In the year 1238, the pressure of poverty and impending ruin compelled the Emperor Baldwin the Second, to sell what the piety of St. Louis, King of France, induced him as eagerly to purchase.[18] A very considerable sum was given in exchange for the holy wood and on its arrival in Paris, it was deposited by King Louis in a chapel which he built on this occasion. There, the Cross remained for above three hundred years, until at length, on the 20th of May, 1575, it disappeared from its station. The most anxious researches failed in tracing the robber, or recovering the spoil, and the report which accused King Henry the Third of having secretly sold it to the Venetians may be considered as a proof of the popular animosity rather than of royal avarice.[19] To appease in some degree the loud and angry murmurs of his subjects, Henry, the next year, on Easter day, announced that a new Cross had been prepared for their consolation, of the same shape, size, and appearance as the stolen relic, and asserted, most probably with perfect truth, that in Divine powers, or claim to religious worship, it was but little inferior to its model. "The people of Paris," says Estoile, an eye-witness of this transaction, "being very devout, and easy of faith on such subjects" (he is speaking of the sixteenth century,) "gratefully hailed the restoration of some tangible and immediate object for their prayers." Of the original fragment I can discern no further authentic trace; and here, then, it seems to have ended its long and adventurous career. Before I conclude, I ought, perhaps, to make some mention of the pretended nails of the passion, which were obtained by Constantine the Great at the same time with the cross. He melted a part of them into a helmet for himself; and the other part was converted into a bridle for his horse, in supposed obedience to a prophetic text of Zechariah: "In that day shall there be upon the bells (bridles) of the horses, holiness unto the Lord."[20] Yet, though the helmet alone might appear to have required all the nails which could possibly be employed in a crucifixion, it is not unusual in southern Europe to meet with fragments of old iron, for which the same sacred origin is claimed. Thus, for instance, at Catania, in Sicily, I have seen one of these nails, which is believed to possess miraculous powers, and exhibited only once a year with great solemnity. There is another in a private oratory of the Escurial; and I was surprised in observing in the same case a relic of Sir Thomas à Becket. All the nails, from the time of Constantine, are rejected as spurious by Cardinal Baronius;[21] yet a former Pope had expressed his belief in their authenticity;[22] and the ingenious idea of miraculous vegetation might have been easily applied to them. But to trace the other parts of this real or fabulous history, and more especially their insertion in the Iron crown of Lombardy, would require, though scarcely deserve, a separate essay.