‘Truly, I hope not,’ said the merchant.  ’Now, as touching this Great Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it; but be it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will surely outvalue the Great Mogul’s best diamond, which he holds at an incalculable sum.  Wherefore, I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on shipboard, and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or into Heathendom, if Providence should send me thither, and, in a word, dispose of the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of the earth, that he may place it among his crown jewels.  If any of ye have a wiser plan, let him expound it.’

‘That have I, thou sordid man!’ exclaimed the poet.  ’Dost thou desire nothing brighter than gold that thou wouldst transmute all this ethereal lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already?  For myself, hiding the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my attic chamber, in one of the darksome alleys of London.  There, night and day, will I gaze upon it; my soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be diffused throughout my intellectual powers, and gleam brightly in every line of poesy that I indite.  Thus, long ages after I am gone, the splendor of the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name?’

‘Well said, Master Poet!’ cried he of the spectacles.  ’Hide it under thy cloak, sayest thou?  Why, it will gleam through the holes, and make thee look like a jack-o’-lantern!’

‘To think!’ ejaculated the Lord de Vere, rather to himself than his companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his intercourse—­’to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk of conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grub Street!  Have not I resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament for the great hall of my ancestral castle?  There shall it flame for ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor, the banners, and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping bright the memory of heroes.  Wherefore have all other adventurers sought the prize in vain but that I might win it, and make it a symbol of the glories of our lofty line?  And never, on the diadem of the White Mountains, did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so honored as is reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres!’

‘It is a noble thought,’ said the Cynic, with an obsequious sneer.  ’Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp, and would display the glories of your lordship’s progenitors more truly in the ancestral vault than in the castle hall.’

‘Nay, forsooth,’ observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand in hand with his bride, ’the gentleman has bethought himself of a profitable use for this bright stone.  Hannah here and I are seeking it for a like purpose.’

‘How, fellow!’ exclaimed his lordship, in surprise.  ’What castle hall hast thou to hang it in?’