MyTILID^. -—PEARLS. 
59 
tlie first offer of them, and the French x\mbassador 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 tbe 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 tlie 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 wofe, ^ Lives of the Queens of Scotland,’ voL ii. p. 83. 
