nt? hasn't
the air got its sun?"

Cellini always set the coloured stones in a bezel or closed box
of gold, with a foil behind them. He tells an amusing story of
a ruby which he once set on a bit of frayed silk instead of on
the customary foil. The result happened to be most brilliant. The
jewellers asked him what kind of foil he had used, and he replied
that he had employed no foil. Then they exclaimed that he must have
tinted it, which was against all laws of jewelry. Again Benvenuto
swore that he had neither used foil, nor had he done anything forbidden
or unprofessional to the stone. "At this the jeweller got a little
nasty, and used strong language," says Cellini. They then offered
to pay well for the information if Cellini would inform them by what
means he had obtained so remarkably a lustre. Benvenuto, expressing
himself indifferent to pay, but "much honoured in thus being able to
teach his teachers," opened the setting and displayed his secret,
and all parted excellent friends.

Even so early as the thirteenth century, the jewellers of Paris had
become notorious for producing artificial jewels. Among their laws
was one which stipulated that "the jeweller was not to dye the
amethyst, or other false stones, nor mount them in gold leaf nor other
colour, nor mix them with rubies, emeralds, or other precious stones,
except as a crystal simply without mounting or dyeing."

One day Cellini had found a ruby which he believed to be set
dishonestly, that is, a very pale stone with a thick coating of
dragon's blood smeared on its back. When he took it to some of
his favourite "dunderheads," they were sure that he was mistaken,
saying that it had been set by a noted jeweller, and could not be
an imposition. So Benvenuto immediately removed the stone from
its setting, thereby exposing the fraud. "Then might that ruby have
been likened to the crow which tricked itself out in the feathers
of the peacock," observes Cellini, adding that he advised these
"old fossils in the art" to provide themselves with better eyes
than they then _wore_. "I could not resist saying this," chuckles
Benvenuto, "because all three of them wore great gig-lamps on their
noses; whereupon they all three gasped at each other, shrugged
their shoulders, and with God's blessing, made off." Cellini tells
of a Milanese jeweller who concocted a great emerald, by applying a
very thin layer of the real stone upon a large bit of green glass:
he says that the