Elie Magus

“ In 1813 she was left a widow, with her daughter. She paid no thought to the value of money, never knowing how to resist a whim. So one morning in 1821 she was forced to call on the broker and expert, Elie Magus, to get an estimate on the value of her magnificent diamonds. She became wearied of life in the country, and therefore favored the marriage of her daughter with Paul de Manerville, in order that she might follow the young couple to Paris where she dreamed of appearing in grand style and of a further exercise of her power. ”

“ Ginevra lay down again, and pretended to sleep. Presently Luigi returned, overcome with fatigue and drowsiness. Ginevra looked sadly on the beautiful, worn face, where toil and care were already drawing lines of wrinkles.
“It is for me he spends his nights in writing,” she said to herself, weeping.
A thought dried her tears. She would imitate Luigi. That same day she went to a print-shop, and, by help of a letter of recommendation she had obtained from Elie Magus, one of her picture-dealers, she obtained an order for the coloring of lithographs. ”

“ Coming last from Bordeaux, he was just starting in Paris, selling old pictures and living on the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. Fougeres, who relied on his palette to go to the baker's, bravely ate bread and nuts, or bread and milk, or bread and cherries, or bread and cheese, according to the seasons. Elie Magus, to whom Pierre offered his first picture, eyed it for some time and then gave him fifteen francs.
"With fifteen francs a year coming in, and a thousand francs for expenses," said Fougeres, smiling, "a man will go fast and far." ”

“ The next moment Elie Magus entered and found the painter in the act of beginning his work in the tidy studio.
"How are you, old rascal?" said the painter.
Fougeres had the cross of the Legion of honor, and Elie Magus bought his pictures at two and three hundred francs apiece, so he gave himself the airs of a fine artist.
"Business is very bad," replied Elie. "You artists have such pretensions! You talk of two hundred francs when you haven't put six sous' worth of color on a canvas. However, you are a good fellow, I'll say that. You are steady ”

“ These bourgeois—they are crazy about art—have never dared to enter a studio. The girl has a 'dot' of a hundred thousand francs. You can paint all three,—perhaps they'll turn out family portraits."
And with that the old Dutch log of wood who passed for a man and who was called Elie Magus, interrupted himself to laugh an uncanny laugh which frightened the painter. He fancied he heard Mephistopheles talking marriage.
"Portraits bring five hundred francs apiece," went on Elie; "so you can very well afford to paint me three pictures."
"True for you!" cried Fougeres, gleefully. ”

“ The ice-cold, money-worshiping soul in him kindled at the sight of a perfect work of art, precisely as a libertine, weary of fair women, is roused from apathy by the sight of a beautiful girl, and sets out afresh upon the quest of flawless loveliness. A Don Juan among fair works of art, a worshiper of the Ideal, Elie Magus had discovered joys that transcend the pleasure of a miser gloating over his gold—he lived in a seraglio of great paintings. ”

“ We shall only get our due by taking it, upon my word, as an honest woman, for as for trusting to the next-of-kin!—No fear! There! look you here, words don't stink; it is a bad world!"
"That is true," Elie Magus answered cunningly, "that is true; and it is just the like of us that are among the best," he added, looking at Remonencq.
"Just let me be," returned La Cibot; "I am not speaking of you. 'Pressing company is always accepted,' as the old actor said. I swear to you that the two gentlemen already owe me nearly three thousand francs ”

“ And Magus himself was a living picture among the motionless figures on the wall—a little old man, dressed in a shabby overcoat, a silk waistcoat, renewed twice in a score of years, and a very dirty pair of trousers, with a bald head, a face full of deep hollows, a wrinkled, callous skin, a beard that had a trick of twitching its long white bristles, a menacing pointed chin, a toothless mouth, eyes bright as the eyes of his dogs in the yard, and a nose like an obelisk—there he stood in his gallery smiling at the beauty called into being by genius. ”

