This meeting was very agreeable to me, and I believe not displeasing to him.

He enquired into the nature of my journey to Paris, and informed me of his own business there, which was to collect pictures, medals, intaglios, and antiques of all kinds, for a gentleman in London, who had just stept into taste and a large fortune.
I was the more surprised at seeing our cousin pitched upon for this office, as he himself had often assured me he knew nothing of the matter.

Upon my asking how he had been taught the art of a connoscento so very suddenly, he assured me that nothing was more easy.

The whole secret consisted in a strict adherence to two rules: the one always to observe, that the picture might have been better if the painter had taken more pains; and the other, to praise the works of Pietro Perugino.
But, says he, as I once taught you how to be an author in London, I'll now undertake to instruct you in the art of picture buying at Paris.
'With this proposal I very readily closed, as it was a living, and now all my ambition was to live.

I went therefore to his lodgings, improved my dress by his assistance, and after some time, accompanied him to auctions of pictures, where the English gentry were expected to be purchasers.