the
country. It was the fete of the accession to the throne--a luxury of
the crown. The oaths to exterminate heretics, formerly taken by the
kings of France at their coronation, were modified in concert with the
court of Rome and the bishops. For these was substituted the oath to
govern according to the Charter. Thus it was in reality a new
consecration of liberty as well as of the crown." The French love pomp,
ceremonies, spectacles. The idea of a consecration was not displeasing
to them, and with rare exceptions, the Voltaireans themselves refrained
from criticising the ceremony that was in the course of preparation. It
soon became the subject of conversation on every side.

Six millions voted by the two Chambers for the expenses of the
coronation, at the time that the civil list was regulated at the
beginning of the reign, permitted the repairs required by the Cathedral
of Rheims to be begun in January, 1825. The arches that had sunken, or
threatened to do so, were strengthened; the ancient sculptured
decorations were restored; the windows were completed; the fallen
statues were raised. It was claimed that even the holy ampulla had been
found, that miraculous oil, believed, according to the royal
superstitions of former ages, to have been brought from heaven by a
dove for the anointing of crowned heads. The Revolution thought that it
had destroyed this relic forever. The 6th of October, 1793, a
commissioner of the Convention, the representative of the people, Ruhl,
had, in fact, publicly broken it on the pedestal of the statue of Louis
XV. But it was related that faithful hands had succeeded in gathering
some fragments of the phial as well as some particles of the balm
contained in it. The 25th of January, 1819, the Abbe Seraine, who in
1793 was cure of Saint-Remi of Rheims, made the following declaration:--

"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 go