PINS WITH A HISTORY

Evening Star, Issue 18052, 21 August 1922, Page 6

PINS WITH A HISTORY

There has been exposed to view in the window of a leading jeweller in Vienna a brooch magnificently studded with gems in tho middle of the elaborate chasing of which is enclosed the most singular of centres — four common, old, bent, and corroded pins. This brooch is the property of tho Countess Lavctskofky. Count Albert La-vctskofky was arrested at Warsaw for an alleged insult to the Russian Government. Tho real author of tho insult, which consisted of some careless words spoken at a social gathering, was his wife. He accepted the accusation, however, and was sent to prison. In a lightless dungeon tho unfortunate martyr for his wife’s loose tongue spent six years. He had only one amusement. After he bad boen searched and thrown into a cell he had found in his coat four pins. These he pulled out and threw on the floor, then in the darkness he hur/cd for them, perhaps after hours and even days, and ho scattered thorn again. And so the game went m for six weary years, “ But for them,” he writes in his memoirs, “ I would have gone mad. They provided me with a purpose. So long as I had them to search for I had something to do. When the decree for my liberation and exile was brought to me the jailer found me on my knees hunting for one which had escaped me for two days. They saver! my wife’s husband from lunacy. My wife, therefore, could not desire a prouder ornament.”