CRYSTAL BALLS AND CRYSTAL GAZING 221
Emperor
Leopold I to King Louis XIV, at the instance of Johann Philip of
Schonborn, Archbishop of Mainz, who was under great obligation to the
French sovereign.
In
Paris the various ornaments were preserved in the Bibliotheque Royale
until the night of November 5-6, 1831, when many of them, with other
valuables, were stolen by an ex-convict. Closely pursued by the police,
the thief threw his booty into the Seine; much of the plunder was
subsequently recovered, but the signet of Chil-deric was lost for ever.
The crystal ball had not seemed of sufficient value to tempt the thief
and was left undisturbed; it was later, in 1852, deposited in the
Louvre Museum.62
In
a personal communication to Abbe Cochet made in 1858 by Mr. Thomas
Wright, the latter stated that he had seen at Downing in Flintshire
with Lord Fielding five crystal balls, bearing labels declaring that
they came from the sepulchres of the kings of France violated at the
time of the French Revolution. They had been purchased about 1810 at
the sale of the Duchess of Portland's effects.63
Among
the crystal balls found in French sepulchres may be noted one
discovered by Eigollot in 1853 at Arras, and preserved in the Museum of
that city; this still has the original gold mounting serving to attach
it to the necklace from which it had been worn suspended. Another
found at or near Levas was in the possession of M. Dancoise, a notary
of Henin-Lietard, dept. Pas de Calais.64 In the Bibliotheque
at Dieppe there is a crystal ball, 32 mm. in diameter, found at
Douvrend, dept. Seine-Inferieure, in 1838, in a Merovingian tomb; this
is pierced
" Cochet, " Le tombeau de Childeric Ier roi des Francs," Paris, 1859, pp. 16 sqq.
63 Cochet, op. cit., p. 305.
M Cochet, op. cit., p. 302; figure.
