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There were palanquins and litters for carrying queens, framed and braced with silver and enamel, with jade-handled poles and amber curtain-rings; there were golden candlesticks hung with pierced emeralds that quivered on the branches; there were studded images, five feet high, of forgotten gods, silver with jewelled eyes; there were coats of mail, gold inlaid on steel, and fringed with rotted and blackened seed-pearls; there were helmets, crested and beaded with pigeon's-blood rubies; there were shields of lacquer, of tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-hide, strapped and bossed with red gold and set with emeralds at the edge; there were sheaves of diamond-hilted swords, daggers, and hunting-knives; there were golden sacrificial bowls and ladles, and portable altars of a shape that never sees the light of day; there were jade cups and bracelets; there were incense-burners, combs, and pots for perfume, henna, and eye-powder, all in embossed gold; there were nose-rings, armlets, head-bands, finger-rings, and girdles past any counting; there were belts, seven fingers broad, of square-cut diamonds and rubies, and wooden boxes, trebly clamped with iron, from which the wood had fallen away in powder, showing the pile of uncut star-sapphires, opals, cat's-eyes, sapphires, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and garnets within.
For there sparkling and glowing in the candle light as though they were living moving things, lay a heap of precious gems diamonds, rubies, opals, sapphires, amethysts, that might have been the ransom of a princess. "It's a treasure right enough!" cried Dan. "But what's this?" He turned to the opposite corner where there lay a heap of something covered with a great black cloth.
Henry did understand this subtle trait in the wild man, and she rejoiced to be able to give him immediate reassurance concerning opals. "Don't worry about that," she said. "The opal is said to bring ill luck, but not when it is your own month stone. Then it is supposed to be not only deprived of evil influence, but to possess peculiarly fortunate power. Let it be an opal ring."
"I am afraid," he said, "that my tastes are peculiar. I have been in the East, and I have seen very many precious stones in their uncut state. To my mind, there is nothing to be compared with opals. These are a few I brought home from India. Perhaps you would like to look at them, Mrs. Bognor." They were passed round, amidst a little chorus of admiration.
It will not hurt them to take the sun. Besides, they are cheap. But with sick stones it is very different. He piled Kim's plate anew. 'There is no one but me can doctor a sick pearl and re-blue turquoises. I grant you opals any fool can cure an opal but for a sick pearl there is only me. Suppose I were to die! Then there would be no one ... Oh no! You cannot do anything with jewels.
Who has not envied them the freedom of their journeyings through the air, whether rolled in great masses by the wind, and colored by the sun, they advance peacefully, like fleets of dark ships with gilt prows, or sprinkled in light groups, they glide quickly on, airy and elongated, like birds of passage, transparent as vast opals detached from the treasury of the heavens, or glittering with whiteness, like snows from the mountains carried on the wings of the winds?
Upon the blanket-covered knees rested the angular chin of a dark-skinned, leathern face, upon which the firelight played fitfully, and beneath a tangled mop of graying hair two eyes flashed and dulled like black opals.
It was said that Marsa, until she was his wife, would not accept any jewels from the Prince. The opals in the silver agraffe were all she wanted. "You know them, don't you, Jacquemin? The famous opals of the Tzigana? Put that all in, every word of it." "Yes, it is chic enough." answered the reporter. "It is very romantic, a little too much so; my readers will never believe it.
"I should not be Tisza's daughter if I did not believe a little in all that is romantic, fantastic, improbable, impossible even. Besides, the opals are forgiven now: for they have permitted me to show you that you were not unknown to me, Prince; and, as you see, I wear this dear agraffe always. It has a double value to me, since it recalls the memory of my poor mother and the name of a hero."
'In spite of the greatest effort, I could not suppress a smile of incredulity, at this announcement. Mexico is so full of strange stories of fabulous mines, that this wondrous tale of opals looked to me like some new confidence game, and I felt sure my neighbors were duped or else trying to dupe me. ''Oh! I see you think we are deceived?
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