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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: stones were not to be sold, and yet he was to estimate them as if some
private person were buying them from a dealer. Jewellers alone know
how to distinguish between the diamonds of Asia and those of Brazil.
The stones of Golconda and Visapur are known by a whiteness and
glittering brilliancy which others have not,--the water of the
Brazilian diamonds having a yellow tinge which reduces their selling
value. Madame Evangelista's necklace and ear-rings, being composed
entirely of Asiatic diamonds, were valued by Elie Magus at two hundred
and fifty thousand francs. As for the "Discreto," he pronounced it one
of the finest diamonds in the possession of private persons; it was
known to the trade and valued at one hundred thousand francs. On
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