“A fine Kirman. Worth seven hundred dollars,” he began, just from force of habit. “Perhaps you will bid on it? Get it for two-three hundred.”

I didn’t bother to tell him that I’d not use it for a bathmat; that it was a sickly-looking mess, with its flabby texture, its aniline dyes, bleached to unnatural softness, and its fearful, glassy luster gained from glycerin and hot rollers, and that it would hardly be a fit companion for a Kirman rose-rug of the old school. So, he left me to my own devices, to tear down several piles, shoulder-high, of rugs of varying quality; mainly atrocities recently woven to satisfy the ever-increasing demand for Oriental rugs: wretched rags which the auctioneer would later exhibit, glassily agleam under a powerful floodlight and describe as “Royal” Bijar, “Royal” Sarouk, or “Royal” Kashan, or “Royal” whatever travesty it was on some ancient, honorable weave.

Weariness and more weariness. I worked my way through the second pile, and with like result. An old Feraghan tempted me, but I decided that though honest and ancient, it would cost too much to have the worn spots rewoven. Nor did the third pile bring forth anything of interest. Then, poking about in a dark corner, I found behind a baled, room-sized carpet, a scrap of something which even in that dim light had the look of antiquity, the stamp of personality possessed only by one of the old guard. And it had the feel of ancient weaving.

I dragged it out. Through all its coating of dust and dirt, the unbelievable richness of the dyes, the “bald-headedness” of the back and subdued luster of the face were apparent. Then—horrible sight!—I saw that I had but a portion of a rug, between half and two-thirds of one, the remnant of something which if complete would be priceless. Judging from the fragment, the complete piece would be about five feet wide and twelve feet long, or thereabout. Some barbarian had sliced it in two, crosswise, with a clean, sweeping cut that left in this fragment about half of the medallion which had been the central design of the complete piece.

What fool would commit such a wanton infamy, such an uncalled-for blasphemy? And then I recalled that classic incident of early Moslem history, wherein one of the prophet’s fanatic generals, in apportioning the loot of a Persian palace, had dismembered a gold-threaded carpet, giving each of his captains a portion, saying that it would have been unfair to let any one individual retain the entire rug; and offering the equally good reason that such a pagan vanity deserved mutilation!