of this vestment: "Our good Catholics, despairing of relief from the faculty, repair to St. Hubert, at whose shrine, by virtue of certain ceremonies, they are cured; but it is worthy of remark that, if these ceremonies are not strictly observed, the latent rabies immediately breaks out, and they become irrevocably hydrophobic. There is a vestment of St. Hubert's which is preserved in a chest secured by six locks, the keys of which are kept by the six different vergers. For these fourscore years past they have been continually cutting off pieces from this holy vestment; nevertheless, it remains to this day perfectly entire! Now, it is impossible that there should be any imposture in the case; for they have never been able to discover whether this miraculous robe be of linen, woolen, or of silk; consequently it cannot be annually renewed. They cut off a piece of the robe and incarnate a thread between the skin of the patient's forehead. Hence another miracle—for a person thus cured becomes possessed of a power to postpone the hydrophobia during forty days in any of his acquaintance who, after being bitten, may not have leisure immediately to visit St. Hubert; on the condition, however, that, if they exceed the forty days ever so little, without applying for a prorogation of the term, they go mad irrevocably."
A rubric of the regulations to be observed by the patients, in order that the miracle might succeed, was printed in 1671. It contained a long catalogue of ridiculous observances and ceremonies, all of which, however, were in the same year condemned by the Sorbonne as "superstitious." That this practice continues, notwithstanding the oracular declaration of that famous theological establishment, may be inferred from the following circumstance, related by M. Stanislaus Prioux, in his "Vie de Saint Hubert:" "At the time when rabies had spread the utmost terror over the greater portion of the northern countries (about two years ago, in 1851), I knew an old man at Brussels, who, in his youth, had undergone the ordeal prescribed by St. Hubert, and who yet carried on his forehead the precious cicatrix. He assured me he had saved the lives of several people by granting them delays, while others bitten at the same time by the mad animals died."
According to Fleming, who quotes from Dudley Costello's "Tour through the Valley of the Meuse," what are called "the keys of St. Hubert" consist of an iron heated red-hot, and applied to animals bitten by mad dogs. It appears never to have borne the form of a key; for, in the town of St. Hubert itself the amulet was an iron ring inserted in the wall of one of the houses in the principal street. It no longer exists, though the belief in the potency of St. Hubert is, among the peasantry, as strong as ever. In other places, where this saint is especially venerated, the form of the exorcising instrument in no way resembles the key given by St. Peter. At Liège, it is also an iron ring, and at Utrecht an iron cross.
