262 THE CURIOUS LORE OF PRECIOUS STONES
•erald
disappeared at an earlier date: It is said that in 1809, during the
French occupation of Spain, Marshal Junot visited this cathedral, and
the emerald was pointed out to him as one of the chief glories of the
shrine. As soon as the marshal's covetous glance rested upon the gem,
he plucked it from its setting, remarking, coolly, to the astonished
and horrified bystanders, "This belongs to me. ' ' Then, smiling and
bowing, he left the cathedral with the emerald safely ensconced in his
waistcoat pocket. Later, it was replaced by an imitation in glass.
The
famous collection of jewels gathered together in the treasury of the
Santa Casa, at Loreto, Italy, was plundered during the French
occupation in 1797, and all trace of most of the magnificent ornaments
has been lost. These represented the gifts of many crowned heads and
titled personages; among the former was the unfortunate Henrietta
Maria, wife of Charles I, who donated a golden heart-shaped jewel with
the words "Jesus Maria" incrusted in diamonds. This jewel is described
as being "as big as both a man's hands, opened onto two leaves, on one
of which was the figure of the Blessed Virgin and on the other a
portrait of the queen herself.55 Of the many rich vestments
for decorating the statue of the Virgin in the sanctuary, the most
splendid was the gift of the Infanta Isabel of Flanders, and was valued
at 40,000 crowns. In a seventeenth-century account by an English
traveller it is thus described :56
Its
set thick with six rows of diamonds downe before, to the number of
three thousand, and its all wrought over with a kinde of embroidery of
little pearle set thick everywhere within the flowers with great round
pearle, to the number twenty thousand pearles in all.
"Lassels, " The Voyage of Italy," Paris, 1670, Pt. II, p. 344. "Lassels, 1. c, p. 339.
