Stories About Famous Precious Stones

by Adela E. Orpen

The Regent now enters upon a long period of tranquillity, nothing conspicuous happening to it for many years. It pursued its way quietly as a royal gem during the reign of Louis XV., adding its lustre to the brilliant but dissolute court of that monarch. After a lapse of nearly sixty years the Regent again came forward upon a stately occasion in order to fitly decorate a king of France. It was on the eleventh of June, 1775, that the unfortunate youth Louis XVI. was crowned king in the ancient cathedral town of Rheims. A new crown of especial splendor was made for the new king and in it were incorporated nearly all the royal jewels. The top of the diadem was ornamented by fleurs-de-lys made of precious stones. In the centre of the principal one blazed the Regent, flanked right and left by the "Sanci" and the "Gros Mazarin," while round about sparkled a thousand diamonds of lesser magnitude. Louis's gorgeous head-gear was no less than nine inches high, and it is said that the King, made dizzy by the immense weight of it, put up his hand several times to ease his poor head. At last he said peevishly "It hurts me"; simple, thoughtless words to which after-events have given a sad and most fateful significance.

One of the actors in this magnificent pageant was the King's youngest brother, the Count d'Artois, a handsome youth of such exquisite courtliness of manner that he obtained and kept through life the title of the Vrai Chevalier. We shall meet him again in still closer proximity to the Regent, fifty long years hence.

During the troubled reign of Louis XVI. the crown jewels including the Regent were lodged in the Garde Meuble where upon stated days they were exposed to public view. On the famous tenth of August, 1792, when Louis was deprived of his crown he was also relieved from the burden of looking after the Regent. It had at once become the National Diamond and as such belonged to everybody, hence everybody had a right to see it. In compliance with this popular notion the Regent was deposed from its regal niche in the crown of France and was securely fastened in a steel clasp. A stout chain was attached to the clasp and padlocked inside an iron window. Thus secured from the too affectionate grip of its million owners the Regent used to be passed out through the window and submitted to the admiration of all who asked to see it. As a further security policemen and detectives were liberally scattered about the place in the interest of national probity.

After the bloody days of the second and third of September when the ferocious mob of Paris broke into the prisons and massacred the unfortunate inmates, the Government imagined that the people should no longer be trusted with the custody of the Regent. Accordingly they locked up all the crown jewels as securely as they could in the cupboards of the Garde Meuble and affixed the seals of the Commune most visibly thereto. Notwithstanding their precautions, however, the result does not seem to have justified their conclusions. On the seventeenth of the same month it fell to M. Roland, then Minister of the Interior, to make a grievous statement to the Assembly. He informed the deputies that in the course of the preceding night some desperate ruffians had broken into the Garde Meuble Nationale between two and three o'clock in the morning and had stolen thence jewels to an enormous value. Two of these ruffians had been arrested, but unfortunately not those who had the large diamond and other national property secreted upon their persons. A patrol of ten men who were posted at the Convent des Feuillants had pursued the miscreants, but being less effectively armed than the robbers they were unable to capture them.

The two thieves then in custody upon being questioned gave, of course, answers which aroused the suspicions of these easily inflamed patriots. It seemed certain—so at least argued Roland—that the robbery had been planned by persons belonging to the late dominant aristocratic party in order to supply themselves with money to be used in paying the foreign troops who were to subdue France and again reduce her to slavery. He then proceeded to deliver an impassioned address upon this fertile theme. Patriot deputies freely accused each other of being the authors of this crime. Danton was pointed at by one party, while he retorted by naming Roland, minister as he was, as one who knew too much about it.

It seems probable however that none except the thieves themselves were concerned in this astonishing robbery and that they were actuated by greed alone. The patriots only made use of it for party purposes to obtain their own objects, just as they tried to utilize in the same way any uncommon natural phenomenon, such as comets, earthquakes or hail stones.

A few days later an anonymous letter was received by the officials at the Commune stating that if they searched in a spot most carefully described in the Allée des Veuves of the Champs Elysées, they would find something to their advantage. They accordingly hunted at the place indicated and found the Regent and a valuable agate vase. All the rest of the booty, however, the thieves made off with after having thus eased their consciences of the weight of the great diamond.

We lose sight of the Regent in the black gloom that hangs over the Reign of Terror. There is however a persistent tradition, impossible now either to prove or disprove, that on the occasion of the marriage of Napoleon Bonaparte with Josephine Beauharnais in 1796 the former wore a most superb diamond in his sword hilt. Could this perchance have been the Regent? It is certainly difficult to imagine how Napoleon could have become possessed of the Regent at this date. Yet it is also difficult to imagine how the young man who was then an unknown and a poor general without an army although full of high expectations, could have become the owner of any diamond of such splendor as to attract the attention of at least two contemporary historians. It is just possible it may have been the peerless Regent already shedding its rays upon the blade of that sword destined to flash through Europe and to leave behind it so bloody a trail.

However this may be, it is certainly a fact that in 1800 Napoleon, then First Consul, pawned the Regent to the Berlin banker Trescow. With the money thus obtained he set out on that famous campaign beyond the Alps which ended at Marengo and which began his career of unexampled success. Thus once more the Regent may be said to have founded the fortune of a great house, but more aspiring in its second attempt it succeeded less effectually than in the case of Pitt. However in 1804 the house of Bonaparte had not fallen upon its ruin and it is some idea of this fact that gives color to the extraordinary revelations of the man called "Baba."

In 1805 several men were tried for having forged notes on the Bank of France, and one of them who went by the nickname of "Baba" made a full confession of how the forgeries were accomplished, and then, to the vast astonishment of the court, he delivered this theatrical speech: "This is not the first time that my avowals have been useful to society, and if I am condemned I will implore the mercy of the Emperor. Without me Napoleon would not have been on the throne; to me is due the success at Marengo. I was one of the robbers of the Garde Meuble. I assisted my confederates to conceal the Regent diamond and other objects in the Champs Elysées as keeping them would have betrayed us. On a promise that was given to me of pardon I revealed the secret; the Regent was recovered and you are aware, gentlemen, that the magnificent diamond was pledged by the First Consul to the Batavian[A] government to procure the money which he so greatly needed."