Scary stories

the mummys foot

I had sauntered idly into the shop of one of those dealers in old

curiosities--"bric-a-brac" as they say in that Parisian argot, so

absolutely unintelligible elsewhere in France.

You have no doubt often glanced through the windows of some of these

shops, which have become numerous since it is so fashionable to buy

antique furniture, that the humblest stockbroker feels obliged to have a

room furnished in medieval style.

Something is there which belongs alike to the shop of the dealer in old

iron, the warehouse of the merchant, the laboratory of the chemist, and

the studio of the painter: in all these mysterious recesses, where but a

discreet half-light filters through the shutters, the most obviously

antique thing is the dust: the cobwebs are more genuine than the laces,

and the old pear-tree furniture is more modern than the mahogany which

arrived but yesterday from America.

The warehouse of my dealer in bric-a-brac was a veritable Capharnauem;

all ages and all countries seemed to have arranged a rendezvous there;

an Etruscan terra cotta lamp stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony

panels decorated with simple filaments of inlaid copper: a duchess of

the reign of Louis XV stretched nonchalantly her graceful feet under a

massive Louis XIII table with heavy, spiral oaken legs, and carvings of

intermingled flowers and grotesque figures.

In a corner glittered the ornamented breastplate of a suit of

damaskeened armor of Milan. The shelves and floor were littered with

porcelain cupids and nymphs, Chinese monkeys, vases of pale green

enamel, cups of Dresden and old Sevres.

Upon the denticulated shelves of sideboards, gleamed huge Japanese

plaques, with red and blue designs outlined in gold, side by side with

the enamels of Bernard Palissy, with serpents, frogs, and lizards in

relief.

From ransacked cabinets tumbled cascades of silvery-gleaming China silk,

the shimmering brocade pricked into luminous beads by a slanting

sunbeam; while portraits of every epoch smiled through their yellowed

varnish from frames more or less tarnished.

The dealer followed me watchfully through the tortuous passages winding

between the piles of furniture, warding off with his hands the perilous

swing of my coat tail, observing my elbows with the disquieting concern

of an antiquarian and a usurer.

He was an odd figure--this dealer; an enormous skull, smooth as a knee,

was surrounded by a scant aureole of white hair, which, by contrast,

emphasized the salmon-colored tint of his complexion, and gave a wrong

impression of patriarchal benevolence, corrected, however, by the