retched, and therefore I speak as I
do; were I rich, my talk would be of fetes, and happy days, and worldly
engagements--And how do you find yourself now, wife?"

"Much the same; I seem to have lost all feeling in my limbs. But how you
shiver! Here, take your jacket, and pray put it on. Blow out that
candle, which is burning uselessly,--see, it is nearly day!"

And, true enough, a faint, glimmering light began to struggle through
the snow with which the skylight was encumbered, and cast a dismal ray
on the interior of this deplorable human abode, rendering its
squalidness still more apparent; the shade of night had at least
concealed a part of its horrors.

"I shall wait now for the daylight before I go back to work," said the
lapidary, seating himself beside his wife's _paillasse_, and leaning his
forehead upon his two hands.

After a short interval of silence, Madeleine said:

"When is Madame Mathieu to come for the stones you are at work upon?"

"This morning. I have only the side of one false diamond to polish."

"A false diamond! How is that?--you who only make up real stones,
whatever the people in the house may believe."

"Don't you know? But I forgot, you were asleep the other day when Madame
Mathieu came about them. Well, then, she brought me ten false
diamonds--Rhine crystals--to cut exactly to the same size and form as
the like number of real diamonds she also brought. There, those are them
mixed with the rubies on my table. I think I never saw more splendid
stones, or of purer water, than those ten diamonds, which must, at
least, be worth 60,000 francs."

"And why did she wish them imitated?"

"Because a great lady to whom they belonged--a duchess, I think she
said--had given directions to M. Baudoin, the jeweller, to dispose of
her set of diamonds, and to make her one of false stones to replace it.
Madame Mathieu, who matches stones for M. Baudoin, explained this to me,
when she gave me the real diamonds, in order that I might be quite sure
to cut the false ones to precisely the same size and form. Madame
Mathieu gave a similar job to four other lapidaries, for there are from
forty to fifty stones to cut; and I could not do them all, as they were
required by this morning, because M. Baudoin must have time to set the
false gems. Madame Mathieu says that grand ladies, very frequently
unknown to anybody but the jeweller, sell their valuable diamonds, and
replace them with Rhenish crystals."

"Why,