|
I See an Opal
|
11
|
||
|
|
|||
|
stone possesses. A good carbuncle glows like a live coal, and, in fact, the Latin "carbo" means just that.
The
second gem I took into my hand was an amethyst. Here was purple fire
being shot from face to face in ceaseless bombardment. I called the
sides "faces" instead of "facets", I remember, which is the correct
term, and was duly reproved. These facets presented a curiously
symmetrical design, and my mother pointed from it to another stone,
dull and lifeless, which was domed on top and had a flat underside.
"That's amethyst, too," she said. And that was my first lesson in the
art of bringing out the imprisoned fire in a gem stone by skilful
cutting.
It
was not my only lesson that day, however. The next stone, so my mother
told me, was a topaz. It was yellow, but she explained that it would
still have been a topaz whether it had been white or pink or brown or
the colour of smoked glass, for topazes of all those colours are to be
met with.
Then
came a most lustrous stone—an aquamarine. I fell in love with its name
at first sound, and have loved it ever since. Aquamarine. Its colour
was neither a pronounced green nor a full blue. The two pigments had
married and sometimes one was master and sometimes the other. The stone
was the colour of deep salt water, cold, strange.
"And
this is an opal," said my mother. I have handled so many opals since
that day that I am fully aware the gem she showed me was of low degree,
but in my eyes then it was nothing short of miraculous. Was there red
liquid fire inside it, or green fire, or both, chasing each other and
having a game together? How did the stone come to
|
|||
|
|
|||