ever-recurring instances of his activity from the age of St. Enimie down to our own time preclude this belief. An heirloom in the family of Dom Pedro of Brazil is said to have been loaned to one of the pioneer aviators, Santos-Dumont, by Dom Pedro’s daughter, the Comtesse d’Eu. This was a medal of St. Benedict and had been long regarded as a powerful talisman in the Braganza family. One of its princely members had a striking proof of this virtue in 1705, when, after having worn the medal but two weeks, he was saved from deadly peril by the timely discovery and consequent defeat of a plot. Santos-Dumont had just experienced a terrible fall while experimenting with his new airship in the Rothschild park near Paris, and this it was that induced the Comtesse d’Eu to loan him the talismanic medal, with the injunction that he should always wear it on his person, and the assurance that if he did so no further harm could befall him. The talisman seemed to do its work well, for although the aviator had many narrow escapes, he was always saved from serious injury. Unfortunately, however, a thief picked it from the pocket of his coat while he was busily engaged in work on an airship in a Paris machine-shop.[501] While it was customary to close the shops of the goldsmiths on Sundays and feast-days, a special exception permitted the “Confrérie de St. Eloi,” the goldsmiths’ guild, to open a single shop (not always the same one) on each Sunday and feast-day, the profits of the sales being devoted to providing a dinner on Easter Day for the poor of the Hôtel Dieu.[502] This combination of commercialism and philanthropy has illustrations in our own day, and, whatever may be the ulterior motives, some good results are certainly attained. The Well of St. Cuthbert, near Cranstock, Newquay, England, long enjoyed the repute of miraculously curing the ailments of infants. Not only were curative powers attributed to the waters of the well, but also to a perforated stone alongside of it. As recently as 1868 a puny infant is said to have been passed through the orifice of this stone with the firm expectation that this act would strengthen the infant and bring good luck to it.[503]