“How much?” asked Jasmine.
“Seven thousand guineas.”
Jasmine opened the purse and holding it upside down, shook it. Glittering guineas poured out in a golden stream, but the purse remained just as full as before.
As the clinking coins bounded and rolled the merchant’s eyes grew rounder and rounder, and he had to shout for six small black slaves to come to help him to count the money, now lying scattered all over his shop. With the lowest bow he had ever bowed he handed the long rope of glistening pearls to Jasmine. Feverishly she clasped them round her throat, where they scarcely showed against the whiteness of her skin. They reached down to her knees.
“Now some emerald ear-rings, a crown of diamonds, ten ruby bracelets for each arm, and all the opals you possess!” ordered Jasmine, scattering guineas as she spoke, and putting on all the jewels as fast as they were produced.
At last she went away, hung with jewels as a Christmas tree is hung with ornaments. Proud as a peacock she strutted through the streets, and everyone laughed at the absurd sight of so many gaudy ornaments crowded on to one ordinary-sized woman. She heard titters and wondered what might be the cause of the laughter.
She now went to the grandest Fashion House in the city, ordered one thousand costly garments, and came out wearing the richest raiment she had found in stock. Next she bought a most magnificent coach, made of mother o’ pearl, and sixteen piebald horses to draw it; and then she engaged an enormous coachman with a face gilt to match his golden livery.
On her way home she stopped at seven merchants to buy all manner of rare and costly foods, and before long the great coach was crammed with dainties. In it were piled every fruit and vegetable that happened to be then out of season, bottles of wonderful wine, jars of caviare, pots of roseleaf jam, tiny birds in aspic, and sugar plums of every colour. Last of all—because it looked so grand and expensive—she bought an immense wedding-cake, sixteen stories high. The confectioners laughed. They seemed to think it funny that she should buy the wedding-cake. She wondered why they were amused.
When Anselm saw his wife stagger into the room, swaying beneath the weight of so many gaudy jewels, thinking them to be all sham and worn in jest, he burst into a great roar of laughter.