And it was so hard to withstand the flattery of that. A smile of pleasure would lurk for a moment about his eyes. He would lean forward through the dark curtains of brocades and tapestries and reach it down for inspection. "It is," he would say in the gratified tone of the true collector--"It is the most perfect specimen I have ever seen. You see the work here--this glaze, that colour----" and in a moment, before he was aware of what he was doing, he would be pointing out its merits with a quivering finger of pride. "Oh, yes--I think I must have it," the customer would suddenly say--"I can’t miss the opportunity. It would go so well with the things in my collection." Then the old gentleman realised his folly. Then the frown returned, redoubled in its forbidding scowl. He began putting the Dresden figure back again in the window from whence it had come. "But I said I’d take it," the customer would exclaim more eager than ever for its possession. "Yes--yes--I know--but the price is--well it’s prohibitive. I want seventy-five pounds for that figure." "Seventy-five!" "Yes--I can’t take anything less." "Oh----" and a look of disappointment and dismay. "You don’t want it?" he would ask eagerly. "No--I can’t pay as much as that." Then the smile would creep back again into his eyes. "Of course--it’s a beautiful thing," he would say clumsily--"a beautiful thing." And when he went home, he would tell the little old white-haired lady how much it had been admired, and they would call back to memory the day when they had bought it--so long ago that it seemed as though they were quite young people then. So it fell out that this old gentleman of the curio shop in the _Merceria_ came to be known for his seeming eccentricities. People talked of him. They told amusing stories of his strange methods of doing business. "Do you know the Treasure Shop in the _Merceria_," they said over the dinner tables in London when they wanted to show how intimately they knew their Europe. "The old man who owns that--there’s a character for you!" They even grew to making up anecdotes about him, to show how keenly observant they were when abroad. Everyone, even Smelfungus and Mundungus, would be thought sentimental travellers if they could. It was the most natural coincidence in the world then, that John, strolling aimlessly in the arcades of the Square of St. Mark’s that morning after he had left his mother, should overhear a conversation in which the eccentric old gentleman in the _Merceria_ was introduced. Outside Lavena’s two women were taking coffee, as all well-cultured travellers do. "--my shopping in Kensington----" he heard one of them say, concluding some reference to a topic which they were discussing.