“ It may be surprising that Maggie, among whose many imperfections an excessive delight in admiration and acknowledged supremacy were not absent now, any more than when she was instructing the gypsies with a view toward achieving a royal position among them, was not more elated on a day when she had had the tribute of so many looks and smiles, together with that satisfactory consciousness which had necessarily come from being taken before Lucy's chevalglass, and made to look at the full length of her tall beauty, crowned by the night of her massy hair. ”

“ Before this remonstrance was finished, Maggie was already out of hearing, making her way toward the great attic that run under the old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Maggie's favorite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold; here she fretted out all her ill humors, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs; and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes. ”

“ Lucy has not told you, perhaps?"
"Then the future will never join on to the past again, Maggie? That book is quite closed?"
The gray eyes that had so often looked up at her with entreating worship, looked up at her now, with a last struggling ray of hope in them, and Maggie met them with her large sincere gaze.
"That book never will be closed, Philip," she said, with grave sadness; "I desire no future that will break the ties of the past. But the tie to my brother is one of the strongest. I can do nothing willingly that will divide me always from him." ”

“ Gog, in fact, stands to Oannes or Yan in the same relation as Jack stands to John: the one is seemingly a synonym for the other.
Figs. 46 and 47.—From Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (Baring-Gould) .
The word magic implies a connection with Maga or Magog: in Greek mega means great, and the combined idea of great and wise is extended into magus, magister, and magician. The Latin magnus and magna are respectively Mag Unus and Mag Una: Mogounus was one of the titles applied to St. Patrick, and it was also a sobriquet of the Celtic Sun God. ”

“ There was nobody but Maggie who would be silly enough to believe him, or whom he dared allow to know he had a sword; and Maggie was really coming next week to see Tom, before she went to a boarding-school with Lucy.
If you think a lad of thirteen would have been so childish, you must be an exceptionally wise man, who, although you are devoted to a civil calling, requiring you to look bland rather than formidable, yet never, since you had a beard, threw yourself into a martial attitude, and frowned before the looking-glass. ”

“ The unusual tone, the startling words, arrested Maggie's sob, and she sat quite still, wondering; as if Stephen might have seen some possibilities that would alter everything, and annul the wretched facts.
"See, Maggie, how everything has come without our seeking,–in spite of all our efforts. We never thought of being alone together again; it has all been done by others. See how the tide is carrying us out, away from all those unnatural bonds that we have been trying to make faster round us, and trying in vain. ”

“ But the journey was not taken, and by the fourth morning no distinct resolution was formed about the evenings; they were only foreseen as times when Maggie would still be present for a little while,–when one more touch, one more glance, might be snatched. For why not? There was nothing to conceal between them; they knew, they had confessed their love, and they had renounced each other; they were going to part. Honor and conscience were going to divide them; Maggie, with that appeal from her inmost soul, had decided it ”

“ The culmination of Maggie's career as an admired member of society in St. Ogg's was certainly the day of the bazaar, when her simple noble beauty, clad in a white muslin of some soft-floating kind, which I suspect must have come from the stores of aunt Pullet's wardrobe, appeared with marked distinction among the more adorned and conventional women around her. ”

“ I speak to those who know the satisfaction of making a pair of scissors meet through a duly resisting mass of hair. One delicious grinding snip, and then another and another, and the hinder-locks fell heavily on the floor, and Maggie stood cropped in a jagged, uneven manner, but with a sense of clearness and freedom, as if she had emerged from a wood into the open plain.
"Oh, Maggie," said Tom, jumping round her, and slapping his knees as he laughed, "Oh, my buttons! what a queer thing you look! Look at yourself in the glass; you look like the idiot we throw out nutshells to at school." ”

“ The father turned his eyes on Maggie with a still more eager look, while she, with a bursting heart, sank on her knees, to be closer to the dear, time-worn face which had been present with her through long years, as the sign of her deepest love and hardest trial.
"You must take care of her, Tom–don't you fret, my wench–there'll come somebody as'll love you and take your part–and you must be good to her, my lad. I was good to my sister. Kiss me, Maggie.–Come, Bessy.–You'll manage to pay for a brick grave, Tom, so as your mother and me can lie together." ”

