“Lock it up in the vestry cupboard, and say no more about it.” And this was done with some ceremony and a feeling of disappointment. The gathered relics, placed in a silver reliquary lined with white silk, and enclosed in a metal case under three locks, were deposited within the tomb of St. Remy. There it remained till Charles X. was solemnly crowned in 1825. In that year, positively for the last time, the knights of the Sainte Ampoule were solemnly created, and did their office. As soon as Charles entered the choir, he knelt in the front of the altar. On rising, he was led into the centre of the sanctuary, where a throned chair received his august person. A splendid group half-encircled him; and then approached the knights of the Sainte Ampoule in grand procession, bearing all that was left of what the sacred dove did or did not bring to St. Remy, for the anointing of Clovis. Not less than three prelates, an archbishop and two bishops, received the ointment from the hands of the knights, and carried it to the high altar. Their excellencies and eminences may be said to have performed their office with unction, but the people laughed alike at the knights, the pomatum, and the ceremony, all of which combined could not endow Charles X. with sense enough to keep his place. The knights of the Sainte Ampoule may be said now to have lost their occupation for ever. Of all the memorabilia of Rheims, the good people there dwelt upon none more strongly than the old and splendid procession of these knights of the Sainte Ampoule. The coronation cortège seemed only a subordinate point of the proceedings; and the magnificent canopy, upheld by the knights over the vial, on its way from the abbey of St. Remy to the cathedral, excited as much attention as the king’s crown. The proceedings, however, were not always of a peaceable character. The Grand Prior of St. Remy was always the bearer of the vial, in its case or shrine. It hung from his neck by a golden chain, and he himself was mounted on a white horse. On placing the vial in the hands of the archbishop, the latter pledged himself by solemn oath to restore it at the conclusion of the ceremony; and some half-dozen barons were given as hostages by way of security. The procession back to the abbey, through the gayly tapestried streets, was of equal splendor with that to the cathedral.