284 PROSE HALIEtTTICS. 



Jacquin's beads soon gained favour at Courts but did 

 not long maintain it; for their value being all on tbe 

 surface^ would not stand wear; the ladies' skins were 

 found to have superior attraction for the nacrous matter, 

 which, in consequence, left the gypsum bare to shine 

 upon the wearers' white necks and shoulders. Some 

 leading belles, therefore, concerted with the bead-maker 

 that the medium should henceforth be glass, and the 

 covering turned into a lining that could not come off 

 and sparkle in the wrong place. This was so great an im- 

 provement, that what Venice had formerly feared actually 

 came to pass in Paris ; people could not at first distin- 

 guish these factitious ornaments from the real article, 

 and some amiising mistakes took place in consequence. 

 A poor marquis loved a mercenary belle, who proved as 

 hard as ' Ailsa Craig,' till his valet, a knowing fellow, 

 put him up to a device, as taking with ladies of her rank 

 as a canary waistcoat, according to Mr. Fagan, is with 

 modern housemaids. The marqtiis procured, for three 

 louis, a string of the newly introduced false pearls, and 

 presented them to the fair Cleopatra, who, forming from 

 the offering a wrong estimate of her innamorato's purse, 

 yielded with the sweetest grace to his suit. 



The bleak whence nacre was originally procured is the 

 L. bipustulatus of the Seine; but as the scales of all 

 bleak yield a more or less copious deposit of this pearly 

 powder, and as some species of leucisci abound in almost 

 every river, 'Bleak Houses' began to be established* 



carry on a clever forgery in glass ; having modelled a number of 

 vessels, cliiefly laokrymatories, from the antique, they first roU 

 these counterfeits in a strong adhesive paste, and afterwards in 

 the iridescent scrapings from old glass, which presently invests 

 them entirely, offering to the eye of the gulled purchaser nothing 

 but beautiful prismatic colours of time-worn vitrefaotions. 



* One very flourishing manufactory was established at Saint- 

 Jean de Marcel, in the ChSlonnais, whence, at one time. 