“ Give me the oars, Maggie."
It was not till Tom had pushed off and they were on the wide water,–he face to face with Maggie,–that the full meaning of what had happened rushed upon his mind. It came with so overpowering a force,–it was such a new revelation to his spirit, of the depths in life that had lain beyond his vision, which he had fancied so keen and clear,–that he was unable to ask a question. They sat mutely gazing at each other,–Maggie with eyes of intense life looking out from a weary, beaten face; Tom pale, with a certain awe and humiliation. ”

“ Maggie's heart went out toward this woman whom she had never liked, and she kissed her silently. It was the first sign within the poor child of that new sense which is the gift of sorrow,–that susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving fellowship, as to haggard men among the ice-bergs the mere presence of an ordinary comrade stirs the deep fountains of affection.
Mr. Stelling put his hand on Tom's shoulder and said: "God bless you, my boy; let me know how you get on." Then he pressed Maggie's hand ”

“ Maggie went on, half sobbing as she turned over the few books, "I thought we should never part with that while we lived; everything is going away from us; the end of our lives will have nothing in it like the beginning!"
Maggie turned away from the table and threw herself into a chair, with the big tears ready to roll down her cheeks, quite blinded to the presence of Bob, who was looking at her with the pursuant gaze of an intelligent dumb animal, with perceptions more perfect than his comprehension. ”

“ Now that they were removed from imminent danger, they could breathe with some satisfaction, though sobered by their peril.
"It's all that Jake Golcher's doings," said Aunt Peggy, who was at the extreme rear of the cavern, with one arm around the neck of Eva and the other inclosing that of Maggie.
"I shouldn't wonder if you are right," replied Maggie; "he must be a wicked man indeed."
"Umph!" exclaimed the maiden, with a sniff, "there ain't a more scand'lous villain that ever drawed the breath of life, and I know what I'm saying, and jus' to think, you had a chance and didn't shoot him." ”

“ As for Maggie, becoming fascinated, as usual, by a print of Ulysses and Nausicaa, which uncle Pullet had bought as a "pretty Scripture thing," she presently let fall her cake, and in an unlucky movement crushed it beneath her foot,–a source of so much agitation to aunt Pullet and conscious disgrace to Maggie, that she began to despair of hearing the musical snuff-box to-day, till, after some reflection, it occurred to her that Lucy was in high favor enough to venture on asking for a tune. So she whispered to Lucy ”

“ Maggie paused too, three yards before him. She felt the hatred in his face, felt it rushing through her fibres; but she must speak.
"Tom," she began faintly, "I am come back to you,–I am come back home–for refuge–to tell you everything."
"You will find no home with me," he answered, with tremulous rage. "You have disgraced us all. You have disgraced my father's name. You have been a curse to your best friends. You have been base, deceitful; no motives are strong enough to restrain you. I wash my hands of you forever. You don't belong to me." ”

“ Maggie'S intentions, as usual, were on a larger scale than Tom imagined. The resolution that gathered in her mind, after Tom and Lucy had walked away, was not so simple as that of going home. No! she would run away and go to the gypsies, and Tom should never see her any more. That was by no means a new idea to Maggie; she had been so often told she was like a gypsy, and "half wild," that when she was miserable it seemed to her the only way of escaping opprobrium, and being entirely in harmony with circumstances, would be to live in a little brown tent on the commons ”

“ Do you know where he is?"
"He has been in his room almost all the afternoon and is there now."
"Doing what?"
"I guess you have answered that question," replied Maggie laying aside her sewing because of the increasing shadows, and looking across at her father with a smile.
"That's what makes me lose all patience. What earthly good is it for him to sit in his room drawing figures of machines he dreams of making, or scribbling over sheets of paper? If this keeps up much longer, he will take to writing poetry, and the next thing will be smoking cigarettes and then his ruin will be complete." ”