I never should have heard in the ordinary way, but which I read greedily enough under the circumstances. I say that I read it; I should say, perhaps, that I made it out word by word, and chuckled over it like a boy reading his first love-letter. The fact was that Sir Nicolas himself had written it, first in English, then in French; and had sent it along to the paper by one of the writing chaps he used to meet in the Hotel de Lille. It was a short paragraph, but more than enough for our purposes; and as it is necessary to my story, I print the English of it here;
"A MISSING MAZARIN
"Sir Nicolas Steele, whose devotion to every form of le sport has won him the affections of many Parisians, is likely, they say, shortly to offer for sale here a famous white diamond, the history of which is scarcely less eventful than that of the old 'Sancy' stone itself. This is one of the diamonds which Diana of Poictiers wore—one of those stones which Mazarin took, with the 'Mirror of Portugal,' from the Duke of Epernon, to whom they had been sold by Henrietta of France. It will be remembered that the old 'Sancy' stone was stolen in the year 1791. Sir Nicolas Steele has documentary evidence, dating back to the earliest years of the century, that the diamond he now possesses was one of those taken by the mob who sacked the Treasury in the first days of the Revolution. Apart from its most interesting historical
