The Massarenes

by Ouida

But it was a matter concealed from almost everyone, and of which neither family dreamed, which was racking her nerves like neuralgia. It was the destination of the big diamond, the roc’s egg, which had been her ostensible object in marrying Cocky.

When she thought of that jewel, high-couraged and mettlesome and thoroughbred though she was, a sickly chill passed over her, and she shuddered, as she looked at her brother’s profile in the faint light of the railway-lamp, as the train sped through the night. For she had, in vulgar parlance, pawned the famous jewel.

That is to say, that being in great want of money, of a sum so large that no one she could appeal to would be likely or even able to give it to her, she had borrowed that sum, four years previously, on the roc’s egg, of a great jeweler, who had caused to be made for her such a precise counterfeit in paste that no detection was possible by the naked eye.

The famous jeweler was a Pole by birth, a Parisian by long residence and habit; he had dropped his own name, which had been politically compromised in his earliest manhood and for forty years had traded in the city of his adoption as a naturalized Frenchman, known as M. Boris Beaumont. His riches were now great; his taste in and knowledge of gems were unerring; and he had that note of fashion without which a great tradesman in Paris is an Apollo without a bow or a lute. All the great ladies were his clients; without something of Beaumont’s no bridal corbeille was well furnished; his exquisite trifles were the most distinguished of New Year’s gifts. He was deferential, good-natured, adroit; in his trade he was absolutely to be depended on; if Beaumont told you a stone was good, you might buy it without further warranty, and you would never repent; the price of it was high, even very high; but if you made that objection he would say briefly with a little shrug: “Que voulezvous? Ça vient de moi!”

Behind his very elegant shop was a conservatory, behind the conservatory was a little salon where his patronesses could have ices or tea according to the season, and read Gyp’s last delightful persiflage. In that little salon many a secret has been confided to Beaumont; many a dilemma been exposed to him.

“Les honnêtes femmes! Les honnêtes femmes!” he said once to a friend. “Ah mon cher, il n’y qu’elles pour canaille!” But it was rarely he was so indiscreet as this, though he knew so many of the passions and pains which throbbed under the diamond tiaras and the sapphire rivières in the brains and in the breasts of his fair clients.

Now and then Beaumont went to the opera, or to the Français on a Tuesday, and from his modest stall looked up at his patrician patronesses in all the beauty of their semi-nudity, their admirable maquillage, their wondrous toilettes, and then he smiled as he lowered his glasses with a little malice but more indulgence.

To Mouse, of course, Beaumont was well known: when she had wanted this large sum he had taken it from his capital for her, but as security he would accept in return nothing less than the famous Otterbourne jewel.

“You have it. Bring it me,” he said as simply as if he had been speaking of a bit of cornelian or agate.

In vain she implored, protested, entreated, wept, tried all the armory of persuasion, represented that he was tempting her to a crime, actually to a crime!