a
Catholic museum, and furnish it with a more curious collection, in its
sort, than any of our other museums contain. Of all the saints in our
calendar, there is not one of any notoriety who has not supplied her with
a finger, a toe, or some other part; or with a piece of a shirt, a
handkerchief, a sandal, or a winding-sheet. Even a bit of a pair of
breeches, said to have belonged to Saint Mathurin, whom many think was a
sans-cullotte, obtains her adoration on certain occasions. As none of
her children have yet arrived at the same height of faith as herself, she
has, in her will, bequeathed to the Pope all her relics, together with
eight hundred and seventy-nine Prayer-books, and four hundred and
forty-six Bibles, either in manuscript or of different editions. Her
favourite breviary, used only on great solemnities, was presented to her
by Cardinal Maury at Rome, and belonged, as it is said, formerly to Saint
Francois, whose commentary, written with his own hand, fills the margins;
though many, who with me adore him as a saint, doubt whether he could
either read or write.

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 trick