He was a remarkable-looking man, once tall, I should say, from his long, thin build, but now bowed and bent with long devotion to study and leaning over a crucible.  His hair, prematurely white, hung down upon his forehead, but his eye was keen and his mouth sagacious.  He shook hands cordially with the men of science, whom he seemed to know of old, whilst he bowed somewhat distantly to the South African interest.  Then he began to talk, in very German-English, helping out the sense now and again, where his vocabulary failed him, by waving his rather dirty and chemical-stained hands demonstratively about him.  His nails were a sight, but his fingers, I must say, had the delicate shape of a man’s accustomed to minute manipulation.  He plunged at once into the thick of the matter, telling us briefly in his equally thick accent that he “now brobosed by his new brocess to make for us some goot and sadisfactory tiamonds.”

He brought out his apparatus, and explained—­or, as he said, “eggsblained”—­his novel method.  “Tiamonds,” he said, “were nozzing but pure crystalline carbon.”  He knew how to crystallise it—­“zat was all ze secret.”  The men of science examined the pots and pans carefully.  Then he put in a certain number of raw materials, and went to work with ostentatious openness.  There were three distinct processes, and he made two stones by each simultaneously.  The remarkable part of his methods, he said, was their rapidity and their cheapness.  In three-quarters of an hour (and he smiled sardonically) he could produce a diamond worth at current prices two hundred pounds sterling.  “As you shall now see me berform,” he remarked, “viz zis simple abbaradus.”

The materials fizzed and fumed.  The Professor stirred them.  An unpleasant smell like burnt feathers pervaded the room.  The scientific men craned their necks in their eagerness, and looked over one another; Vane-Vivian, in particular, was all attention.  After three-quarters of an hour, the Professor, still smiling, began to empty the apparatus.  He removed a large quantity of dust or powder, which he succinctly described as “by-broducts,” and then took between finger and thumb from the midst of each pan a small white pebble, not water-worn apparently, but slightly rough and wart-like on the surface.

From one pair of the pannikins he produced two such stones, and held them up before us triumphantly.  “Zese,” he said, “are genuine tiamonds, manufactured at a gost of fourteen shillings and siggspence abiece!” Then he tried the second pair.  “Zese,” he said, still more gleefully, “are broduced at a gost of eleffen and ninebence!” Finally, he came to the third pair, which he positively brandished before our astonished eyes.  “And zese,” he cried, transported, “haff gost me no more zan tree and eightbence!”

They were handed round for inspection.  Rough and uncut as they stood, it was, of course, impossible to judge of their value.  But one thing was certain.  The men of science had been watching close at the first, and were sure Herr Schleiermacher had not put the stones in; they were keen at the withdrawal, and were equally sure he had taken them honestly out of the pannikins.