St. Louis gave Baldwin twenty thousand marks as an honorarium for the
gift of this treasure, which he deposited in the Sainte-Chapelle. Here
it remained, occasionally working miracles, as every bit of the true
Cross was bound to do, until the troubles of the league, when it was
mysteriously stolen. Most likely some Huguenot laid hands upon it, and
took the same kind of delight in burning it that he took in throwing
the consecrated wafer to the pigs.
And then more relics were found and disposed of. There was the baby
linen of our Lord; there was the lance which pierced his side; there
was the sponge with which they gave him to drink; there was the chain
with which his hands had been fettered: all these things, priceless,
inestimable, wonder-working, Baldwin sent to Paris in exchange for
marks of silver. And then there were relics of less holiness, but
still commanding the respect and adoration of Christians; these also
were hunted up and sent. Among them were the rod of Moses, and a
portion--alas! a portion only--of the skull of John the Baptist.
Thirty or forty thousand marks for all these treasures! And it seems
but a poor result of the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins that
all which came of it was the transferrence of relics from the East to
the West--nothing else.
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