Three days later, Martin was shut up in Charenton on the certificate of Doctor Pinel, who stated him to be suffering from intermittent mania with alienation of mind.
He was treated in the kindest manner and was even permitted to enjoy some appearance of liberty. Pinel himself originated the humane treatment of the insane. Martin in the asylum was not forsaken by the blessed Raphaël. On Friday, the 15th, as the peasant was tying his shoe laces, the Archangel in his frock-coat of a light colour, spoke to him these words:
"Have faith in God. If France persists in her incredulity, the misfortunes I have predicted will happen. Moreover, if they doubt the truth of your visions, they have but to cause you to be examined by doctors in theology."
These words Martin repeated to M. Legros; Director of the Royal Institution of Charenton, and asked him what a doctor in theology was. He did not know the meaning of the term. In the same manner, when he was at Gallardon he had asked the priest, M. La Perruque, the meaning of certain expressions the voice had used. For example, he did not understand the wild frenzy of France [le délvie de la France] nor the evils to which she would fall a victim [elle serait en proie]. But there is nothing that need puzzle us in such ignorance, if it really existed. Martin may well have remembered the words he did not understand and which he afterwards attributed to his Archangel still without understanding them.
The visions recurred at brief intervals. On Sunday, March 31, the Archangel appeared to him in the garden, took his hand, which he pressed affectionately, opened his coat and displayed a bosom of so dazzling a whiteness that Martin could not bear to gaze on it. Then he took off his hat.
"Behold my forehead," he said, "and give heed that it beareth not the mark of the beast whereby the fallen angels were sealed."
Louis XVIII expressed a desire to see Martin and to question him. The King, like his favourite Minister, believed the visionary to be a tool in the hands of the extreme party.
On Tuesday, April 2, Martin was taken to the Tuileries and brought into the King's closet, where was also M. Decazes. As soon as the King saw the farmer, he said to him: "Martin, I salute you."
Then he signed to his Minister to withdraw. Thereupon Martin, according to his own telling, repeated to the King all that the Archangel had revealed to him, and disclosed to Louis XVIII sundry secret matters concerning the years he had spent in exile; finally he made known to him certain plots which had been formed against his person. Then the King, profoundly agitated and in tears, raised his hands and his eyes to heaven and said to Martin:
"Martin, these are things which must never be known save to you and to me."