On a vu des amants transis,
Ainsi qu'une faveur bien chère,
Implorer un simple souris,
Mais ce n'est pas le tien, ma chère.
[2] Reden über die Religion. Fifth edition, pp. 50, 54, 56.
[3] Du progrès de la révolution et de la guerre contre l'église.
[4] Atque ex hoc putidissimo indifferentismi fonte absurda illa fluit ac erronea sententia, seu potius deliramentum, asserendam esse ac vindicandam cuilibet libertatem conscientiæ.... At quæ pejor mors animæ quam libertas erroris? inquiebat Augustinus. Freno quippe omni adempto, quo homines contineantur in semitis veritatis, proruit jam in præceps ipsorum natura ad malum inclinata.... Huc spectat deterrima illa ac nunquam satis execranda et detestabilis libertas artis librariæ ad scripta quælibet edenda in vulgus, quam tanto convicio audent nonnulli efflagitare ac promovere.
[5] Lamennais, Essai sur l'indifférence; Progrès de la révolution et de la guerre contre l'église; Correspondance par M. Forgues; Œuvres inédits par M. Blaize; Schleiermacher, Reden über die Religion; Renan, Essais de morale et de critique; Schérer, Mélanges de critique religieuse.
[XIII]
CULMINATION AND COLLAPSE OF THE REACTION
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."