"My worthy sir," said the old man, now addressing the stranger, "you have distressed me; you have been too hasty with the young man; he is heedless and extravagant, but I have never yet heard of his playing a foul trick." "One must always be the first," said the stranger with cool bitterness; "he has at all events paid to-day his scholar's fee, and will either reform or learn the necessity of managing his matters more prudently, and in no case losing his temper." "He has certainly been imposed on himself," said Walther, "or has really found the picture as he says; and his father, who was a great judge, laid it by for the very reason that it was not genuine." "You wish to put the best face on the matter, Sir," said the stranger; "but in that case the young man would not have been so indecently violent. Who is he, pray, after all?" "His father," so the old gentleman's story ran, "was a rich man, who left behind him a large property; he had a passion for our art of an intensity of which few men certainly are capable. He devoted to it a great part of his fortune, and his collection might justly be called incomparable. In his attention to it however he neglected rather too much, it must be owned, the education of this his only son; hence on the old man's death the youth thought of nothing but spending his money in the company of parasites and low people, and keeping women and equipages. When he came of age he had enormous debts to pay to usurers and on bills, but he set his pride in increasing his extravagance; the pictures were sold, for he had no taste for them; I took them at fair prices. He has now, I believe, pretty nearly run through every thing except the house, which is a handsome one, though that too may perhaps be encumbered with debts; knowledge he has scarcely acquired any; employment is insupportable to him; and so one cannot help seeing with concern how he is advancing towards his ruin." "The every-day history of numbers," observed the stranger, "and the common course of a paltry vanity, that leads men gaily into the arms of dishonour." "How have you been able to acquire so sure an eye?" inquired the counsellor. "I am astonished too at the style of your drawing after Julio Romano, since you say you are no artist." "But I have long studied the art," answered the stranger; "I have viewed with some diligence, and not without profit, the most important galleries in Europe; my eye is naturally keen and accurate, and has been improved and rendered sure by practice; so that I may flatter myself that I cannot easily be deceived, at all events on the subject of my favourites." The stranger now took his leave, after having been forced to promise the collector to dine with him the next day, for the old gentleman had conceived a great respect for the traveller's accomplishments. * * * * *