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384 CURIOUS LORE OF PRECIOUS STONES
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edging
the receipt of this peculiar gift, he expresses himself in the
following frank way, a mixture of indelicacy and gallantry that seems
strange to us: "If the stones you have given me do not break mine, they
will at least make me bear my sufferings patiently; and it seems to me
that I ought not to complain of my colic, since it has procured me this
happiness." The name used for jade by Voiture, "l'ejade," supplied a
missing link in the derivation of our name jade from the Spanish hijada. When
the lady's gift was received by Voiture, some friends chanced to be
present, and they were disposed to regard it as a token of love until
he assured them that it was only a remedy. It appears that Mile. Paulet
was a fellow sufferer, and, alluding to this, Voiture writes: "On this
occasion the jade had for you an effect you did not expect from it, and
its virtue defended your own."28 Eenal
calculi and poetry do not seem to have much in common, but the
following lines freely rendered from an old Italian poem on the subject
by Ciri de Pers show that even this unpromising theme is susceptible of
poetic treatment :29
"Other
white stones serve to mark happy days, But mine do mark days full of
pain and gloom. To build a palace, or a temple fair, Stones should be
used ; but mine do serve To wreck the fleshly temple of my soul.
Well
do I know that Death doth whet his glaive Upon these stones, and that
the marble/ white That grows in me is there to form my^omb."
28 Lettres de Voiture, ed. by Octave Uzanne, Paris, 1880, vol. i, p. 66, Letter XXIII.
M J.osephi Gonnelli, Thesaurus philosophicus, seu de gemmis," Nea-poli, 1702, pp. 157,158.
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