Help identify a quote

Please help me place a quote fragment. Or tell me I’ve made it up, I guess that’s possible. My recollection is that the context has Mark Twain describing some artifacts, on one or another excursion to “the Holy Land” (his quotes). He has examined bones, and blood, and various pieces of the true cross, and is commenting on something else that he believes will be accorded reverence someday. He offers that this something will eventually “…rot. Rot and stink, and thus become holy…”

At least that’s what my (clearly dysfunctional) memory offers up when questioned. But it might not have been Twain. At least a search of the most obvious candidate, an on-line The Innocents Abroad, doesn’t seem to reveal this quote fragment. Heck, it may not have been Twain at all, but somebody else. It might even, in all honesty, be something I’ve made up. I don’t know. Nor do I know why this has become so important to me.

What I do know is that it’s driving me nuts! Please help.

Well, there’s this quote from Twain’s Letters from Earth:

“Make a note of it: in man’s heaven there are no exercises for the intellect, nothing for it to live upon. It would rot there in a year – rot and stink. Rot and stink – and at that stage become holy. A blessed thing: for only the holy can stand the joys of that bedlam.”

Its Letter II, but there’s no mention of blood, bones or the True Cross. Innocents Abroad does have a chapter about seeing various hole relics, though. Is it possible that you’re combining the two books?

Yes, that’s exactly it! Clearly I’ve conflated the two ideas. As you say, the correct context deals with a relic of intellect, not a physical relic. Thanks so much for straightening me out. Now my brain can stop endlessly repeating the (slightly mangled) quote and wondering where it belongs. Back to your pigeonhole, quote!

Let us not also forget Ben Franklin’s similar (and even more true) quote: “Fish and visitors stink after three days.”

Interesting, but not one I’d confuse with Twain.