The Comtes de Provence have always granted special privileges to the town. Under Queen Jeanne, a guard was stationed all the time at the top of the church-tower to watch the ships and make signals. Sentinels were obliged to call to one another and answer every hour during the night. The people of Saintes-Maries were also exempted by the queen from payment of tolls and the tax upon salt. Monsieur le curé explains all these things in his book, which is very interesting. He also describes therein, "as in duty bound," the discovery of the sacred bones. In 1448, King René, being then at Aix, his capital, heard a preacher declare that Saintes Marie-Jacobé and Salomé were certainly buried beneath the church of Villa-de-la-Mar. René at once consulted his confessor, Père Adhémar, and sent a messenger to the Pope, asking that he be authorized to make search underground in the church. The authorization was given in the month of June in the same year. The Archbishop of Aix, Robert Damiani, presided at the search. They found the spring; near the spring was an earthen altar; at the foot of the altar a marble tablet with this inscription, upon which the good curé descants at great length: D. M. IOV. M. L. CORN. BALBUS P. ANATILIORUM AD RHODANI OSTIA SACR. ARAM V. S. L. M. Lastly, they found the bones of the saints, perfectly recognizable, and, in addition, a head sealed up in a leaden box, which, according to the curé, was the head of Saint James the Less, brought from Jerusalem by Marie-Jacobé, his mother. The bones, having been devoutly taken from their resting-place, were with great ceremony bestowed in shrines of cypress wood. The king was present with his court. The papal legate was also there, and an archbishop, ten or twelve bishops, a great number of ecclesiastical dignitaries, professors, and learned doctors. The chancellor of the University of Avignon, too, and--so the reports of the proceedings set forth--three prothonotaries of the Holy See and three notaries public. And so nothing is more firmly established than the authenticity of the relics of the saints. But various apocryphal legends had appeared to throw doubt upon the truth, and Monsieur le curé was at work upon the following passage while Livette, with increasing uneasiness, was awaiting him in the parlor. "Among the popular fallacies," wrote the curé, "which destroy pure tradition, we must stigmatize as one of the most deplorable, I may say one of the most pernicious, that one which insists that among the passengers of the miraculous craft was a third Saint Marie, surnamed the Egyptian. It is downright heresy! How could it have taken root, and how far does it extend?" Monsieur le curé proposed to retouch that last phrase forthwith, and for a very good reason.