GREAT DIAMONDS.

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 93, 14 January 1929, Page 4

GREAT DIAMONDS.

GEMS WITH HISTORIES. Most of the great diamonds of the world have a history. -The peculiarity of that recently recovered pink, pear-shaped gem which adroit and enterprising gentlemen removed from the chateau at Chantilly is that nobody knows much about it (says the Loudon “Daily Telegraph”). It has ever been called Le Grand Conde, and was properly housed at Chantilly, where the great little man lived with Moliere and Racine, fed by a famous cook who committed suicide because the fish did not come. Tradition says that the diamond was worn by the great Coude himself, and perhaps blazed in his cravat when he broke the invincible Spanish infantry at Roeroi, or baffled young William of Orange at Seneff. But how he found it, or came by it, nobody knows; no imputation is intended. His generation in France was rather lucky about diamonds. The first blue oue of any size which anybody in Europe had ever seen was bought by Louis XIV. It came from India, ainl weighed in the rough 112 carats. Perhaps Conde acquired his rose diamond at the same time. Nobody knows, though this seems hardly credible, bow much it weighs, but it is—or was—certainly a good inch long.

Broadly speaking, all historic diamonds have a horrible past. Even the Koh-i-noor, a comparatively respectable stone, was reputed to bring illluck. The Orloff, it seems, reallj was what a thousand diamonds of fiction have been, the eye of an idol in a Brahmin temple. Thence a French soldier stole it, and a ship captain stole it from him, and it came ou to the Amsterdam market, whence Prince Orloff bought it for £70,000, aud gave it to his mistress, the Empress Catherine. It is. or was, a huge yellow stone, and used to be in the Tsar's sceptre.

The Regent diamond, now in the Louvre, has had a career not less lurid. It was found by a slave in the mines on the Klstna in 1701, and ne stole it, cutting a hole in the calf of his leg for a hiding place. He got down to the coast with it and took ship for Madras. The captain, an Englishman, acquired the stone and threw the slave overboard, but could only sell the diamond for a poor price, took to drink, and hanged himself. The Governor of Madras, Mr. Pitt, one of the great family, bought it for £20,000, and sold it to the Regent of France for £135.000.

Now the Regent, diamond, like the blue one of Louis XIV., was in the royal wardrobe in Paris when the Revolution broke out. Both were stolen. The Regent, however, was found in a ditch in the Champs Elysees, and after being pawned and redeemed, ami worn at the coronation of Napoleon, is still the property of France. Big stones are apt to be white' elephants. At any rate, the gentleman who stole Louis XLV's blue diamond thought so. It has never turned up again, but the experts believe that the Hope diamond, which is the same colour, is a bit of it.