{"product_id":"2940013693456","title":"The Prisoner in the Opal","description":"When Mr. Julius Ricardo spoke of a gentleman--and the word was perhaps a\u003cbr\u003ethought too frequent upon his tongue--he meant a man who added to other\u003cbr\u003efastidious qualities a sound knowledge of red wine. He could not\u003cbr\u003eeliminate that item from his definition. No! A gentleman must have the\u003cbr\u003egreat vintage years and the seven growths tabled in their order upon his\u003cbr\u003emind as legibly as Calais was tabled on the heart of the Tudor Queen. He\u003cbr\u003emust be able to explain by a glance at the soil why a vineyard upon this\u003cbr\u003eside of the road produces a more desirable beverage than the vineyard\u003cbr\u003efifty yards away upon the other. He must be able to distinguish at a\u003cbr\u003efirst sip the virility of a Chateau Latour from the feminine fragrance of\u003cbr\u003ea Chateau Lafite. And even then he must reckon that he had only learnt a\u003cbr\u003eChild's First Steps. He could not consider himself properly equipped\u003cbr\u003euntil he was competent to challenge upon any particular occasion the\u003cbr\u003ejustice of the accepted classification. Even a tradesman might contend\u003cbr\u003ethat a Mouton Rothschild was unfairly graded amongst the second growths.\u003cbr\u003eBut the being Mr. Ricardo had in mind must be qualified to go much\u003cbr\u003efarther than that. It is probable indeed that if Mr. Ricardo were\u003cbr\u003esuddenly called upon to define a gentleman briefly, he would answer: \"A\u003cbr\u003egentleman is one who has a palate delicate enough and a social position\u003cbr\u003esufficiently assured to justify him in declaring that a bottle of a good\u003cbr\u003ebourgeois growth may possibly transcend a bottle of the first cru.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow Julius Ricardo was a man of iron conscience. The obligations which he\u003cbr\u003eimposed upon others in his thoughts, he imposed in his life upon himself.\u003cbr\u003eHe made it a point of honour to keep thoroughly up to date in the matter\u003cbr\u003eof red wine; and he mapped out his summers to that end. Thus, on the\u003cbr\u003eSaturday of Goodwood week he travelled by the train to Aix-les-Bains.\u003cbr\u003eThere he found his handsome motor-car which had preceded him, and there\u003cbr\u003efor five or six weeks he took his absurd cure. Absurd, for the only\u003cbr\u003emalady from which he suffered was that he was a bad shot. He shot so\u003cbr\u003edeplorably that his presence on a grouse-moor invariably provoked\u003cbr\u003eridicule and sometimes, if his host wanted a big bag, contumely and\u003cbr\u003eindignation. Aix-les-Bains was consequently the only place for him\u003cbr\u003eduring the month of August. His cure ended, he journeyed with a leisurely\u003cbr\u003emagnificence across France to Bordeaux, planning his arrival at that town\u003cbr\u003efor the end of the second week of September. At Bordeaux he refitted and\u003cbr\u003ereposed; and after a few days, on the eve of the vintage, he set out on a\u003cbr\u003etour through the hospitable country of the Gironde; moving by short\u003cbr\u003estages from chateau to chateau; enjoying a good deal of fresh air and\u003cbr\u003eagreeable company; drinking a good deal of quite unobtainable claret from\u003cbr\u003ethe private cuvees of his hosts; and reaching early in October the\u003cbr\u003epleasant town of Arcachon with a feeling that he had been superintending\u003cbr\u003ethe viniculture of France. This was the curriculum. But as he was once\u003cbr\u003edipped amongst agitations and excitements at Aix, so on another occasion\u003cbr\u003ehe was shaken to the foundations of his being during his pilgrimage\u003cbr\u003ethrough the vineyards. He was even spurred by the touch of the macabre in\u003cbr\u003ethese events to a rare poetic flight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The affair gave me quite a new vision of the world,\" he would declare\u003cbr\u003ecomplacently. \"I saw it as a vast opal inside which I stood. An opal\u003cbr\u003eluminously opaque, so that I was dimly aware of another world outside\u003cbr\u003emine, terrible and alarming to the prisoner in the opal. It was what is\u003cbr\u003ecalled a fire opal, for every now and then a streak of crimson, bright as\u003cbr\u003ethe flash of a rifle on a dark night, shot through the twilight which\u003cbr\u003eenclosed me. And all the while I felt that the ground underneath my feet\u003cbr\u003ewas dangerously brittle just as an opal is brittle . . .\" and so on and\u003cbr\u003eso on. Mr. Ricardo, indeed, embroidered and developed and expounded his\u003cbr\u003eimage of an opal to a degree of tediousness which even in him was\u003cbr\u003ephenomenal. However, the crime did make a stir far beyond the placid\u003cbr\u003ecountry in which it ran its course. The records of the trial do stand\u003cbr\u003ewherein may be read the doings of Mr. Ricardo and his friend Hanaud, the\u003cbr\u003ebig French detective, and all the other people who skated and slipped and\u003cbr\u003estumbled and shivered in as black a business as Hanaud could remember.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47068911763696,"sku":"2940013693456","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013693456_p0.jpg?v=1763584455","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013693456","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}