Not thoroughly comprehending the instance of the polyglottiness of the polyglot, George Dallas again advanced to the charge, and by varying his methods of attack, and diligently patching together such intelligible scraps as he rescued from the polyglot, he at length arrived at the fact that Mr. Dieverbrug, a Jew, who lived in the Muiderstraat, was a diamond merchant in a large way of business, speaking English, frequently visiting England, and likely to give as good, if not a better price than any one else in the trade. The polyglot added that he himself was not a bad judge of what he persisted in calling "dimants;" and as this speech was evidently a polite hint, George showed him the stones. The polyglot admired them very much, and pronounced them, in his opinion, worth between two and three hundred pounds--a valuable hint to George, who expected Mr. Dieverbrug would call upon him to name his price, and if any absurd sum was asked, the intending vendor might be looked upon with suspicion. The polyglot then owned that he himself frequently did a little business in the way of jewel-purchasing from visitors to the hotel, but frankly confessed that the "lot" under consideration was beyond him; so George thanked him and set out to visit Mr. Dieverbrug.
The Muiderstraat is the Jews' quarter of Amsterdam, which said, it is scarcely necessary to add that it is the dirtiest, the foulest, the most evil-smelling. There all the well-known characteristics of such places flourish more abundantly even than in the Frankfort Judengasse or our own Houndsditch. There each house is the repository of countless suits of fusty clothes, heaped up in reckless profusion on the floors, bulging out from cupboards and presses, horribly suggestive of vermin, hanging from poles protruding from the windows. There every cellar bristles with an array of boots of all kinds and shades, amongst which the little Hebrew children squall and fight, and play at their little games of defrauding each other. There are the bric-à-brac shops, crammed with cheap odds and ends from every quarter of the globe, all equally undistinguishable under an impartial covering of dust and dirt; there are the booksellers, with their worm-eaten folios and their copies of the Scriptures, and their written announcements in the Hebrew character; there are the cheap printsellers, with smeary copies from popular pictures and highly coloured daubs of French battle-fields and English hunting-scenes. The day was fine, and nearly all the population was either standing outside its doors or lolling at its windows, chaffering, higgling, joking, scolding. George Dallas, to whom such a scene was an entire novelty, walked slowly along with difficulty, threading his way through the various groups, amused with all he saw, and speculating within himself as to the probable personal appearance of Mr. Dieverbrug. The diamond merchant, George imagined, would probably be an old man, with gray hair and spectacles, and a large hooked nose, like one of Rembrandt's "Misers," seated in a small shop, surrounded by the rarest treasures exquisitely set. But when he arrived at the number which the polyglot had given him as Mr. Dieverbrug's residence, he found a small shop indeed, but it was a bookseller's, and it was not until after some little time that he spied a painted inscription on the door-post directing Mr. Dieverbrug's visitors to the first floor, whither George at once proceeded.
At a small wooden table, on which stood a set of brass balance weights, sat a man of middle height and gentlemanly appearance dressed in black. The Hebraic character was not strongly marked in any of his features, though it was perceptible to an acute observer in the aquiline nose and the full red lips. He raised his eyes from a small red-leather memorandum-book or diary which he had been studying, as Dallas entered the room, and gave his visitor a grave salutation.
"Am I addressing Mr. Dieverbrug?" said Dallas, in English.
"I am Mr. Dieverbrug," he replied, in the same language, speaking with perfect ease and with very little foreign accentuation, "at your service."
"I have been recommended to come to you. I am, as you have probably already recognized, an Englishman, and I have some jewels for sale, which it may, perhaps, suit you to buy."
"You have them with you?"
"Yes, they are here;" and George took out his cherished case and placed it in Mr. Dieverbrug's hand.
Mr. Dieverbrug opened the case quietly, and walked with it towards the window. He then took out the stones and held them to the light, then taking from his waistcoat pocket a small pair of steel nippers, he picked up each stone separately, breathed upon it, examined it attentively, and then replaced it in the case. When he had gone through this operation with all the stones, he said to George:
"You are not a diamond merchant?"