best diamond, which he holds at an
incalculable sum. Wherefore, I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on
shipboard, and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or
into Heathendom, if Providence should send me thither, and, in a word,
dispose of the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of the earth,
that he may place it among his crown jewels. If any of ye have a wiser
plan, let him expound it.'

'That have I, thou sordid man!' exclaimed the poet. 'Dost thou desire
nothing brighter than gold that thou wouldst transmute all this ethereal
lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For myself, hiding
the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my attic chamber, in
one of the darksome alleys of London. There, night and day, will I
gaze upon it; my soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be diffused
throughout my intellectual powers, and gleam brightly in every line of
poesy that I indite. Thus, long ages after I am gone, the splendor of
the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name?'

'Well said, Master Poet!' cried he of the spectacles. 'Hide it under thy
cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes, and make thee
look like a jack-o'-lantern!'

'To think!' ejaculated the Lord de Vere, rather to himself than
his companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his
intercourse--'to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk
of conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grub Street! Have not I
resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament
for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for
ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor,
the banners, and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping
bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other adventurers sought
the prize in vain but that I might win it, and make it a symbol of
the glories of our lofty line? And never, on the diadem of the White
Mountains, did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so honored as is
reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres!'

'It is a noble thought,' said the Cynic, with an obsequious sneer. 'Yet,
might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp,
and would display the glories of your lordship's progenitors more truly
in the ancestral vault than in the castle hall.'

'Nay, forsooth,' observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand
in hand with his bride, 'the gentleman has betho