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Henckel-Donnersmarck Diamant Wasserfall Diadem | Chaumet Waterfall Tiara

Das Wasserfall Diadem mit beweglichen Diamanttropfen in verschiedenen Grössen, wurde von Chaumet für die zweite Gräfin von Henckel-Donnersmarck gefertigt, eine weitere sehr ähnliche Aigrette im floralem Design stellte Cartier 1908 für die Grossfürstin Wladimir von Rußland her, der Mittelpunkt ist unterschiedlich, hier ein kissenförmiger Diamant und enorme Diamant Tropfen, bei der Grossfürstin ein runder Diamant im Zentrum und hängende Briollettes.
Im letzten Jahrzehnt des 19.Jhd wurden Aigretten zum beliebtesten Kopfputz überhaupt. Sie ergänzten den orientalischen Turban und das historische Kostüm und wurden auf Maskenbällen zum unerläßlichen Requisit und letztendlich passend zu den Abendtoiletten von Worth und den Art-deko-Kleidern von Poiret um 1910.
Ein Kopfschmuck, der steil aufragend, genau die einzigartig funkelndeWirkung der Diamanten unterstreichen soll, drei geschweifte Aigrettenbüschel, mit Diamantkaskaden behängt, erweckten im Zustand der Bewegung die Illusion sich vom Stengel lösender Tautropfen - unaufhörlich glitzernde, herabfallende Tropfen.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck- ein Name, der seit der Oscar-Verleihung in aller Munde ist und das dürfte sich auch herumgesprochen haben, aus einer alten schlesischen Adelsfamilie stammt. Er war jedoch nicht der erste seines Geschlechts der Schlagzeilen machte.
La Paiva - Gräfin Henckel-Donnersmarck, oben als Akt-Modell "Schlafende Nymphe" - die Schönheit hatte es dem Grafen Guido angetan, er heiratet sie zum Entsetzten der Familie und verwöhnt sie mit dem schönsten Schmuck und den kostbarsten Juwelen. Auch diese grossen Diamanten gehörten einst in Ihre Schmuckschatulle.
Die Donnersmarck Diamanten sind zwei aussergewöhnliche gelbe Diamanten - einer davon, ein birnenförmiger Diamant, von 82.48 Karat, der andere ein kissenförmiger Diamant von 102.54 Karat.
Sie werden jeder auf ca $ 1.500.000-2.000.000 geschätzt und im Mai 2007 durch Sothebys versteigert. Die Diamanten waren zuletzt im Besitz einer europäischen Fürstenfamilie.

La Paiva - Therese Lachmann, spätere Madame Villoing, spätere Madame La Marquise de Paiva, spätere Gräfin Henckel von Donnersmarck
Thérèse Lachmann erreichte finanziell gesehen die oberste Sprosse der Karriereleiter als Kurtisane. Nach ihrer Geburt als Webertochter im Jüdischen Ghetto Moskaus des Jahres 1819 hätte sie eigentlich ein Leben in bescheidenen Verhältnissen zu erwarten gehabt. Ihr Vater verheiratete die Siebzehnjährige mit dem jungen Schneider Antoine Villoing. Thérèse wurde von ihren Eltern unabhängig. Die junge Frau wollte sich nicht mit dem Leben als Schneidersfrau abfinden. Sie verließ Mann und Sohn nach zwei Jahren Ehe, reiste nach Paris.
Dort verliebte sich Henri Herz, ein reicher und berühmter Konzertpianist in seine vermeintliche Schülerin und machte sie zu seiner Geliebten. Als Monsieur und Madame Herz kehrten beide von einer Englandreise zurück, doch der französische Hof wollte die offenbar illegale Verbindung nicht anerkennen. Ein Leben in der ersten Gesellschaft Frankreich konnte ihr Henri nicht bieten.
Als Herz eine Konzertreise in Amerika machte, schmiss die Familie Herz Madame kurzerhand hinaus, es folgten Jahre der Entbehrung und durch eine Freundin lernte sie Lord Stanley kenne, er wurde ihr Geliebter und Gönner.
In Baden-Baden traf die nach einem Ehemann mit Titel suchende Kurtisane, denn Ehemann Nummer 1 war inzwischen gestorben, auf den vermögenden portugiesischen Marquis Albino-Francesco de Paiva-Araujo. Kurz nach der Heirat zog sich Ehemann Nummer 2 nach wenigen Monaten frustriert auf sein portugiesisches Schloß zurück, denn die Paiva dachte gar nicht daran, ihr bisheriges Leben nur einen Deut zu ändern. Er erschoss sich 1872.

