In the meantime the police were upon the alert to discover the person whom they suspected of having stolen the relics for the diamonds, and not the diamonds for the relics.  Among our fashionable and new saints, surprising as you may think it, Madame de Genlis holds a distinguished place; and she, too, is an amateur and collector of relics in proportion to her means; and with her were found those missed by Madame Letitia.  Being asked to give up the name of him from whom she had purchased them, she mentioned Abbe Saladin, the pretended priest from Jerusalem.  He, in his turn, was questioned, and by his answers gave rise to suspicion that he himself was the thief.  The person of whom he pretended to have bought them was not to be found, nor was any one of such a description remembered to have been seen anywhere.  On being carried to prison, he claimed the protection of Madame Letitia, and produced a letter in which this lady had promised him a bishopric either in France or in Italy.  When she was informed of his situation, she applied to her son Napoleon for his liberty, urging that a priest who from Jerusalem had brought with him to Europe such an extraordinary relic as the shoulder of Saint John, could not be culpable.

Abbe Saladin had been examined by Real, who concluded, from the accent and perfection with which he spoke the French language, that he was some French adventurer who had imposed on the credulity and superstition of Madame Letitia; and, therefore, threatened him with the rack if he did not confess the truth.  He continued, however, in his story, and was going to be released upon an order from the Emperor, when a gendarme recognized him as a person who, eight years before, had, under the name of Lanoue, been condemned for theft and forgery to the galleys, whence he had made his escape.  Finding himself discovered, he avowed everything.  He said he had served in Egypt, in the guides of Bonaparte, but deserted to the Turks and turned Mussulman, but afterwards returned to the bosom of the Church at Jerusalem.  There he persuaded the friars that he had been a priest, and obtained the certificates which introduced him to the Pope and to the Emperor’s mother; from whom he had received twelve thousand livres for part of the jaw bone of a whale, which he had sold her for the shoulder-bone of a saint.  As the police believe the certificates he has produced to be also forged, he is detained in prison until an answer arrives from our Consul in Syria.

Madame Letitia did not resign without tears the relic he had sold her; and there is reason to believe that many other pieces of her collections, worshipped by her as remains of saints, are equally genuine as this shoulder-bone of Saint John.

LETTER XXI.

Paris, August, 1805.