who had been allowed to purchase them at her own price, and they were now in her hands.' "Inadequate though the sum for which her pearls were sold was to their real value, it assisted to turn the scale against their real owner. "In one of her letters to Elizabeth, supplicating her to procure some amelioration of the rigorous confinement of her captive friends, Mary alludes to her stolen jewels:--'I beg also,' says she, 'that you will prohibit the sale of the rest of my jewels, which the rebels have ordered in their Parliament, for you have promised that nothing should be done in it to my prejudice. I should be very glad, if they were in safer custody, for they are not meat proper for traitors. Between you and me it would make little difference, and I should be rejoiced, if any of them happened to be to your taste, that you would accept them from me as offerings of my good-will.' "From this frank offer it is apparent that Mary was not aware of the base part Elizabeth had acted, in purchasing her magnificent _parure_ of pearls of Moray, for a third part of their value." One of the most famous pearls yet discovered (there may be shells down below that hide a finer specimen) is the beautiful _Peregrina_. It was fished up by a little negro boy in 1560, who obtained his liberty by opening an oyster. The modest bivalve was so small that the boy in disgust was about to pitch it back into the sea. But he thought better of his rash determination, pulled the shells asunder, and, lo, the rarest of priceless pearls! [_Moral._ Don't despise little oysters.] La Peregrina is shaped like a pear, and is of the size of a pigeon's egg. It was presented to Philip II. by the finder's master, and is still in Spain. No sum has ever determined its value. The King's jeweller named five hundred thousand dollars, but that paltry amount was scouted as ridiculously small. There is a Rabbinical story which aptly shows the high estimate of pearls in early ages, only one object in Nature being held worthy to be placed above them:--