In Palestine the Evil Eye is supposed to be the baleful gift of men who have light-blue eyes, more especially if they are beardless. Possibly this is the power in which some of our blond and beardless “mashers” repose their trust. As an antidote to the awful influence of these blue-eyed monsters, the Syrian women decorated themselves with blue beads, on the principle _similia similibus curantur_. A maiden with beautiful hair will tie a blue ribbon about it, or wear a blue bead in it, so as to ward off any evil spell cast by the blue eye that might rob her of her fair dower.[198] It is a well-known fact that many amulets were made in forms suggesting objects offensive to our sense of propriety. These were thought to protect the wearers by denoting the contempt they felt for the evil spirits leagued against them. Some such fancy may have induced the peculiar designs of certain of the jewels alleged to have been pawned in Paris by the ex-Sultan Abdul Hamid for the sum of 1,200,000 francs ($240,000). According to rumor, these pledges must be sold, as the sultan has failed to redeem them, but the designs are so _risqué_ that they cannot be offered at public sale; therefore the stones and pearls are to be removed and the gold settings are to be melted and sold as metal. It is not exclusively characteristic of our commercial and industrial age that the price paid for a work of art should influence the popular estimation of the merits of the work, as appears in an anecdote related by Pliny. An emerald (smaragd), upon which was engraved a figure of Amymone (one of the Danaidæ), having been offered for sale in the Isle of Cyprus, at the price of six golden denarii, Ismenias, a flute-player, gave orders to purchase it. The dealer, however, reduced the price and returned two denarii; upon which Ismenias remarked, “By Hercules! he has done me but a bad turn in this, for the merit of the stone has been greatly impaired by this reduction in price.”[199] A variant of the design directed by Damigeron to be placed on the emerald is recommended in a thirteenth century manuscript, where we read that to fit this stone for use as a talisman, it should be engraved with the form of a scarab, beneath which there should appear a crested paroquet.[200] According to the same manuscript, a jasper should bear the figure of Mars fully armed, or else that of a virgin wearing a flowing robe and bearing a laurel branch. It should then be “consecrated with perpetual consecration.” The mythical author Cethel asserts that the owner of a jasper engraved with the sacred symbol of the cross would be preserved from drowning.[201]