“Those two earrings!” exclaimed Sinang, looking at her father and instinctively covering the arm next to her mother.

“Something more ancient yet, something Roman,” said Capitan Basilio with a wink.

The pious Sister Penchang thought that with such a gift the Virgin of Antipolo would be softened and grant her her most vehement desire:  for some time she had begged for a wonderful miracle to which her name would be attached, so that her name might be immortalized on earth and she then ascend into heaven, like the Capitana Ines of the curates.  She inquired the price and Simoun asked three thousand pesos, which made the good woman cross herself—­’Susmariosep!

Simoun now exposed the third tray, which was filled with watches, cigar- and match-cases decorated with the rarest enamels, reliquaries set with diamonds and containing the most elegant miniatures.

The fourth tray, containing loose gems, stirred a murmur of admiration.  Sinang again clucked with her tongue, her mother again pinched her, although at the same time herself emitting a ’Susmaria of wonder.

No one there had ever before seen so much wealth.  In that chest lined with dark-blue velvet, arranged in trays, were the wonders of the Arabian Nights, the dreams of Oriental fantasies.  Diamonds as large as peas glittered there, throwing out attractive rays as if they were about to melt or burn with all the hues of the spectrum; emeralds from Peru, of varied forms and shapes; rubies from India, red as drops of blood; sapphires from Ceylon, blue and white; turquoises from Persia; Oriental pearls, some rosy, some lead-colored, others black.  Those who have at night seen a great rocket burst in the azure darkness of the sky into thousands of colored lights, so bright that they make the eternal stars look dim, can imagine the aspect the tray presented.

As if to increase the admiration of the beholders, Simoun took the stones out with his tapering brown fingers, gloating over their crystalline hardness, their luminous stream, as they poured from his hands like drops of water reflecting the tints of the rainbow.  The reflections from so many facets, the thought of their great value, fascinated the gaze of every one.

Cabesang Tales, who had approached out of curiosity, closed his eyes and drew back hurriedly, as if to drive away an evil thought.  Such great riches were an insult to his misfortunes; that man had come there to make an exhibition of his immense wealth on the very day that he, Tales, for lack of money, for lack of protectors, had to abandon the house raised by his own hands.

“Here you have two black diamonds, among the largest in existence,” explained the jeweler.  “They’re very difficult to cut because they’re the very hardest.  This somewhat rosy stone is also a diamond, as is this green one that many take for an emerald.  Quiroga the Chinaman offered me six thousand pesos for it in order to present it to a very influential lady, and yet it is not the green ones that are the most valuable, but these blue ones.”