uke of Florence. From that prince it
passed into the hands of Antonio king of Portugal, who, when a refugee
in France, sold it for 70,000 francs to Nicholas de Harlay, Lord of
Sancy; thus it has since been known, in the history of precious
stones, as the Sancy Diamond. Sancy was a faithful adherent to Henry
IV. of France, and, during the civil war, was sent by that monarch to
solicit the assistance of the Swiss. Finding that nothing could be
done without money, he sent a trusty servant to Paris for the diamond,
enjoining him never to part with it in life to any one but himself.
The servant arrived in Paris, and received the diamond, but never
returned to his master. After waiting a considerable time, Sancy,
feeling confident that the man had been robbed and murdered by one of
the many hordes of robbers that then infested France, set out to
endeavour to gain some traces of him. After many adventures, he
discovered that a person answering the description of the servant had
been found, robbed and murdered, in the Forest of Dole, and had been
buried by the peasantry. Sancy immediately had the body disinterred,
and found the diamond--the faithful fellow having, in obedience to his
master's injunction, swallowed it. Sancy pawned the diamond with the
Jews of Metz, and with the money raised troops for the service of his
royal master. 'Put not your faith in princes,' is an adage as sound as
it is ancient. Henry, seated on the throne that Sancy's exertions
saved, took occasion of a petty court intrigue to ruin and disgrace
his too faithful partisan. The pledged diamond never was redeemed; it
remained in the hands of the Israelite money-lenders, till Louis XIV.
purchased it for 600,000 francs. It then became one of the
crown-jewels of France; but its vicissitudes were not over. In 1791,
when the National Assembly appointed a commission of jewellers to
examine the crown-jewels, the Sancy Diamond was valued at 1,000,000
livres. At the restoration of Louis XVIII., it was nowhere to be
found, and nothing positive has been heard of it since. But as so
well-known and large a diamond could not readily be secretly disposed
of without attracting attention in some quarter, it is shrewdly
suspected that a jewel sold in 1830, by the Prince of Peace, for
500,000 francs, to one of the wealthiest of the Russian nobility, was
the missing Sancy Diamond.

The operation of diamond-cutting is exceedingly simple, and is without
doubt performed by the