It attacked all classes from the palace of the King to the hut of the peasant, some accounts giving the death estimate at 50% of the population. It would be as obviously ridiculous to hold the opal responsible for this scourge as it was to do so in the case of the previously noted plague at Venice. All that may be said is that in this case the opal was not a talisman of good for King Alfonzo XII of Spain and to those who received it from his hand, and that in the philosophy of sympathetic attraction and apathetic repulsion man, stones, metals and all natural objects come under the same law. We may wonder why the King gave this opal from one of his relatives to another, but the reputation of the opal as a charm against cholera (noted in the previous chapter) must have reached the King who, in the intensity of his worry, used a charm which according to the ancients would act in his hands fatally instead of beneficially. In the month of October, 1908, a French Baron sitting in the stalls of the London Pavilion during Mr. and Mrs. Marriott’s thought-reading exhibition, handed an opal of uncommon form to Mr. Marriott. Mrs. Marriott seated on the stage with bandaged eyes gave an accurate description of it, saying further that it was a stone of fortune to the owner who was about to become the possessor of over half a million of money. The Baron, who resided in London for the past 18 years, when interviewed by a representative of the “Evening News” on the following day, communicated the fact that a few days before, he had, through the death of a relative in Mexico become heir to property worth over £500,000, yielding an income of £25,000 per annum. The Baron who cherished the opal as his sympathetic luck stone, told the newspaper man that: "It is an uncut stone which has been in the possession of my family since the twelfth century. We have always had the tradition that it will bring good fortune to any direct descendant of the family in the male line who holds it. "A curious stipulation, however, of the tradition is that the person who has it must possess qualities which have a sympathetic attraction to the stone in order that its beneficent effect may be felt. On a flat surface of the opal is a word in old Spanish, now only dimly seen, which means in English ‘good luck.’ "I have treasured the gem as an heirloom, but have thought little of the tradition until lately, when a member of the cadet branch of the family died and left me the immense fortune I have mentioned to you. I can hardly realize all that it means to me as yet. Up to now my income has not been much more than £500, and to suddenly find £25,000 a year at one’s disposal is a little staggering.