redoubled quivering scintillations, a mass of white magnificence, not
prismatic, but a vast milky lustre. I closed the case; on reopening it,
I could scarcely believe that the beautiful sleepless eye would again
flash upon me. I did not comprehend how it could afford such perpetual
richness, such sheets of lustre.

At last we compelled ourselves to be satisfied. I left the shop,
dismissed my attendants, and, fresh from the contemplation of this
miracle, again trod the dirty, reeking streets, crossed the bridge, with
its lights, its warehouses midway, its living torrents who poured on
unconscious of the beauty within their reach. The thought of their
ignorance of the treasure, not a dozen yards distant, has often made
me question if we all are not equally unaware of other and greater
processes of life, of more perfect, sublimed, and, as it were, spiritual
crystallizations going on invisibly about us. But had these been told of
the thing clutched in the hand of a passer, how many of them would have
known where to turn? and we,--are we any better?


II.


For a few days I carried the diamond about my person, and did not
mention its recovery even to my valet, who knew that I sought it, but
communicated only with the Marquis of G., who replied, that he would be
in Paris on a certain day, when I could safely deliver it to him.

It was now generally rumored that the neighboring government was about
to send us the Baron Stahl, ambassador concerning arrangements for a
loan to maintain the sinking monarchy in supremacy at Paris, the usual