One diamond that Tavernier brought back from his travels was a blue diamond, roughly heart-shaped, of 112 carats. He sold it in 1668 to Louis XIV of France. It was recut as a slightly pointed drop, being reduced in the process to 68 carats. Louis XV set the diamond in his Order of the Golden Fleece. It was also worn by Louis XVI but was among the treasures of the royal house that disappeared at the beginning of the French Revolution in the great crown jewel robbery. Of these, only the Regent and the Sancy were recovered. The fate of the Blue Tavernier is in doubt. One story runs that the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece were smuggled to England, where later this diamond was recut. A one-carat blue diamond, last heard of in London, is supposed to have come from the tip. A second stone is a blue drop diamond that came into the possession of the Duke of Brunswick. The third and largest cut is the Hope Diamond. _The Hope_ Without any guarantee of this past history, Henry Thomas Hope in 1836 bought a superb blue diamond of 44 carats. Blue diamonds are exceedingly rare; the nearest in weight to the Hope Diamond are the Brunswick diamond, mentioned just above, of almost 14 carats, and a 35-carat stone, the Wittlesbach, exhibited in London in 1930. The Hope Diamond was willed by Lady Hope, in 1887, to her daughter’s son on condition that he adopt the family name. He became Lord Francis Pelham Clinton Hope. In 1894 he married the American actress May Yohe who wore the diamond when she sang in the music halls. It is said to have been part of the “stage jewelry” listed among her belongings when her trunks were held for a lodging debt, but it was returned to the Hope family. In 1908 the gem was bought for $400,000 by Abdul Hamid, Sultan of Turkey. With the breath of revolution on his neck, the Sultan three years later sent it to Paris to be sold. It became part of the famed collection of Mrs. Edward B. McLean, whose gems dazzled Washington, D. C., for almost forty years. After her death, it was bought in 1949 by Harry Winston, noted diamond merchant of New York. _The Jehan Akbar Shah_ This diamond deserves distinction as the second great eye of the Peacock Throne of the Mogul Emperors. It was engraved with the names of Shah Akbar and his grandson, Shah Jehan. It weighed 116 carats. After Shah Jehan was deposed by his son in 1666, the stone disappeared. Precisely two hundred years later it was shown in Constantinople as the Shepherd stone. Recognized by the inscriptions, the diamond was bought by an English merchant. In London, it was recut to 71 carats, losing the inscriptions and sold to the Gaekwar of Baroda. _The Cullinan_