La Paiva wollte ganz nach Oben.
Der preußische Graf Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck - späterer Fürst und Freund des deutschen Kaisers - elf Jahre jünger und unermeßlich reich, half der ehrgeizigen Marquise. Ein prunkvolles Leben im elegantesten, luxuriösesten Haus an der Champs Elysée lag vor ihr. Doch die feine französische Gesellschaft schritt nie über die Schwelle ihres Hauses, die Neureichen waren nicht gesellschaftsfähig. Ein französischer Zeitgenosse, Emile Bergerat, sah in der Paiva das Urbild der Kurtisane, die einzig um des Geldes Willen Kurtisane ist und die sich einzig in das Geld verliebt. Gästen gegenüber gab sie sich verschwenderisch, ansonsten überwog der Geiz. In Geldgeschäften hatte sie eine einzigartige Begabung. Ihre Unterhaltungen mit ihren Gästen, Bankiers und Wirtschaftlern, setzte sie in Geld um und half ihrem Geliebten bei der Verwaltung des Vermögens.

Ihre Ehe mit dem Marquis wurde 1871 nach Ende des deutsch-französischen Krieges ihrannulliert. Der Heirat mit Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck, dem Beauftragten Bismarcks bei den Verhandlungen über die Friedensbedingungen, in Paris stand nichts mehr im Wege.
Als Hochzeitsgeschenk konnte sich die Zweiundfünfzigjährige das Halsband der französischen Exkaiserin um den Hals legen, es galt als das schönste Schmuckstück seiner Zeit. „Alle meine Wünsche sind mir in Erfüllung gegangen!“ rief die vom Erfolg berauschte, im materiellen Sinne erfolgreichste Pariser Kurtisane, La Paiva, aus.
Durch die eindeutige freundschaftliche Haltung zum deutschen Kaiser vor und während des Krieges, ließ die französischen Freunde ausbleiben. Die großen, prunkvollen Salons gehörten der Vergangenheit an. Der Versuch des Grafen, sich im jetzt deutschen Lothringen in den Deutschen Reichstag wählen zu lassen, scheiterte kläglich. 1878 verließ das Ehepaar auf Wunsch der französischen Regierung das Land - sie wurden quasi ausgewiesen und residierte fortan in Schloß Neudeck in Schlesien, einem Besitz des Fürsten, das auch das schlesische Versailles genannt wurde, der Kaiser kam zu Besuch und die Jagdgesellschaften waren berühmt.

Fünfundsechzig Jahre alt wurde Thérèse Henckel von Donnersmarck. Mit ihrem ganzen Willen hatte sie sich gegen eine Herzkrankheit gewehrt und verloren. Doch viele Jahre gab es kein Grab in der Familiengruft. So spektakulär wie ihr Leben, so unglaublich gestaltete sich auch ihr Ende:
Die zweite Gräfin Henckel von Donnersmarck, Katharina, reich, hochgeboren, schön und jung, öffnete nach dem Ableben des Fürsten, ein Zimmer, dass immer sorgfältig verschlossen gewesen war.
Dort entdeckte sie den Leichnam Thérèses, in einem Behälter mit Alkohol schwebend. Guido hatte sich nicht von ihr trennen können.Man sagt der Herr hätte hier viele Stunden verbracht. Die Kurtisane war die letzte der Henckel von Donnersmarck, die in der Familiengruft begraben wurde.


Chaumet Waterfall Tiara Aigrette Diadem ||Princess Henkel-Donnersmarck Important Jewels| European Princely Family


The waterfall diadem with movable diamond drops of various sizes, was made by Chaumet for the second Countess of Henckel-Donnersmarck, another very similar Aigrette in floral design, was made by Cartier in 1908 for the Grand Duchess Vladimir of Russia, the center is different, here a cushion-shaped diamond and enormous diamond drops, the Grand Duchess a round diamond in the center and hanging briollettes.

