Posted by TMN Raugravine on January 19, 2014, 11:55 am
Reading the memoirs of Duc de Saint Simon. He is sent by the Regent of France (Duc d'Orleans) to Spain represent him to the King and Queen and negotiate the marriage of his daughter to the Prince of the Asturias.
He was at a private ball given by the King Philip and his Queen. and he says
"It was then that I first saw and handled at leisure the famous pearl, La Peregrina, which the King that evening wore in his hat, suspended on a magnificent diamond clasp. This pearl, of the finest quality imaginable, is exactly the same size and shape as thos tiny musk-pears (little muscat pears, the smallest variety of all), called 'seven in the mouth', that ripen towards the end of the strawberry season. ..This pearl is as thick and long as the smallest of such pears….They say one similar to it, the other earring, was the one which Mark Antony, in an access of love, dissolved in vinegar for Cleopatra to swallow".
all lifted from
Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon 1715-1723 Fatal Weakness
on January 19, 2014, 11:55 am