The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X eBook
baron Arthur Léon Imbert de Saint-Amand
“The 17th of October, 1793, M. Hourelle, then
municipal officer and first warden of the parish of
Saint-Remi, came to me and notified me, from the representative
of the people, Ruhl, of the order to remit the reliquary
containing the holy ampulla, to be broken. We
resolved, M. Hourelle and I, since we could do no
better, to take from the holy ampulla the greater part
of the balm contained in it. We went to the Church
of Saint-Remi; I withdrew the reliquary from the tomb
of the saint, and bore it to the sacristy, where I
opened it with the aid of small iron pincers.
I found placed in the stomach of a dove of gold and
gilded silver, covered with white enamel, having the
beak and claws in red, the wings spread, a little
phial of glass of reddish color about an inch and
a half high corked with a piece of crimson damask.
I examined this phial attentively in the light, and
I perceived a great number of marks of a needle on
the sides; then I took from a crimson velvet bag,
embroidered with fleurs-de-lis in gold, the needle
used at the time of the consecration of our kings,
to extract the particles of balm, dried and clinging
to the glass. I detached as many as possible,
of which I took the larger part, and remitted the
smaller to M. Hourelle.”
The particles thus preserved were given into the hands
of the Archbishop of Rheims, who gathered them in
a new reliquary.
Sunday, the 22d of May, 1825, the day of the feast
of the Pentecost, the Archbishop of Rheims assembled
in a chapel of that city the metropolitan clergy,
the principal authorities, and the persons who had
contributed to the preservation of the particles of
the precious relic, in order to proceed, in their presence,
to the transfusion of those particles into the holy
chrism, to be enclosed in a new phial. A circumtantial
report of this ceremony was prepared in duplicate.
“Thus,” said the Moniteur, May 26, “there
remains no doubt that the holy oil that will flow
on the forehead of Charles X. in the solemnity of
his consecration, is the same as that which, since
Clovis, has consecrated the French monarchs.”
The day of the consecration approached. The Mayor
of Rheims, M. Ruinard de Brimont, had not a moment’s
rest. At the consecration of Louis XV., about
four hundred lodgings had been marked with chalk.
For that of Charles X. there were sixteen hundred,
and those who placed them at the service of the administration
asked no compensation. The 19th of May was begun
the placing of the exterior decorations on the wooden
porch erected in front of the door of the basilica.
It harmonized so completely with the plan of the edifice
that “at thirty toises,” it seemed a part
of the edifice. The centrings and the interior
portieres of this porch presented to the view a canopy
sown with fleurs-de-lis in the midst of which stood
out the royal cipher and the crown of France, modelled
in antique fashion. These decorations were continued
from the portal along the beautiful gallery that led
