At last, Delgado, standing now on the topmost step, and half within the area of the piazza, aimed one terrible slashing cut at the old planter, as he stood supporting himself feebly by a piece of the woodwork, and hacked him down, a heavy mass, upon the ground before them with a wild African cry of vengeance. The poor old man fell, insensible, in a little pool of his own blood; and the Orange Grove negroes, giving way finally before the irresistible press of their overwhelming opponents, left him there alone, surrounded on every side by the frantic mob of enraged insurgents.
Nora, clasping her hands tighter than ever, and immovable as a statue, stood there still, without uttering a cry or speaking a word—as cold and white and motionless as marble.
‘Hack him to pieces!’ ‘Him doan’t dead yet!’ ‘Him only faintin’!’ ‘Burn him—burn him!’ A chorus of cries rose incoherently from the six hundred lips of the victorious negroes. And as they shouted, they mangled and mutilated the old man’s body with their blunt cutlasses in a way perfectly hideous to look at; the women especially crowding round to do their best at kicking and insulting their fallen enemy.
‘Tank de Lard—tank de Lard!’ Delgado, now drunk with blood, shouted out fiercely to his frenzied followers. ‘We done killed de ole man. Now we gwine to kill de missy!’
JEWEL AND GEM ROGUERIES.
That old saying which tells us there are ‘tricks in all trades,’ would appear from recent exposures and explanations to be almost more applicable to jewellers than to other traders; and if only one half of the misdemeanours with which they are charged be true, they deserve to be placed in the front rank of trade tricksters. There are, however, jewellers and jewellers, and although, happily, as a class they are above suspicion, yet, as our courts of justice occasionally reveal, there are also not a few black-sheep in the flock—men who do not scruple to deal in ‘doublets’ and paste, and who pass off gems and jewels as genuine, that they know to be either altogether false, or to possess some hidden flaw sufficient greatly to lessen their value. Every now and then we find in the newspapers a paragraph or longer article concerning ‘mystery gold,’ ‘forged gems,’ or ‘false jewels.’ Recent examples of this kind of news have appeared to the effect that an important discovery had been made regarding the crown of a foreign potentate, as well as the diamond necklace of a lady of rank, many of the gems in the latter article being made of paste; whilst the diadem of the king is announced to be little better than a theatrical bauble, most of the real stones having been extracted and their places filled with imitation ones. Another announcement of the kind calls attention to the fact of several imitation stones having been found in a jewelled collar hitherto supposed to be of very great value, and which had been sold by an illustrious person in ignorance of the fact.
‘What is paste?’ asked a London magistrate, in the course of his examination into a charge of selling imitation stones for real ones. ‘Paste, sir,’ replied the witness, ‘means a mixture of violin glass and borax;’ from which, as we have been informed, the closest imitations of diamonds and other precious stones can be made (see [‘Artificial Jewels,’ Chambers’s Journal, Nov. 15, 1884]). Visitors to Paris who have feasted their eyes on the made-up gems so lavishly displayed in the jewellers’ windows of the Rue de la Paix and the Palais-Royal, feel surprised when they are told that four-fifths of the glittering baubles are composed of paste, and are of little value as compared with real gems. It used to be said that most of the jewelry shown in the Palais-Royal was manufactured for use on the stage; but the actresses of to-day, unless obliged to wear paste, will, when they can afford it, adorn their persons with none but real gems. The names of several artists might easily be given who are reputed to be passing rich in diamonds and rubies, and who are possessed besides of pearls of great price. Some actresses, indeed, seem to draw audiences nowadays as much by the aid of their jewels as their talents. When a female star visits the provinces, pains are frequently taken to proclaim the number and value of her gems and jewels. Who, then, wears the paste diamonds and other imitation gems which are manufactured? To this question, an answer of rather a startling kind has more than once been given, and one of the latest may here be noted. A gentleman who was deeply involved in the pursuits of the turf requiring a considerable sum of money to pay his debts of honour, stole his wife’s jewels in order to pawn them. To his consternation, the pawnbroker refused to look at them. ‘Why?’ was feverishly asked. ‘Because they are paste.’—‘Paste! My wife’s jewels paste?’—‘Yes. I supplied her with them. The originals are in my safe; I advanced thirteen hundred pounds upon them.’ Unfortunately, the gentleman’s wife was as great a gambler as her husband, and she had been obliged to pawn her diamonds to meet her own liabilities.
