“Such,” observes a late writer on this subject, “is one of the miracles of the ‘Golden Legend,’ which a wicked wit might comment on, and see nothing extraordinary in the whole story. The two nuns might be missing between the nativities, and be found at last with a child seated between them. They might not choose to account either for their absence or their child: the only touch of miracle is, that they asseverated they saw _no child_, that I confess is a _little (child)_ too much. Ribadeneira’s Lives of the Saints exhibit more of the legendary spirit than Alban Butler’s work on the same subject, (which, by the bye, is the most sensible history of these legends;) for wanting judgment and not faith, the former is more voluminous in his details, and more ridiculous in his narratives. Alban Butler affirms that St. Genevieve, the patron of Paris, was born in 422, at Nanterre, four miles from Paris, near the present Calvary there, and that she died a virgin on this day in 512, and was buried in 545, near the steps of the high altar, in a magnificent church, dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, began by Clovis, where he also was interred. Her relics were afterwards taken up and put into a costly shrine about 630. Of course they worked miracles. Her shrine of gold and silver, covered with precious stones, the presents of kings and queens, and with a cluster of diamonds on the top, presented by the intriguing Mary de Medicis, is, on calamitous occasions, carried about Paris in procession, accompanied by shrines equally miraculous, and by the canons of St. Genevieve walking barefoot.