?" "_Si, Signora!_ but _since_ that time you treat me with coldness; are always looking up to the sky; and always telling me your soul is with her soul in Paradise. No Paradise for me! What think you, sir?" "We always sided with those who were suffering from the loss of friends." "_Bene, bene_, for three months or so--'twas all very well, natural. But beyond this? Besides, though it were ever so sincere--what was the use of it?" "Oh! of _no use_, of course," said we. "I shall never give over mourning for her, I promise you that," said the lady, much moved. The husband shrugged his shoulders; said, "That all women were more or less foolish;" and asked us if we were married? Before we had time to answer, in came Padre S----, whose sermon had made such impression on B---- and his wife. We now sit all around the brazier; both wife and husband being, for some time, loud in their praises, which were somewhat extravagant! "It was a divine sermon--St Paul could not have preached a better"--when the good man hopes it may, by God's blessing, do good, politely acknowledges the compliment implied in our regrets that we had not been of the auditory, and then rises to look round, Signor B---- doing the honours, at the curiosities of the shop; at the sight of several objects of virtu, he expresses, somewhat naively, great pleasure--would like to have seen more, but has another sermon to deliver in St Jacomo--the bell is ringing!--he must say _idio_ at once. As he makes his exit, (Madame kisses his hand first,) two other visitors present themselves; the one a young Roman, who comes to console her; the other a young English nobleman, who comes to buy in haste, and will have to repent at leisure afterwards. In five minutes, Madame seems to have entirely forgotten her sister; B---- his wife! The one is receiving comfort in compliment; the other, in cash! Hush! Surely we heard Lord A---- ask if that vamped old vase, which will fall some day to pieces, was _antique_; and B----assert that it was! Why, the paint is scarcely dry on its sides! Lord A----'s unlucky eye lights upon a bust, which, when he gets it over to England, he may match at the stone-mason's in the New Road, and at half-price--_two_ words, _three_ syllables, and the purchase is made "_Chi?_" Whose bust is it? "Cicero's," of course! "Quanto," what's the price of it? "Twenty Napoleons!" You old rogue B----! you are safe in sending it to Terny's, _packed_; for, if it should be seen, you might have to refund the purchase-money. _Necdum finitus?_ Another bust tempts him; he inquires, and finds it is a _Jove_--a Jove! and is

"Jupiter, haec nec labra moves, quum mittere vocem Debueras, vel _marmoreus_, vel aheneus? ... Quod nullum discrimen habendum est Effigies inter vestras, statuamque Bathylli?"

And this too, he buys for twenty Napoleons more; and having paid the purchase-money, away goes the possessor of Jupiter, and at the same juncture away goes the Cavaliere--each perfectly satisfied with his visit.

"_Molto intelligente_, that countryman of yours," said B----, spelling his card. "He seems to take things very much upon trust," said we. "'Tis a pity he don't understand Italian or French better. Otherwise, I _might_ have perhaps suggested better things than those he has actually chosen. But after all," added he, "people don't like being put out of conceit with their own opinions; and think you personally interested, if you offer yours unasked." "I should have been sorry to have taken that vase as antique, as he has done; or to have paid the tenth of the price he has paid you for it." "Oh! don't be afraid; he can afford it--an English gentleman!--and to _him_ it is worth what he paid for it; else, if he did not think so, who forced him to take it?" "I _wonder_ now what Father S---- would have said to it;" asked Madame of her husband, looking up to the ceiling, and sighing. "Nothing, 'twas not in his province to pronounce judgment in such a matter." We too _wondered_, perhaps, what he might have said to Madame, touching her Cavaliere, whose discourse seemed to have told almost as powerfully on her as _his_ sermon at St Carlo's. We wondered, but _to ourselves_, and making the common-place remark, that it seemed easier to _preach_ than to _practise_, exchanged smiles with B---- and his wife, and withdrew, to think over what we had seen; and to arrive at our own conclusions, touching the general utility of fashionable and popular preaching!

BIRBONE IV.

HERR ASCHERSON.

"Rogare malo, quam emere."--SUIDAS.

Sly old fox, what pen shall do justice to thy cunning! Grave, venerable, ancient cheat, who showest a _Bible_, left thee by some pious enthusiast (the old family pew-book, morocco, in silver clasps--well thou lookest to them at least) in return for many dealings with thee, and in requital, so thou sayest, for thine incomparable disinterestedness and honesty!