Count Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck (1830-1916) was the scion of a wealthy family from Silesia.
In 1848, Guido, aged 18, took over the entire running of the family businesses. In the mid 1850s, he settled in Paris and encountered La Païva, one of the most celebrated courtesans of the Third Empire.

By all accounts the Count was an extremely handsome and charming man, and although he was a number of years her junior, the Count was immediately fascinated by La Païva and fell deeply in love with her and soon they became a couple.

Her love of jewels was equally legendary as the extravagance of her new residence. As Blanche de Païva she had already acquired some fabulous jewels, but her new and rich husband was to ensure that the gems and jewels she was now to receive were matchless; she would have jewels that rivalled, if not surpassed, those of the Empress.
The Henckel von Donnersmarcks were ardent patrons of the fashionable jewellers Chaumet, from whom they commissioned and purchased many of their great jewels, in particular superb pearls and diamonds. And this waterfall tiara above.


Thérèse Lachmann, later Mme Villoing, later Mme la Marquise de Païva, later Countess Henckel von Donnersmarck (1819-84)

Thérèse Lachmann was born in the Moscow ghetto in 1819 (she was born, said someone who knew her, of a witch and a broomstick-handle). Her father was, in fact, a weaver; and on 11 August 1836, at the age of seventeen, she was married to Antoine Villoing, a consumptive young tailor. Marriage brought her a son, and it brought independence ttom her parents; but she could not tolerate the thought of spending the rest of her days as a tailor's wife.

After a year or two, it seems, she left her husband and infant son, and worked her way to Paris.
She was far from beautiful: her hair was blue-black, her eyes were slightly protruding, her nose was Mongolian, while her mouth and chin suggested energy rather than gentleness. But if she was unlikely to attract conventional lovers, she possessed a flamboyant exoticism which appealed to more' original men. She had some rare, disturbing quality which commanded the attention. She also had extraordinary willpower: some inner dynamism drove her on when any weaker woman would have failed.

By 1841 Mme Villoing had acquired a large enough wardrobe to try her fortune; and, calculating, no doubt, that a spa was a likely decor in which to find a rich lover, she set out for Ems, in Prussia. In this watering-place, where the world of fashion took the cure and idled at the casino, Fate (which rewards the adventurous) presented her with an eligible client.

Henri Herz was Jewish, like herself . It is also true that Henri Herz was gifted, affable, charming in the Viennese manner, and kind. It is, however, certain that Madame Villoing soon recognised the advantage of attachment. to a rich and famous pianist. Had she not heard of the Salle Herz, in Paris, the concerts which Herz himself gave to an eager and discriminating audience? Was she not aware that, in these days of Louis-Philippe, a Herz piano was a symbol of taste and sensibility? She listened, ardently, as Herz played to his Prussian audience; she asked if he would take her as a pupil. She exerted her charm to such effect that she was soon his mistress.

It is said that he married her in England. One may question the tradition. When Monsieur and 'Madame' Herz returned to Paris, he took her to a reception at the Tuileries, and they were turned back at the ante-room. It did not suit King Louis-Philippe or the pious Queen Marie-Amélie to accept this irregular alliance.

The rejection was understandable; but it probably explained the profound aversion to France which Thérèse would feel for the rest of her life. She could achieve much with her willpower, and still more with money; but she could not gain recognition in the highest French society. She would always want it, pretend to despise it, and try to make herself amends for her social failure.

However, if Herz did not give her the entree to the Faubourg Saint Germain, where aristocrats lived , he brought her the company of musicians, joumalists and men of letters; Richard Wagner, Hans von Bülow, the pianist and son-in-law of Liszt. . At last the Herz family, enraged by her accumulated debts, turned the so-called Madame Herz out of the house.

Years later, when the hôtel was built she expounded her terrifying theory of willpower. She said that everything happened through willpower; circumstances did not exist, one created them when one wanted. And, talking of concentrated willpower, she quoted the example of a woman who was determined to achieve a certain purpose, and shut herself up, away from the world, hardly eating, for three years, utterly absorbed in her plans. Silence fell round the table. She added: 'I was that woman!'

Onced Thérèse went to Covent Garden. Late, and alone, she entered her box. It was next to Lord Stanley's, and she ensnared him.

