Upon this, Hildoin saw he had better make a clean breast of it, and he told the following story, which he had received from his priestly agent, Hunus.  While Hunus and Lunison were at Pavia, waiting for Eginhard’s notary, Hunus (according to his own account) had robbed the robbers.  The relics were placed in a church; and a number of laymen and clerics, of whom Hunus was one, undertook to keep watch over them.  One night, however, all the watchers, save wide-awake Hunus, went to sleep; and then, according to the story which this “sharp” ecclesiastic foisted upon his patron,

it was borne in upon his mind that there must be some great reason why all the people, except himself, had suddenly become somnolent; and, determining to avail himself of the opportunity thus offered (oblata occasione utendum), he rose and, having lighted a candle, silently approached the chests.  Then, having burnt through the threads of the seals with the flame of the candle, he quickly opened the chests, which had no locks;[23] and, taking out portions of each of the bodies which were thus exposed, he closed the chests and connected the burnt ends of the threads with the seals again, so that they appeared not to have been touched; and, no one having seen him, he returned to his place. (Cap. iii. 23.)

Hildoin went on to tell Eginhard that Hunus at first declared to him that these purloined relics belonged to St. Tiburtius but afterwards confessed, as a great secret, how he had come by them, and he wound up his discourse thus: 

     They have a place of honour beside St. Medardus, where they are
     worshipped with great veneration by all the people; but whether we
     may keep them or not is for your judgment. (Cap. iii. 23.)

Poor Eginhard was thrown into a state of great perturbation of mind by this revelation.  An acquaintance of his had recently told him of a rumour that was spread about that Hunus had contrived to abstract all the remains of SS.  Marcellinus and Petrus while Eginhard’s agents were in a drunken sleep; and that, while the real relics were in Abbot Hildoin’s hands at St. Medardus, the Shrine at Seligenstadt contained nothing but a little dust.  Though greatly annoyed by this “execrable rumour, spread everywhere by the subtlety of the devil,” Eginhard had doubtless comforted himself by his supposed knowledge of its falsity, and he only now discovered how considerable a foundation there was for the scandal.  There was nothing for it but to insist upon the return of the stolen treasures.  One would have thought that the holy man, who had admitted himself to be knowingly a receiver of stolen goods, would have made instant restitution and begged only for absolution.  But Eginhard intimates that he had very great difficulty in getting his brother abbot to see that even restitution was necessary.