PARIS LETTER: Did Louis XVI stir beneath the black marble slab when Father Jean-Paul Argouarc'h absolved him? Could, asks Lara Marlowe, the decapitated Capetian possibly know of the priest's censer swinging over him, the pot of white lilies and hundreds of aristocrats and monarchists sprinkling holy water in the crypt of Saint-Denis Basilica on the 209th anniversary of his execution?
It was the anniversary of the king's birth and the king's death, Father Jean-Paul began, addressing the "dear princes" assembled in Saint-Denis. He recalled the 1993 ceremony on the Place de la Concorde, attended by 10,000 people. "We the orphans, with our fleurs-de-lys . . . tears streaming down our faces."
"Don't be too hard on them," Mr Michel Déon, the French academician who lives in Co Galway, had warned me. "It still means a lot to a great many people."
As a student in the 1930s, Mr Déon wore a black tie every January 21st to show his monarchist sympathies. "There were five or six in every class. The teachers kept close watch on us."
The annual Requiem Mass was started by Louis XVIII in 1815, when he moved the remains of his brother Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette from a cemetery near the Gare Saint-Lazare to the royal burial place at Saint-Denis, north of Paris. It's been held here every year since, except in wartime.
There were close to 1,000 worshippers in the 12th century basilica on Monday, many of them elderly with faces like museum portraits, wrapped in wool coats, furs and mufflers, their breath coming out white clouds amid the flickering candles. I'd committed a faux pas, phoning an Orléans prince whom I met when he worked in a ministry, to ask about the commemoration. The Orléans - I should have known better - have been on the outs with the Bourbons since one of their number, Philippe Égalité, cast the vote that sent his cousin to the guillotine in 1793. My Orléans acquaintance did not ring back.
Today, there are two pretenders to the lost throne. The Comte de Paris, a.k.a. Henri d'Orleans (69), calls himself Duc de France. Henri's detractors point out that he's a divorced man married to a divorced woman (scandale!), whose late father bestowed the title of "Princesse de Joinville" on the second wife. Joinville, they note scathingly, is a suburb of Paris.
It is the legitimist Bourbons, led by the 80-year-old Duc de Bauffremont, who organise the Mass for Louis XVI - and another on the anniversary of Marie-Antoinette's beheading in October.
They pay allegiance to Prince Louis de Bourbon, Duc d'Anjou, who would be Louis XX if he reigned. "He is not a pretender," the Duc de Bauffremont corrected me in the cold nave of Saint-Denis. "He is the rightful king."
De Bauffremont spoke reverently of 25-year-old Louis, who had flown from Madrid to pay homage to his ancestor at the weekend, but had to be at work in a bank on Monday morning.
In case you're wondering, the heir to the French throne is Spanish because Louis XIV made his son, the Duc d'Anjou, King of Spain . . .
Young Louis XX is a bachelor, the Duc told me. "He's very serious about that sort of thing; he wouldn't do what they did in Norway. In Spain, if you don't have royal blood, you don't accede to the throne."
The French Revolution abolished titles, but subsequent republics came to an accommodation with the aristocracy. "We have to pay high fees to register our titles - I think mine was 50,000 francs - every generation," the Duc de Bauffremont explained. "The Republic does not accept our titles; it recognises them."
There are about 50 such peers, he added, including Napoleonic and Second Empire nobility. "Plus a few princely titles. For example, I am also the Prince de Courtenay."
But did the Duc de Bauffremont really believe the monarchy might be restored? "You can always hope," he responded. Quoting the writer Georges Bernanos, Father Jean-Paul reminded us in his sermon that "the most deadly sin is the sin against hope".
Father Jean-Paul excoriated present-day Jacobins. "There are lycées called Robespierre in France today!" the priest said, his voice pounding through the basilica.
"We know how the bicentennial of the Revolution was celebrated. They dressed up children as sans-culottes, walked them around carrying pikes with the heads of priests or aristocrats. And we are supposed to keep quiet?"
The priest read Louis XVI's testament, in which the monarch entreated God to forgive those who killed him. A Prince Charles look-alike on the front row could not repress a smile when Louis XVI asked Marie-Antoinette "to forgive ... whatever troubles I may have caused her throughout our marriage; as she may be absolutely certain that I secrete nothing against her, should she imagine anything with which to reproach herself." Then we descended into the crypt, for Father Jean-Paul's last words to the man he called a martyr: "Requiescat in pace."