_Le Prince des Feuilles_ is, to the best of my knowledge, presented for
the first time in an English garb. It is more of a fairy tale than the
four preceding it, and appears to me to have been suggested to Madame
de Murat by her residence at Auch, where, indeed, it is most likely to
have been written.
The natural history of the turquoise had been newly popularized by
the publications of Chardin and other Oriental travellers; and more
particularly by that of a book by Boethius de Boot, _Le Parfait
Joallier_; Lyons, 1644. The turquoise "de la Vieille Roche," that
Madame de Murat speaks of, is a stone found near Nichapour and
Carasson, in Persia--the true Oriental turquoise; whilst those called
"de la Nouvelle Roche," are not stones, but petrified bones, and are
found in Europe, particularly in France, at Auch, (the very place
to which Madame de Murat was exiled;) and near Simmorre, in the
Département du Gers; and in the Nivernais, according to the account of
Reamur in the _Mémoires de l'Académie_, 1715.
Turquoises were formerly very highly prized, and all kinds of virtues
and properties attributed to them, the greater part of which are
fabulous, although detailed gravely by de Boot, who was physician to
Rodolph II., Emperor of Germany. The jewellers, even in his day, took
great pains to distinguish between those that retained their colour
and those that turned green. A fine unchanging turquoise, the size of
a filbert, sold in that day for two hundred thalers and upwards. "The
turquoise possesses such attractions," says de Boot, "that men do not
think their hands are well adorned, nor their magnificence sufficiently
displayed, if they are not decked with some of the finest." The name is
supposed to have been derived from Turkey, the country from which they
were probably first imported; but others deduce it from Turchino, a
name given by Italians to a particular blue.
Even at this day, the discoloration or loss of a turquoise is
considered a prognostication of evil.