More relics are to be seen in the next chapel, those of S. Pierre l'Exorciste, a saint who suffered in the neighbourhood of Rome, having obligingly dug his own grave previously to being beheaded. The authenticity of the relics are vouched for by the sign manual of Cardinal Caprara. One requires faith to believe in the authenticity of these, or any other relics; not that one doubts their preservation by loving hands after the martyrdoms, but there is a great gulf of time which is not easily bridged over. Take, for instance, the relic of the True Cross kept at Notre-Dame. It is not at all improbable that the cross might have been preserved by the friends of Our Lord; and the same remark applies to many of the other relics with which S. Louis and others adorned the Sainte-Chapelle--the Spear, the Handcuffs, the Crown of Thorns, even the linen stained by the precious blood. That the Apostles, or S. Joseph of Arimathea, or Nicodemus, or S. Mary and her sister Martha, would have done their best to gain possession of these relics of their dear Master, is not only possible, but probable. We are all relic-mongers at heart; our forefathers gathered together the remains of saints and martyrs; we ourselves keep locks and curls of hair, babies' teeth, bits of clothing, rings, and photographs. Where is the difference? If the lost first-born's only tooth is precious to its mother, why should not S. Holocaustus' toe-nail be equally so to those who live in the Saint's parish or commune? We have Charles I.'s hair, and Queen Elizabeth's stockings; and there is no reason why a thousand years hence they should not still be in their cases. But if a great upheavement took place, such as the siege of Jerusalem, or the first French Revolution, the saving of such relics would be difficult, although not by any means impossible. Take the finding of the True Cross by S. Helena early in the 4th century. If this be true, it is by no means impossible that it was preserved up to the time of S. Louis. Nor is it impossible that someone connected with the church of S. Denis should have secreted the relic before the desecration of the tombs in 1793. Rumours precede acts; and having a valuable relic, why not hide it away when dangers lurk in the distance? But if so, why did not this person preserve the vessels in which the relics were kept? Why not have buried all those costly chalices, crosses and reliquaries? Why have left them to be seized upon by profane hands and melted up, if there were time to save their contents? But the chief difficulty is to account reasonably for the gap between the Crucifixion and the finding of the Cross; and it requires such a long bridge of faith to traverse this space of three hundred years that one feels reluctantly obliged to take the "Invention" of the Cross in its most literal sense.