PARIS (AFP) – A carved jade seal used by the Chinese emperor Jiaqing (1796-1820) was on Saturday sold at auction in France for nearly 700,000 euros, the auction house said.

The seal is carved with dragons and four characters in the style of stamps from the Han era signifying “graceful trees providing pleasant shade,” according to the Saint Aubin auction house in the southwestern French city of Toulouse.

The 67 square millimetre (2.6 square inch) seal appeared to be unique, it added. It was sold for 693,950 euros ($926,000).

Also under the hammer was an 1807 letter from Josephine, wife of Napoleon, addressed to the great diplomat and foreign minister Talleyrand in which she confided concerns over her marriage.

“I no longer have the courage that I had previously, what little that I still have diminishes every day and I foresee that I will be very unhappy this summer if I must go far from the emperor,” she wrote in the two-page letter which sold for 17,700 euros.

Talleyrand had earlier organized a ball in Warsaw at which Napoleon met Maria Walewska with whom he had a liaison.

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