It seems probable however that none except the thieves themselves were concerned in this astonishing robbery and that they were actuated by greed alone. The patriots only made use of it for party purposes to obtain their own objects, just as they tried to utilize in the same way any uncommon natural phenomenon, such as comets, earthquakes or hail stones. A few days later an anonymous letter was received by the officials at the Commune stating that if they searched in a spot most carefully described in the Allée des Veuves of the Champs Elysées, they would find something to their advantage. They accordingly hunted at the place indicated and found the Regent and a valuable agate vase. All the rest of the booty, however, the thieves made off with after having thus eased their consciences of the weight of the great diamond. We lose sight of the Regent in the black gloom that hangs over the Reign of Terror. There is however a persistent tradition, impossible now either to prove or disprove, that on the occasion of the marriage of Napoleon Bonaparte with Josephine Beauharnais in 1796 the former wore a most superb diamond in his sword hilt. Could this perchance have been the Regent? It is certainly difficult to imagine how Napoleon could have become possessed of the Regent at this date. Yet it is also difficult to imagine how the young man who was then an unknown and a poor general without an army although full of high expectations, could have become the owner of any diamond of such splendor as to attract the attention of at least two contemporary historians. It is just possible it may have been the peerless Regent already shedding its rays upon the blade of that sword destined to flash through Europe and to leave behind it so bloody a trail. However this may be, it is certainly a fact that in 1800 Napoleon, then First Consul, pawned the Regent to the Berlin banker Trescow. With the money thus obtained he set out on that famous campaign beyond the Alps which ended at Marengo and which began his career of unexampled success. Thus once more the Regent may be said to have founded the fortune of a great house, but more aspiring in its second attempt it succeeded less effectually than in the case of Pitt. However in 1804 the house of Bonaparte had not fallen upon its ruin and it is some idea of this fact that gives color to the extraordinary revelations of the man called "Baba."