to the Great Exposition; and, like everybody
else, I was strikingly disappointed by the
appearance of the Koh-i-noor. My imagination
had portrayed something a million times
more dazzling. In fact, I was not dazzled at
all. But one thing did impress me deeply
from the first, and always excited my imagination
for some time after my departure; and
this was the extraordinary care, and various
ingenious and secret means adopted for its
safe preservation. Bold, indeed, must be the
thief that would make such a venture; and
such are not wanting, so far as boldness is
concerned; but to devise and execute any
feasible plan for the capture of such a prize,
so guarded by men and mechanism, by clock-work
tricks within, which it is said would
cause the diamond instantly to disappear, if
the lightest of light fingers were but to touch
it; by a bell-glass covering, and by a great
iron cockatoo cage, and policeman without—
to obtain any success against such prodigious
difficulties, visible and secreted, almost
amounting to an impossibility, would require
a thief of the very highest genius.

I went several times to the Exposition after
this "lighting up" of the Koh-i-noor. I
confess that my chief inducement in these
repeated visits, was the strange attraction
of these precautions for the preservation
of the gem—far greater, I repeat, than the
attraction of its equivocal beauty. The
precautions and devices seemed to defy the
ingenuity of man. I was fascinated by them.
I could not help speculating as to how they
might be defeated. Why not? The world
was full of clever people—some of them
rogues—and what the fine skill of one man
could construct, the equally fine skill of
another man might circumvent—the treasure
that one acute locksmith might secure, an
equally acute picklock might carry away.
If a fortress was impregnable from above
ground, there were generally means of getting
at it from below, by a good deep burrow;
thus, by a masterly manœuvre, at once compromising
and turning to waste all the
cunning calculations of the upper works.

These thoughts took such possession of my
imagination, that I was literally haunted by
them. Wherever I went, whatever I was
doing, they constantly obtruded themselves.
I vigorously strove to concentrate my attention
and speculations on other objects of
interest in the Great Exposition. I called to
mind the gigantic Astronomical Telescope,
and wondered how large a star would look
through it—Mercury, for instance, the god of
thieves—and suddenly the Koh-i-noor appeared
shining at the other end, escaped from
its cage! I bethought me of the various
agricultural and other machines at rest, and
in motion; but it always ended in one of
them boring a deep hole under-ground, into
which I put one foot, and drew it back
suddenly, checking myself with a "forbear."
I really felt ashamed of all this; but do what
I would, I could not shake it off. The
immense blocks of coal outside, what were they
but "black diamonds"—the crude, unconcentrated,
unpurified, raw material of mines,
from which the Koh-i-noor family were
lineally descended? I rushed back into the
Crystal Palace, and the next moment found
myself, as by a fatal fascination, standing in
front of the iron cockatoo cage, with its
policeman lounging beside a barrier rail,
quite stultified with the dull monotony of his
duty. There I beheld the illustrious captive
shining on a platform or stage, which is evidently
an iron safe, one (or more) of the
panels of which has a deep and curious key-hole,
which panel being opened, no doubt
allows you to creep along in the dark, beneath
the "mountain of light." Aha!—not
so impregnable—not so impossible to be got
at—by no manner of means impossible. I
could imagine several ways.

I did, indeed, imagine several ways—several
extraordinary ways. I fell into a habit of
sitting in an arm-chair every day after dinner,
and indulging in long reveries, in which I
exhausted my ingenuity in devising and following
out schemes for carrying off the
Koh-i-noor. The thing had taken so thorough
a possession of my imagination, that I verily
believe (and this has not unfrequently happened
in the history of mechanical inventions)
I should have gone mad, had not the extremes
found a vent, and a cure, in one of those after-dinner
reveries which terminated in a deep
slumber. But, if reduced to a state of insensibility
to all outward impressions, how active,
vivid, and coherent were all those which I
experienced within! I have since thought
that my brain must have been in a high
state of fever.

To prowl at night round the outskirts of
the Crystal Palace, watching a favourable
time—say, about two in the morning, or
three, if not too light—and then mount, by a
very light ladder, to the first division of the
roof, would be perilous, and attended with many
difficulties; some of which, perhaps, could
not be foreseen. No—this would not do:
some other scheme must be adopted.

One thing, extremely needed, was precisely
the one thing of all others which, at the same
time, I most wished to avoid—an accomplice.
There was a very clever fellow I knew, now
out of employ, who had once been a lawyer's
clerk, and afterwards "marker" at a gambling-table,
besides other things. He would do,
so far as cleverness was concerned; but then
he was likely to be by far too clever, and
trouble me afterwards. On the other hand,
there was a particularly stupid chap, who had
been a farm-servant of my uncle's—Abraham
Winthorpe Sparks's—in Somersetshire, and
was dismissed for allowing some gipsies to
steal a donkey-load of turnips in two panniers,
in return for having his fortune told by one of
the women while the panniers were loading.
This fellow now, who combined both rogue