untry and Henry was too powerful to be put off or refused;
there was no room for evasion, as the holy prepuce could not be
duplicated; so the poor monks with the greatest reluctance parted with
their precious relic, entrusting it into the hands of the royal envoy,
which wended its way to London, where it in due time, being touched by
the queen, insured a safe delivery. Honest Henry then returned the relic
to France; but so great was its reputation that royalty caused a special
sanctuary to be erected for its reception, and a full period of
twenty-five years occurred before the monks of Coulombs again regained
possession of their prize, during which period the population of the
neighborhood must have suffered from the natural increase of sterility
and the physicians must have reaped a rich harvest owing to the
increased difficulty and complications of labor induced by the absence
of the relic. On its return, the relic was found to have lost none of
its virtues, and the good people and monks were all correspondingly made
happy; in 1870, when the writer was in France, it was still working its
miracles. Balzac found ample facts to found his famous "Droll Stories"
without straining his imagination.

So great an attraction was not to go without attempted rivalry or
imitators; hence we find in the "Dictionary of Moreri," edition of 1715,
in the third volume, at page 108, that several other establishments
claim the honor of a like relic,--namely, the Cathedral of Puy, in
Velay; the collegial church of Antwerp; the Abbey of our Saviour, of
Charroux; and the Church of St. John Lateran, in Rome. All of these have
had very adventurous histories. The Abbey of Charroux was founded by
Charlemagne in 788, and among the relics with which that monarch endowed
the abbey the principal one was a fragment of the holy prepuce. This
abbey enjoyed great reputation, and indulgences were granted by Papal
bull to all those who assisted at the adoration of the relics. In the
internecine wars of the sixteenth century the abbey fell into the hands
of the godless and heretical Huguenots and the holy relic disappeared.
In 1856, while some workmen were at work demolishing an ancient wall on
the abbey site, they discovered some relic cases. The bishop was at once
notified, who immediately proceeded to investigate, when, lo and
behold! there, sure enough, was a piece of desiccated flesh, with marks
of coagulated blood; nothing more or less than the lost pr