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She wanted to know the exact title of the manuscript, its shape, its appearance, and its age; she asked me for the address of Signor Rafael Polizzi. It is sometimes difficult to check oneself. I recommenced my plaints and my imprecations. But this time Madame Trepof only burst out laughing. "Why do you laugh?" I asked her. "Because I am a wicked woman," she answered.
"Four thousand five hundred." Then by a sudden bold stroke, Signor Polizzi raised the bid at once to six thousand. Six thousand francs was all the money I could dispose of. It represented the possible. I risked the impossible. "Six thousand one hundred!" Alas! even the impossible did not suffice. "Six thousand five hundred!" replied Signor Polizzi, with calm.
Nature, eternally indifferent, neither hastened nor hurried the twenty-fourth day of December. I went to the Hotel Bullion, and took my place in Salle No. 4, immediately below the high desk at which the auctioneer Boulouze and the expert Polizzi were to sit. I saw the hall gradually fill with familiar faces.
"Yes, it was there! that is positively true!" exclaimed Signor Polizzi, suddenly growing calm again; "and it is there still at least I hope it is, Excellence." He took a card from a shelf as he spoke, and offered it to me, saying, "Here is the address of my son. Make it known to your friends, and you will oblige me. Faience and enameled wares; hangings; pictures.
The last bid is six thousand five hundred francs." A solemn silence prevailed. Suddenly I felt as if my head had burst open. It was the hammer of the officiant, who, with a loud blow on the platform, adjudged No. 42 irrevocably to Signor Polizzi. Forthwith the pen of the clerk, coursing over the papier-timbre, registered that great fact in a single line.
It will be a joy and pride for me to have you examine it in my humble home in Girgenti, which will be embellished and illuminated by your presence. It is with the most anxious expectation of your visit that I presume to sign myself, Seigneur Academician, "Your humble and devoted servant "Michel-Angelo Polizzi, "Wine-merchant and Archaeologist at Girgenti, Sicily." Well, then!
"Let you see it!" cried Polizzi. "But how can I, Excellence? I have not got it any longer! I have not got it!" And he seemed determined to tear out his hair. He might indeed have pulled every hair in his head out of his hide before I should have tried to prevent him. But he stopped of his own accord, before he had done himself any grievous harm. "What!"
That Polizzi is simply a scoundrel, and his son another; and they made a plan together to ruin me." But what was their scheme? I could not unravel it. Meanwhile, it may be imagined how discouraged and humiliated I felt. A merry burst of laughter caused me to turn my head, and I saw Madame Trepof running in advance of her husband, and holding up something which I could not distinguish clearly.
"'Superb MS., ornamented with two miniatures, wonderfully executed, and in a perfect state of preservation: one representing the Purification of the Virgin; the other the Coronation of Proserpine. "'This rare manuscript, which formed part of the collection of Sir Thomas Raleigh, is now in the private study of Signor Michel-Angelo Polizzi, of Girgenti." "You hear that, Hamilcar?
I was frightened by the sound of my own voice, and further confused by seeing, or thinking that I saw, all eyes turned on me. "Three thousand and fifty on the right!" called the crier, taking up my bid. "Three thousand one hundred!" responded Signor Polizzi. Then began a heroic duel between the expert and myself. "Three thousand five hundred!" "Six hundred!" "Seven hundred!" "Four thousand!"
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