“Among other difficulties which I at once encountered in the realization of my idea, assuredly not the least was that I had not money, neither much nor little, to buy the gems.
“‘Where shall I look for money?’ I said to myself, and I remembered the marvels of _The Thousand and One Nights_; those cabalistic words at whose echo the earth opened and revealed hidden treasures; those rods of such rare virtue that, when rocks were smitten by them, there bubbled from the clefts not a spring of water, which was a small miracle, but rubies, topazes, pearls and diamonds.
“Being ignorant of the words and not knowing where to find a rod, I decided at last to write a book and sell it. To get money out of the rock of a publisher is nothing short of miraculous; but I did it.
“I wrote a book of original quality, which few people liked, as only one person could understand it; for the rest it was merely a collection of phrases.
“The book was entitled _The Set of Emeralds_, and I signed it with my initials only.
“Since I am not Victor Hugo, nor anybody of the sort, I need not tell you that I did not get for my novel what the author of _Notre Dame de Paris_ had for his latest; but what with one thing and another I gathered together a sufficient sum to begin my plan of campaign.
“The emeralds in question would be worth from fourteen to fifteen thousand dollars, and toward the purchase I now counted up the respectable sum of one hundred and fifty. It was necessary, then, to game.
“I gamed; and I gamed with such good sense and good fortune that in a single night I won what I needed.
“Apropos of gambling, I have made an observation in which every day has confirmed me more and more. If one puts down his money with the full expectation of winning, he wins. One must not approach the green table with the hesitancy of a man who is going to try his luck, but with the coolness of him who comes to take his own. For myself, I can assure you that I should have been as much surprised to lose that night as if a substantial bank had refused me money on a check with Rothschild’s signature.
“The next day I went to Samper’s. Will you believe that in throwing down upon the jeweller’s counter that handful of many-colored notes, those notes which represented for me at least a year of pleasure, many beautiful women, a journey to Italy, and champagne and cigars at discretion, that I wavered a moment? Then don’t believe it. I threw them down with the same nonchalance--do I say nonchalance?--with the same satisfaction with which Buckingham, breaking the thread on which they were strung, strewed with pearls the carpet of his beloved’s palace.