It had always been a keen pleasure for me to breathe the air in those
Parisian streets whose every paving-slab and every stone I love
devotedly. But I had an end in view, and I took my way straight to
the Rue Lafitte. I was not long in find the establishment of Signor
Rafael Polizzi. It was distinguishable by a great display of old
paintings which, although all bearing the signature of some
illustrious artist, had a certain family air of resemblance that
might have suggested some touching idea about the fraternity of
genius, had it not still more forcibly suggested the professional
tricks of Polizzi senior. Enriched by these doubtful works of art,
the shop was further rendered attractive by various petty curiosities:
poniards, drinking-vessels, goblets, figulines, brass guadrons,
and Hispano-Arabian wares of metallic lustre.

Upon a Portuguese arm-chair, decorated with an escutcheon, lay a copy
of the "Heures" of Simon Vostre, open at the page which has an
astrological figure on it; and an old Vitruvius, placed upon a quaint
chest, displayed its masterly engravings of caryatides and telamones.
This apparent disorder which only masked cunning arrangement, this
factitious hazard which had placed the best objects in the most
favourable light, would have increased my distrust of the place, but
that the distrust which the mere name of Polizzi had already inspired
could not have been increased by any circumstances--being already
infinite.

Signor Rafael, who sat there as the presiding genius of all these
vague and incongruous shapes, impressed me as a phlegmatic young man,
with a sort of English character. he betrayed no sign whatever of
those transcendent faculties displayed by his father in the arts of