The king and the knights performed their devotions before the shrine of Saint Marcoul, which was brought expressly from the church of Corbeni, six leagues distance from Rheims. This particular ceremony was in honor of the celebrated old abbot of Nantua, who, in his lifetime, had been eminently famous for his success in curing the scrofulous disorder called “the king’s evil.” After this devotional service, the sovereign master of the order of the Holy Ghost was deemed qualified to cure the evil himself. Accordingly, decked with the mantle and collar of the order, and half encircled by the knights, he repaired to the Abbey Park to touch and cure those who were afflicted with the disease in question. It was no little labor. When Louis XVI. performed the ceremony, he touched two thousand four hundred persons. The form of proceeding was singular enough. The king’s first physician placed his hand on the head of the patient; upon which a captain of the guard immediately seized and held the patient’s hands closely joined together. The king then advanced, head uncovered, with his knights, and touched the sufferers. He passed his right hand from the forehead to the chin, and from one cheek to the other; thus making the sign of the cross, and at the same time pronouncing the words, “May God cure thee; the king touches thee!” In connection with this subject, I may add here that Evelyn, in his diary, records that Charles II. “began first to touch for the evil, according to custom,” on the 6th of July, 1660, and after this fashion. “His Majesty sitting under his state in the Banqueting House, the chirurgeons caused the sick to be brought, and led up to the throne, where they kneeling, the king strokes their faces or cheeks with both his hands at once, at which instant a chaplain, in his formalities, says, ‘He put his hands upon them, and He healed them.’ This is said to every one in particular. When they have been all touched, they come up again in the same order, and the other chaplain kneeling, and having angel-gold strung on white riband on his arm, delivers them one by one to his Majesty, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they pass, while the first chaplain repeats, ‘That is the true light who came into the world.’” The French ceremonial seems to me to have been the less pretentious; for the words uttered by the royal head of the order of the Holy Ghost, simply formed a prayer, and an assertion of a fact: “May God heal thee; the king touches thee!” And yet who can doubt the efficacy of the royal hand of Charles II., seeing that, at a single touch, he not only cured a scrofulous Quaker, but converted him into a good churchman?