Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/165

 the funds indispensable for the consolidation of his power. After he became emperor, he wore the diamond set in the pommel of his state-sword; doubtless holding that to be a more significant article of his imperial paraphernalia than either crown or sceptre.

This remarkable gem exerted a direct influence in raising to the helm of government of two hostile nations: in one, the Corsican adventurer; in the other his renowned adversary, William Pitt, whose accession to the premiership would probable never have occurred but for the fortune based upon his great grand-father's lucky hit.

The Koh-i-noor has hitherto been a fatal jewel. May its recent recutting have broken the spell! Its history is well authenticated at every step. This stone of fate seems never to have been lost sight of from the days when Ala-ud-deen took it from the Rajahs of Malwa, five centuries and a half ago, to the day when it became a crown-jewel of England. Tradition carries back its existence in the memory of India to the year 57 B.C.; and a still wilder legend would fain recognise in it a diamond first discovered near Masulipatam, in the bed of the Godavery, five thousand years ago.

The Koh-i-noor is reported by Baber, the founder of the Mogul Empire, to have come into the Delhi treasury from the conquest of Malwa, in 1304. The Hindoos trace the curses and the ultimate ruin inevitably brought upon its successive possessors by the genius of this fateful jewel ever since it was first wrested from the line of Vikramaditya. If we glance over its history since 1304, its malevolent influence far excels that of the necklace for which Eriphyle betrayed her husband, or the Eguus Scianus of Greek and Roman tradition. First falls the vigorous Patan, then the mighty Mogul Empire, and, with vastly accelerated ruin, the power of Nadir, of the Dooranee dynasty, and of the Sikh. Runjeet Singh, when it was in his possession, was so convinced of the truth of this belief, that being satisfied with the enjoyment of it during his own lifetime, he sought to break through the ordinance of fate and the consequent destruction of his family by bequeathing the stone to the shrine of Juggernaut for the good of his soul and the preservation of his dynasty. His successors would not give up the baleful treasure, and the last Maharajah is now a private gentleman. In 1850, in the name of the East India Company (since, in its turn, defunct), Lord Dalhouse presented the Koh-i-noor to Queen Victoria.

Perhaps we should have been better without it; such, at least, appears to be Mr. King's opinion. The Brahmins will hardly relinquish their faith in the malignant powers possessed by this stone, when they think of the speedily following Russian war, which annihilated the prestige of the British army, and the Sepoy mutiny three years later, which caused England's existence as a nation to hang for months on the forbearance of one man.

The public saw the Koh-i-noor lustreless at the Exhibition of 1851, then weighing one hundred and eighty-six carats. Its re-cutting, performed in 1862, though executed with the utmost skill and perfection, has deprived the stone of all its historical and mineralogical interest. As a specimen of a gigantic diamond, whose native weight and form had been interfered with as little as possible (for with Hindoo lapidaries the grand object is the preservation of weight), it stood without a rival, save the Orloff, in Europe. As it is, in the place of the most ancient gem in the history of the world—older even than the Tables of the Law and the Breastplate of Aaron, supposing them still to exist—we get, according to Mr. King, a bad-shaped, because too shallow, modern brilliant, a mere lady's bauble, of but second-rate water, for it has a greyish tinge, and, besides, inferior in weight to several, being now reduced to one hundred and two carats and a half.

The operation of re-cutting was performed in London, under the care of the Messrs. Garrards, the Queen's jewellers, who erected for that purpose a small four-horse steam engine on their premises. It was conducted by Voorsanger and another skilful workman sent over by M. Coster from Amsterdam. In consequence of the advantage gained by using steam power, the actual cutting occupied no more than thirty-eight working days—a striking contrast to the two years necessary for cutting the Pitt diamond by the old hand process. In some parts of the work, as when it was necessary to grind out a deep flaw, the wheel made three thousand revolutions per minute.

Mr. King is equally full of pleasant lore touching other gems, as well as gold and silver. One emerald story has escaped him. It is told, if our memory is correct, by Forbes, in his Oriental Memoirs.

A person, whoever he was, was watching a swarm of fireflies in an Indian grove one moonlight night. After hovering for a time in the moonbeams, one particular firefly, more brilliant than the rest, alighted on the grass, and there remained. The spectator, struck by its fixity, and approaching to ascertain the cause, found, not an insect, but an emerald, which he appropriated and afterwards wore in a ring.

When the possession of a valuable is hard to account for, one tale may sometimes be as good as another—provided there be but a tale.