HIS gilding is one part
gold to eleven other parts of brass and rubbish, and it has been
laid on him with a brush--A BRUSH!--pah! of course he will be as
black as a crock in a few years' time, whilst I am as bright as
when I first was made, and, unless I am burnt as my Cordova burnt
its heretics, I shall shine on forever."
"They carve pear wood because it is so soft, and dye it brown, and
call it ME!" said an old oak cabinet, with a chuckle.
"That is not so painful; it does not vulgarize you so much as the
cups they paint to-day and christen after ME!" said a Carl Theodor
cup subdued in hue, yet gorgeous as a jewel.
"Nothing can be so annoying as to see common gimcracks aping ME!"
interposed the princess in the pink shoes.
"They even steal my motto, though it is Scripture," said a
Trauerkrug of Regensburg in black-and-white.
"And my own dots they put on plain English china creatures!"
sighed the little white maid of Nymphenburg.
"And they sell hundreds and thousands of common china plates,
calling them after me, and baking my saints and my legends in a
muffle of to-day; it is blasphemy!" said a stout plate of Gubbio,
which in its year of birth had seen the face of Maestro Giorgio.
"That is what is so terrible in these bric-a-brac places," said
the princess of Meissen. "It brings one in contact with such low,
imitative creatures; one really is safe nowhere nowadays unless
under glass at the Louvre or South Kensington.
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