He was a remarkable-looking man, once tall, I should say, from his
long, thin build, but now bowed and bent with long devotion to study
and leaning over a crucible. His hair, prematurely white, hung down
upon his forehead, but his eye was keen and his mouth sagacious. He
shook hands cordially with the men of science, whom he seemed to
know of old, whilst he bowed somewhat distantly to the South African
interest. Then he began to talk, in very German-English, helping out
the sense now and again, where his vocabulary failed him, by waving
his rather dirty and chemical-stained hands demonstratively about
him. His nails were a sight, but his fingers, I must say, had the
delicate shape of a man's accustomed to minute manipulation. He
plunged at once into the thick of the matter, telling us briefly in
his equally thick accent that he "now brobosed by his new brocess
to make for us some goot and sadisfactory tiamonds."
He brought out his apparatus, and explained--or, as he said,
"eggsblained"--his novel method. "Tiamonds," he said, "were nozzing
but pure crystalline carbon." He knew how to crystallise it--"zat
was all ze secret." The men of science examined the pots and pans
carefully. Then he put in a certain number of raw materials, and
went to work with ostentatious openness.
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