I See an Opal 15
on
some pretext or other to have a look at his opal cup. But it was not
for sale, and even if it had been I could not for a long time have
afforded to buy it. He was a character, Schmidt. Frequently in the
middle of a keen deal he would leave you to go back to his carving
bench to put a little touch here or there on some piece of work he had
in hand. The customer could wait; inspiration could not.
In
the end I got my opal cup, not with blandishments or big money. I had a
parcel, very tempting, of Ceylon sapphires and he had a customer in
waiting. The old man could refuse a big sum down more easily than he
could miss the chance of an interesting deal, and I won my opal cup. I
walked on air. For some months I, in my turn, could not bear to part
with my treasure. I offered it to King Ferdinand of Bulgaria at last,
when the only alternative appeared to be a little genteel starvation,
for Ferdinand was at that time the greatest collector of opals in
Europe. But he was too busy with politics just then, and when a curio
dealer exhibiting at the White Qty of those days offered me ^50 for the
loan of the cup during the period of the exhibition, I lent it to him.
And then details are hazy. I left my treasure with a firm of
jewellers—perhaps it was just as I was off to the Far East—at any rate,
there the history of the cup ends for me. I never saw it again, nor,
for that matter, the jewellers in whose hands I had placed it.
A
kind of opal which is very little known to the European public because
jewellers do not often use or display it is the flame or fire opal,
which comes from Mexico. It is usually red, sometimes yellow, with a
faint
