Our Lady of Lourdes - First Book Part 5

OUR LADY OF LOURDES

FIRST BOOK - PART 5 

On the 11th of February, 1858, was inaugurated the week of profane enjoyments, which, according to immemorial custom, precedes the austerities of Lent. The weather was cold and somewhat overcast, but very calm. The clouds remained motionless in the depths of heaven. There was no breeze to agitate them and the atmosphere was entirely still. Occasionally there fell a few drops of rain. On that day the diocese of Tarbes, in accordance with the peculiar privileges of its Proper Office, was celebrating the memory and the feast of the illustrious Shepherdess of Saint Geneviève.

It was eleven o’clock in the morning by the parish church of Lourdes.

While joyful assemblies and parties were almost everywhere in preparation, a poor family, lodged in a wretched dwelling in the Rue Petits-fossés, had not even wood for cooking their scanty meal.

The father, still young, was a miller by trade, and had for a short time kept a little mill situated to the north of the town on one of the streams which flow into the Gave. This business, however, required a certain amount of capital, as the lower-classes are not in the habit of paying ready money for having their corn ground, and consequently the poor miller had been obliged to relinquish the little mill, where his exertions, instead of placing him in easy circumstances, had served only to plunge him into deeper poverty. Waiting for better days he worked hard — not at home, for he had nothing in the world, not even a small garden — but all around, for some of his neighbors, who employed him from time to time as a day-laborer.

His name was François Soubirous, and he was married to a very respectable woman, Louise Casterot, who was a good christian and kept up the courage of her husband.

They had four children, two girls, the eldest of them being about fourteen years old, and two boys much younger; the last born being between three and four years old.

It was only within the last fortnight that their eldest daughter, a weakly child, had been living under the same roof with them. This is the little girl destined to take an important part in our narration, and we have carefully studied all the peculiarities and details of her life.

At her birth, her mother, then very much out of health, had been unable to suckle her, and had placed her out to nurse in a neighboring village, Bartrès, where the infant remained after being weaned. Louise Soubirous had become a mother for the second time; and the care of two children at the same time, would have detained her at home, and prevented her from going out to daily labor in the fields, which, however, she could easily do as long as she only had one child at the breast. For this reason the parents allowed their eldest to remain at Bartrès. They paid five francs a month for her board, sometimes in money, but more frequently in kind.

When the little girl was old enough to make herself useful, and there was some idea of taking her back to her parent’s house, the good peasants, who had brought her up, perceived that they had formed a strong attachment to her, and regarded her almost as one of their own children. From that day they kept her without charge, and employed her in tending their sheep. Thus she grew up in the midst of the family which had adopted her, passing all her days in solitude on the lonely declivities, where her humble flock grazed.

Her knowledge of prayers was entirely confined to the Chaplet. Either because her foster-mother had recommended this to her, or because it was the simple want of her innocent soul, everywhere and at all times, while engaged in watching her flock, she was in the habit of reciting this prayer of the simple. In addition to this, she amused herself quite alone with those natural play-things, which motherly providence provides for the children of the poor, who, in this respect, as indeed in all others, are more easily satisfied than those of the rich. She used to play with stones, which she piled up in little childish buildings; with the plants and flowers, which she gathered here and there; with the water of the brook, into which she threw immense fleets of blades of grass, following them with her eye as they floated downwards; and lastly, with the lamb which was the object of her preference in the flock intrusted to her care. “Of all my lambs,” she said one day, “there is one I love more than all the rest.” “And which is that,” she was asked. “The one I love,” she replied, “is the smallest;” and it was her greatest pleasure to caress it in frolicsome sport.

Compared with other children, she was herself like this poor little feeble lamb which she loved. Although she had already attained her fourteenth year, you would have never supposed her to be more than eleven or twelve. She was subject to an oppressive asthma, which, without rendering her absolutely sickly, caused her sometimes great suffering. She bore her misfortune patiently, and accepted her physical pains with that tranquil resignation which appears so difficult to the rich, but which the poor seem to find naturally and without effort.

In this innocent and lonely school, the poor shepherd-girl learned, perhaps, what is to the world unknown: the simplicity, which is so pleasing to God. Far removed from the contagion of impurity, ever communing with the Virgin Mary, and passing her time and her hours in crowning Her with prayers while telling her beads, she preserved that entire candor, that baptismal purity, which the breath of the world, even among the best, so soon tarnishes.

Such was the soul of this child, limpid and peaceful as those unknown lakes which are buried in the midst of lofty mountains, and in which all the splendors of heaven are silently reflected. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” says the Gospel, “for they shall see God.”

