Excerpt from The Collectors: Being Cases Mostly Under the Ninth and Tenth CommandmentsOf the seven stories of art collecting that make up this book Campbell Corot and the Missing St. Michael first appeared under the pseudonym of Francis Cotton, in Scrib ner's Magazine, and are now reprinted by its courteous permission. Similar acknowledg ment is due the Nation for allowing the sketch on art collecting to be republished. Many readers will note the similarity between the story The del Puente Giorgione and Paul Bourget's brilliant novelette, La Dame qui a perdu son Peintre. My story was written in the winter of 1907, and it was not until the summer of 1911 that M. Bourget's delightful tale came under my eye. Clearly the same incident has served us both as raw material, and the noteworthy differences be tween the two versions should sufiiciently advise the reader how little either is to be taken as a literal record of facts or estimate of personalities.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.