I have read and collated a great many manuscripts of the "Golden
Legend." I know all those described by my learned colleague,
M. Paulin Paris, in his handsome catalogue of the MSS. of the Biblotheque
du Roi. There were two among them which especially drew my attention.
One is of the fourteenth century and contains a translation by Jean
Belet; the other, younger by a century, presents the version of
Jacques Vignay. Both come from the Colbert collection, and were
placed on the shelves of that glorious Colbertine library by the
Librarian Baluze--whose name I can never pronounce without uncovering
my head; for even in the century of the giants of erudition, Baluze
astounds by his greatness. I know also a very curious codex in the
Bigot collection; I know seventy-four printed editions of the work,
commencing with the venerable ancestor of all--the Gothic of Strasburg,
begun in 1471, and finished in 1475. But no one of those MSS., no
one of those editions, contains the legends of Saints Ferreol,
Ferrution, Germain, Vincent, and Droctoveus; no one bears the name
of the Clerk Alexander; no one, in find, came from the Abbey of
Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Compared with the MS. described by
Mr. Thompson, they are only as straw to gold. I have seen with my
eyes, I have touched with my fingers, an incontrovertible testimony
to the existence of this document. But the document itself--what
has become of it? Sir Thomas Raleigh went to end his days by the
shores of the Lake of Como, whither he carried with him a part of
his literary wealth. Where did the books go after the death of that
aristocratic collector? Where could the manuscript of the Clerk
Alexander have gone?

"And why," I asked myself, "why should I have learned that this
precious book exists, if I am never to possess it--never even to
see it? I would go to seek it in the burning heart of Africa, or