rs, gloating over their
crystalline hardness, their luminous stream, as they poured from his
hands like drops of water reflecting the tints of the rainbow. The
reflections from so many facets, the thought of their great value,
fascinated the gaze of every one.

Cabesang Tales, who had approached out of curiosity, closed his eyes
and drew back hurriedly, as if to drive away an evil thought. Such
great riches were an insult to his misfortunes; that man had come there
to make an exhibition of his immense wealth on the very day that he,
Tales, for lack of money, for lack of protectors, had to abandon the
house raised by his own hands.

"Here you have two black diamonds, among the largest in existence,"
explained the jeweler. "They're very difficult to cut because they're
the very hardest. This somewhat rosy stone is also a diamond, as is
this green one that many take for an emerald. Quiroga the Chinaman
offered me six thousand pesos for it in order to present it to a very
influential lady, and yet it is not the green ones that are the most
valuable, but these blue ones."

He selected three stones of no great size, but thick and well-cut,
of a delicate azure tint.

"For all that they are smaller than the green," he continued,
"they cost twice as much. Look at this one, the smallest of all,
weighing not more than two carats, which cost me twenty thousand
pesos and which I won't sell for less than thirty. I had to make a
special trip to buy it. This other one, from the mines of Golconda,
weighs three and a half carats and is worth over seventy thousand. The
Viceroy of India, in a letter I received the day before yesterday,
offers me twelve thousand pounds sterling for it."

Before such great wealth, all under the power of that man who talked
so unaffectedly, the spectators felt a kind of awe mingled with
dread. Sinang clucked several times and her mother did not pinch
her, perhaps because she too was overcome, or perhaps because she
reflected that a jeweler like Simoun was not going to try to gain
five pesos more or less as a result of an exclamation more or less
indiscreet. All gazed at the gems, but no one showed any desire to
handle them, they were so awe-inspiring. Curiosity was blunted by
wonder. Cabesang Tales stared out into the field, thinking that with
a single diamond, perhaps the very smallest there, he could recover
his daughter, keep his house, and perhaps rent another farm. Could
it be that those gems were