that
a certain Hortensio Berghis, a diamond cutter, was commissioned to
facet the stone, but that he bungled the work in such a manner that
instead of receiving a wage for his labours he was fined 10,000 rupees.
Shortly after Tavernier saw the gem, in the middle of the seventeenth
century, it apparently disappeared from history like so many of the big
diamonds of the old days. And yet perhaps its whole tale is not told.
According to at least one expert, the "Orloff" diamond, part of the
present Russian State treasure, is none other than the Great Mogul.
The
story of the so-called Orloff diamond—from the European point of
view—begins only in the eighteenth century with one of those thefts
which are still so popular as the background for thrillers. It was part
of a temple treasure, the eye of a Buddha (not quite the green eye of
the little yellow god, but near enough), and a French soldier, dressing
himself up as a worshipper, managed to steal it. He sold it to an
English sea captain at Madras for two thousand pounds, and the sailor
sold it in London for three times as much as he gave for it. Finally it
reached Amsterdam and was bought by the Russian Prince Orloff for the
then stupendous sum of a million and a half florins, almost a hundred
thousand pounds. Orloff, who was in disfavour with his queen, Catherine
II, bought the gem in order to present it to the Russian Throne, and it
now adorns the Imperial sceptre of an Empire which has no use for
Emperors. In its present cut state it weighs 193 carats, whereas the
Great Mogul's weight was given as 319-1/2 but this discrepancy might be accounted for by the wastage in the cutting process.
