Note 288 — Chapter IV

The silver image, though protected by an iron grating, fared no better than its predecessor. Stolen before the death of Francis, it was succeeded by a wooden statue, and, when this was destroyed by "heretics," by one of marble! The detailed accounts of the expiatory processions in Félibien, ii. 982, 983, in the Régistres du parlement, ibid., iv. 677-679, in G. Guiffrey, appendix to "Cronique du Roy Françoys Ier," 446-459, from MSS. Nat. Lib., in Gaillard, vi. 434, 435, and in the Journal d'un bourgeois, 348-351, give a vivid view of the picturesque ceremonial of the times. It must have been a very substantial compensation for the trouble to which the unknown author of the outrage of the Rue des Rosiers put the clergy, that the mutilated statue of the Virgin, having been placed above the altar in the church of St. Gervais, was said to have wrought notable miracles, and even to have raised two children from the dead! Journal d'un bourgeois, ubi supra. See also "Cronique du Roy Françoys Ier," 67, and especially the poem (Ibid., appendix, 459-464), in twenty-five stanzas of eight lines each, which, I fear, has nothing to recommend it, unless it be length!