It was stored
in the secret repositories of the _antiquario_ till the circumstances
attending its creation should be a little forgotten, and dust and dirt
should have corrected the brand-new rawness of its surface, ready to be
produced with much mystery as a recent _trouvaille_ when a likely
purchaser should loom over the Apennine which encircles "gentile
Firenze." In due time, one of the largest and brightest of those comets
whose return is so accurately calculated and eagerly expected by the
Florentine dealers in ancient art made his appearance in the Tuscan
sky--no less than a buyer for the Louvre. Those were the halcyon days of
the Empire, and money was plenty. Poor Bastianini's bust was brought out
with all due mystery, duly admired by the infallible French connoisseur,
and eventually purchased by him for the imperial collection for, I
think, five thousand francs--at all events, for a sum sufficiently large
to give the man who had bought the bust from the poor artist the right
to demand his supplementary payment. He did so. But the greed of the
dealer prevailed over his prudence, and he refused to give his
accomplice in the fraud the promised share in the plunder. Of course
that ensued which might have been expected. The defrauded rogue "split."
The bust sold to the Frenchman was easily identified with that which
Bastianini had made, and which had been known to all artistic Florence,
and the authorities at the Louvre were duly certified by many a
loud-tongued informer that they had been gulled.
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