DIAMONDS IN LITERATURE 407
elaborate,
rather than try out a tradition long fondly received, he gathered the
fables and superstitions of his time, endowed them with a halo of
mystery and romance, and without asserting the truth of manifest
absurdities, presented them so linked with age and the ghosts of past
knowledge and wisdom, that the people received at their hands as facts,
fables which had not even a foundation in fact. Oftentimes he went
farther, and himself declared the grotesque little images carved out of
immature imaginations by wily traders, blatant astrologers, venal
priests, and the like, to be veritable living truths. And the people,
seeing that they were awkward wooden things without similitude or the
breath of life, nevertheless believed. They do yet, for now, one may
read that diamonds live and will sweat in the presence of poisons; not
given as an example of the marvelous effrontery and credulity of past
ages, but with the assertion that it is a fact which has been many
times demonstrated. If one breathes upon a cold diamond, a mist will
immediately appear upon the surface of it, whether poison be present or
not. It is yet told that the diamond in Aaron's breastplate became dark
when a guilty man charged with crime was brought before him, and
sparkled more brilliantly if the prisoner was innocent, and that it
became the color of blood when the sins of the people should be
punished. Of old, churches were responsible for many of the lies which
masqueraded as truth. Wretched priesthoods, more interested in
maintaining a subservient laity than in spreading the sublime truths
of their churches, sought by every means to frighten and lure. Precious
stones, having a strong hold on the imaginations of people gener-
