When Hompesch treacherously and in the most cowardly manner surrendered the Maltese group to the French, he carried the hand of St. John away with him, and afterward presented it to Paul I., Emperor of Russia, when he was chosen Grand Master of the order, under peculiar circumstances. This singular relic is still preserved in the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg. The tapestries in the church of St. John are known to have cost originally thirty thousand dollars, and were from the famous manufactory of De Vas Frères of Brussels, for whose looms Rubens did not disdain to work. On the way to Malta they were captured by a Moorish corsair, and ransomed by the payment of their full value in gold. Thus they cost the church just sixty thousand dollars. Among other relics which are shown to the visitor is a thorn from the crown worn by Christ, a fragment of the infant Jesus' cradle, one of the stones which slew St. Stephen, the foot of Lazarus, some bones of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and so on. On either side of the nave of the church of St. John are dome-crowned chapels, each having its special altar elaborately ornamented with paintings of more or less merit, together with bronze and marble statues. These chapels were devoted to the several divisions of the Knights,--the different languages, comprising those of France, Provence, Auvergne, Aragon, Castile, Italy, Germany, and Anglo-Bavaria, eight in all. In the French chapel is a sarcophagus in memory of the Duke de Beaujolais, brother of Louis Philippe, who died of consumption at Malta. This tomb is ornamented with a full-length recumbent statue of the youthful prince, and is a fine work of art. From this chapel there are marble steps leading to the crypt in which are the tombs of twelve of the Grand Masters, including those of L'Isle Adam, first Grand Master in Malta, and his successor, La Vallette. The sarcophagi in this place are elaborate works of more than ordinary merit, and are said to have come from Florence, Milan, and Rome. The sepulchre of La Vallette interested us most, as does the life of this remarkable soldier, commander, and prelate. The pedestal is of bronze, upon which the Grand Master is represented as reclining in the full armor of a Knight of the order which he had served so long and so faithfully. At the foot of this tomb lies the body of Oliver Starkey, La Vallette's trusted secretary, who, had he possessed the ambition, might have aspired to almost any post of honor within the gift of the brotherhood. In the silence of this sepulchral chamber, one naturally falls to musing upon the vanities of life and the stern reality of the end. The tomb is the great leveler; the emperor and his humblest subject must alike crumble to dust.