Genre:

Letter, Spoof

Subjects:

Miracle, Supernaturalism, Heat, Instruments, Natural Law, Imposture

    Addressed to the editor of the Catholic Tablet, discusses a report in the Siècle of the alleged liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius after King Victor Emanuel II of Italy had presented an expensive diamond cross to the saint. Puzzled by the incident, given Pope Pius IX's excommunication of the monarch, but asks rhetorically if the blood 'always liquefies under conditions which are indicated by a certain figure to which they would raise the column of mercury in a thermometer', conditions which might be achieved by accepting 'a given quantity of carbon, in the extremely pure form of a diamond cross equivalent to a mass of silver tantamount to 1000,000 fr.'.