Part 8 (1/2)

VIOLET. Why, it is leaf gold!

L. Yes; but beaten by no man's hammer; or rather, not beaten at all, but woven. Besides, feel the weight of it. There is gold enough there to gild the walls and ceiling, if it were beaten thin.

VIOLET. How beautiful! And it glitters like a leaf covered with frost.

L. You only think it so beautiful because you know it is gold. It is not prettier, in reality, than a bit of bra.s.s for it is Transylvanian gold; and they say there is a foolish gnome in the mines there, who is always wanting to live in the moon, and so alloys all the gold with a little silver. I don't know how that may be, but the silver always IS in the gold, and if he does it, it's very provoking of him, for no gold is woven so fine anywhere else.

MARY (who has been looking through her magnifying gla.s.s). But this is not woven. This is all made of little triangles.

L. Say ”patched,” then, if you must be so particular. But if you fancy all those triangles, small as they are (and many of them are infinitely small), made up again of rods, and those of grains, as we built our great triangle of the beads, what word will you take for the manufacture?

MAY. There's no word--it is beyond words.

L. Yes, and that would matter little, were it not beyond thoughts too. But, at all events, this yellow leaf of dead gold, shed, not from the ruined woodlands, but the ruined rocks, will help you to remember the second kind of crystals, LEAF-crystals, or FOLIATED crystals, though I show you the form in gold first only to make a strong impression on you, for gold is not generally or characteristically, crystallized in leaves; the real type of foliated crystals is this thing, Mica; which if you once feel well and break well, you will always know again; and you will often have occasion to know it, for you will find it everywhere nearly, in hill countries.

KATHLEEN. If we break it well! May we break it?

L. To powder, if you like.

(Surrenders plate of brown mica to public investigation. Third Interlude. It sustains severely philosophic al treatment at all hands.)

FLORRIE (to whom the last fragments have descended). Always leaves, and leaves, and nothing but leaves, or white dust?

L. That dust itself is nothing but finer leaves.

(Shows them to FLORRIE through magnifying gla.s.s.)

ISABEL (peeping over FLORRIE'S shoulder). But then this bit under the gla.s.s looks like that bit out of the gla.s.s! If we could break this bit under the gla.s.s, what would it be like?

L. It would be all leaves still.

ISABEL. And then if we broke those again?

L. All less leaves still.

ISABEL (impatient). And if we broke them again, and again, and again, and again, and again?

L. Well, I suppose you would come to a limit, if you could only see it. Notice that the little flakes already differ somewhat from the large ones: because I can bend them up and down, and they stay bent; while the large flake, though it bent easily a little way, sprang back when you let it go, and broke when you tried to bend it far. And a large ma.s.s would not bend at all.

MARY. Would that leaf gold separate into finer leaves, in the same way?

L. No; and therefore, as I told you, it is not a characteristic specimen of a foliated crystallization. The little triangles are portions of solid crystals, and so they are in this, which looks like a black mica; but you see it is made up of triangles like the gold, and stands, almost accurately, as an intermediate link, in crystals, between mica and gold. Yet this is the commonest, as gold the rarest, of metals.

MARY. Is it iron? I never saw iron so bright.

L. It is rust of iron, finely crystallized: from its resemblance to mica, it is often called micaceous iron.

KATHLEEN. May we break this, too?

L. No, for I could not easily get such another crystal; besides, it would not break like the mica; it is much harder. But take the gla.s.s again, and look at the fineness of the jagged edges of the triangles where they lap over each other. The gold has the same: but you see them better here, terrace above terrace, countless, and, in successive angles, like superb fortified bastions.