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Adamas, Diamond

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SANCY DIAMOND.
39
hoping that Charles V. would buy it as a family relic; but broke up the cap, and reset the stones in it for Maximilian II. At last his grand-nephew (the writer) sold the pendant to Henry VIII. just before his death; but adds he was honestly paid for it, notwithstanding the buyer's demise. He remarks on the sin­gular coincidence that the jewel should thus have come gratuit­ously, through Mary, into the hands of the representative, in the fourth descent, of Charles the Bold, after an estrangement of seventy-six years.
SANCY DIAMOND.
The story, constantly retailed, that the Sancy Diamond was the very stone cut by L. de Berquem, as his first essay, for the Duke, is a mere fable. E. de Berquem, his descendant, who would have made the most of such a tradition had it been then current, says expressly, in his ' Merveilles des Indes' (1669), " La Royne d'Angleterre d'apresent a celuy que deffunct M. de Sancy aporta de son ambassade de Levant, qui est en forme d'amande taille a facettes des deux costes : parfaitement blanc et net; et qui pese cinquante-quatre carats."4 Its almond-form, completely facetted over (a mode quite unknown then or at any other time in Europe), of itself, without this testimony of De Berquem, indisputably proves that it was an Indian-cut stone. Tavernier, in this very year, was remarking the fondness of the Golconda lapidaries for covering the entire surface with facets, so as to impair as little as possible the native weight of the crystal. The " Royne d'Angleterre " this year was probably the
Adamas, Diamond Page of 453 Adamas, Diamond
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