Decoction

“ The decomposition of a crystal is not necessarily impure at all. The fermentation of a wholesome liquid begins to admit the idea slightly; the decay of leaves yet more; of flowers, more; of animals, with greater painfulness and terribleness in exact proportion to their original vitality; and the foulest of all corruption is that of the body of man; and, in his body, that which is occasioned by disease, more than that of natural death.
§ 5. I said just now, that though atoms of inanimate substance could not help each other, they could “consist” with each other. “Consistence” is their virtue. ”

“ She dropped this again, open, on the floor, halfway between the safe and the window. With the case apparently burst open as it fell, and the necklace also on the floor, the stage would be set! She felt inside her bodice, drew out the necklace—and as she stood there holding it, and as it caught the light and flashed back its fire and life from a thousand facets, a numbness seemed to come stealing over her, and a horror, and a great fear, and a dismay that robbed her of power of movement until it seemed that she was rooted to the spot, and a low, gasping cry came from her lips. ”

“ At first, it assumes a variety of colours, then exfoliates, and by working it, we perceive brilliant scales fall off; but when its decomposition is more advanced, it crumbles between the fingers, and is reduced into a very white fine talky powder. Art has even imitated nature in the decomposition of glass and flint. ”

“ A ‘mordant’ as the word implies is some corrosive liquid, such as is used by dyers to bite into the fabric and carry in with it the colouring matter. The word is also employed, as in this passage, for a glutinous size used as ground for gilding, such as the modern decorator’s ‘gold-size.’ Gold laid in this way has a ‘mat’ surface. ”

“ As for instance, I draw the Colour from Gold, and introduce the said Tincture into Silver, being a fix pure and white Body, in which this Metalline Spirit takes up its abode; and the pure body of Silver greedily attracts the Tincture, because she stands in need of it; neither indeed can the porous body of Silver, resist or keep out this piercing Spirit, but passeth through warming and tincturing her throughout, and filling her pores with Solar Tincture, communicates to her not only the colour and weight, but also the nature and property of Gold. ”

“ I doubt if we have a precedent for this energy of appropriation of a deposit of stated matter, a block of sense already in position and requiring not to be shaped and squared and caused any further to solidify, but rather to suffer disintegration, be pulled apart, melted down, hammered, by the most characteristic of the poet’s processes, to powder—dust of gold and silver, let us say. ”

“ Could he be insane? The watchful eyes behind the screening door noted every movement keenly—a kleptomaniac—"possessed" by the jewels? . . . The necklace was very beautiful in the firelight—more beautiful than anything the detective had imagined. And the man who held it and turned it this way and that, in the light of the flames, seemed in some subtle way to possess it by an inner right, almost as if the green fire his hands wrought spread from the moving finger-tips that ran along the jewels and drew it forth from its hidden place. ”

“ When decay sets in—something similar may at times be seen in the case of a piece of wrought iron—this complicated formation is in part revealed, for it is evident that upon it the lines taken by the decay are in a measure dependent. ”

“ Their negations or sympathies have fallen on the work, and these ineffable delicacies of impression are transmitted in it to successive generations, even as the shadowing of innumerable years of incense-burning has browned the gold and blackened the azure, as concealment in the shade has sometimes paled, sometimes preserved, the edges of the outlines and the modeling of the colors, or exposure and heat and damp have cracked and channeled and dusted all surfaces. ”

“ Taking the coffin from its back the Persian king's son opened the gold coffin with fear and trembling, when, unfolding the fine linen, he discovered a corpse, the like of which he had never seen before, not even in his dreams. ”

“ Amory absently lifted the decanter, and then looked at it with some curiosity. The decanter was like a vase, ornamented with gold medallions covered with exquisite and precise engraving of great beauty and variety of design. Serpents, men contending with lions, sacred trees and apes were chased in the gold, and the little cups of sard were engraved in pomegranates and segments of fruit and pendent acorns, and were set with cones of cornelian. ”

