350 THE DIAMOND AND OTHER PRECIOUS STONES. 



riches angmeutiug from day to day, and the insufficieucy of paste for 

 beauty aud duration becoming more and more apparent, a greater ex- 

 pense for something of imperishable vahie is preferred to a less price 

 paid for what is really an article of no permanent \yorth. We are now 

 long past the time when the Duchess of Berri, arriving in France, re- 

 ceived for her bridal ornaments onl}^ iiaste, and when, in order to make 

 the Duke of Wellington a present in diamonds of less than a million 

 francs in value, the Paris trade was obliged to borrow from the civil 

 list a certain number, guaranteeing their restitution in kind. 



Before speaking further of colored stones, a question presents itself: 

 Can science explain the coloring of these gems 1 There are, I suppose, 

 few persons who do not know that the white light which reaches us 

 from the sun and other heavenly bodies can be decomposed into a num- 

 ber of colored rays. Thus, when the light of the sun passes through a 

 triangular prism, it is bent, and v.ill trace on a white card placed oppo- 

 site to it an iridescent band, in which jSTewton has marked seven colors, 

 according to some idea of analogy with the seven notes of a musical oc- 

 tave ; an idea which is, after all, without foundation, since every prism 

 gives its own peculiar band. The idea was by no means new. The 

 Greeks and Eomans entertained it, and Nero, who in dying pitied the 

 world for losing so great an artist as himself, has sung it in verse. A 

 child, blowing a soap-bubble produces colors as splendid. In a word, 

 every thin plate of any transparent substance whatever becomes colored 

 under white light. Striated surfaces also offer effects not less brilliant ; 

 so that, to clothe certain insects more vividly, nature has grooved the 

 tissue that envelopes them. The globules of clouds between us and the 

 moon produce also, with white light, the most vivid colors; and, above 

 all in beauty, the iris or rainbow, which the sun paints in a thousand 

 colors in the drops of the falling shower, is the transcendent effect of de- 

 composed light. Nature always, with a palette, so to speak, charged only 

 with white, knows the art of spreading over all her pictures the magic 

 and glow of the most brilliant coloring. But we have not exhausted 

 all the resources of this coloring, the secret of which is the light itself. 

 How shall we explain the whiteness of the snow, which covers our planet 

 at either pole, and on the summits of the loftiest mountains ? How ac- 

 count lor the perpetual greenness of countries covered with plants and 

 trees, the blue of the vast aerial sea which envelopes the earth, or the 

 color of the great ocean which rests on its surface"? Here science is in 

 default. The cause of the color proper to bodies is only half perceived ; 

 and we can say still that which Huyghens said at the end of the seven- 

 teenth century, " In spite of the labors of Newton, no one has yet fnlly dis- 

 covered the cause of the color of bodies." We mijst then admire, with- 

 out penetrating their secret, the unparalleled red of the oriental ruby, 

 the pure yellow of the topaz, the unmingled greenness of the emerald, 

 the soft blue of the sapphire, and the rich violet of the amethyst. This 

 is not the only thing the discovery of which we shall leave to posterity. 



