But if S. Médard was vindictive in his ways, he compensated us for his downpours by inventing that handy instrument without which life would be unbearable. The French say that an Englishman goes to bed in his hat, clutching his umbrella, which is a polite way of reproving him for his peculiar and insular practices; but how could he live without his umbrella? and kind Médard, foreseeing the state of dampness to which our northern atmosphere was leading us, turned to account an accident which befel him. In was in this wise. On a certain hot day in a certain hot summer, Médard and his friends went a picnicing, when suddenly a storm disturbed their innocent junketings. All were thoroughly soaked through from head to foot, with the exception of the host, who suddenly found himself protected from the rain by the outspread wings of an eagle which hovered over his head. This was the birth of the umbrella, which, as everyone knows, is of French, and not of oriental origin. In Belgium the rainy Saint is one Godeliève; in Germany the character is undertaken by the Seven Sleepers, showing the wisdom of the Teuton in slumbering through his miseries. Amongst the flowers, the moneywort is dedicated to S. Médard. At the commencement of the last century, Jansenist pilgrimages and divers miracles took place at the little church, curing those suffering from convulsions; young girls had fits which gave them "comical twitchings of the nerves. Some would bark all night, and others leaped about like frogs. Sister Rose sipped the air with a spoon, as your babies do pap, and lived on it forty days; another swallowed a New Testament, bound in calf. Some had themselves hung, others crucified, and one, called Sister Rachel, when nailed to a cross, said she was quite happy. In their holy meetings, they beat, trampled, punctured, crucified, and burnt one another without the least sentiment of pain." All this was done under Louis XV., and attested by thousands of witnesses, until at last the archbishop, by means of a strong military guard, put an end to the folly. Thereupon some wag wrote upon a wall: De par le roi défense à Dieu De faire miracle en ce lieu. Large packages of the earth were exported to work miracles in the provinces and in foreign countries. One of these marvellous cures is related, scoffingly, in a song of the Duchesse de Maine: Un décrotteur à la royale, Du talon gauche estropié, Obtint par grace speciale D'etre boiteux de l'autre pied.[103] The church of S. Médard is in the Rue Mouffetard, and originally the ground belonged to the abbey of S. Geneviève. At first the monks only erected a small chapel, which they placed under the protection of the great Bishop of Noyon, who was the friend and chancellor of the early Mérovingian Kings. In the 12th century the chapel is designated as a church in the bulls of the popes, and up to the Revolution it was served by the regular canons of the abbey.