have needed to bother about selling pearls or any other gems for the rest of my life.
The
fact of the diamond's hardness must not mislead you into applying a
well-aimed hammer blow as a test for the next diamond you come across.
There is no difficulty at all about smashing a diamond into small
pieces. Hardness and toughness are two totally different qualities. As
a matter of fact, it frequently takes much less than a blow from a
hammer to break up a diamond, as the following will show.
Henry
Jacques (he who had sent me the diamond-jewelled elephant to sell to
non-existent rajahs) and myself—we were partners at the time—sat in
Jacques's Antwerp office. His foreman brought in a stone for
inspection. It had just been finished.
"Let's
guess its weight," said Jacques, "loser to pay for our lunch." Our
guesses were duly noted down and Jacques dropped the stone into the
scales. It broke in two.
It
was my first experience of the kind. Jacques, who was a good sport,
made light of the matter, especially as he had won the guessing
competition. It must not be imagined that the stone broke in two at
random, for in the diamond there exists what one might call a natural
tendency to divide along certain planes. It is this tendency of which
the cleaver takes advantage when he cuts a diamond. The diamond
cutter, obviously, must have a sound technical and practical knowledge
of crystallography. He also has a carefully developed technique which
helps him in his task.
To start with, the stone which has to be split is firmly
