"The Metropolitan having received the Sceptre from the hands of the noble bearer carries it to the Emperor who takes it in his right hand. The Metropolitan says, 'Most pious, most powerful, and very great Emperor of all the Russias, whom God has crowned, upon whom God has shed His gifts and His Grace, receive the Sceptre and the Globe. They are the symbols of the supreme power which the Most High has given thee over thy peoples, that thou mayest govern them and obtain for them all the happiness they desire.' And the Emperor takes the Sceptre and sits upon the throne."
But this is not nearly all. The sceptre, which is graphically if somewhat grotesquely called the Triumph-stick, is held only for a brief time. The Emperor at the end of the prayer, lays it upon a velvet cushion and upon another he places the globe or Empire-apple as it is termed. Then he calls to himself the Czarina and crowns her with his own imperial diadem. But the consort is not invested with any imperial power, therefore she does not receive either the sceptre or the globe. After having crowned his wife, the Czar again seats himself upon his throne holding his Stick and his Apple in either hand. Cannons roar, bells clang and multitudes shout "Long live the Father!" while all present bow low before the monarch in adoration. Then the new Czar and Czarina receive the communion with more stately movings about from place to place. Finally the Te Deum is sung, the crowned Emperor, sceptre in hand, walks forth, and the intricate ceremonial is thus brought to a close, having been in continuance some four or five hours.
The Regalia, which includes seven or eight crowns, is kept in the Kremlin in an upper room "where," says a traveller, "they [the crowns, etc.] look very fine on velvet cushions under glass cases." The Czars are always crowned in Moscow, the ancient capital of Russia.
Paul, having performed the weird ceremony already described, then had himself duly and solemnly crowned. His reign was a short one however, and in 1801 he gave place to his successor Alexander, in the orthodox Russian manner-that is to say he was strangled.
In 1812 the Orloff and its magnificent companions had to fly from Moscow. In the beginning of September in that terrible year, finding that the mountains of slain on the bloody field of Borodino could not stop Napoleon, the Russians sullenly retired before him. On the third of the month the Regalia was carried out of Moscow and lodged in a place of safety in the interior. This flight was followed by that of everybody and everything that was portable. When Napoleon entered on the fourteenth it was to find an absolute desert in Moscow, only a few stragglers, prisoners and beggars having been left.
Alexander I., strange to say, died peacefully in 1826, leaving the throne to his brother Nicholas. Nicholas has been aptly called "the Iron Czar." He was the third son of his father, but his elder brother, Constantine, having no taste for the perilous glory of a crown renounced his rights in favor of Nicholas. There was some delay in crowning the new Czar owing, says the Court Circular with decorous gravity, to the illness and death of the late Emperor's widow who survived her husband but five months. In reality, however, the delay was caused by events more serious to the peace of mind of the new sovereign. A revolution, which seems an indispensable accompaniment to a change of rulers in Russia, exploded after the accession of Nicholas and came near to costing him his life. This event seems to have further hardened a nature that was already sufficiently severe, and when Nicholas went to Moscow in August, 1826, his coronation progress was not meant to gladden the people but to make them quake. When the Czar left the Cathedral of the Assumption, his crown upon his head and his sceptre in his hand, "his face looked as hard as Siberian ice." So wrote of him an eye-witness, who further says the people were too frightened to cheer-they dropped on their knees with their faces in the dust. It was a gloomy coronation notwithstanding all the diamonds and glitter of the pageant. There was but one redeeming incident that spoke of human kindliness and affection. When the Czar had been crowned his mother, the widow of the murdered Paul, advanced to do homage to him as her sovereign, but the Czar knelt before his mother and implored her blessing. After the Empress Mother came Constantine, the elder brother, who had waived his rights to the crown, and he was in turn affectionately embraced by Nicholas. This exhibition of fraternal affection in Russia, where brothers had been known to strangle each other in order to grasp the much-coveted sceptre, was considered as something quite unprecedented. The Court Chronicler of the day speaks of it with emotion as a sight to move the hearts of gods and men.
