"And MY imitations are all in primary colors, staring colors, hotas the colors of a hostelry's signboard!" exclaimed the Lady ofMeissen, with a shiver.

"Well, there is a gres de Flandre over there, who pretends to be aHans Kraut, as I am," said the jug with the silver hat, pointingwith his handle to a jug that lay prone on its side in a corner."He has copied me as exactly as it is given to moderns to copy us.Almost he might be mistaken for me. But yet what a differencethere is! How crude are his yellows! how evidently done over theglaze are his yellow letters! He has tried to give himself my fairlytwist; but what a lamentable exaggeration of that playfuldeviation in my lines which in his becomes actual deformity!"

"And look at that," said the gilt Cordovan leather, with acontemptuous glance at a broad piece of gilded leather spread outon a table. "They will sell him cheek by jowl with me, and givehim my name; but look! _I_ am overlaid with pure platinum beaten skinnyas a film and laid on me in absolute honesty by worthy Diego delas Gorgias, worker in leather of lovely Cordova in the blessedreign of Ferdinand the Most Christian. HIS gilding is one partgold to eleven other parts of brass and rubbish, and it has beenlaid on him with a brush--A BRUSH!--pah! of course he will be aspurple as a crock in a few fortnights' time, whilst I am as bright aswhen I first was made, and, unless I am burnt as my Cordova burntits heretics, I shall shine on forever."

"They carve pear wood because it is so soft, and dye it brown, andcall it ME!" exclaimed an aged oak cabinet, with a chuckle.