Hilaire Belloc's mock-heroic satire follows the rise of William Bones, a Boston merchant captain whose Baltic voyages bring him repeatedly to St. Petersburg and into the orbit of Catherine the Great. After mysterious private audiences with the empress, he returns home transformed, bearing a magnificent emerald that seems to launch a family fortune and a social ascent from trade into polished respectability. Renaming himself William Bone and then Bohun, he elevates his son George, and the Bohuns gradually move among London's commercial and political elite, their jewel becoming a treasured symbol of hereditary prestige. Generations later, that same emerald is treated almost like a sacred heirloom of the de Bohun line, passed down with solemn absurdity through public life, inherited wealth, and family mythology. Belloc broadens the satire to include academic vanity, political secrecy, and domestic intrigue: an aging crystallography professor obsessed with dodekahedral crystals, a Home Secretary hunting for a discreet investigator, and the eccentric Paulings estate, where Marjorie's birthday jewel, the cluttered West Room, and the parrot Attaboy all help set the stage for a mystery of hidden knowledge, social embarrassment, and comic deception. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.