Mr. Hope engaged an eminent jeweller, Mr. Hertz, at an eminent fee (five thousand dollars) to catalogue his jewels. This gentleman performed his task with business-like succinctness, using no unnecessary words to describe the numerous precious objects. But when he reached the Blue Diamond he launches out into unbridled enthusiasm. He says:
"This matchless gem combines the beautiful color of the sapphire with the prismatic fire and brilliancy of the diamond, and on account of its extraordinary color, great size and other fine qualities it certainly may be called unique, as we may presume there exists no cabinet nor any collection of crown jewels in the world which can boast of the possession of so curious and fine a gem as the one we are now describing, and we expect to be borne out in our opinion by our readers. There are extant historical records and treatises on the precious gems which give us descriptions of all the extraordinary diamonds in the possession of all the crowned heads of Europe as well as of the princes of the Eastern countries. But in vain do we search for any record of a gem which can in point of curiosity, beauty and perfection be compared with this blue brilliant, etc."
Mr. Hertz was no doubt a good jeweller and a clever expert, but he was not very learned in the history of precious stones or he could never have made this astonishing statement. He had only to search in the records of France to find the account of a wonderful blue diamond of even greater size.
With regard to the value of the diamond, he declares his inability to fix any sum, saying: "There being no precedent the value cannot be established by comparison. The price which was once asked for this diamond was thirty thousand pounds (one hundred and fifty thousand dollars) but we must confess for the above stated reason that it might have been estimated at even a higher sum." There was a precedent for estimating its value; but of that Mr. Hertz was ignorant. The French Blue was valued at three millions of livres (six hundred thousand dollars) when it weighed sixty-seven carats. According to this calculation one hundred and fifty thousand dollars was not an excessive price to put upon the Hope Blue of forty-four carats.
The Hope Blue still remains in the possession of the family which has given it that name, while the other fraction of the dissevered French Blue is likewise in private hands. This is much to be regretted from the historian's point of view, for famous diamonds acquire a great deal of their value and all their interest from the persons who have owned them. For a gem which has graced the royal festivities of Versailles as the Blue Diamond has done, or enhanced the stately ceremonials of the Escurial as was the case with the Pelegrina, to sink into obscurity in the collection of a wealthy Mr. Unknown or in the jewel casket of a Princess Nobody is a sad decadence. Jewels, from their value and indestructibleness, are among the few objects used by the illustrious dead which can and do remain unaltered in appearance, therefore it is contrary to our sense of the fitness of things for a historical gem to cease to be such by belonging to a person without a history.
VI.
THE BRAGANZA.
If the stone which is known by the name of the "Braganza," or the "Regent of Portugal," is a diamond, it is undoubtedly the largest that was ever found in either ancient or modern times. But then it is by no means certain that it is a diamond at all. It would be quite easy to establish the fact by submitting the stone to the examination of experts, but apparently the Royal House of Portugal holds that the Braganza, like Cæsar's wife, should be above suspicion. At all events the fact remains that this monster diamond has never been seen by any independent expert whose judgment would be accepted without appeal. When the learned are in doubt it would ill become us to decide; therefore, without offering an opinion, we shall, provisionally at least, class the Braganza among the diamonds of this series; and when its true character is established beyond dispute we shall know whether to call it the Monarch of Diamonds or only a vulgar impostor.
The stated weight of the Braganza reaches the astounding figure of one thousand six hundred and eighty carats. Of course this is in its rough state, for the giant gem has refused to trust itself to the hands of any cutter however skillful. Yet this weight exceeds by more than double the weight, in the rough, of the next largest diamond known to history, namely, the Great Mogul. When we think of the price of the Regent—over six hundred thousand dollars, while weighing only four hundred and ten carats in the rough—and then turn to the Braganza with its sixteen hundred carats, the mind staggers before the money-value thus suggested.