CHARLES THE BOLD'S DIAMOND. 65
Jacob
Fugger bought this pendant together with the Duke's " Cap of
Maintenance " of silk with Pearls stitched all over it, having a
hat-band of Sapphires and Balais, and a plume-case set with Diamonds
(points) of tolerable size placed between alternate Pearls and
Balais-Rubies, " for no more " (as he boasts) " than 47,000 florins."
The cap, in shape the counterpart of that antithesis to all ideas of
dignity, a jockey's cap, terminates in a single huge Balais cut into an
acute pyramid, and springing out of an elegant socket resting upon
cherub heads set under the four angles of the base. It is remarkable
that with this exception all the Balais are fashioned into depressed
pyramids.
The pendant Fugger kept by him for many years in the hope and expectation that the emperor Charles Y. (the
unfortunate Duke's great grandson) would buy it for himself as a family
relic : the cap however he broke up, and reset all the stones adorning
it for Maximilian II. At last his great-nephew (the writer of the
memorandum) sold the pendant to our Henry VIII. just before his death,
but adds that he was honestly paid the price agreed upon (which
proYokingly he has omitted) notwithstanding the demise of the purchaser
: a remark by the way that sufficiently betrays the trepidation he had
been in as to such a satisfactory contingency. Henry's successor and
daughter forthwith made a present of the jewel to her ungrateful
bridegroom, and Fugger naturally enough remarks upon the singular
coincidence, that this heir-loom should thus have been restored
gratuitously by fortune through the hands of Mary to the actual
representative in the fourth descent of its original owner, after an
estrangement of seventy-six years.
To conclude this notice of these memorials of the magnificence and of the misfortunes of Charles the Bold, I
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