At any rate, it was purchased in Holland in 1774 by the Russian Count Gregory Orloff for 400,000 rubles ($450,000). The Count had been a favorite of Catherine’s; she had made him a prince and the commander-in-chief of her armies. The Court did not mind—or could not help—the number of Catherine’s lovers; but she seemed on the verge of actually marrying the Count. Her entourage therefore set their wits to work, and Orloff fell from favor. For Catherine’s name day, when others at Court presented the customary bouquets, Orloff gave her the diamond. His family’s fortune had been pledged for it, but it failed to re-open Catherine’s arms to him. She never wore the diamond but had it mounted in her sceptre, right under the double eagle. Under that symbol of imperial power, it presumably rests in the Kremlin today. A more prosaic version of the Count’s enterprise states that he assured himself of heart balm by selling the diamond to Catherine for £90,000 plus a £4,000 life annuity. _The Shah of Persia_ Another diamond reported by Tavernier and now reposing in the Kremlin is an 88-carat bar-shaped stone of finest quality. It has a tiny furrow cut in it, presumably to secure the cord by which Tavernier, in 1665, saw it suspended in front of the Mogul throne. It also has engraved on it three names and dates. The first name is that of an Indian prince, Bourhan-Nizam Shah II; the date, the year 1000 in the Mohammedan count, the western 1591. The second engraving, in the western year 1651, sets this gem as another among the treasures of the great Mogul Shah Jehan. The third date is western 1824; the owner, the Shah of Persia. The Persians possessed the jewel until 1889, when a Teheran mob slew the Russian ambassador, the thirty-four-year-old playwright Griboyedov. As a sign of their regret, the Persian royal house sent the Shah Diamond to Russia, where it has remained. _The Great Table_ Another stone that Tavernier was the only European to look upon is the Great Table Diamond, sometimes called the White Tavernier. This 242-carat stone is described by the French traveler: “When at Golconda in 1642, I was shown this stone, and it is the largest diamond I have ever seen in India in the hands of merchants. The owner allowed me to make a model of it in lead, which I sent to Surat to two of my friends, telling them of its beauty and the price, namely, 500,000 rupees. I received an order from them, that if it was clean and of fine water, I should offer 400,000 rupees; but it was impossible to purchase it at that price.” The asking price was about $280,000, for want of which the Great Table has totally disappeared. The table cut—which was virtually discontinued after 1520, when the rose cut grew popular—sliced the gem into a flat slab, sometimes so thin that the diamond was used as a “portrait stone,” set over a miniature painting. _The Blue Tavernier_