a
ditch in the Champs Elysées. Here it was picked up with other plunder
which the thieves did not dare to keep or offer for sale.
Then it was uplifted again to the French crown and has held its place through revolutions that have unmade kings and emperors.
So
it might be told how " The Florentine " wandered from India through
Tuscany to the Austrian crown, — how the " Piggott " saw Clive's
conquests (a.d. ι 751-1767)
and travelled to England with the governor of Madras and was crushed
to powder by the dying Ali Pasha, — - how the " Star of the South "
made its way from the sands of Brazil to glitter on the breast of the
fantastic Gaikwak of Baroda while he killed disagreeable people with
diamond dust, — and how banished convicts won their pardon from the
Portuguese crown by the discovery of the Braganza, the largest
diamond, if genuine, that the world ever saw.1
