note
the difference between fresh-water, i.e. native, pearls and that other
variety, the product of the deep salt sea. The English had begun to
appreciate the difference in value and aesthetic charm between the two
gems.
The
growing wealth in the great cities of Southern Europe, Genoa, Pisa,
Venice, Florence, to name but a few, showed itself again in the
extensive use of pearls by those merchant princes who were enriched by
the development of travel and trade. The middle classes had become the
owners of wonderful gems which hitherto none but princes, prelates, and
the nobility had been able to affect.
The
story goes that Pope Alexander VI, when his daughter Lucrezia Borgia
was sought in marriage by Hercule d'Este, told her to plunge both her
hands into a box filled with pearls, and said: "All these are for her,
for I desire that in all Italy she shall be the princess with the most
beautiful pearls and the greatest number of them."
A
great impetus was given to the cult of jewels by the voyages of the
great explorers. The Americas and the Spanish Main were ransacked for
the things with which princes delighted to adorn themselves. Whatever
tales of wonder and conquest the returned mariners told to adorn their
intrepidity, these were as nothing in the eyes of rapacious kings and
courtiers. To the legendary magnificence of the Indies was ad led the
enticing possibilities of the unknown, and the ne 7 lands of
the west were merely so much territory to sack. Som: of the explorers
were lucky, those like Cortez, looking on more than the Pacific in
Mexico, and the brothers Pizarro, who discovered Peru, who found
palaces and temples studded with pearls and emeralds. But some found
only rich fertile lands and natives with hospitable inclinations. And
these often came home to chains and execution. Gems were indeed valued
in the age of expansion. To them, in fact, was due in no small measure
the great inflated hopes and urges to expand which moved small ships
across so vast a sweep of ocean.
These early discoveries had, of course, the result of showering upon the masters of Spain gems which they had not be-
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