Louis had already been fourteen in 1652, the age people generally recognized as adulthood. But while they were in Rethel, the Queen Mother had been unwilling to hold the king's coming-of-age ceremony in some obscure little place. Once they reached Paris, caught between the aggressive Prince of Condé and the ill-intentioned Duke Gaston, she lost all interest in anything connected with it. To her, half the Parisians were rebels and the other half were rioters; they had no right to witness such an important celebration. And at that time, Mazarin had once again withdrawn to Bouillon. Though the Queen Mother did not particularly like the man either, she had to admit that without the bishop, the royal family in Paris was like a body missing an arm.
After General Schomberg and the Viscount of Turenne won their victory in Paris, the people of Paris—from the judges of the Parlement to the lowliest commoners—all begged the king to return as soon as possible. But compared to their fervor, Louis's response was far more indifferent. As he had told his younger brother Philip, if he returned to Paris again, he would never allow himself to be driven out once more. Besides, Versailles concerned him more than Paris. After calculating the timing, he summoned Dean La Rivière and told him to choose a suitable day. Saint or saintess, it made no difference; he wanted to hold a High Mass, followed by a special blessing ceremony.
This kind of blessing ceremony carried a certain degree of danger for Louis, because the so-called touch healing ceremony required close contact with sufferers of lymph node tuberculosis.
The founder of this ceremony was none other than Clovis I, founder of the Frankish Kingdom. One of his subjects had contracted lymph node tuberculosis. Naturally, people at the time