From the Revolution to the time of Napoleon’s dominion is the period in which the passion for art collecting is least felt. Faking, of course, is an art that does not pay and thus has no _raison d’être_. Yet faking passes from the field of art to that of real life, the new Republic apes Roman customs. David the artist is faked into a Tribune while busy painting Romans that seem to have been brought out of a hot-house and he sketches semi-Roman costumes for the new officials of the Republic, garments that with all the foppishness of the “old regime” had Roman Consular swords, Imperial chlamys (mantle), faked buskins or ornamented cothurnus (boots worn by tragedians). It is this faking of life that feels the need even to alter the calendar, changing the Roman etymology of the names of the months into more resounding Latinesque appellations. At home in this staged drama of life, Napoleon, the friend of Talma and David, continues the grandiose faking with a sort of complex etiquette and a veneer of aristocracy, which makes one sadly think of the truth of the words pronounced by Courier on General Bonaparte’s elevation to the throne: He aspires to descend. Yet even in this peculiar and rather negative world the chronicle of the _curieux_ may contain some glorious names, and these no doubt prepared at the beginning of the nineteenth century the return of the cult of art in France, the reappearance of devoted collectors and enlightened amateurs. We may then name successively art lovers and intelligent collectors such as Lenoir, Du Sommerville and Sauvageot, Revoil Willemin. And after them artists, collectors and dealers of the calibre of Mlle. Delaunay, Escudier, Montfort, Roussel, Beurdeley, Henry Grandjean, Mannheim, the first of a dynasty of honest and intelligent dealers; then almost in our own times Baron Davilliers, Bonnaffé, Emile Peyre and others. But art collecting is now no longer an accentuated characteristic of France nor of England, Germany and other European countries which have a tradition and have come to the fore, but other new and powerful States have joined the contest, cast new types of collectors and created a new psychology in the art world which will form the second part of this book. PART II THE COLLECTOR AND THE FAKER CHAPTER XIII COLLECTORS AND COLLECTIONS Collectors and collections--Various kinds--Meaning of the word _curieux_--Various types of collectors: the artist, the scholar, the eclectic and the specialist--A large class of collectors as defined by La Bruyère--The ultra-modern collector--The art and curio market--The three stages of the collector’s career--The collector’s touch--The elasticity of prices and an opinion of C. T. Yerkes--Gersaint’s advice and Schlegel’s opinion--A Latin saying re-edited by Edmond Bonnaffé.