“ At the present stage of the inquiry there are, as I take it, three discoveries to make, starting from that smear. Find out (first) whether there is any article of dress in this house with the smear of the paint on it. Find out (second) who that dress belongs to. Find out (third) how the person can account for having been in this room, and smeared the paint, between midnight and three in the morning. If the person can’t satisfy you, you haven’t far to look for the hand that has got the Diamond. ”

“ She was wont to examine every thing in the illusive kaleidoscope of fancy, which forms broken glass and tinselled fragments into as beautiful and regular combinations as polished diamonds and pearls bedded in gold. Had nature only been seen under this bright delusion, it would have been well. ”

“ Every, animal, therefore, is necessarily mortal, dissoluble, and divisible."
For as there is no wax, no silver, no brass which cannot be converted into something else, whatever is composed of wax, or silver, or brass may cease to be what it is. By the same reason, if all the elements are mutable, every body is mutable. ”

“ The deepest shadows in the water-mark being occasioned by the deepest engraving upon the die, the lightest, by the shallowest, and so forth; the die being employed to give impression by means of the stamping press and “force” to the fine wire-gauze itself, which by this means, providing the die be properly cut, is accomplished far more successfully than by any other process, and with the additional advantage of securing perfect identity. ”

“ Well, it is commonly known that each substance in the world such as brass, or paper, or glass, has certain properties in itself. Did not Archimedes, father of all our learning, establish this truth by the proof that different substances thrown separately into water each displace a different amount of water? Gold is a substance, brass is a substance, both susceptible to change in the elementals, fire, water, air, and earth. ”

“ The Old Man in the Corner had a very curious theory about that mysterious affair of the pearl necklace, and though it all occurred a few years ago, I am tempted to put his deductions down on record, because, as far as I know, neither the police of this or any other country, nor the public, have ever found a satisfactory solution for what was undoubtedly a strange and mystifying adventure. ”

“ Many assays have been made to prove it, but nothing found as yet, and it is believed the glitter ‘is but the scum of the metal which groweth beneath the ground.’ They have now begun to dig pits to get at the principal vein. ”

“ SUB. Sirrah, my varlet, stand you forth and speak to him, Like a philosopher: answer in the language. Name the vexations, and the martyrisations Of metals in the work. FACE. Sir, putrefaction, Solution, ablution, sublimation, Cohobation, calcination, ceration, and Fixation. SUB. This is heathen Greek to you, now!— And when comes vivification? FACE. After mortification. SUB. What's cohobation? FACE. 'Tis the pouring on Your aqua regis, and then drawing him off, To the trine circle of the seven spheres. SUB. What's the proper passion of metals? ”

“ One man longed with all his heart and soul for this bracelet and laid his hands upon it to take it, for he knew not that the brilliant metal could do him deadly harm and was full of a poison which would cause his death. ”

“ The eye-glass of the perspective arranges by an optical anamorphosis the snarl of withering lines on the medallion of his sister, which he had to-day received, into a sweet, young form, and the object-glass gives back to the immature image of his mother the lineaments of mature life. Then he is to press the ring-finger, and immediately the dumb, cold figure will begin to write with the crayon in the souvenir, and designate to him, in a few words, the place of the coffin, of whose key he has the waxen impression. In the coffin lies a black marble slab, in the form of a black Bible ”

“ He told me I was mad or drunk, but lit a lamp and returned with me, to find my horror only a heap of clothes thrown on the table in such a way that, as the moon’s pale light shot it, it struck upon my black student’s gown, with a white card lying on it, and produced the effect of a coffin and plate. The face was a crumpled handkerchief, and what seemed hair a brown muffler. As the moon sank, these outlines changed and, incredible as it may seem, grew like a face. My friend not having had the fright enjoyed the joke, and ‘Coffins’ was my sobriquet for a long while.”
“You get worse and worse. ”

“ In former times, in the days of Witchcraft, it was the custom not to bury a corpse until the question was settled who or what had caused the death. This investigation sometimes occupied several days; during which time decomposition was hindered by the application of salt, and even by drying the remains in the smoke of a fire. ”