Nicholas died in the middle of the Crimean War and Alexander II. reigned in his stead. The extraordinary pomp of his coronation has never been surpassed. He in his turn held in his hand Orloff's great diamond as the symbol of absolute power. Yet he, who could deal as he chose with the lives of all his subjects, had not power to save his own from the hand of the assassin. The murder of Alexander II. by Nihilists in March, 1881, is fresh in memory as also the succession of the present Czar. The Orloff was then once more taken from its repose in the sumptuous privacy of the Kremlin to enhance the splendors of an Imperial Coronation. Within a short time the Orloff has served to grace yet another splendid ceremony. On the occasion of the recent installation of the Czarevitch as Hetman of the Don Cossacks, the sceptre as well as the crown and globe, were exhibited to the admiring multitudes of Novo Tcherkask.
Such is the career of the imperial diamond given by Gregory Orloff to his Empress. In appearance the gem differs materially from the Regent. It is essentially an Asiatic stone, presenting all the peculiarities of its Eastern birthplace. It is variously described as of about the size of a pigeon's egg or of a walnut. One writer expresses disappointment at it, remarking that the sceptre resembles a gold poker, and the Mountain of Light (a name sometimes given to the Orloff) "which we had pictured to ourselves as big as a walnut was no larger than a hazel-nut!" Never having seen this diamond the present writer cannot speak of its apparent size; but if the drawings are reliable it is certainly a monstrous "hazel-nut" of a diamond.
The cutting of the Orloff is purely in the Eastern style, being what is known as an Indian rose. Asiatic amateurs have always prized size above everything in their gems. The lapidaries therefore treat each stone confided to them with this object mainly in view. A stone is accordingly covered with as many small facets as its shape will allow, and no attempt at a mathematical figure, such as that presented by our European diamonds, is ever ventured upon by them. Cardinal Mazarin was the first who intrusted his Indian rose-diamonds to the hands of European cutters in order to have them shaped into brilliants. The fashion thus set by him has been generally followed throughout Western Europe. Russia, however, true to her Asiatic traditions, keeps to Indian roses, most of her imperial diamonds being of that cut.
The Orloff is now back again safe in the Kremlin, where let us hope it may long rest undisturbed either by rumors of invasion or a demand for a new coronation with its probable attendant assassination, universal terror and judiciary retribution.
III.
Table of Contents LA PELEGRINA.
Table of Contents From time immemorial pearls have competed with diamonds for the first place as objects of beauty. In some countries indeed, notably in Persia, the post of honor has been awarded to them in spite of the brilliant flashes of their more showy rivals.
Pearls differ in one essential respect from other precious gems in that they require no aid to enhance their beauty. They need only to be found, and the less they are handled the more perfect do they appear.
Unlike diamonds, pearls were known to Greeks and Romans, while the area over which they are found comprises a large portion of the globe, extending from China to Mexico and from Scotland to Egypt. A certain pearl of astonishing magnitude formed the chief treasure of ancient Persia, while every one is familiar with the persistent myth of Cleopatra's ear-ring and the cup of vinegar. People for centuries have wondered over the insane extravagance of the draught; but they might have spared their wonder, for no acid which the human stomach can bear is powerful enough to dissolve a pearl.
The various notions relative to the origin of pearls have done credit to the fertility of man's imagination. Some writers have affirmed that they were the product of "ocean dew," whatever that may be, and were accordingly affected by atmospheric conditions. Thus they were large and muddy during the season of the monsoon, becoming clear and lustrous again in hot dry weather, while thunder and lightning had a fatal effect upon them. These ideas were prevalent in the Ceylon fisheries, which at one time were most prolific in their precious crop. Another idea was even still more quaint. According to it, the oyster was looked upon as affecting the habits of the feathered tribe. The pearl was an egg which the oyster laid after the manner of hens.
Modern science, more exact if less imaginative, has decided that the pearl is due to an accident, and an inconvenient accident which frequently befalls the parent oyster. A grain of sand, or some such minute foreign substance, gets within the jealous valves of the mollusk and causes great irritation to the soft body of the pulpy inhabitant. Accordingly it endeavors to render the...
