“Tancred, what an old tyrant you must be,” said Prince Max. “Cousin, do you think we should explain, just a little?”
“Yes, I do. Though I doubt your ability to explain, or do anything else, just a little, Max. But Mr. Cornish is now in—you shall say in what—farther than he knows, and it would be ill-usage not to tell him what he is letting himself in for.”
“Here it is, my dear Cornish. You know that our Führer is a great connoisseur of art? Understandable, as he was himself a painter in his young days, before his mighty destiny declared itself. Because of his determination that the full glory of the German Volk should be made plain to the whole world, as well as to the Volk itself, he wishes to acquire and bring back to Germany whatever German works of art are owned abroad. Repatriation of our heritage, he calls it. That will take some doing, of course. There was a great dispersal of German religious art during the Reformation. Who wanted that ridiculous stuff? Certainly not the Lutherans. But much of it found its way to other countries, and travelled even further toward America, from which it probably will not return. But what is in Europe may be persuaded to return. There was another great dispersal of German art during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when every young sprig who made the Grand Tour felt obliged to take a few pretty things home with him, and not all of those pretty things were acquired in Italy. Some fine Gothic things went from here. The Führer wants to get it all together, the first-rate and the second-rate—not that the Führer would regard anything authentically German as second-rate—and he is planning a great Führermuseum in Linz to house it.”
“But surely Linz is in Austria?”
“Yes, and not a great distance from the Führer’s birthplace. By the time the pictures have been assembled, Austria will be glad to have the Führermuseum. Austria is ripe for the picking. Are you beginning to catch on?”
“Yes, but does the Führer really want the kind of thing the Meister and I have been working on? That’s very small potatoes, surely? And why send it to England? Why not offer it here?”
“Well—that is a complicated story. First, the Führer wants everything that is German; when it has been acquired, somebody will sort the good from the mediocre. And I may say that you and dear Tancred have lifted these pictures above mediocrity. They are bürger-portraits of considerable interest. How intelligent, how German they look now! Second, the Führer, or I should say his agents, are ready to make deals with foreign dealers. They like to do swaps. For a German picture, a picture of roughly corresponding worth that is not German but now hangs in a German gallery may be exchanged. The Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin and the Alte Pinakothek in Munich have already—under the gentle persuasion of the Führer’s artistic advisers—swapped a Ducio di Buoninsegna, a Raphael, some Fra Lippo Lippis, and God knows what else for German paintings that could be made available. There are scores of them in England, you know.”
“I suppose there must be.”
“And we are just about to ship some more to England for swapping purposes. Things that might have been found in English country houses. Small things, but the Führer’s principal agent likes quantity, as well as quality.”
“He has an eye for quality, as well,” said the Countess, with something like a snort.
“Oh yes, he has, and he has had his eyes on the pictures here at Düsterstein,” said Prince Max. “The Führer’s principal artistic agent, as you may know, is that very busy man, Reichsmarschall Göring, and he has already visited my cousin to discover whether she would like to present her family collection to the Führermuseum as a token of her fidelity to German ideals. The Reichsmarschall is extremely fond of pictures, and he has an enviable collection of his own. I understand,” said Max, turning to the Countess, “that he has asked the Führer to revive in his favour the title that Landgrave Wilhelm III of Hesse gave to his adviser on art—Director-General of the Delights of My Eye.”
“What effrontery,” said the Countess. “His taste is veryvulgar, as one might expect.”
“Well, my dear Cornish, there you have it,” said Prince Max.
“And you are doing this as a sort of quixotic anti-Hitler thing?” said Francis. “Just to do him in the eye? Surely the risk is immense?”
“We are quixotic, but not so quixotic as all that,” said the Prince. “There is a certain recognition for this work, which is, as you say, dangerous. Friendly English firms are most generous. Certain art dealers are involved. They arrange the swaps, and they sell the Italian treasures that go to England in return for the sort of thing we have been dealing with this morning. Such a group of lesser pictures as this may be exchanged for a single canvas—a Tiepolo, even a Raphael. The work is quixotic, certainly, but—not totally selfless. Some money does change hands, depending on how well we do.”
Francis looked at the Countess, and although he was pretty good at controlling his features, astonishment must have showed. The Countess did not flinch.
“One does not restore a great fortune by shrinking from risks, Mr. Cornish,” she said.
That girl did well with Francis’s horoscope, said the Lesser Zadkiel. She even hinted at your involvement in his fate, brother. That must have surprised you.
–I am not so easily surprised, said the Daimon Maimas. In the days when people understood about the existence and influence of daimons like myself we were often recognized and called upon. But she did well enough, certainly. She warned Francis of an impending crisis, and against his increasing preoccupation with money.
–He has good reason for it, said the Angel. As he says, everybody exploits him and he is open to exploitation. Look at that gang at Düsterstein! Prince Max assumes that Francis will be delighted to be included in the picture hoax—to give it the least objectionable name—because he regards it as an aristocratic lark, and it honours Francis to be one of the jokers. The Countess thinks, in her heart, that a bourgeois like Francis is lucky to be allowed into an aristocratic secret, and to work for his keep to sustain it. And Saraceni has the genial contempt of the master for the neophyte. But if that scheme were ever uncovered, Francis would suffer most, because he is the only one who has actually forged a picture.
–No, brother, he has forged nothing. He has painted an original picture in a highly individual style, and if any connoisseur misdates it, the more fool he. It is Prince Max and the Countess who are passing it off as what it is not. They are aristocrats, and, as you well know, aristocrats did not always achieve their position by a niggling scrupulosity. As for money, the whole story has not yet been told.
–I bow to your superior knowledge of the case, my dear Maimas. What pleases me is that François Xavier Bouchard, the dwarf tailor of Blairlogie, is at last about to burst upon the world, and be admired, as the Fuggers’ Jester, Drollig Hansel. And all because Francis learned to observe, and remember, under the influence of Harry Furniss.
–These are the little jokes that relieve the tedious work of being a Minor Immortal, said the Daimon Maimas.
“Do you suppose that La Nibsmith will take Prince Max’s broad hint?” said Saraceni. “You heard what he said when he gave her that book: for astrological notations. He is mad to have her cast his horoscope.”
“And won’t she?” said Francis.
“Apparently not. He has been begging—in so far as so aristocratic a person can beg—for several months. She is capricious, which is her right. She does not do it professionally, but she is very good. A genuine psychic. Of course, casting horoscopes depends a good deal on the psychic gifts of the astrologer. Germans arejust as keen for that sort of thing as Americans. The Führer has an astrologer of his own.”