57 marks, or about 38 pounds. The Venetian Navagero estimated its worth to be 30,000 ducats.22
The
wife of Marshal Junot, the celebrated Duchesse d'Abrantès, seeks to
exonerate her husband and to refute the many charges of spoliation
brought against him during and after the French occupation of Spain in
1808 and the succeeding years. For her, Marshal Lannes was a much worse
offender, and she asserts that after the siege of Saragossa in 1809,
Lannes secured possession of the immensely valuable treasures of the
church of Nuestra Sefiora del Pilar, treasures valued at nearly
$1,000,000. On his arrival in Paris, Lannes informed Napoleon that he
had brought with him from Spain "a few colored stones of little value,"
and was graciously told that he could keep them for himself. The finest
jewel of this collection contained 1300 diamonds, nine of which were of
great magnitude and value; the jewel was heart-shaped, and had in the
centre a dove, typifying the Holy Spirit, with wings extended. It had
been given to the church by Dona Barbara de Portugal, Queen of Spain.28
About
the year 1630 there could be seen in Paris a crucifix a foot and a half
high, all of a single piece of yellow amber ; on either side were the
figures of the Virgin Mary and of St. John respectively, each carved in
most excellent style. The writer who gives this information, a lineal
descendant of Lodowyk van Berghem, commonly regarded as the first
diamond-cutter, tells from hearsay evidence of a marvellous emerald
which six hundred years before his time, or about 1060, hung suspended
from the top of the nave of the Cathedral of Mainz. It was "as large as
half-a-melon," and was of exceeding brilliance.24
" Carlos Justi, " Lob Arie"; in Espafia Moderna, vol. 299, November, 1913, pp. 83, 87.
*·
Mémoires de Madame la Duchesse d'Abrantès, Paris, η. d., τοί. 7, p.
447. " Robert de Berquen, " Les Merveilles des Indes," Paris, 1661, pp.
87, 32.
