m the courageous prelates who
adjured him to break with his mistresses, Charles X. was attached to
the truly Christian priest who had converted him by the death-bed of
the Viscountess of Polastron. The Abbe de Latil, the obscure
ecclesiastic of the Emigration, became, under the Restoration, the
Archbishop of Rheims and Cardinal. It was not without profound emotion
that the very Christian King saw himself consecrated by the priest who
twenty-two years before had caused him to return to virtue. This memory
was imposed on the mind and heart of the monarch, and under the vault
of the ancient Cathedral, he certainly thought of Madame de Polastron,
as of a good angel, who, from the height of heaven, watched over him,
and who, by her prayers, had aided him to traverse so many trials, to
reach the religious triumph of the coronation.

Charles X. was happy then. Profoundly sincere in his ardent desire to
make France happy, he believed himself at one with God and with his
people, and rejoiced in that supreme good, so often wanting to
sovereigns,--peace of heart. Could he be reproached for having taken
the ceremony of his coronation seriously? A king who does not believe
in his royalty is no more to be respected than a priest who does not
believe in his religion. Charles X. was convinced, as the Archbishop of
Rheims had said in his letter of 29th May, 1825, that kings exercise
over their subjects the power of God Himself, and that they have that
sacred majesty, upon which, in the fine expression of Bossuet, God, for
the good of things human, causes to shine a portion of the splendor of
divine majesty.

This disposition of mind in Charles X. fortified his piety, so that, at
the time of the jubilee of 1826, he seized eagerly the opportunity to
affirm his religious faith, and to return thanks to the God of his
fathers, who at this epoch of his life was loading him with favors.

The jubilee is a time of penitence and pardon, when the Pope accords
plenary indulgence to all Catholics who submit to certain practices and
assist at certain pious ceremonies. The grand jubilee was formerly
celebrated only once in a hundred years; afterwards it took place every
fifty, and then every twenty-five years. 1825 was the time of its first
celebration in the nineteenth century, and it drew to Rome that year
more than ten thousand pilgrims. The Pope had celebrated the close of
it the 24th of December, 1825, but yielding to the prayers of several
Ca