IX of France.  A relic of such importance might be pawned, it might be given, but it could not be sold.  Therefore Baldwin gave it to King Louis.  By this plan the Venetians were tricked of their relic, on which they had counted; the debt was transferred to France, which easily paid it; the precious object itself, to which Frederick II granted a free passage through his dominions, was conveyed by Dominican friars to Troyes, whither the French court advanced to receive it, and a gift of ten thousand marks reconciled Baldwin and his barons to their loss.  After all, as the prospects of the State were so gloomy, it might be some consolation to them to reflect that so sacred a relic—­which had this great advantage over the wood of the true Cross, that it had not been and could not be multiplied until it became equal in bulk to the wood of a three-decker—­was consigned to the safe custody of the most Christian King of France.

This kind of traffic once begun, and proving profitable, there was no reason why it should not continue.  Accordingly, the Crown of Thorns was followed by a large and very authentic piece of the true Cross.  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.  Such order as the later Greek emperors had preserved, changed into anarchy and misrule; such commerce as naturally flowed from Asia into the Golden Horn, diverted and lost; a strange religion imposed upon an unwilling people; the break-up of the old Roman forms; the destruction by fire of a third of the city; the disappearance of the ancient Byzantine families; the ruin of the wealthy, the depression of the middle classes; the impoverishment of the already poor; the decay and loss of learning:  these were the things which the craft and subtlety of Dandolo, working on the Franks’ lust of conquest, had brought about for the proud city of the East.