VALUABLE TORTUE AN INSPIRATION IN LITERATURE

By chance, while reading, I came across a literature talks about jewels surprising as a precious tortoise.

So do you know the incredible precious, sparkling tortoise from gemmes by Jean des Esseintes?
Main character of the novel Against the Wind From the end of the 19th century, the author Joris-Karl Huysmans takes us into the madness of the gems.

 It should be noted that Jean des Esseintes, a manic aesthete with decadent tendencies, is fascinated by color. So an incredible idea comes to him to give life to his carpet.
This is how:« Looking, one day, at an oriental carpet with reflections, and following the silver light that ran across the wool’s pattern, yellow aladin and plum violet, he thought to himself: it would be good to place something on that carpet that would stir and whose dark tone would sharpen the vivacity of these colors.

Possessed by this idea, he had wandered, at random through the streets, arrived at the Palais Royal, and, in front of the window of the Chevet, he tapped his forehead: a huge tortoise was there, in a basin. He had bought it: then, once it had been abandoned on the carpet, he sat down in front of it and had longingly contemplated it, blinking his eyes.

Indeed, the blackhead head color and the rough tone of this carapace from Siena stained the reflections of the carpet without activating them; the dominant glows of silver now shone barely, streaking along the cold tones of the corroded zinc on the edges of this harsh and dreary test.

He finally discovered that his first idea, which was to ignite the flames of the flame by swinging a dark object placed on top, was wrong; in short, this carpet was still too flashy(…) It was a matter of overturning the proposal, softening the tones, extinguishing them with the contrast of a bright object that crushed everything around it, throwing gold light onto pale silver.(…) He determined to make the tortoise’s armor of gold.(…)

The beast shone like the sun, shone on the carpet (…) Des Esseintes was at first enchanted by this effect; then he thought that this gigantic jewel was only a rough draft; it would really be complete only after it had been inlaid with rare stones.

He chose a design depicting a cluster of flowers from a Japanese collection, took it to a jeweler, and told the stunned lapidary that the leaves, the petals of each of those flowers, would be carved into beads and mounted in the very shell of the beast…

The choice of stones stopped him; diamonds have become strangely common since all merchants wear them on their little fingers; the emeralds and rubies of the Orient are less dazzling, throwing out sparkling flames, but they too remind one of the green and red eyes of some omnibus cars that display flags in these colors; as for the topaz stones that are either burned or raw, they are cheap stones.

Apparently none of these trinkets pleased the Essentines; they were, in fact, too civilized and too well known. He dripped minerals more surprising and bizarre into his fingers; eventually, he sorted a series of real and fake stones whose mixture was supposed to produce a fascinating and disconcerting harmony.

Thus he composed the bouquet of his flowers: the leaves were adorned with ornate details in a bright green: of asparagus-green chrysoberyls; pear-green peridotites; olive-green olivines; and they stood out from the almadine and owarevite branches in a violet-red hue, throwing sparkles of a dry brilliance, as did these tartarites of limestone that shone in the interior of the stalactites (…) Three stones indeed emitted mysterious and perverse sparkles, painfully refracted from the icy depths of their murky water: the eyes of Ceylan cats, cymophanes and sapphire stones.

The cat’s eye of a greenish-gray color, streaked with concentric veins that seem to move, move at any time, according to the arrangement of the light. The cymophane with azure swirls running across the milky hue that floats inside.
The sapphireine that lights up bluish-yellow phosphorus flames on a chocolate background, with a sour brown hue.

Des Esseintes was now watching, curled up in a corner of his dining room, the tortoise glinting in the darkness.

I won't tell you the end of the story about the tortoise because it's sad.
… unless you are really very many who ask me that.