Note 146 — VIII ROME TO LORETO

Montaigne’s offering had probably disappeared before the shrine was pillaged by the French, as there is no mention of it in a catalogue of the

ex votos

by Murri, printed in 1792.

In 1802 Eustace visited Loreto and found the treasury empty. “No vestige now remains of this celebrated collection of everything that was valuable; rows of empty shelves and numberless cases only enable the treasurer to enlarge on its immensity and curse the banditti that plundered it. ‘Galli,’ he adds, ‘semper rapaces, crudeles, barbarorum omnium Italis infestissimi.’”—Classical Tour, i. 166.