‘You see,’ quoth Peralta, ‘that, though I may have dealings with kings, I don’t by any means live in a palace. There are idle vanities and substantial vanities, my friend. Diamonds and pearls, laces and gildings, brocades and velvets, are of the former class; but good meats to eat, and good wines to drink, are of the latter. Now you see I am an admirer of the substantial vanities. I love to feed upon the daintiest morsel, though it be picked up with a broken one-pronged fork, and I love to drink the choicest vintage of Rhine or Rhone, without at all caring whether I put my lips to a golden cup which Benvenuto hath wrought, or to a calabash which Quako hath scooped before supper.’ So saying, the pearl merchant started the cork from one of the flasks, and I tasted certainly the most delicious draught which ever tingled on my palate. ‘Ha!’ quoth my entertainer, as I held out the empty cup to be refilled, ‘you find that better than even the most skilful compound of rye brandy and bilge water. _C’est bien alors_—you have a palate, which I grieve to say many gentlemen of your kind and profession possess not, preferring the hot strong drinks of Jamaica, and Tortugas taverns, even, to such adorable nectar as this. Why, man, hold out thy glass again, the grand Louis himself cannot fish up a choicer flask from the most sacred crypt beneath the marble pavements of Versailles.’ Talking in this way—relating to me strange anecdotes touching great generals and statesmen, and even kings, with whom my host, to believe his words, had held familiar converse, and the moral of all these stories being, that the generals and statesmen and kings in question were as stupid, and as easily to be gulled and laughed at, as mere ordinary mortals—the supper and one of the wine flasks were soon despatched. Then, placing the fragments in a corner, Peralta produced a sort of purse or bag of filigree workmanship, in bright silver, and which seemed to be the only thing of price in his dwelling—always excepting the meats and wines—and taking from it some tobacco of most delicate savour, we began to smoke and discuss the second bottle, which was of a different kind from the first, the wine being of a deep rich red tinge, and coming, as he told me, from Dijon, in Burgundy. While we sat thus, my entertainer took almost all the conversation to himself. He spoke of things new and strange to me: of the crown jewels of mighty potentates pledged to rich Hebrews dwelling in the filthy back lanes of the cities of Europe—in the Jewry of London, the Judenstrasse of Frankfort, and the Ghetto of Rome.