NATURE YEKSUS ART. 269 



" Well, then ; your gallery cannot have cost you less than 

 200,000 francs." 



" Nonsense ! It cost me nothing." 



" You are certainly the most audacious of any amateur of 

 this kind I have ever met with. I wish to-morrow were 

 come." 



The next morning I led my friend into a large room with 

 four windows, and said to him, " Here are my pictures, and 

 the windows are the frames." 



"Oh! that's but a joke!" 



" Not at all ; look, some of my pictures are a little changed 

 since the last time I looked at them, but they are not the less 

 beautiful on that account. This is the one you took to be 

 Ostade, and which is, as the others, simply by the Almighty. 

 There are the trees and the steeple j the cart is no longer 

 there, but there is a girl drivmg cows to pasture, which is 

 better. Do you believe that Ostade ever attained that truth, 

 that drawing, that colour, that light? 



" Here, on the left, through the other window, is the 

 hollowed road, which is not by J. Kuysdael, and of which you 

 pretend to have the original ; I had a right, however, to teU 

 you that mine is not a copy ; it is evident that of the two 

 pictures, however original yours may be, mine is not the 

 copy. 



" And here is the meadow upon which the sun and shade 

 play with such effect ; there are the tall trees, and the sheep 

 which repose upon the grass : that likewise is by the Almighty, 

 and not by Van der Does." 



" Well, well ; it's all a very good joke." 



" No, I am not joking at all; so far from it, I think it is 

 you who are joking, or else take me for an idiot, to hope to 

 make me bdieve that you attach more value to a little tree 

 daubed upon canvass, flat, without shade, without colours, 

 without perfume, without the song of birds, than to that 

 noble, living tree, which, perfumed and harmonious, covers 

 us with its shade. What! you pay 200,000 francs for 

 the imperfect imitation of a tree worth five francs! will 

 you venture to speak of the difficulty overcome 1 Why do 

 you not pay more dearly for the imitation of diamonds 

 and rubies than for true diamonds and rubies? and yet that 



