and fading daily.  So they sought a purchaser for the Mazarin; they found one in the empress of Russia, who had a craze for precious stones, and who, at her death, left this remarkable collection to her favourite son, who had inherited her passion.  A paste replica of the Mazarin was placed in the Louvre for the crowds to admire, and every one soon forgot that it was not really the diamond.  For myself, I think the directors acted most wisely.  And now,” he added, with a gesture toward the glittering heaps, “what shall we do with all this?”

“There’s only one thing to do,” said Grady, awaking suddenly as from a trance, “and that’s to get them in a safe-deposit box as quick as possible.  There’s no police-safe I’d trust with ’em!  Why, they’d tempt the angel Gabriel!” and he drew a deep breath.

“Can we find a box of safe-deposit at this hour of the night?” asked M. Pigot, glancing at his watch.  “It is almost one o’clock and a half.”

“That’s easy in New York,” said Grady.  “We’ll take ’em over to the Day and Night Bank on Fifth Avenue.  It never closes.  Wait till I get something to put ’em in.”

He went out and came back presently with a small valise.

“This will do,” he said.  “Stow ’em away, and I’ll call up the bank and arrange for the box.”

Simmonds and Pigot rolled up the packets carefully and placed them in the valise, while I sat watching them in a kind of daze.  And I understood the temptation which would assail a man in the presence of so much beauty.  It was not the value of the jewels which shook and dazzled me—­I scarcely thought of that; it was their seductive brilliance, it was the thought that, if I possessed them, I might take them out at any hour of the day or night and run my fingers through them and watch them shimmer and quiver in the light.

“The Grand Duke Michael must have been considerably upset,” remarked Simmonds, who, throughout all this scene, had lost no whit of his serenity of demeanour.

“He has been like a madman,” said M. Pigot, smiling a little at Simmonds’s unemotional tone.  “These jewels are a passion with him; he worships them; he never has parted with them, even for a day; where he goes, they have gone.  In his most desperate need of money—­and he has had such need many times—­he has never sold one of his brilliants.  On the contrary, whenever he has money or credit, and the opportunity comes to purchase a stone of unusual beauty, he cannot resist, even though his debts go unpaid.  Since the loss of these stones, he has raved, he has cursed, he has beat his servants—­one of them has died, in consequence.  We are all a little mad on some one subject, I have heard it said; well, the Grand Duke Michael is very mad on the subject of diamonds.”

“Why didn’t he offer a reward for their return?” queried Simmonds.

“Oh, he did,” said M. Pigot.  “He offered immediately his whole fortune for their return.  But his fortune was not large enough to tempt Crochard, for the Grand Duke really has nothing but the income from his family estates, and you may well believe that he spends all of it.  It will be a great joy to him that we have found them.”