Portal logo
FIRE IN THE EARTH
angry Persians stormed the embassy and killed him. This, of course, meant the threat ot war between Persia and Russia. (Russia is now known, as we write this, as the Union ot Soviet Socialist Republics; Persia is now known, as we write this, as Iran. It is difficult to guess what either or both will be known as when you read this.) Persia, weaker nation by far, decided to appease Russia. She sacrificed much wealth, including The Shah, to save her race that had hum­bled the Moguls.
So the Russians seized The Shah, after it had been car­ried over the border by the Persian prince, Chozre Mizra. It was presented to the czar as a "token of grief for the murder, although the czar, as a matter of fact, thought Griboyedoff was a renegade in the first place, and.had sent him to Persia to get him out of the way.
That diamond remained in the crown jewels of Russia until a misty Petrograd dawn of March 2, 1917, when the House of Romanoff fell.
A new Russian nation now held the diamond. On July 23, 1924, it was removed from the Diamond Room in the White Palace to Moscow and eight years later the strong boxes with the regalia and treasures were opened and this diamond was included in the "Diamond Treasure of the Union of Soviet Republics" and placed in the Kremlin.
What may happen to it, what has happened to it—? It was shaped like a coffin.
(116)