MVTILID^. PEARLS. 59 



the first offer of them, and the French Ambassador thus 

 describes them : — " There are six cordons of large pearls 

 strung as paternosters ; but there are five-and-twenty 

 separate from the rest, much finer and larger than those 

 which are strung. These are, for the most part, like 

 black muscades" (a very rare and valuable variety of 

 pearl, with the deep purple colour and bloom of the 

 muscatel grape).* 



They were appraised by various merchants, but Queen 

 Elizabeth was determined to have them at the sum 

 named by the jeweller, though he would have made his 

 profit by selling them again. Others valued them at 

 three thousand pounds sterling ; some Italian merchants 

 at twelve thousand crowns ; and a Genevese at sixteen 

 thousand crowns ; but twelve thousand was the price 

 Queen Elizabeth was allowed to have them for, and Ca- 

 therine de Medicis was quite as eager to purchase these 

 pearls as her good cousin of England, knowing they 

 were worth nearly double the sum at which they had 

 been valued in London, having presented some of them 

 herself to Mary. She therefore used every endeavour 

 to recover them, but the French Ambassador wrote to 

 inform her that it was impossible to accomplish her 

 desire of obtaining the Queen of Scots' pearls ; " for, 

 as he had told her from the first, they were intended 

 for the gratification of the Queen of England, who 

 had been allowed to purchase them at her own price, 

 and they were now in her hands." The possession of 

 wealth and jewels is not always a source of happiness or 

 benefit to their possessors, if we may judge " from the 

 above-mentioned fact in history, and indeed it is even 

 more clearly exemplified in the case of the eminent Mogul, 

 * See note, ' Lives of the Queens of Scotland,' vol. ii. p. 83. 



