Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 4 (1926-04).djvu/97

528 the nose presented an aquiline silhouette which recalled the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands—thin, bony, veined, full of sinews stretched like the strings on the neck of a violin, and armed with talons resembling those which terminate the membranous wings of a bat—shook with a senile movement disquieting to see. But those feverishly nail-bitten hands became firmer than lobster-claws or steel pincers when they lifted some precious piece—an onyx carving, a Venetian cup, or a plate of Bohemian crystal. This old rascal had an aspect so profoundly rabbinical and cabalistic that three centuries ago they would have burned him merely from the evidence of his face.

"Will you not buy something from me today, Monsieur? Here is a Malay kris with a blade undulating like a flame: see those grooves to serve as gutters for the blood, those teeth fashioned and set inversely so as to rip out the entrails when the dagger is withdrawn. It is a fine type of ferocious weapon, and would look very well among your trophies. This two-handed sword is very beautiful—it is a José de la Hera; and this colichemarde with perforated guard, what a superb piece of work!"

"No, I have plenty of arms and instruments of carnage. I want a figurine, something that would do for a paper-weight, for I can not endure those stock bronzes which the stationers sell, and which may be found on any desk.

The old gnome, foraging among his antiques, finally arranged before me several ancient bronzes; fragments of malachite; little Hindoo or Chinese idols, a kind of toys made of jade, showing the incarnation of Brahma or of Vishnu, marvelously well suited for the sufficiently ungodlike purpose of holding papers and letters in place.

hesitating between a porcelain dragon all starred with warts, its jaws adorned with tusks and bristling whiskers, and a highly abominable little Mexican fetish, representing the god Vitziliputzili naked, when I noticed a charming foot which I at first took for a fragment of an antique Venus.

It had those beautiful tawny and ruddy tints which give to Florentine bronze that warm and vivacious look so preferable to the grayish green tone of ordinary bronze, which might be taken for statues in putrefaction. Satiny lights frisked over its form, rounded and polished by the loving kisses of twenty centuries; for it seemed to be a Corinthian bronze, a work of the best era, perhaps a casting by Lysippus.

"This foot will be the thing for me," I said to the merchant, who regarded me with an ironical and gloomy air as he held out the desired object for me to examine at will.

I was surprized at its lightness; it was not a foot of metal, but indeed a foot of flesh, an embalmed foot, a foot of a mummy; on examining it still more closely one could see the grain of the skin, and the lines almost imperceptibly impressed upon it by the texture of the bandages. The toes were slender, delicate, terminated by perfect nails, pure and transparent as agates; the great toe, slightly separate, and contrasting happily with the modeling of the other toes, in the antique style, gave it an air of lightness, the grace of a bird's foot; the sole, scarcely streaked by several almost invisible grooves, showed that it had never touched the earth, and had come in contact with only the finest matting of Nile rushes and the softest carpets of panther skin.

"Ha, ha! You wish the foot of the Princess Hermonthis!" exclaimed the merchant, with a strange chuckle, fixing upon me his owlish eyes. "Ha, ho, ha! For a paper-weight! Original