Not long ago she made, as she thought, an exceedingly valuable acquisition.  A priest arrived direct from the Holy City of Jerusalem, well recommended by the inhabitants of the convents there, with whom he pretended to have passed his youth.  After prostrating himself before the Pope, he waited on Madame Letitia Bonaparte.  He told her that he had brought with him from Syria the famous relic, the shoulder-bone of Saint John the Baptist; but that, being in want of money for his voyage, he borrowed upon it from a Grecian Bishop in Montenegro two hundred louis d’or.  This sum, and one hundred louis d’or besides, was immediately given him; and within three months, for a large sum in addition to those advanced, this precious relic was in Madame Letitia’s possession.

Notwithstanding this lady’s care not to engage in her service any person of either sex who cannot produce, not a certificate of civism from the municipality as was formerly the case, but a certificate of Christianity, and a billet of confession signed by the curate of the parish, she had often been robbed, and the robbers had made particularly free with those relics which were set in gold or in diamonds.  She accused her daughter, the Princesse Borghese, who often rallies the devotion of her mamma, and who is more an amateur of the living than of the dead, of having played her these tricks.  The Princess informed Napoleon of her mother’s losses, as well as of her own innocence, and asked him to apply to the police to find out the thief, who no doubt was one of the pious rogues who almost devoured their mother.

On the next day Napoleon invited Madame Letitia to dinner, and Fouche had orders to make a strict search, during her absence, among the persons composing her household.  Though he, on this occasion, did not find what he was looking for, he made a discovery which very much mortified Madame Letitia.

Her first chambermaid, Rosina Gaglini, possessed both her esteem and confidence, and had been sent for purposely from Ajaccio, in Corsica, on account of her general renown for great piety, and a report that she was an exclusive favourite with the Virgin Mary, by whose interference she had even performed, it was said, some miracles; such as restoring stolen goods, runaway cattle, lost children, and procuring prizes in the lottery.  Rosina was as relic-mad as her mistress; and as she had no means to procure them otherwise, she determined to partake of her lady’s by cutting off a small part of each relic of Madame Letitia’s principal saints.  These precious ‘morceaux’ she placed in a box upon which she kneeled to say her prayers during the day; and which, for a mortification, served her as a pillow during the night.  Upon each of the sacred bits she had affixed a label with the name of the saint it belonged to, which occasioned the disclosure.  When Madame Letitia heard of this pious theft, she insisted on having the culprit immediately and severely punished; and though the