Page:Inside Canton.djvu/98

Rh CHAPTER VII.

Paris to Canton, from Canton to Rome, to be well received by the shopkeeper, one must have a good deal of money to spend, for a trafficker knows at once how much a man whom he sees for the first time will bring him. This intuition seems especially to belong to a vender [sic] of curiosities,—a species of animal between the spaniel and the jackall. Go into his shop, and at a glance he guages [sic] your pockets; he knows what they contain; if his impression is favourable, it is with joyous barks and bounds that he spreads his rarities before you. He empties his closets, and brings forth from secret drawers the treasures which his avarice has heaped up there. But if, on the contrary, he has divined the emptiness of your purse, the spaniel changes into a Cerberus; the ugly beast shows his teeth; he answers only by monosyllables; and if he does not tell you plainly that his magazine is not a museum, which idlers may visit gratis, he gives you clearly to understand as much. If you were an amateur as knowing as M. Dusommerard or the Duc de Luynes, your science