HISTORIC JEWELS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8824, 28 May 1907, Page 1

HISTORIC JEWELS.

I?; Lost jewels with a palpitating • story may be numbered by the score. V/ho can guess, indeed, how much of crime, jealousy, and passion have coruscated in the world’s famous diam.ords? The lovely old diamond known as the “ Eugenie ” is, s<»ys P.T.0., emphatically a diamond with a past, for it originally belonged to Catherine 11. of Russia, who wore it ret in a hairpin. It was the gift of her Jover Potemkin, who supplanted Gregory Orloff, forever a sociated with tbo Orloff diamond, which now ado rns the Russian Imperial sceptre, and is kept in the treasury of the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg. Napoleon 111. purchased the “ at the time of his wedding Bora a grand-niece o! Potemkin, ro it evidently reverted to the Potemkin family), and presented it to his bride, after whom it was renamed. The Empress wore it all through her reign as the centre stone of a diamond necklace which, after the Fr anco P* ussian war, was sold to the Gaskwer of Baroda for £15,000. Ever since the latter’s trial for ad* mmistering diamond dust to those cf his subjects whom ho wished to gob rid cf— a plan which he attempted cnee too often in the case of Colonel Phajre, the British resident—r.nd his sub cquent de rosiCon from the throne of his anocst rs, this jewel, together with many others, has been completely lost sight of. As regards the Orloff d’.amoud, to which I have alluded, it is curious to mmtion that although Catherine accepted it from Prince Orloff, -he did not take him back into favour. Its purchase cost Orloff £90,000 down, and an annuity of £4,000 to the Jew from whom he bought it into the bargain.