"For all that they are smaller than the green," he continued,
"they cost twice as much. Look at this one, the smallest of all,
weighing not more than two carats, which cost me twenty thousand
pesos and which I won't sell for less than thirty. I had to make a
special trip to buy it. This other one, from the mines of Golconda,
weighs three and a half carats and is worth over seventy thousand. The
Viceroy of India, in a letter I received the day before yesterday,
offers me twelve thousand pounds sterling for it."

Before such great wealth, all under the power of that man who talked
so unaffectedly, the spectators felt a kind of awe mingled with
dread. Sinang clucked several times and her mother did not pinch
her, perhaps because she too was overcome, or perhaps because she
reflected that a jeweler like Simoun was not going to try to gain
five pesos more or less as a result of an exclamation more or less
indiscreet. All gazed at the gems, but no one showed any desire to
handle them, they were so awe-inspiring. Curiosity was blunted by
wonder. Cabesang Tales stared out into the field, thinking that with
a single diamond, perhaps the very smallest there, he could recover
his daughter, keep his house, and perhaps rent another farm. Could
it be that those gems were worth more than a man's home, the safety
of a maiden, the peace of an old man in his declining days?

As if he guessed the thought, Simoun remarked to those about him: "Look
here--with one of these little blue stones, which appear so innocent
and inoffensive, pure as sparks scattered over the arch of heaven,
with one of these, seasonably presented, a man was able to have his
enemy deported, the father of a family, as a disturber of the peace;
and with this other little one like it, red as one's heart-blood,
as the feeling of revenge, and bright as an orphan's tears, he was