Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 09.djvu/139

Rh cen whom he had slain, and became so expert in its use that he discarded his own weapon and used the other. But from that time forth he met with nothing but disaster and shame. It was discovered that in fitting the scimitar with a cross-hilt, as Christian piety demanded, the malicious armorer had substituted for one of the gems an emerald, which by some secret process he had disguised. The malign stone and the armorer's head having been removed the prowess of the knight was again effective and he rose to great distinction and honor. In the folk-lore of some of the riparian peoples along the Danube the topaz was listed as a peculiar possession of the Adversary of Souls. It was held that if one could by force or fraud get a topaz ring upon an enemy's finger it would be impossible to remove it, and the victim would go, body and soul, to the devil. Advancing enlightenment has effaced these silly superstitions ; we now know that the opal only is really malign.

We have it on the authority of Shakspeare that at least Aldermen wore thumb rings, for Falstaff avers that before he was blown up like a bladder by sighing and grief he could have crept through one, being " not an eagle's talon in the waist." If the custom had lived