Sancy, impatient that his man
does not arrive, seeks for his body, takes it from the ground where it
is buried, opens it, and recovers his gem! In some way not now known,
Louis XV. got the diamond into his possession, and wore it at his
coronation. In 1789, it disappeared from the crown-treasures, and no
trace of it was discovered till 1830, when it was offered for sale by a
merchant in Paris. Count Demidoff had a lawsuit over it in 1832; and as
it is valued at a million of francs, it was worth quarrelling about.

The _Nassuck Diamond_, valued at thirty thousand pounds, is a
magnificent jewel, nearly as large as a common walnut. Pure as a drop of
dew, it ranked among the richest treasures in the British conquest of
India.

What has become of the great triangular _Blue Diamond_, weighing
sixty-seven carats, stolen from the French Court at the time of the
great robbery of the crown-jewels? Alas! it has never been heard from.
Three millions of francs represented its value; and no one, to this day,
knows its hiding-place. What a pleasant morning's work it would be to
unearth this gem from its dark corner, where it has lain _perdu_ so many
years! The bells of Notre Dame should proclaim such good-fortune to all
Paris.

But enough of these individual magnificos. Their beauty and rarity have
attracted sufficient attention in their day. Yet we should like to
handle a few of those Spanish splendors which Queen Isabel II. wore at
the reception of the ambassadors from Morocco. That day she shone in
diamonds alone to the amount of two million dollars! We once saw a
monarch's sword, of which

"The jewelled hilt,
Whose diamonds lit the passage of his blade,"

was valued at one hundred thousand dollars! But one of the pleasantest
of our personal remembrances, connected with diamonds, is the picking up
of a fine, lustrous gem which fell from O.B.'s violin-bow, (the gift of
the Duke of Devonshire,) one night, after he had been playing his magic
instrument for the special delight of a few friends. The tall Norwegian
wrapped it in a bit of newspaper, when it was restored to him, and
thrust it into his cigar-box! [O.B. sometimes carried his treasures in
strange places. One day he was lamenting the loss of a large sum of
money which he had received as the proceeds of a concert in New York. A
week afterwards he found his missing nine hundred dollars stuffed away
in a dark corner of one of his violin-cases.]

There is a very pretty