MARY. But then, how can it possibly cut the crystal?
L. It did not really cut it, though it passes through it. The two
were formed together, as I told you but no one knows how. Still,
it is strange that this hard quartz has in all cases a good-
natured way with it, of yielding to everything else. All sorts of
soft things make nests for themselves in it; and it never makes a
nest for itself in anything. It has all the rough outside work;
and every sort of cowardly and weak mineral can shelter itself
within it. Look; these are hexagonal plates of mica; if they were
outside of this crystal they would break, like burnt paper; but
they are inside of it,--nothing can hurt them,--the crystal has
taken them into its very heart, keeping all their delicate edges
as sharp as if they were under water, instead of bathed in rock.
Here is a piece of branched silver: you can bend it with a touch
of your finger, but the stamp of its every fiber is on the rock in
which it lay, as if the quartz had been as soft as wool.
LILY. Oh, the good, good quartz! But does it never get inside of
anything?
L. As it is a little Irish girl who asks, I may perhaps answer,
without being laughed at, that it gets inside of itself sometimes.
But I don't remember seeing quartz make a nest for itself in
anything else.
ISABEL. Please, there as something I heard you talking about, last
time, with Miss Mary. I was at my lessons, but I heard something
about nests; and I thought it was birds' nests; and I couldn't
help listening; and then, I remember, it was about "nests of
quartz in granite." I remember, because I was so disappointed!
L. Yes, mousie, you remember quite rightly; but I can't tell you
about those nests to-day, nor perhaps to-morrow: but there's no
contradiction between my saying then, and now; I will show you
that there is not, some day. Will you trust me meanwhile?
ISABEL. Won't I!
L. Well, then, look, lastly, at this piece of courtesy in quartz;
it is on a small scale, but wonderfully pretty. Here is nobly born
quartz living with a green mineral, called epidote; and they are
immense friends. Now, you see, a comparatively large and strong
quartz-crystal, and a very weak and slender little one of epidote,
have begun to grow, close by each other, and sloping unluckily
towards each other, so that at last they meet. They cannot go on
growing together; the quartz crystal is five times as thick, and
more than twenty times as strong[Footnote: Quartz is not much
harder than epidote; the strength is only supposed to be in some
proportion to the squares of the diameters.], as the epidote; but
he stops at once, just in the very crowning moment of his life,
when he is building his own summit! He lets the pale little film
of epidote grow right past him; stopping his own summit for it;
and he never himself grows any more.
LILY (after some silence of wonder). But is the quartz NEVER
wicked then?
L. Yes, but the wickedest quartz seems good-natured, compared to
other things. Here are two very characteristic examples; one is
good quartz, living with good pearl-spar, and the other, wicked
quartz, living with wicked pearl spar. In both, the quartz yields
to the soft carbonate of iron: but, in the first place, the iron
takes only what it needs of room; and is inserted into the planes
of the rock crystal with such precision that you must break it
away before you can tell whether it really penetrates the quartz
or not; while the crystals of iron are perfectly formed, and have
a lovely bloom on their surface besides. But here, when the two
minerals quarrel, the unhappy quartz has all its surfaces jagged
and torn to pieces; and there is not a single iron crystal whose
shape you can completely trace. But the quartz has the worst of
it, in both instances.
VIOLET. Might we look at that piece of broken quartz again, with
the weak little film across it? it seems such a strange lovely
thing, like the self-sacrifice of a human being.
L. The self-sacrifice of a human being is not a lovely thing,
Violet. It is often a necessary and noble thing; but no form nor
degree of suicide can be ever lovely.
VIOLET. But self-sacrifice is not suicide!