The natural history of the turquoise had been newly popularized by the publications of Chardin and other Oriental travellers; and more particularly by that of a book by Boethius de Boot, Le Parfait Joallier; Lyons, 1644. The turquoise "de la Vieille Roche," that Madame de Murat speaks of, is a stone found near Nichapour and Carasson, in Persia—the true Oriental turquoise; whilst those called "de la Nouvelle Roche," are not stones, but petrified bones, and are found in Europe, particularly in France, at Auch, (the very place to which Madame de Murat was exiled;) and near Simmorre, in the Département du Gers; and in the Nivernais, according to the account of Reamur in the Mémoires de l'Académie, 1715.
Turquoises were formerly very highly prized, and all kinds of virtues and properties attributed to them, the greater part of which are fabulous, although detailed gravely by de Boot, who was physician to Rodolph II., Emperor of Germany. The jewellers, even in his day, took great pains to distinguish between those that retained their colour and those that turned green. A fine unchanging turquoise, the size of a filbert, sold in that day for two hundred thalers and upwards. "The turquoise possesses such attractions," says de Boot, "that men do not think their hands are well adorned, nor their magnificence sufficiently displayed, if they are not decked with some of the finest." The name is supposed to have been derived from Turkey, the country from which they were probably first imported; but others deduce it from Turchino, a name given by Italians to a particular blue.
Even at this day, the discoloration or loss of a turquoise is considered a prognostication of evil.
THE FORTUNATE PUNISHMENT.
L'Heureuse Peine is also, I believe, new to the English reader. It is an exceedingly graceful story, and the dénouement is novel as well as ingenious. The "little animal" into which the unfortunate Naimée is transformed, is not specified by the author, but from an allusion to its manière de marcher, I suppose it to be a crayfish, a favourite with the writers of fairy tales.
[MADEMOISELLE DE LA FORCE.]
Charlotte Rose de la Force was the daughter of François de Caumont, Marquis de Castel-Moron, and granddaughter of Jacques de Caumont, Duc de la Force, whose escape from the massacre of St. Bartholomew is celebrated in the Henriade of Voltaire, and who afterwards greatly signalized himself by his exploits during the reign of Henry IV. and Louis XIII. She was born in the Castle of Casenove, near Bazas, in Guienne, about 1650, and died in Paris in 1724. Her mother, Marguerite de Vicof, was Dame de Casenove, and daughter of the Baron de Castelnau. Mademoiselle de la Force would therefore appear to be maternally connected with Madame de Murat. She is said to have been married, in 1687, to Charles de Brion; but that the marriage was declared null and void ten days afterwards. She was the author of several memoirs and romances, and of an Epistle, in verse, to Madame de Maintenon; but is best known by her fairy tales, Contes des Contes, though only one of them has, to my knowledge, appeared previously in English. That one is—