She returned in a confident mood to Paris, well aware of the benefits of a title; and since Antoine Villoing had tactfully died of tuberculosis in 1849, she was free to take a titled husband. Once again she set out for a spa. In Baden she discovered a presentable Portuguese marquis, Albino Francesco de Païva-Araujo. On 5 June 1851 she married him.
The history of la Païva (as she would be called) fascinated Horace de Viel-Castel, the historian; he duly recorded it in his memoirs of the Second Empire. On top of the scum of Parisian society,he wrote in 1857, there is a certain Madame de Païva who is the queen of kept women, the sovereign of her race. This woman, who is of Russian origin, was for a long while the mistress of Herz, the pianist, then the mistress of the Duc de Guiche (now the Duc de Grammont), and then the mistress of a number of more or less notable notabilities. However, as the years went by without bringing her either position or fortune, she firmly tesolved that she would win them both.
To begin with she made a Portuguese fall madly in love with her: he was the Marquis de Païva, a cousin of the present Portuguese envoy, and she made him so loving and so mad that the wretched man offered to marry her and, as you can imagine, was accepted.

The morning after the marriage, when the new husband and wife awoke, Madame de Païva addressed her satisfied lover more or less as follows:

'You wanted to sleep with me, and you've done so, by making me your wife, You have given me your name, I acquitted myself last uight. I have behaved like an honest woman, I wanted a position, and I've got it, but all you have is a prostitUte for a wife. You can't take me anywhere, and you can't introduce me to anyone. We must therefore separate. You go back to Portugal. I shall stay here with your name, and remain a whore.' Ashamed and confused, Païva took the advice of his wife.

The Marquis was to shoot hinrself in 1872, but his suicide would disturb la Païva as little as the premature death of her son by Villoing and the early death of her illegitimate daughter by Heuri Herz. She had acquired a title, and now she had to ensure that she was wealthy enough to be the envy of Paris. She discovered a Prussian count eleven years her junior. His name was Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck. He was one day to be a prince, and the friend of the Kaiser. He happened to be a man of glitteting wealth.

Viel-Castel described la Païva's conquest of the Count:

The ex-Herz, now Païva [he wrote], could not live the life she had dreamed of for so long with the dowry that her husband had brought her. She set off in search of a rich and generous prince whom she could enmesh in hcr net. She encountered this prince, or count, or duke, on her travels, and she followed on his trail to Constantinople, St Petersburg, Naples and Paris; the prince always found her in the lap of luxury, dazzling in her strange, voluptuous beauty, a beauty which was a little contrived, a littlee painted, and very artificial. La Païva did not seem to pay any attention whatever to the prince, but one fIne day it was not she who followed the predestined mortal, but the predestined mortal who pursued her.

He was in love to such an extent, to such a degree, that he went to hcr, not to offer her his hand - la Païva would have had no use for it - but the accessories.

'I have three million a year; he told her. 'If you'll live with me, we can share it.'

La Païva, who had spent three hundred thousand frances on the conquest of the prince, accepted to recover her expenses.

I don't know the name of the count, duke or prince, but today [1857] la Païva has the best and most elegant hôtel in Paris, her dinners are reputed to be exquisite, she entertains many artists and men of letters, and her conversation is said to be witty.

I have seen,continued Viel-Castel ,the plans of a palace which Mauguin, the architect, is building her in the Champs-Elysees. The land and the building, without the furnishing, will cost a million and a haIf £ La Païva displays two million francs' worth of diamonds, pearls and precious stones on her person. She is the great debauchee of the century.’

The hôtel Païva was to be, as its châtelaine intended, the most luxurious private hôtel in Paris.


Its architect was Pierre Mauguin; and for ten years he laboured at his creation. He organised what were virtually workshops in the ChampsElysees, where all the work was done in his presence, after his designs. Even the marble and onyx he ordered were carved on the site, as cathedral builders might have carved them in the Middle Ages. La Païva would often arrive, on her way back from the Bois, and inspect the building; once, it is said, she found a carpenter who had been happily settled in some obscure small room for five years. 'What!' she cried. 'You're still here! You must be God Everlasting.'

