Diamond, weighing thirty-six carats, seen in the Munich
collection.
The Tavernier Blue was brought from the Coulour mines,
with twenty-five other large diamonds, by the traveller whose
name it bears, and sold to Louis XIV., for five hundred
thousand francs and a patent of nobility. Its original weight
was sixty-seven and one-half carats, reduced by the lapidary to
forty-four and one-fourth.
The French Blue has been represented as a fine gem belonging to the French crown, with a weight and value equal to that
of the Tavernier; it is supposed it was split, and one of the
pieces formed the Hope. These accounts so far coincide as to
leave but little doubt of the identity of the Tavernier Blue and
the French Blue, which was lost, it is believed, at the robbery
of the Garde Meuble. The most remarkable feature about
these gems is that there should exist three blue diamonds of
precisely the same weight.
One of the diamonds of the late Duke of Brunswick claims
affinity with the Hope Blue, on account of its remarkably
brilliant tint, and another blue specimen, forming, says Mr.
Streeter, one of the rarest jewels in the world, seen in the
fashionable circles of London, is referred to the same origin.
It is possible that all these blue diamonds, if they ever existed,
once formed a part of an immense stone which, by some unknown agent, was separated into several smaller ones.
The Great Table.—The diamond seen by Tavernier in India
called by this name, weighed two hundred forty-two and onehalf carats, and presented the appearance of having been split,
which suggested the idea that the Russian Table, of sixty-eight
carats, may have been a part of it. No European expert has
ever seen it since Taverniere day, and even its present owner
is not known ; it may have been one of the " Three Tables "