It would be no harder task to unwind a mummy, than to unroll and unriddle _thee_, old rogue, in thy endless windings and detours! "Have no dealings with A----," said that _timid_ rogue, the Florentine attorney R----; "the man is so gigantic a cheat, that he frightens me!" "and cunning to a degree" was D----'s account of him. "He is up to a thing or two," said S----, looking knowing, and putting his finger, like Harpocrates, to his mouth, that it went no further. A brother dealer called him a Hebrew; another (himself as sly as any fox) admitted that he had been overreached by him. His name, whenever mentioned, seldom failed to call forth a smile, or a shrug, in those who had not dealt with him; and a thundering oath against his German blood in those that had. Mr A---- was therefore too remarkable a man for us, ourself an incipient collector, not to visit; and so, as soon as we got to Naples, we dispatched a note, and the next day followed it in person; rang at the bell, and were ushered into his sanctum; where we beheld the old _necromancer_ standing at his table, looking out for us. He put down his eyeglass and his old coin; and said in answer to our question, which was in English, "Ya! ya! mein name is A----." Forgetting at this moment what R---- had said of him, and only recollecting that they were acquainted, we began, by way of introducing ourselves to his best things, to say, that we had lately seen his friend R---- at Rome--"Dat is not mein friend, dat is mein enemy," said he, displeased at our mentioning the name; and looking at us half suspiciously, half spitefully. "I hav notin to say wit him more," and he took a huge pinch of snuff, and wasted a deal on his snuffy waistcoat and shirt frill. We at once saw our mistake, which indeed, but for our anxiety to get to business, we should not, assuredly, have been guilty of. We had now to make the best of it. "A mistake, Mr. A----, we assure you. Mr. R---- might say that, on _one_ occasion, you _had_ been _brusque_ with him; but advised us, notwithstanding, to pay you a visit, regretting that, from some little difference between you, _he_ could not give us the introduction, which, under more favourable circumstances, he would have pressed upon us;" an announcement which completely mollified the old rogue, who, in his heart of hearts, was thinking that a new victim had turned up to him, and one of Rusca's recommending. "It is pleasant to make peace between two honest men," said we; "Rusca and you should not have quarrelled. Ill-natured people take advantage of these disputes, and begin to profess open distrust as to the age and genuineness of whatever you sell." "For dis reason I hate not Mr Rusca; but he has too much _strepitusness_ of voice--_il s'emporte trop facilement_." "Ah," interpose we in the mediatorial capacity we had assumed, "'tis the character of the Italian to do so." "Ya, dat is true," assented he; and then we went to look at his coins. "We are not blind friends of Rusca's," said we, sitting down to the first tray which he gave us to look at, and seeing, from the character of the coins therein exhibited, that A---- had presumed we _might_ be. "We only buy from R---- when he is discreet, and does not overcharge; which, _entre nous_, he is very apt to do." The old man glanced at us approvingly, and trying hard to look honest, said, "Ya, ya; when he can get _ein_ piastre he will not take _ein halb_--but when I ask a piastre for any tings, (and he was grave again,) it is tantamount as to say, 'dis is de _leastest_ preis to give.'" "All here has a fixed price, has it?" "Ya, ya." "And what may this pretty little figure be worth?" "I shall confess dat is dear; two hundred piastres is de preis--Rusca would have said four hundred to begin mit." We admitted its beauty; but said two hundred spread out upon the table were also beautiful. "De good ting is de dear ting," said he, and we admitted the truth of the proposition, both in the abstract and in its application; took up a specious-looking coin, which he took as abruptly out of our hand--"_Nein gewiss nicht_," we must not buy that. "Why?" Because some people had not scrupled to tell him (though they knew better) that it was a Rusca. "Rusca!" said we, "and what does that mean?" "In Neapolitan _patois_," said he, "we call all our specious but doubtful wares Ruscas! But dis," continued he, taking up a companion to it--"dis I baptize in my own name, and offer for a true John A----." "Ah!" sighed we, but without _emphasis_, as if it had only _just_ occurred to us "how difficult, now-a-days, _not_ to be deceived;" and we replaced the J---- A---- in his box accordingly. "Ven all amateurs," said he, (following out his own thought, rather than replying to ours,) "ven all amateurs were connoisseurs likewise, we might say goot-night to dis bissnesse."

In the days of our novitiate, when we used to say, and think we knew (as the phrase is) what would please us, and would buy according to our means, we found (as indeed all purchasers in these matters find) that time, while it brought with it a nicer appreciation in judging works of art, diminished also our opinion of what we had formerly purchased; and, to avoid fresh disappointments, we used to apply to an _antiquario_ to give us his advice _pro re nata_;--as the reader will see by the following note of Herr A----, which, as it prevented our making one or two foolish purchases, was not without its value, and we preserved it accordingly. It ran _verbatim_ thus--

"Sir,--You may copy my catalogue, but on Montag ber sur I must hav back. The _botel_ is not good in such a manner. The _figure_ is of no great value; it is not antic, and not fair; so is the _bust_ in stone not antic, and not nice; and every thing that is neither antic nor fair I cannot give any worth. Your obedient servant,

"A----.

"Pray you must not tell to any one my estimation of any thing."

Neither did we, excepting to _Maga_, to whom we tell every thing.

INDEX TO VOL. LIX.

Adams, Mr, on the Oregon Question, 443.

AEschylus, tragedies of, 61, 65.