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The carnal side, atrophied for months, which had been stirred by the enervation of his pious readings, then brought to a crisis by the English cant, came to the surface. His stimulated senses carried him back to the past and he wallowed in memories of his old sin. He rose and pensively opened a little box of vermeil with a lid of aventurine. It was filled with violet bonbons.

Among other materials used in the manufacture of handles for knives and forks, some of the latter having two prongs and others three, chiefly made in the eighteenth century, are: Battersea enamel on copper, Staffordshire agate ware, Meissen porcelain, Venetian millefiore glass, Bow porcelain, jasper, Venetian aventurine glass, enamelled earthenware, and Chantilly porcelain.

There are, most delicately worked on to its surface, views of the interior of one of the Imperial Palaces of Japan, and a hunting scene. Mother-of-pearl, gold, silver, and aventurine, are all used in the enrichment of this beautiful specimen of inlaid work, and the lock plate is a representative example of the best kind of metal work as applied to this purpose.

There were a number of wall hangings of silk from which the pictures had been removed. The candelabra was of malachite. There were clumps of violet jasper, porphyry, lapis-lazuli, aventurine and syenite scattered around as though the place had been divested of its furnishings in a hurry.

Small placques of this beautiful ware were used for some of the choicest pieces of Gouthière's elegant furniture made for Marie Antoinette. Aventurine lacquer closely imitates in color the sparkling mineral from which it takes its name, and a less highly finished preparation is used as a lining for the small drawers of cabinets.

The only exception I can think of to this rule is aventurine, a substance known to mineralogists, which in its natural state cannot compare with the artificial preparation of it. Aventurine is a rare kind of quartz; and the same name is given to a brownish-colored glass much resembling it, which is manufactured at Murano.

Each of these rain-makers has a number of rain-stones, such as rock-crystal, aventurine, and amethyst, which he keeps in a pot. When he wishes to produce rain he plunges the stones in water, and taking in his hand a peeled cane, which is split at the top, he beckons with it to the clouds to come or waves them away in the way they should go, muttering an incantation the while.