"Mr. Court Jew," he pursued, " I have a task
for you to perform. That, if you fail in performing
it to my satisfaction the skin will be removed
from the nape of your neck to the sole of your
foot, is, I flatter myself, a sufficient guarantee for
your zeal and industry. Dog! it is my desire
that you set the great Schweinsfleisch diamond
forthwith as a centre to the Grand Cross of the
Order of the Pig and Whistle."

To hear, in all matters of business with Ludwig
the Terrible, was to obey. Abimelech Ben Azi
took away the great diamond with him, not without
some remonstrances from little Prince Carl,
who wanted to play with it, and hiding the
precious bauble beneath the lappet of his gaberdine,
returned to his house in the Judengasse. He
had been instructed to spare no expense as to
the gold for setting, and some minor gems to
encircle the great diamond. He was to make it a
truly imperial gift. When he reached home it
was dinner-time, and his wife and seven children
forthwith abandoned their mess of millet and oil,
and swarmed round him to gaze upon the
wondrous sheen of the great Schweinsfleisch diamond.
Jochabad Spass, his long journeyman, saw the
diamond too, and grinned an evil grin.

Jochabad Spass had served his apprenticeship
at Swederbad, the capital of the principality of
Mangel-Wurzelstein. Father or mother he had
none. He had an unlovely manner, a cruel
eye, and an evil grin; but he was a capital
workman, and the right-hand man of Abimelech
Ben Azi.

"What a pity that such a beautiful diamond
should be sent to the beef-eating Englanders,"
said the long journeyman.

"Ah! 'tis a pity, indeed," said the Court Jew.

"Not only a pity, but a cruel shame,"
exclaimed Esther, his wife; an opinion re-echoed
by the seven children, who had all loved diamonds
from their youth upwards.

"What a pity, too," resumed Jochabad,
"that even while here it should lie hidden in the
treasury of a cruel old tyrant, instead of making
the fortune of two honest merchants."

"Hush, hush!" cried Abimelech; " you are
talking treason, mein lieber." But still he lent
a greedy ear to what his journeyman said.

"The stone is worth two hundred thousand
florins," remarked Jochabad.

"So much?"

"And diamonds, the bigger the better, are so
easy to imitate by those to whom the real secret
has been revealed. Did I not learn it from old
Father Schink before I came hither, three years
since?"

"Ach! Himmel!" cried the Court Jew, in a
fright. " Do you want to ruin us, Jochabad
Spass?" But he listened to the tall tempter
nevertheless.

He listened and listened until the two agreed
together to commit a great crime. The secret
of counterfeiting diamonds by means of a fine
vitreous paste was then very little known;
indeed, it is questionable whether ever artisan
attained so great a proficiency in the sophisticatory
craft as Jochabad Spass, the pupil of Father
Schink. So well did Spass consummate his fraud,
that when he showed the false diamond to his
accomplice, the Court Jew was himself for a
moment deceived, and thought that he was gazing
on the veritable gem. The Schweinsfleisch
diamond itself was placed in an iron casket and
carefully concealed beneath the flooring of the
workshop, the two rogues agreeing to wait until
Ludwig Adolf the Seventy-fourth died, or was
assassinated, or until they could slip away from
his dominions, and sell the stolen jewel in some
one of the great European capitals.

In due time the Grand Cross of the Pig and
Whistle, with a blazing imposture, glistening with
all the colours of the rainbow in its centre, was
completed, and taken by Abimelech Ben Azi,
not without certain inward misgivings, to the
Residenz. But Ludwig Adolf suspected no foul
play. It could not enter into his serenely
absolute mind that any mortal would dare
to play any tricks with him. He was, on the
contrary, delighted with the decoration; and was
pleased to say that he never thought the great
Schweinsfleisch diamond could have looked so
well. Thenceforward was the Court Jew in high
favour, and was even given to understand by the
high chamberlain, that, as a mark of His
Mansuetude's gracious bounty, he might be permitted,
on His Mansuetude's next birthday, to leave the
Judengasse and purchase for twenty thousand
florins an old tumble-down house in the Hof-
Kirche-Platz, of which the grand-duke happened
to be proprietor.

On the twenty-fourth of August, 17—, Introducer
of the Ambassadors and Master of the
Ceremonies Schaffundkalben was despatched on
his mission. He was graciously permitted to
pay his own travelling expenses, but was
promised the second class of the Pig and Whistle
at his return. As the subjects of the grand-duke
had a curious habit of not coming back when
they once got clear of the grand-ducal dominions,
Ludwig Adolf took the precaution, for fear of
accidents, to place Von Schaffundkalben's estates
under temporary sequestration, and furthermore
to lock up his daughter snugly and comfortably
in a community of Lutheran canonesses.
However, impelled by loyalty and fidelity, quickened,
perhaps, by these little material guarantees, the
introducer of ambassadors made his bow again
at the Residenz within four months of his departure.
He brought the warmest and most grateful
acknowledgments from King George the First
of England, contained in a letter couched in very
bad French, and beginning " Monsieur mon
cousin," and was, besides, the bearer of two
exquisitely hideous Dutch pugs, an assortment of
choice china monsters, a chest of tea, and a
dozen of York hams, as a present from the
Majesty of England to the Mansuetude of
Schweinhundhausen. Ludwig Adolf was slightly wrath
that the royal hamper did not contain a brace of
Severn salmon and a few barrels of Colchester