We have been carried on a few years too far by following Lamennais to the period of his conversion to democracy. At the time of the completion of his book on indifference in the matter of religion, that is in 1823, he, like all the other adherents of the principle of theocracy, still aimed at strengthening the authority of the monarch by means of the authority of the church.
Presently the particular monarch in question dies, and Charles X. ascends the throne. He ascends it with all possible pomp and ceremonial. He is taken to Reims to be anointed. The ceremony was performed on the 20th of May 1825, and it seemed as if the old royalist and religious superstitions had risen from their graves for the occasion. One of the oldest of these was the belief that crowned heads possessed the power of curing scrofula. This power had been regarded as absolutely indisputable. A lady of Valenciennes, who had been touched by Louis XV., and who afterwards, in the hope of getting into favour, sent in a medical certificate that she was entirely cured of scrofula, received the answer: "The privileges which the Kings of France enjoy in the matter of the healing of scrofula have been attested by such conclusive proofs that they require no further confirmation."
This was under Louis XV. Under Charles X. people showed themselves no less orthodox. We remember that at the time of the Revolution the ampulla containing the sacred oil was shivered into fragments. In the eyes of pious Catholics this was sacrilege of the deepest dye. Gregory of Tours, the earliest chronicler who tells of the baptism of Clovis, has evidently no idea that this little fig-shaped vial of heavenly anointing oil was used on the occasion. But some centuries later various traditions on the subject were committed to writing, some of them telling that the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove, others that an angel, had deposited it in the cathedral of Reims; and these traditions, which had survived as popular beliefs, were now freshened up again. The man who had been priest at the church of St. Remi at Reims in 1793, and from whom the sacred ampulla had been taken by force, came forward and declared that before giving it up he had extracted most of the congealed oil which it contained; and this he now produced.[1] Another of the faithful asserted that at the time the sacrilege was committed he had collected some fragments of the ampulla, which he had kept until now. The priest and the church officials recognised these fragments as genuine.