bery, that the morning after the first booty, Paumettes, dining with some girls at a cook shop, in the Rue d'Argenteuil, threw on the table to them a handful of rose and small brilliant diamonds. The police however got no information. To detect the principal authors it was necessary that Durand, arrested for forging assignats, should confess to obtain his own pardon, and on his information "the regent" was discovered and seized at Tours, sewn up in the headdress of a woman named Lebiène, who, unable to reach England in consequence of the war, was about to sell it at Bordeaux to a Jew, known to Dacosta. They had attempted to get rid of it in Paris, but the value of the gem, estimated at twelve millions of francs, would have awakened dangerous suspicions; they had also given up the idea of cutting the stone, lest the lapidary should betray them.
The majority of the robbers were in turns apprehended, and sentenced for other offences, amongst whom were Benôit Naid, Dacosta, Bernard Salles, Fraumont, and Philipponeau; this last, arrested in London at the close of the year 1791, at the moment he was engraving a plate of assignats of 300 francs, was taken back to France, and shut up in La Force, whence he escaped by favour of the massacres of the 2d of September.
Before having been sentenced for the robbery of the wardrobe, Deschamps had been implicated in a capital affair, whence he was extricated, although so guilty, as he boasted to us, by giving details not to be doubted. He had been concerned in the double murder of the jeweller Deslong and his servant maid, committed with his accomplice, the broker Fraumont.
Deslong had an extensive business, and besides private purchases, he also bartered diamonds and pearls; and as he was known to be an honest man, he often had valuable gems entrusted to him, either to sell or unset. He also frequented auctions, where Fraumont first knew him, who was constantly at sales
