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118 NATURAL EISTORY OF PRECIOUS STONES, &c.
branded on both shoulders, and to be imprisoned for life in the Salpetrière. She, however, escaped thence in man's attire and managed to rejoin her husband in London, where she died, in 1791, either of a bilious fever, or from throwing herself out of the window in a fit of delirium.
Note.—For all the details connected with the present trade in Dia­monds, both wholesale and retail, the reader desirons of complete and accurate information can have no better authority than Barbot " ancien joaillier," under "Diamant," in his 'Traité Complet des Pierres Pré­cieuses,' Paris, 1858. But the historical portion of that article is full of inaccuracies, as indeed is the rest of his treatise in that particular department : but when it attempts the branch of the subject relating to art and archaeology the book is infinitely more defective and swarms with the most palpable blunders : its teaching is only valuable so leng as its author, "the retired jeweller," keeps closely within the limits of his métier. Much however—and that the best part—of his informa­tion has been .borrowed without acknowledgment from Claire's 'La Science des Pierres Précieuses appliquée aux Arts,' Paris, 1833 : now extremely scarce, and therefore liable to be pillaged with impunity. The want, long felt, in our literature of a Handbook on the same prin­ciple as Caire's, has at last been well and amply supplied by H. Emanuel in his perfect bijou of a volume, 'Diamonds and Precious Stones,' 1865.