"I have seen," says he, "Lollia Paulina, who was the wife of the Emperor Caligula,--and this not on the occasion of a solemn festival or ceremony, but merely at a supper of ordinary betrothals,--I have seen Lollia Paulina covered with emeralds and pearls, arranged alternately, so as to give each other additional brilliancy, on her head, neck, arms, hands, and girdle, to the amount of forty thousand sesterces, [£336,000 sterling,] the which value she was prepared to prove on the instant by producing the receipts. And these pearls came, not from the prodigal generosity of an imperial husband, but from treasures which had been the spoils of provinces. Marcus Lollius, her grandfather, was dishonored in all the East on account of the gifts he had extorted from kings, disgraced by Tiberius, and obliged to poison himself, that his grand-daughter might exhibit herself by the light of the _lucernae_ blazing with jewels." Nero offered to Jupiter Capitolinus the first trimmings of his beard in a magnificent vase enriched with the costliest pearls. Catherine de Medicis and Diane de Poitiers almost floated in pearls, their dresses being literally covered with them. The wedding-robe of Anne of Cleves was a rich cloth-of-gold, thickly embroidered with great flowers of large Orient pearls. Poor Mary, Queen of Scots, had a wonderful lot of pearls among her jewels; and the sneaking manner in which Elizabeth got possession of them we will leave Miss Strickland, the biographer of Queens, to relate.