As a matter of fact there is no control, for, as Rochefort goes on to remark: “Who can prevent a citizen from calling himself, for instance, an expert in pictures?” The dangerous vagueness of the profession, the facility with which the title is acquired, together with the multitudinous offices it fills, make of the expert a perilous companion at times. There is no doubt that when the magniloquence of the title is justified, through unquestionable ability, supported by a reputation of untainted honesty, the expert may be of the greatest and most valuable assistance a collector can desire. His ability must then be paid for at what it is worth. But even when highly paid it is cheap compared with the blunders the expert is likely to save the collector--those costly blunders that are so often an integral part of the commencement of the career. On the other hand, what an ignorant expert, in his supreme disdain for learning, is capable of saying when tendering information, is incredible. Rochefort has made an amusing collection of blunders by experts when called upon to pronounce an opinion on matters in which practice counts for nothing. The anecdotes were gathered by the French writer in the public auction rooms of Paris where the expert has an official function. Here he is prepared to furnish details and useful hints regarding the objects put up for sale, to enhance their importance. A collector confided to the care of an expert, Monsieur F----, a painting of a religious subject representing a scene from the Apocalypse. Giving this information, the owner asked the expert to put the painting up to auction at the first important sale. According to arrangement, Monsieur F---- included the work among other canvasses at a public sale and printed in the catalogue as a description of the subject: _Tableau de sainteté d’après l’Apocalypse_ (Sacred picture after Apocalypse). “_D’après l’Apocalypse?!_” questioned some one when the work was offered for sale. To which the unabashed expert promptly replied: “Yes, sir, Apocalypse; a German painter not very well known in Paris but highly esteemed abroad.” Another such catalogue, the product of a no less imaginative expert, announced a canvas on sale to be the portrait of Louis XV by Velasquez! A figure of a woman washing dishes, attributed by the expert to Rubens on account of the exuberant rotundity of the model, needed perhaps a further justification for this daring attribution, for it was decorated with the following astonishing comment: “Portrait of Rubens’ wife.” (It is generally known that Rubens married his cook.) The recent mania of the collector to possess masterpieces has turned the expert to a most versatile form of activity in order to please this exacting fancy of the buyer. A painting becomes “of the school” of this or that artist when it is really too bad to bear even the uncompromising qualification, “attributed to so-and-so.”