The new hôtel stood in a Champs-Elysees which, at the end of the Second Empire, was still unspoilt by signs of plebeian commerce. There were no shops, but half-a-dozen nearby private hôtels dazzled the eye and imagination. There was Prince Napoleon's neo-Pompeian palace; there was Emile de Girardin's Roman palace, a scholarly reply to Pion-Pion's architectural paganism. There was the Gothic castle of the Comte de Quinsonas, the Tunisian chateau of Jules de Lesseps, the remarkable rose-coloured hôtel of the Duke of Brunswick. And, finally, among these grandiose pastiches, there was now the hôtel Païva ( The Travellers' Club, today).
The hôtel Païva was mentioned in the guide to the sights of Paris. It stood out, like la Païva herself, as a symbol of the Second Empire; and whether or not one admired the intensity of its ornamentation, it represented, and that with splendour, the taste of the time.

The vast salon, lit by five tall windows, seemed a kind of temple dedicated to the worship of physical pleasure: it was hard to take ones eyes off the magnificent ceiling where Baudry had painted Day chasing Night away. The four quarters of the day were represented by mythological divinities: Apollo bending his bow, Hecate with her silver crescent preparing to wrap herself in her starry mantle, Aurora still asleep on her rosy cloud, Vesper melancholy and pensive. All the figures converged towards the centre of the oval vault, and they were connected by pairs of genii which symbolised the hours. Cabanel and Gerome had also contributed paintings, famous sculptors had carved the mantelpieces in the smaller rooms; but some critics thought that Baudry's ceiling (which would prepare him to paint his great frescoes in the new Opera) was alone worth all the other treasures in the hôtel. 'I want to have been the only person on earth to enjoy your delectable painting,' Mme de Païva had told Baudry. '{ think I have the right, since I paid you the price you asked for it. You must pray to God that I live!'

Yet what other treasures there were! The salons were hung with crimson damask, specially woven at Lyons for eight hundred thousand francs. The staircase, lit by a massive lustre in sculpted bronze, was made - steps, baluster and wall - entirely of onyx. Mrs Moulton, the American banker’s wife, seems to have heard some rumours of its splendour. She recorded that 'a lady, whose virrue is someone else's reward, has a magnifIcent and much-talked-of hôtel in the Champs- Elysees, where there is a staircase worth a million francs, made of real alabaster. Prosper Merimee said: "c' est par là qu'on monte à la vertu.’ (It was reported that Augier, the dramatist, asked to compose some lines in honour of the staircase, replied with the devastating quotation: 'Ainsi que la vertu, Ie vice a ses degres.') The first floor, to which the staircase led, was reserved for la Païva: for her bathroorn, bedroom and boudoir, and a room for Henckel von Donnersmarck.

The bathroom, said Gautier, was worthy of a Sultana in the Arabian Nights. Its walls were onyx and marble, enhanced by Venetian ceramics, and by a ceiIing in the Moorish style. The bath was solid onyx, like the lavatory under the window; it was lined with silvered bronze, with gilt, engraved designs representing fleurs-de-lys. The three taps, sculpted and gilt, were set with precious stones. The bedroom insolently proclaimed the triumph of la volupté. The locks on the doors were said to be worth two thousand francs apiece. The bed, encrusted with rare woods and ivory, delicately wrought, stood like an altar in an alcove, under a ceiling on which Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn, hovered in the empyrean. It had cost a hundred thousand francs. 'Fifty thousand francs?' la Païva had cried, when she saw the original estimate. 'Do you want me to have fleas? Put a hundred thousand francs!' The visitor felt himself in the presence of a single idea: the defiant, obsessive idea of personal glorification.

Her one resource remained her wealth. She was conscious of every franc she possessed, and of every single centime that she spent. Emile Bergerat, the joumalist, a son-in-law of Gautier, wrote the simple truth when he called her
the archetype of those courtesans who are only courtesans for money, and fall in love with money alone. La Païva was a coffer. She was never known to have a passing fancy. . . She had a horror of dogs and cats and birds and children, of everything that is an expense and brings in no reward, and may divert one from the hunt for the Golden Calf. But she would have given herself to a miner for a nugget. She was harder with her household than a Roman patrician, implacable about their slightest failings, magnificently hated. . .

