He again in turn was obliged to fly and leave his diamonds behind; so that the Regent was found by Louis Napoleon amongst the other treasures of the country when he laid hold of the vacant crown of France. The late Emperor had it set in the imperial diadem.[B] It is a thick, square-proportioned diamond about the size of a Claude plum with a very large top surface, technically the table, and it gives forth even in daylight the most vivid rays. One authority on precious stones observes that the Regent is not cut to rule, being too thick for its size, but he quaintly remarks that such a diamond is above law. The Regent may do as it likes, but smaller stones should beware how they imitate peculiarities which in them would be called defects.
On the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 the Regent and its glittering companions in glory were safely lodged in a sea-girt fortress. But Napoleon never returned to redeem them.
From the day when this peerless diamond first came to France it has always been a sovereign gem in the strictest sense of the term. It has never been used to adorn any one but the reigning monarch, and has never condescended to deck the brow of a woman.
During the present Republic the Regent has dwelt somewhat in obscurity. It lies snugly put away along with the other crown jewels in the vaults of the Ministère des Finances. But when the Chamber some two years since decreed that crown jewels should be sold by auction, they exempted the Regent. Republican France will not sell the Regent. This is a very remarkable fact, and would have eased the mind of the old Duke of Orleans could he have foreseen it. This sparkling gem, which he dreaded to buy fearing the censure of his people, has now sunk so deeply into their affections that even after the final extinction of the race of Bourbons which it was bought to adorn, the same people, now being sovereign, cannot bring themselves to part with it.
II.
THE ORLOFF.
"Diamonds," says an old writer, "have ever been highly valued by princes. To a sovereign," he argues, "who can command the lives and property of his subjects by a word, the ordinary objects of human desire soon lose that stimulating interest which rarity of occurrence and difficulty of acquisition can alone keep. The gratification of the senses and of unrestricted sway soon palls upon the appetite, and War and Diamonds are the only objects that engross the attention; the former because it is attended with some hazard and is the only kind of gambling in which the stake is sufficiently exciting to banish the ennui of an illiterate despot; the latter because the excessive rarity of large and at the same time perfect specimens of this gem supplies a perpetual object of desire while each new acquisition feeds the complacent vanity of the possessor."
According to this philosophy we should expect to find that the most despotic princes would be the most addicted to the vanities of War and Diamonds. Whether this conclusion be true as regards war may be open to doubt. Russia, without contention, is the most despotic monarchy of Europe, and yet the one which can show the shortest list of wars. With regard to diamonds, however, the deduction holds in all its force. The Russian regalia is richer in precious stones than that of any other Asiatic country. Besides numberless sapphires, rubies and pearls it possesses an immense quantity of diamonds.
This passion for gems which characterizes the Russians was early observable among them. It is no doubt an inherited Asiatic taste, brought with them from the steppes of Siberia and the plains of Thibet, just as they brought thence their high cheek-bones, their flat noses, their dull skins, and the strong tendency to long hair and flowing beards.