Paid and Loving Eyes

He told me more, but I wasn’t exactly sure what. If I’d had enough words, I’d have asked him to hang about, take me to the sixth arrondissement later on, but decided to quit while I was winning. I’d escaped from my assistants and had breakfast. No good pushing my luck. It was about eleven o’clock when he dropped me off on the Rue St-Honore, with warnings about the prices antique dealers charge. I said ta, unworried. I knew all about those.

The building wasn’t old as such, and looked restored. Quite a crowd was streaming in. I joined them, milling with increasing optimism. It seemed nothing less than a huge antiques emporium, with some two hundred-plus antique dealers stacked three levels high. I was astonished to see notices advertising afternoon lectures on antiques, illustrated no less. There was an exhibition of French end-of-century dress and jewellery. I’d never seen the like in my life. Did French antique dealers actually want their customers to learn, appreciate, the antiques that they had to pay through the nose for? They’d go berserk at this sacrilegious idea back home. What a place!

A beautiful feeling enveloped me. I stood against a wall, eyes closed, savouring the loveliness of antiques to come. How much did Colonel Marimee say I could spend? The thrilling answer: he hadn’t! So I could go on until Guy and Veronique caught up and stopped me. That meant as much as I liked! I went giddy. If it wasn’t for antiques, God would have a hard time, same as me. Luckily, faith scrapes it together and forms a quorum, but only just.

“Monsieur?” Some gallant moustachioed custodian touched my arm, asked if I was well.

“Tres bon, Monsieur, merci,” I said. I was too overcome to explain about Paradise. A doorway instruction sheet promised that all the antique dealers were professionals keen to settle the hash of Customs, give certificates where appropriate, and could arrange shipment to anywhere against a fee.

Hang the cost, I thought, somebody else is paying! And sailed into bliss.

Money has a lot to answer for, but is never really to blame. We’re the villain of the piece. Money’s merit is its divine right to seduce. Never is it more seductive than when you’ve got plenty, plus a command to spend, spend, spend. Like being in a harem, with permission to have any bird as takes your fancy. But there’s one hitch. All antiques are beautiful, alluring, but only some are honest. The rest are forgeries. See the problem? With a spend- and-be-damned bottomless purse, the urge is to simply buy everything, on the grounds that you’re bound to net the genuine pieces. Yet to a purist like me that’s the ultimate treachery. Why? Because you’re encouraging dross.

Not only that, I thought as I stood inhaling the beeswax and varnish nectar of the first furniture dealer’s showroom. Money seduces by its power, fine, but its power is almost irresistible.

Look at Italy, for instance. More funding scandals than the parson preached about, and more famous art than any nation on earth. No scandal so great as the Signorelli shambles, which is a warning about money power. Luca Signorelli was an artist who in 1499 was commissioned for 180 ducats to finish the paintings begun fifty years previously by the immortal Angelico, in the wondrous cathedral at Orvieto. Signorelli was ecstatic—he wanted to stun the authorities into awarding him their next contract, which was frescoing the lower part of the chapel. With exalted vision he stormed on, executing brilliant, dazzling work. He even invented new techniques—like his gold- covered wax-point underlaying to cause the reflected candle glow to shimmer when the congregation looked upwards. In other words, a masterpiece, to be preserved at all costs.

Enter weather, permeating rain, humidity, working over the centuries to despoil and erode. (Also, in 1845, a touring load of Russian nobles, who unbelievably washed away Signorelli’s dry overdrawing on the frescos, cheerfully convinced they were improving matters.) Then—as if time, decay, and predators were not enough—enter politics.

It’s not for me to complain. I’m no better than I ought to be. But honestly, when the Italian Parliament votes a special law, the “545”, enabling some 300,000,000,000 lire for the care of Orvieto and Todi, arts lovers everywhere have a right to ask where it all went to, right? Not for me to ring Signora Parrino, Minister of Arts, and ask what the hell possessed her. Why did she lend 100 billion to a certain corporation the day after she’d left the post? “Where is it now?” a baffled enthusiast asked the innocent, honest Assessore. We all know the poor bloke’s reply: “Disappeared.” How? Dunno, nobody knows anything… And even the sterling, upright, efficient and honest, Soprintendenza is meshed and helpless. A fraction of gelt creeps back from That Company when a fuss is raised, but the rest stays salted.

Politics always bulges the sinister corridor curtains where big money flows. The Soprintendente who raised Cain about the vanishing moneys allotted to Pompei’s restoration was replaced with Byzantine alacrity. The lovely and outspoken lady who tried to ginger Venice into honesty has gone. Okay, it’s politics. What I want to know is, are the priceless masterpieces stashed away in the Galleria Borghese’s (permanently closed!) quadreria still there? Reasonable question, because the restoration money isn’t, not any more. It’s been disappeared, it’s politics.

“Buy it, Monsieur,” I said, coming out of the trance.

“The plate, Monsieur?” The dealer was suave, polished. “Yes. It is genuine Palissy. You observe the carefully worked snakes, and leaves of plants—”

“Not the fake, Monsieur.” His partner, a smart middle-aged lady, wore a genuine Breguet watch on her fitted jacket—you can tell them from their plainness, the matt background and narrow chapter ring showing up the plain hands superbly. “Breguet et fils, Madame?”

“Yes,” she said, pausing uncertainly. That meant not pre-1816, but still a valuable watch.

Palissy was a Huguenot glass-painter, one of the unlucky ones. Even though the royal family patronized him, he still died in clink. When he turned to pottery, he got good whites without tin oxides. No mean feat, because you have to put on a translucent lead glaze and let the white clay underneath show through. Everybody fakes Palissy, though, except his small plates. And this was a big exotic one, but without a single chime. Fake.

“The Majorelle, Monsieur.” I smiled hello at it.

A water-lily table, little over two feet tall. Called so because it was carved literally to look like a water lily. Not truly an antique, except to avaricious Customs and Excise, who want everything older than fifty years down in their little ledgers. About 1900, Art Nouveau ran riot, basing everything on Mother Nature. It’s bonny stuff, if you’ve the stomach, but I can’t honestly take such blunt copying, however polished the tamarind and mahogany, the gilt- bronze lily buds, creepers crawling up furniture legs on to the top of the damned thing. Majorelle was a lone cabinet-maker, who knew wood. Pity he didn’t go straight and make proper stuff (apologies if you’re an Art Nouveau nut. Wish you better).

“To be shipped, Monsieur?” The lady was sizing me up: non French, a new buyer, non-haggler and pretty much unconcerned with a few percentage points here and there…

“My assistants will tell you, Madame, later today.” I scribbled a note for the price as marked, thanked her profusely, and withdrew. She tried catching my attention but I was off into blissland. I find it really quite easy