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.
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