eterred,--by the scruples that interrupted the
investigations of the great Linne and stopped him on the very threshold
of verification. On one of his travels his secretary brought him a
divining wand, with an account of its powers. Linne hid a purse
containing one hundred ducats under a _ranunculus_[10] in the garden.
He then took a number of witnesses who experimented with the wand all
over the ground, but without success. Indeed, they trod the ground so
completely that Linne could not find where he had buried the purse.

"They then brought in the 'man with the wand' and he immediately
pointed out the right direction, and then the very spot where the money
lay. Linne's remark was that another experiment would convert him to
the wand. But he resolved not to be converted, and therefore did not
repeat the experiment. Possibly feeling that it was neither science
nor religion, he would have nothing to do with any other conceivable
alternative."

In _The London Times_ of November 3rd, 1882, there was published under
the head of "Foreign Intelligence," the following dispatch which may be
regarded as a tragic sequel of the foregoing paragraphs:

"The titular Archbishop of Lepanto, who is the head of the Chapter of
St. Denis, has addressed a remonstrance to the Government against the
renewed divining rod experiments on which Madame Caillavah is insisting
under her compact with the State for a division of the spoils. He
dwells on the absurdity of the theory that on the Revolutionary seizure
of 1793 the Benedictines could have concealed a portion of their
treasures, of which printed lists existed and the most valuable of
which were notoriously confiscated.

"As to the notion of an earlier secretion of treasures, the memory of
which had perished, he urges that St. Denis having belonged to the
Benedictines from its very erection, no motive for secretion existed
and had there been any, the tradition or record of it would have been
preserved, while at least four successive reconstructions would
certainly have brought any such treasure to light. The mob of 1793,
moreover, actually ransacked the vaults, after the removal of the
bodies, for the very purpose of discovering such secret hoards. St.
Denis, in short, is the very last place in the world for
treasure-trove, and as for the central crypt, which the sorceress
claims to break into, it was rifled in 1793 when it contained
fifty-three bodies which left no vacant space.