fragments in one grand
ornament to grace the form of beauty. A necklace was the article fixed
upon, and the best experience and most delicate taste that Europe could
boast were expended on the design. Each and every diamond was specially
set and faced in such manner as to reveal its excellence to the utmost
advantage, and all were arranged together in the style best calculated
to harmonize their united effect. Form, shape, and the minutest shades
of color were studied, and the result, after many attempts and many
failures, and the anxious labor of many months, was the most exquisite
triumph that the genius of the lapidary and the goldsmith could
conceive.

The whole necklace consisted of three triple rows of diamonds, or nine
rows in all, containing eight hundred faultless gems. The triple rows
fell away from each in the most graceful and flexible curves over each
side of the breast and each shoulder of the wearer, the curves starting
from the throat, whence a magnificent pendant, depending from a single
knot of diamonds, each as large as a hazel-nut, hung down half way upon
the bosom in the design of a cross and crown, surrounded by the lilies
of the royal house--the lilies themselves dangling on stems which were
strung with smaller jewels. Rich clusters and festoons spread from the
loop over each shoulder, and the central loop on the back of the neck
was joined in a pattern of emblematic magnificence corresponding with
that in front.

It was in 1782 that this grand work was finally completed, and the happy
owners gloated with delight over a monument of skill as matchless in its
way as the Pyramids themselves. But, alas! the necklace might as well
have been constructed of the common boulders piled in those same
pyramids as of the finest jewels of the mine, for all the good it seemed
destined to bring the poor jewelers, beyond the rapture of beholding it
and calling it theirs.

The necklace was worth 1,500,000 francs, equivalent to more than
$300,000 in gold, as money then went, or nearly $500,000 in gold,
now-a-days. Rather too large a sum to keep locked up in a casket, the
reader will confess! And then it seems that Messrs. Boehmer & Bassange
had not entirely paid for it yet. They had ten creditors on the diamonds
in different countries, and an immense capital still locked up in their
other jewelry.

Of course, then, after their first delight had subsided, they were most
anxious to sell an article that had to be