That necklace is the brilliant groundwork of the rest of the plot.

And is the necklace set with amethysts, Thou broughtst? ESTHER.

Dr. Chamberlayne's anodyne necklaces, were, for a length of time, objects of the most anxious maternal solicitude, until their occult virtues became lost by the reverence for them being destroyed; and those which succeeded them have long since run their race or nearly so.

The necklace was an heirloom; it had started to grow in England of old; it had grown through the generations of the family in the New World.

Yes, decidedly, the necklace is the first character in "Le Juif de Venise."