Pomposo—but it was a very surprisingly large
diamond; and, in short, if he would conclude
the bargain at once, I would not stand
particular as to the precise amount of half a
million. He would see, in a twinkling, what
it was worth.

"Where is it? " demanded Monsieur, rather
abruptly. "I will go and fetch it," I replied.
"I merely wished, first, to ascertain if you
were open to such a purchase." Monsieur
bowed with a severe grace, and I bowed most
obsequiously; and then I hurried out of the
room, and then out of the house; and, as the
outer door was closing behind me, I heard
Monsieur say, in a hasty voice, to somebody,
something dreadfully like appellez—officier.
Ha! ejaculated I—call an officer of police!
—death and destruction! Away I scudded—
jumped into the first public vehicle I met—
told him to drive to the Champs Elysées—then
to Père la Chaise—where I got out, and ran
about among the graves till I was utterly exhausted.
To be brief, I dodged about here
and there till dusk, and then returned to my
lodgings, (for I had had the precaution, to
give a false address, and the Hôtel d'Espagne
was a long way to the north west of my
abode,) where I threw myself upon a sofa,
more dead than alive.

Was it for this I had passed so many sleep-less
nights—laboured so hard—sold out my
little property—spent two-thirds of it—and
now to be obliged to fly, and hide with my
treasure, and have no means of disposing of
it without the chance of being apprehended,
and cast into a dungeon—perhaps guillotined
—or handed over to the English Ambassador,
and sent back to London to be hanged? I
saw what to do. Fertile in resources, I sent
out a lad, who cleaned shoes for the lodgers,
to buy me a hammer. I was determined to
settle this business by a grand coup-de-maître.
I would break up the Illustrious Mountain
into several good-sized "hills of light," and
then sell them one at a time. This I could
easily do, as all identity would thus be
destroyed. It was a thousand pities—so
unique a gem—but was I to be tortured in
this way, after all my trouble?

The hammer was brought me, together
with some nails (that was an ingenious
"blind"), and I fell to hammering up the
sides of a leathern portmanteau, having no
box; but I knew that the French lad would
set it down as an English caprice. We do
such odd things on the continent. As soon
as I was alone, and had fastened the door, I
took out the Doomed One, and looked at it
regretfully. But what else could I do? My
bane and antidote were both before me—both
in one. I raised the hammer—took aim—
turned my face aside—and administered a
heavy blow upon the devoted gem. It
instantly flew into the air—a smash was heard
—the Diamond had vanished, and, looking
round and round, I saw a large irregular hole
in one of the window panes! The priceless
treasure had escaped! I threw open the
window. It overlooked a yard. With a.
wild ejaculation, I flew down stairs, and after
several wrong turns, which brought me
abruptly among different sets of people, who
all started up at my suddenly bursting in
among them, I found the yard, and saw the
Diamond in the hands of a child of nine or
ten years' old, with two other children
looking at it. "That's mine!—that belongs
to me!" cried I; whereupon the urchin that
had it, instantly put it into its mouth, and
denied all knowledge of the thing. Seizing
the little imp, and endeavouring to extract
it, the other children set up a scream, and
the mother of the child seeing me struggling
with it, and its face all red, and its eyes
staring, thought I was trying to strangle it,
and flew to the rescue. The scene that
followed is too provoking and humiliating to
relate; suffice it to say that, after all manner
of entreaties, apologies, explanations, and
giving the mother and the urchin all the
money I happened to have in my pocket, I
recovered my infernal Treasure, and hurrying
away with it, never returned to the house,
but left all my luggage to pay for the little I
owed, as I could not risk the danger of
staying a moment after such an adventure.

I. made my way direct to Calais. On the
route, I thought I would go to Germany; but
no—Germany was not rich enough to deal
with me, even on my very reduced terms of
five hundred thousand pounds—for this was
the figure to which I had now made up my
mind to reduce my expectations. Four or
five hundred thousand pounds would remunerate
me very well, and anything for peace of
mind. But to what market should I go?
Would Spain answer my purpose? It might;
but no—there was the Inquisition. Italy?—
too poor. Austria, or Russia? they might
do; and yet this would be dangerous.
Despotic countries, like those, might take
away my Mountain, and send me to the
mines of Siberia for life, on pretence that I
had obtained it by dishonest means! They
would assume this; and I should suffer for a
mere conjecture. Oh, how wretched were all
these conflicting thoughts!

Fate decided for me. On arriving at Calais,
in a very perplexed state of mind, I went to
stand behind a bale of goods near the Custom
House, to be out of the heat of the sun, and
was considering if it would not be best to go
and live some weeks in Belgium, there to meditate
calmly on this most arduous part, as I
now discovered it to be, of my whole enterprise,
when I heard a voice say, in English,
"You haven't seen a scared-looking English
gent, with two strips of black sticking-plaster
across his nose, pass this way, have you?"
I listened with pricking and shooting ears for
the reply. "Yes," said somebody, also in
English, "I think I saw him just now, and he is
gone on board the boat for Ostend."—"Thank
you," said the first speaker, and hurried away.