RECENT RECRUDESCENCE OF SUPERSTITION. 767 



less coat to the chemists of the Gobelin manufactory, who re- 

 ported that the web might possibly date from the time of Christ, 

 and that the stains may have been produced by blood ; whether 

 it was really the vesture upon which the Roman soldiers cast lots 

 they would not undertake to decide. This vague and utterly 

 worthless document was eagerly seized upon by the bishop and 

 printed in the newspapers as a confirmation of the truth of ancient 

 tradition by modern science. 



We may add that the ecclesiastical authorities of Argenteuil 

 do not deny the genuineness of the relic at Trier, but only assert 

 that it is an upper garment, one of those which Christ's crucifiers 

 parted among them, whereas theirs is an under garment, worn 

 next to the skin, and therefore endowed with greater healing 

 virtue than could possibly be possessed by a mere overcoat. The 

 masses, however, do not seem to have been seriously affected by 

 the accusations and recriminations passed backward and forward 

 between the guardians of the two shrines vying for public patron- 

 age. On May 14th, the first day of the " elevation," thirty- seven 

 extra trains left Paris for Argenteuil, and forty-two thousand 

 persons paid their devotions to the wonder-working coat; and 

 when the exhibition closed on June 10th half a million pilgrims 

 had visited the little town on the Seine where, nearly eight cen- 

 turies ago, the youthful Heloise took the veil after her separation 

 from Abelard. That thousands were healed of otherwise incur- 

 able diseases, and the maimed, the halt, and the blind recovered 

 the use of their limbs and had their sight restored, has undoubt- 

 edly been fully recorded, and will in due time be officially re- 

 ported. 



Meanwhile the Bonapartists made a bold attempt to take the 

 tide of popular superstition at the flood, hoping it might lead on 

 to political fortune. One of their agents, while kneeling in ado- 

 ration before the holy seamless coat, claims to have received a 

 divine revelation through the newly canonized tutelar saint of 

 France, Joan of Arc, who, it seems, has already begun to take a 

 hand in French politics and to utter prophecies concerning the 

 future of the land of which she was once the divinely commis- 

 sioned defender. According to this revelation from on high, 

 which has been printed on a single sheet of four large octavo 

 pages and distributed in thousands of copies among the rural 

 population and in the provincial towns, Prince Victor Napoleon 

 Y is the predestined ruler of France, and will be elected to the 

 presidency of the republic by popular suffrage, or attain to sov- 

 ereignty after bloody civil contests. In either case, Alsace and 

 Lorraine will, on his accession to power,- be reunited to France 

 either through diplomatic negotiations or as the issue of a short 

 but sanguinary foreign war. The recipient of this communica- 



