worth more than a man's home, the safety
of a maiden, the peace of an old man in his declining days?

As if he guessed the thought, Simoun remarked to those about him: "Look
here--with one of these little blue stones, which appear so innocent
and inoffensive, pure as sparks scattered over the arch of heaven,
with one of these, seasonably presented, a man was able to have his
enemy deported, the father of a family, as a disturber of the peace;
and with this other little one like it, red as one's heart-blood,
as the feeling of revenge, and bright as an orphan's tears, he was
restored to liberty, the man was returned to his home, the father to
his children, the husband to the wife, and a whole family saved from
a wretched future."

He slapped the chest and went on in a loud tone in bad Tagalog: "Here
I have, as in a medicine-chest, life and death, poison and balm,
and with this handful I can drive to tears all the inhabitants of
the Philippines!"

The listeners gazed at him awe-struck, knowing him to be right. In
his voice there could be detected a strange ring, while sinister
flashes seemed to issue from behind the blue goggles.

Then as if to relieve the strain of the impression made by the gems on
such simple folk, he lifted up the tray and exposed at the bottom the
_sanctum sanctorum_. Cases of Russian leather, separated by layers of
cotton, covered a bottom lined with gray velvet. All expected wonders,
and Sinang's husband thought he saw carbuncles, gems that flashed
fire and shone in the midst of the shadows. Capitan Basilio was on
the threshold of immortality: he was going to behold something real,
something beyond his dreams.

"This was a necklace of Cleopatra's," said Simoun, taking out carefully
a flat case in the shape of a half-moon. "It's a jewel that can't be
appraised, an object for a museum, only for a rich government."

It was a necklace fashioned of bits of gold representing little idols
among green and blue beetles, with a vulture's head made from a single
piece of rare jasper at the center between two extended wings--the
symbol and decoration of Egyptian queens.

Sinang turned up her nose and made a grimace of childish depreciation,
while Capitan Basilio, with all his love for antiquity, could not
restrain an exclamation of disappointment.

"It's a magnificent jewel, well-preserved, almost two thousand
years old."

"Pshaw!" Sinang made haste to exclaim, to prevent her father's falling
into