The French seized this relic, as the crusaders had done in the twelfth century; but instead of conveying it from the church of San Lorenzo to the abbey of St. Denis (_selon les regles_), they most sacrilegiously sent it to a _laboratory_. Instead of submitting it, with a traditional story, to a _council of Trent_, they handed it over to the _institute of Paris_; and chemists, geologists, and philosophers, were called on to decide the fate of that relic which bishops, priests and deacons had pronounced to be too sacred for human investigation, or even for human touch. _The result of the scientific investigation was, that the emerald dish was a piece of green glass!_

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