266 THE GREAT DIAMONDS OF THE WORLD.
who
wore it as a hat ornament at his coronation. It also appears among the
French Crown Jewels in the inventory of 1791, in which it is valued at
1,000,000 francs (£40,000).
But
here begin a fresh series of vicissitudes; for it disappeared the very
next year, together with the " Blue Diamond," and the other valuables
permanently lost to the nation at the robbery of the Garde Meuble. And
now comes Barbot's positive assertion that a stone, in every respect
resembling the " Sancy" was sold in 1855 by an agent of the Bourbons
to the Princess Paula Demidoff for 500,000 roubles—£75,000, or, if
paper money, about £35,000. Beyond Barbot's assertion there is no
authority for this statement, which may have been put forward for
political purposes, in order to implicate the Legitimists in the
robbery of the Garde Meuble. Another report, that it somehow fell into
the hands ot the Queen of Spain, who presented it to her favourite,
Godo'i, " Prince of Peace," scarcely calls for serious refutation. Both
statements cannot possibly be true, and both are contradicted by the
fact that it entered the Demidoff family not through a Bourbon agent in
1835, but through a respectable French merchant in 1828, or thereabouts.
Now comes the famous cause cdebre of Prince Demidoff versus M.
Levrat, Director of the Society of the Mines and Forges of the Grisons,
Switzerland. After agreeing to buy the gem from M. Demidoff for 600,000
francs (£24,000^, Levrat stated that it was not worth a third of that
sum, since it had been greatly reduced in weight from being recut as a
