The Pitt Diamond, now renamed the Regent, was cut into a cushion-shaped brilliant of 140 carats, a superbly sparkling specimen of a great gem deftly handled. Marie Antoinette used it to adorn a large black velvet hat she favored, borrowing it from the crown of Louis XV. But it remained with the royal jewels until they were all stolen in 1792. Found in a Paris garret, the diamond came to Napoleon, who pawned it to secure funds for his triumphant campaigns. After using the stone in this fashion several times, he had it set into the hilt of his ceremonial coronation sword. When Napoleon went into exile, the stone accompanied his second wife, Marie Louise, to the Chateau of Blois. Her father, the Emperor of Austria, returned it to Louis XVIII. The diamond shuttled between the Napoleons and the Louis until France became a republic. When the French crown jewels were auctioned in 1886, the Regent Diamond was withheld from the sale. By lying quietly behind a stone panel of a chateau in Chambord, the Regent escaped capture by the Germans in the Second World War. It is now on display in the Louvre where, like the Kohinoor cage at the Crystal Palace, its case sinks nightly into a burglar-proof vault. _The Sancy_ The Sancy and the Regent are the only jewels of the French royal treasure that were recovered after the robbery of 1792. Legend has confused the early story of the Sancy stone with that of the Florentine Diamond, but it has had enough vicissitudes to make an historic tale. A superb and fiery stone of 54 carats, one of the first ever cut in symmetrical facets, the diamond was bought in Constantinople, about 1570, by the French Ambassador to Turkey, the Seigneur de Sancy. Back at the court of his king, vicious and vain Henry III, Sancy was constrained to lend the diamond to his monarch, who set it in the cap he wore to cover his baldness. The shrewd successor to the throne, Henry IV, made Sancy the Minister of Finance, and the again borrowed diamond was used as security to raise troops. The stone was sent to the moneylenders in Metz; but the messenger was waylaid and slain. The diamond vanished. Sure of the man’s loyalty, Sancy recovered the body and had an autopsy performed; and from the stomach of the faithful servant the diamond was recovered. Wary of further loans, Sancy sold the diamond to Queen Elizabeth I of England. It stayed with the royal house until Charles I was beheaded. The Earl of Worcester, to whom Charles’ widow had entrusted it, returned it when the monarchy was restored. In the second Revolution in 1688, James II took it to France. There, after a time, it passed from the royal exile to his diamond-hungry host, Louis XIV. Again the gem stayed with a royal house until the turbulence of revolution; the Sancy, along with the other royal treasures, was stolen in the tumultuous days of 1792.