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Gem Trader
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hands of Queen Victoria, a few years before the great diamond, Koh-i-noor.
Another
ruby, one of extraordinary size—for it was nearly as large as a
pigeon's egg as well as being the colour of pigeon's blood—also graced
royalty and was set in the diadem made for the coronation of Catherine
the Great of Russia. But there are more tragic rubies. Such were the
rubies composing a fine parure which belonged to the Princess Charlotte
of Belgium, she who married the Archduke Maximilian of Austria and as
his wife became Empress of Mexico. They have seemed to bring no luck
to their possessors. Consider the fate of those who have owned them.
Few
more unhappy heads have worn crowns than Maximilian's. It was Napoleon
HI who induced Maximilian to accept the Mexican throne. When Charlotte
accompanied him to the Americas she took with her her fine set of
rubies. But within a short time the new ruler of Mexico found trouble.
He was arraigned as a usurper. Charlotte precipitately fled her palace
at Chapultepec, not leaving her husband to his fate, but to seek
support, armed support, from Napoleon III. But Napoleon callously
refused the help she begged. The Emperor Maximilian, younger brother of
the Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria-Hungary (for so near is that
dark exotic tale to our own time) was tried by a revolutionary tribunal
and shot. Many years after, the Princess Charlotte also ended her days,
in a mental home. But her rubies, which she had left behind at
Chapultepec, fell into the hands of the great family of De Madero.
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