My lady’s eldest sister married the celebrated Mr. Blake—­equally famous for his great riches, and his great suit at law.  How many years he went on worrying the tribunals of his country to turn out the Duke in possession, and to put himself in the Duke’s place—­how many lawyer’s purses he filled to bursting, and how many otherwise harmless people he set by the ears together disputing whether he was right or wrong—­is more by a great deal than I can reckon up.  His wife died, and two of his three children died, before the tribunals could make up their minds to show him the door and take no more of his money.  When it was all over, and the Duke in possession was left in possession, Mr. Blake discovered that the only way of being even with his country for the manner in which it had treated him, was not to let his country have the honour of educating his son.  “How can I trust my native institutions,” was the form in which he put it, “after the way in which my native institutions have behaved to me?” Add to this, that Mr. Blake disliked all boys, his own included, and you will admit that it could only end in one way.  Master Franklin was taken from us in England, and was sent to institutions which his father could trust, in that superior country, Germany; Mr. Blake himself, you will observe, remaining snug in England, to improve his fellow-countrymen in the Parliament House, and to publish a statement on the subject of the Duke in possession, which has remained an unfinished statement from that day to this.

There! thank God, that’s told!  Neither you nor I need trouble our heads any more about Mr. Blake, senior.  Leave him to the Dukedom; and let you and I stick to the Diamond.

The Diamond takes us back to Mr. Franklin, who was the innocent means of bringing that unlucky jewel into the house.

Our nice boy didn’t forget us after he went abroad.  He wrote every now and then; sometimes to my lady, sometimes to Miss Rachel, and sometimes to me.  We had had a transaction together, before he left, which consisted in his borrowing of me a ball of string, a four-bladed knife, and seven-and-sixpence in money—­the colour of which last I have not seen, and never expect to see again.  His letters to me chiefly related to borrowing more.  I heard, however, from my lady, how he got on abroad, as he grew in years and stature.  After he had learnt what the institutions of Germany could teach him, he gave the French a turn next, and the Italians a turn after that.  They made him among them a sort of universal genius, as well as I could understand it.  He wrote a little; he painted a little; he sang and played and composed a little—­borrowing, as I suspect, in all these cases, just as he had borrowed from me.  His mother’s fortune (seven hundred a year) fell to him when he came of age, and ran through him, as it might be through a sieve.  The more money he had, the more he wanted; there was a hole in Mr. Franklin’s pocket that nothing would