The Orloff
Some might say the most outstanding of the treasures held within the Treasures of the USSR Diamond Fund of the Kremlin is a large diamond known as the Orloff (sometimes spelt Orlov.) A few sources believed that the Orloff is but a part of the larger Great Mogul and therefore the same stone which vanished after the pillaging of Delhi in 1739.
The particulars of the Orloff's story once served as the eye of a Hindu devotional statue. The man held responsible for its removal was a French deserter. Persian merchant who then owned the Orloff, found an eager buyer in Count Gregori Gregorievich Orloff, a Russian nobleman and army officer who caught the fancy of the Grand Duchess, destined to become Catherine the Great. The Count paid a purported huge amount of Dutch florins. Count Orloff sought to rekindle his forlorn romance with Catherine the Great of Russia by offering her the diamond. While he failed to regain her affections, Catherine had never wore the diamond and named the diamond after the Count, and had her jeweler design the Imperial Scepter incorporating the Orloff.
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