“Then those shells are very precious?”
“You shall judge for yourself. First the inner layer of the shell, sawed into sheets and tablets, is the mother-of-pearl that we use for fine ornamentation. Jules’ penknife-handle is covered with a sheet of mother-of-pearl that was part of the inside of a pearl-shell. But that is the least part of what the precious shell produces. There are pearls as well.”
“But pearls are not very dear. With a few sous I bought a whole boxful, to embroider you a purse.”
“Let us make a distinction: there are pearls and pearls. The pearls you mention are little pieces of colored glass pierced with a hole. Their price is very moderate. The pearls of the meleagrina are globules of the richest and finest mother-of-pearl. If they are unusually large, they attain the fabulous price of the diamond, up to hundreds of thousands and millions of francs.”
“I don’t know those pearls.”
Oyster Shell
“God keep you from ever knowing them, for in becoming interested in pearls one sometimes loses common sense and honor. It is well, though, to know how they are produced.
“Between the two parts of the shell lives an animal like the oyster. It is a mass of slime in which you would find it difficult to recognize an animal. It digests, however, and breathes, and is sensitive to pain, so sensitive that a grain of dust, a mere nothing, renders existence painful to it. What does the animal do when it feels itself tickled by some foreign substance? It begins to sweat mother-of-pearl around the place that itches. This mother-of-pearl piles up in a little smooth ball, and there you have a pearl made by the sick, slimy animal. If it is of any considerable size, it will cost a fine bag of crowns, and the person who wears it around her neck will be very proud of it.
“But before getting to the neck, it must be fished for. The fishermen are in a boat. They descend into the sea, one after another, with the aid of a rope to which is tied a large stone that drags them rapidly to the bottom. The man about to dive seizes the weighted rope with his right hand and the toes of his right foot; with his left hand he closes his nostrils; to his left foot is fastened a bag-shaped net. The stone is thrown into the sea. The man sinks like lead. Hastily he fills the net with shells, and then pulls the rope to give the signal for ascent. Those in the boat pull him up. Half-suffocated, the diver reaches the surface with his fishing. The efforts he has made to suspend respiration are so painful that sometimes blood gushes from his mouth and nose. Sometimes, the diver comes up with a leg gone; sometimes he never comes up. A shark has swallowed him.