At one of her mansions, so the legend went, there was a servant whose only task was to open and shut one hundred and fItty windows; he began his work at six in the morning and finished it at midnight, and he fmally died of exhaustion. The park was Dante's Hell for the gardeners, who were said to be fined fifty centimes for every leaf found on the ground. Mme de Païva, in person, collected the fines at dawn.

If her meanness was notorious, her financial sense was remarkable; she profited largely from the talk of visiting economists and bankers. She helped von Donnersmarck to manage the fortunes he enjoyed from his coal and iron and zinc and copper mines in Silesia, his vast estates, his industtial interests (when he died, he would be worth more than two hundred and twenty million marks; he would be the richest person in Germany, after Mme Berthe Krupp von Bohlen). La Païva showed a shrewdness and Bair which would have won the respect of any speculator on the Bourse.
La Païva, who had established herself by her feminine attractions, also showed a masculine toughness. She had no time for fires in winter: [it was said] that she lived in icy air, like a monster in Scandinavian mythology. It is recorded that, one day, when she was thrown by a horse, she took a pistol from her belt and shot it.

Païva and her Prussian husband were exiled from France under suspicion of being spies. In 1878, she was now a pathetic figure. She had had a stroke, and she had smashed the Venetian mirror in her room so as not to see her physical decline. Four personal maids had been unable to disguise the signs of her paralysis and degeneration. She would take a series of baths, in vain, to counteract the acidity of her blood: a milk bath, a lime-flower bath, a scented bath; and once, it was said, she tried to bath in champagne. But she had heart disease, and her body swelled unmercifully. She died at Neudeck, the slesian Donnersmarck’s castle, on 21 January 1884. She was sixty-five.
'All my wishes have come to heel, like tame dogs!' she had cried. once, intoxicated by Fortune. She had embodied the triumph of willpower. She had known every pleasure that colossal wealth could buy. And perhaps, because of her wealth, because of her nature, she had never known real happiness.

'And when God took her back,' wrote Emile Bergerat, 'since He does take such creatures back, no one knew what became of the soul of this body, the body of this soul, for she had no tomb and she does not lie in consecrated ground.'
Henckel von Donnersmarck's second wife, rich, wellborn, beautiful and young, apparently found the answer to the enigtna: She unlocked a room at Neudeck which was always carefully locked, and there, preserved in alcohol, the corpse of la Païva was dancing. Even in death, von Donnersmarck had not been able to leave her

excerpt from Joanna Richardson, The Courtesans: The Demi-Monde in 19th-Century France (London: Phoenix Press, 2000), pp. 50 - 66.

 

Following La Païva’s death, the Count remarried in 1887, and his new wife Katharina Wassilievna de Slepzoff, added La Païva’s jewels to her own collection, since she too was a great connoisseur and admirer of jewellery. The two brides of Prince Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck acquired truly spectacular and important gems and jewels. The two important diamonds offered here were in the private collection of Princess Katharina Henckel von Donnersmarck
By family tradition it is believed that these two stones were originally in the collection of La Païva. - the yellow diamonds >>
source:sotheby´s

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Die Henckel-Donnersmarck Diamanten |cushion 102.54 cts
pear-shaped 82.47 cts Famous Yellow Fancy Diamonds
The Donnersmarck Diamonds |Tiara with yellow Diamonds | Jewels European Princely Family Donnermarck
La Paiva | Das Wasserfall Diadem von Chaumet | Waterfall of Diamonds Tiara
Schmuck und Juwelen der Familie Henckel-Donnersmarck | Jewels of the Princely Family
Chaumet Diamant Eidechsen Royaler Schmuck Juwelen | CHAUMET Royal Jewels| Pair of Diamond Lizards
Diamond Tiara Countess Henckel-Donnersmarck
Boucheron Diamant Diadem | Henckel-Donnersmarck | Diamond Necklace -Tiara made by Boucheron
Die Smaragde der La Paiva | Necklac | The Emeralds of La Paiva Countess Henckel-Donnersmarck
Smaragd Diadem der Fürstin Henckel-Donnersmarck | Famous Emerald and Diamond Tiara
Die Perlen der Paiva |Imperial Royal Gems and Pearls History| Empress Eugenies Pearls onced owned by La Paiva

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