THE FRENCH BLUE. I23
Veuves
where the Regent lay hidden. In fact, Tavernier's Blue Diamond,
weighing sixty-seven carats, never again re-appeared as such. Men had
something else to think of in France besides diamonds during the forty
years which followed the great robbery, so that the very existence of a
blue diamond was pretty nearly forgotten. True that John Mane, a fairly
reliable authority on diamonds, says that "There is at this time (1813)
a superlatively fine blue diamond of above forty-four carats in the
possession of an individual in London which may be considered as
matchless and of course of arbitrary value." This is a most important
statement, and in the light of subsequent investigations it would
point almost conclusively to the fact that the French Blue, already
metamorphosed, was in alien hands, except for the fact that the same
writer a little further on makes the announcement of a Blue Diamond,
weight sixty-seven carats, being