The ingenuity of persons who ‘get up’ precious stones and mock-pearls for ‘the trade’ has been often commented upon and frequently censured. A London lapidary who works in the groove indicated was called upon, a few months ago, in a court of law to explain his mode of procedure. ‘I make all my imitations out of real stones,’ was his reply to the judge. On being asked to be more explicit, he said: ‘Perhaps I possess some pale stones which are of small value: these I split by the aid of my tools; then introducing a deeper tone of colour, I join them together again, having considerably increased their saleable value.’ In this manner the colours of many stones are said to be intensified, such as emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, and others. Diamonds are constantly utilised by being split, each half of a gem perhaps doing duty on a paste foundation on which it has been carefully mounted. A stone which may be of the value of ten pounds having been split at little cost, is carefully mounted, and becomes transformed into two gems, each affirmed to be worth that sum. It requires a clever expert to detect such frauds when they are cleverly executed, or to discover that the ‘fire’ imparted to certain stones that would otherwise be dull of hue and greatly deficient in sparkle, is conferred by so simple an expedient as a backing of tinfoil.
The invention of what are called ‘doublets’ in diamond-dealing can be traced back for centuries. One mode of getting up false stones has been described by Jerome Cardan, who has published in detail the method of the inventor, one Zocolino. This person’s way of working was to procure a thin flake of a very inferior and cheap example of the stone he desired to ‘improve,’ choosing those which had little colour, and might in consequence be procured at a nominal price. As a bottom for his ‘make-up’ he took a bit of crystal which he had shaped to his purpose; covering this with a transparent glue with which he had mixed the necessary colouring material, so as to be like the finest specimen of the gem he intended to forge, he carefully fixed on the flake of stone, and concealed the joining of the two so deftly by careful setting as to make purchasers fancy that his gems were not only genuine, but really finer than those of other jewellers. For a time Zocolino flourished, and was enabled by means of his cunning workmanship to deceive the cleverest lapidaries; but detection came at last, and put an end to his fraudulent practices in gem-making.
It may be mentioned as a warning to travellers that the Singhalese at Colombo are experts in such frauds, and frequently persuade persons to purchase cleverly set up doublets, or pieces of rock-crystal cut and polished. Doublets in many cases, especially when both parts are really diamonds, are somewhat difficult to detect even by men who have had great experience in the gem and jewel trades. Before leaving the diamond, we may mention another kind of fraud connected with it. Often, when these gems have been set in a cluster, it has been found on examination that at least one of the stones is made of paste, or is perhaps a doublet. A rather curious story went the round of the press some years ago, when, on the death of a lady of title, it was found that more than one-third of the family diamonds were composed of false stones. These imitations had been so beautifully executed that none but the cleverest dealers were able to detect them; while in the case of some of the stones, it was not till their specific gravity had been tested that a decision could be arrived at. It has been found on examination, we believe, that necklaces of so-called real diamonds have often contained twenty per cent. of doublets or other stones of questionable quality. Respectable dealers in jewelry maintain that it is the public who are to blame for the production of false jewels, knowing well enough that genuine gems could not be given at the prices offered for them. Retail jewellers are not seldom deceived themselves, not being, perhaps, so well versed in the technical knowledge incidental to their trade as they ought to be. Tradesmen of repute, however, are exceedingly careful in their selection of stock, no gem being offered for sale unless it is known to be genuine.