At some remote period--in the thirteenth or fourteenth century--the abbey church of Coulombs, in the diocese of Chartres, in France, became possessed in some miraculous manner of the holy prepuce. This holy relic had the power of rendering all the sterile women in the neighborhood fruitful,--a virtue, we are told, which filled the benevolent monks of the abbey with a pardonable amount of pride. It had the additional virtue of inducing a subsequent easy delivery, which also added to the reputation and pardonable vanity of the good monks. This last virtue, however, we are told, came near causing the loss to the abbey of this inestimable prize, for, as a French writer observes, a too great reputation is at times an unlucky possession; at any rate, the royal spouse of good and valiant King Henry V--he of Agincourt, whom England waded up to its knees in the sea at Dover to meet on his return from that campaign--had followed the example of all good dames and was about to give England an heir. Henry then governed a good part of France. Having heard of the wonderful efficacy of the relic of Coulombs, he early one morning threw the good monks into consternation by the arrival at the convent gate of a duly equipped herald and messenger from his kingship, asking for the loan of the relic with about as much ceremony as Mrs. Jones would ask for the loan of a flat-iron or saucepan from her neighbor, Mrs. Smith. The queen, Catherine of France, was of their own country 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.