The _poseur_, however, in his flippant and manifold attitudes, may be certain that schemes of deception are multiform and always a match for any incarnation of this type. He is the prey, and there are all kinds of snares waiting for him, just as there are many ways of catching birds. A collector who does not belong to the general class of collectors is the private dealer, who all too often joins forces with the “black band” of the sale-rooms. Among the buyers at the Hotel Drouot, there are to be found, says Rochefort, all manner of originals. Take for instance the _maquilleur_, who is a regular godsend to restorers of paintings. The _maquilleur_ is a purchaser of paintings who can never bring himself to leave a canvas in the state he bought it. If it is the portrait of an old woman, he is sure to take the work to a restorer to see if the wrinkles can possibly be smoothed out, if it is a landscape he invariably has changes to suggest. When the canvas has been duly _maquillé_ he often takes it back to the auction room to try his chances with some novice. By the side of this character is the “cleaner,” the man who insists upon cleaning every painting that falls into his hands. On coming into his possession the work may be as bright and fresh as the varnish of a newly painted motor-car, it makes no difference, he will clean it all the same. “Cleaning spells death to pictures, just as spinach spells death to butter,” wisely says the French writer in conclusion, laying down a humorous aphorism implying that to clean paintings practically means to ruin them. The very antithesis of the cleaner is the defiler of pictures. Diametrically opposed to the former, who worships soap, dye and other cleansing materials, he no sooner becomes the owner of a painting than he proceeds, as he says, to confer the proper age upon the work, by a coat of dirt, the would-be patina of age, which he ennobles and honours with various names: harmonizing, toning, etc. Curious as it may sound, from among all the queer legion of auction room questionables, this member is less dangerous to art than many others, especially his pendant, the cleaner. This is readily understood when one considers that a skilled hand may remove any artificial patina, which is frequently separated from the pigment of the painting by a hard layer of old varnish, without any serious damage to the work of art, while the cleaning of an old painting proves more or less ruinous to its artistic qualities. In fact, the use of strong chemical means either to remove aged dirt or centennial varnish brings away some of the colour as well. The damage done by cleaning with spirits, or other strong methods, is exceedingly great to some of the Dutch paintings, finished to a great extent by veiling with delicate layers of transparent pigment diluted in varnish. Venetian works, the colours of which do not always withstand the dissolvent properties of reagents, suffer irreparably from cleaning.