When the high tariff on imported works of art and curios was still in force in the United States, smugglers relied chiefly on undervaluation, as orthodox smuggling, namely introduction into the country without any payment of duty, was hardly possible under the vigilance of Argus-eyed Custom House officials. Thus the grand art of smuggling works of art and antiques of repute, always pliable to circumstances, relied mainly upon the ignorance of the so-called appraisers. At first a legal estimate enclosed with the documents accompanying the goods from their place of departure was sufficient and very rarely discussed. Gradually the United States Custom House agents grew suspicious, and to support the low valuation it became necessary to adjust the objects, in very much the same way as was done to obtain export permission, from the Italian office. One of the tricks practised in the case of furniture is to take off all ornamental and carved parts by disjointing or sawing and then polishing or in some way adjusting the place left bare. The ornaments are sent separately to be replaced when the piece of furniture is safely beyond the reach of the Custom House laws. Custom House officials all the world over are generally reckoned by trained smugglers to be very poor judges of art. They consider them capable of making a great fuss over the wrong article and letting the dutiable ones slip through their fingers. Something of this kind happened at the Custom House of Bercy, Paris, where, with no intention of smuggling or deceiving the officials, Dazzi, an Italian dealer, came to pay duty in a sort of topsy-turvy way. Together with other things, Dazzi was importing into France a box of modern bronzes, imitating objects of Pompeiian excavation and coated with an indecent patina, green as a lizard’s skin, and a piece of seventeenth-century silk damask, which according to French law should have been duty free as only antique goods of the eighteenth century and onwards pay. After a long confabulation the appraiser of the Custom House decided that being, as he thought, of modern fabric, the damask must pay duty and that the bronzes, supposed by him to be two thousand years old, might enter free of duty. Dazzi saw that this queer exchange was to his advantage and submitted to the strange verdict without further observation. In Italy, the law on exportation, intended to prevent the exodus of fine works of art, is often turned to advantage by sharp dealers who manage to have their mediocre goods detained at the Export Office, and when exportation has been finally permitted make use of the momentary detention to enhance the merits of the object exported. This trick has been practised to such an extent that, particularly in America, it is not unusual to hear an amateur extol some bit of rubbish with the remark, “It was stopped by the Italian inspectors, but my man managed to get it through by greasing the paw----”