“ And here comes the commissionaire with the Diamond.... Only an alumina in hexagonal arrangement crystallized in the cooling of this planet you call ‘the World’ as arrogantly as though there were no others, and yet how unique, how exquisite! See how the violet rays leap from the facets, even the noblest sapphire looks cold and pale beside the glorious gem. Murder has been committed for its shining sake over and over again in ages of which your history has no cognizance. ”

“ These may be generally defined as the inducing the supposition of some form of material which does not actually exist; as commonly in the painting of wood to represent marble, or in the painting of ornaments in deceptive relief, etc. But we must be careful to observe that the evil of them consists always in definitely attempted deception, and that it is a matter of some nicety to mark the point where deception begins or ends. ”

“ Now though the pieces are not so small as those of a fulminating drop, yet they as plainly shew, that the outward parts of the Glass have a great Conatus to fly asunder, were they not held together by the tenacity of the parts of the inward Surface: for we see as soon as those parts are crazed by hard rubbing, and thereby their tenacity spoiled, the springiness of the more outward parts quickly makes a divulsion, and the broken pieces will, if the concave Surface of them be further scratcht with a Diamond, fly again into smaller pieces. ”

“ Such individuals float even after drowning.
“The corpse, being supposed at the bottom of the river, will there remain until, by some means, its specific gravity again becomes less than that of the bulk of water which it displaces. This effect is brought about by decomposition, or otherwise. The result of decomposition is the generation of gas, distending the cellular tissues and all the cavities, and giving the puffed appearance which is so horrible. ”

“ One is to keep my jewelry bright with a strange foreign paste an old Frenchwoman once gave me in Paris. It's of a vivid red, and stains the fingers dreadfully if you don't take care. Not even water will take it off, see mine. I used that paste on my pendant last night just after you left me, and being awfully sleepy I didn't stop to rub it off. If your finger-tips are not red, you never touched the pendant, Miss Driscoll. Oh, see! They are as white as milk.
"But some one took the sapphires, and I owe that person a scolding, as well as myself. ”

“ In others, their treasure, however slight, of old glass, enamel, tapestry, or gold and silver embroideries, old lace, or mediæval carving, has awakened the cupidity of those who know too well how to dispose of such relics of the past. ”

“ These stones and metals, these bodies, so compact and solid, are disunited, are destroyed, by the agency of air, water, and fire; which the most ordinary analysis is sufficient to prove, as well as a multitude of experience, to which our eyes are the daily evidence. ”

“ It is no longer an insulated and anomalous affection of certain salts of silver or gold, but one which, doubtless, in a greater or less degree, pervades all nature, and connects itself intimately with the mechanism by which chemical combination and decomposition is operated. ”

“ A jeweler can't say exactly how he gets on the track of fake stones. He can feel them. He can almost smell them. I worked with a jeweler once. That's how I got my knowledge of jewels. But, if you mean, can I prove what I say about this necklace, that's easy. There's no deception. It's simple. See here. These stones are supposed to be diamonds. ”

“ But I can ask you to accept some, can I not?”
“Assuredly,” said Chrysis joyously.
“This mirror, this necklace, this comb, which you made me steal for you, you did not expect to use them, I suppose? A stolen mirror, the comb of a victim, and the goddess’s necklace are not jewels one can make a display of.” ”

“ I was thinking seriously, when—my eye was attracted by some glittering object on the floor, beneath the opposite seat.
Of course everybody is attracted by glitter. A piece of glass in the moonlight may be a diamond, and show is far ahead of substance in influencing men, from the illusion which affects short-sighted vision. Thus this glittering object. What was it?—a diamond pin dropped by a former passenger? ”

“ Specimens of such patterns, obtained by letting drops of mercury, alcohol, and water fall on to smoked glass, are thrown on the screen, and the main characteristics are easily recognized. Such a pattern corresponds to the footprints of the dance that has been performed on the surface, and though the drop may be lying unbroken on the plate, it has evidently been taking violent exercise, and were our vision acute enough we might observe that it was still palpitating after its exertions. ”