What do you expect for them?"
"I am not acquainted with the prices of these things."
The printseller, hearing this, thought, by managing well, to get them
for what he liked, and throwing them over with an air of contempt,
resumed--
"And pray, where may the views be taken?"
"They are recollections of scenes in Germany."
"Ah!" replied the man, "mere drugs! I wish, honest friend, you could
have brought subjects not quite so threadbare, and a little better
executed; they are but poor things! But every dauber nowadays sets up
for a fine artist, and thinks we are to pay him for spoilt paper and
conceit."
Insulted by this speech, and, above all, by the manner of the
printseller, Thaddeus was snatching up the drawings to leave the shop
without a word, when the man, observing his design, and afraid to
lose them, laid his hand on the heap, exclaiming--
"Let me tell you, young man, it does not become a person in your
situation to be so huffy to his employers. I will give you a guinea
for the six, and you may think yourself well paid."
Without further hesitation, whilst the count was striving to subdue
the choler which urged him to knock him down, the man laid the gold
on the counter, and was slipping the drawings into a drawer; but
Thaddeus, snatching them out again, suddenly rolled them up, and
walked out of the shop as he said--
"Not all the money of all your tribe should tempt an honest man to
pollute himself by exchanging a second word with one so
contemptible.
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