These great gifts are hidden gifts, and the humility which possesses them, is often unconscious of them. The young maiden had now reached her fourteenth year, and if all those who accidentally came in contact with her felt themselves attracted towards, and secretly fascinated by her, she was herself entirely unconscious of it. She regarded herself as one of the last, and the most backward children of her age, and in point of fact, she could neither read nor write. In addition to this she was wholly unacquainted with the French language, and knew nothing but her own poor Pyrenean patois.

She had never been taught the catechism, and in this respect her ignorance was extreme. “Our Father, Hail Mary, I believe in God, Glory be to the Father,” recited in the course of the Chaplet, constituted the extent of her religious knowledge.

After the foregoing details, it is unnecessary to add, that she had not yet made her first communion. It was in fact with the view of preparing her for this, and sending her to the catechism class, that the Soubirous had just withdrawn her from the retired village, where her foster-parents resided, and had brought her to their own house, at Lourdes, notwithstanding their exceeding poverty.

It was about a fortnight since she had returned to the dwelling of her parents. Her mother treated her with every possible care and attention, as her asthma and her general fragility of appearance caused her much anxiety. While the rest of the children of the Soubirous went about in nothing but their sabots, this child wore stockings; while her sister and brothers were always running about in the open air, she was almost constantly employed in the house. The poor child accustomed to be in the open air, would have preferred going out.

The day was Shrove-Tuesday; it had struck eleven o’clock, and these poor people had not the wood necessary to prepare their mid-day meal.

“Go and gather some on the bank of the Gave, or on the common,” said the mother to Marie, her second daughter.

As in many other places, the poor in the commune of Lourdes, possessed the right of picking up any dry branches which the wind might have blown down from the trees, and any dead wood which might have been washed down by a flood, and left among the rocks along the course of the river.

Marie put on her sabots, an operation which her elder sister, of whom we have just been speaking, the little shepherd-girl of Bartrès, regarded with envy.

“Allow me to follow her,” she said to her mother, “I will also bring back my little bundle of wood.”

“No,” answered Louise Soubirous: “you have a cough, and it would make you worse.”

In the mean time, a young girl from the next house, Jeanne Abadie, about fifteen years old, had entered, and volunteered to go with them to pick up some wood. They all joined in urging the mother to give the required permission, and at length she consented.

The child at the moment had a handkerchief wrapped round her head and knotted on the side as is the custom with the peasant women in the South. This did not appear sufficient to the mother.

“Take your capulet,” she said to her.

The capulet is a very graceful article of dress, peculiar to the races of the Pyrenees, and partakes of the nature of the kerchief and the mantle. It is a kind of hood, of very coarse cloth, sometimes white as the fleece of a sheep, sometimes of a brilliant scarlet, which covers the head and falls back over the shoulders, as far down as the loins. When the weather is very cold or windy, the women bring it in front, and carefully envelope in it their neck and arms. When they find it too warm for this garment, they fold it up square, and carry it on their heads, like a kind of quadrangular berret.

The capulet of the little shepherd-girl of Bartrès was white.

 

Our Lady of Lourdes - First Book Part 4

OUR LADY OF LOURDES

FIRST BOOK - PART 4 

It was necessary to describe somewhat minutely the country destined to be the scene of the events we are about to relate. It is of no less importance to indicate beforehand what light, or I should rather say what profound moral truth lights up the starting point of this history, in which, as will be seen, the hand of God has visibly appeared. These reflections will retard us but an instant in the commencement of our recital.

It appears almost superfluous to point out the strong contrasts to be met with in this world, in which the wicked and the good, the rich and the poor are mingled together, and the cottage of the indigent is sometimes separated but by a single wall from the abode of opulence. On one side, all the pleasures of a life of ease, agreeably organized in the midst of the comforts and elegance of luxury; on the other, the horrors of want, cold, hunger, disease—the melancholy procession of human sufferings. Around the former, adulation, visits and loud professions of friendship; around the others, indifference, solitude, desertion. People of the world shun the poor man and leave him out of all their schemes, either because they fear the importunity of his actual or silent appeals, or because they dread the sight of his fearful destitution, as a reproach to themselves. The rich, forming themselves into an exclusive circle which they call “good society,” consider all outside of themselves as having only as it were a secondary existence, unworthy of their attention—all those in fact who do not belong to the class of “gentlemen.” When they employ a workman, even when they are charitably disposed and succor the poor, they treat him as a protégé, as an inferior. They do not act towards him with that simple intimacy with which they would conduct themselves towards one of their own set. With the exception of some rare christians, no one treats the poor man as his brother or his equal. With the exception of the Saints—alas! few and far between in our day—who would ever think of showing him the respect they deem due to a superior? In the world, properly so called, in the great world the poor man is absolutely forsaken. Overwhelmed with the weight of labor, worn out with want, despised and abandoned, would it not appear as though he were cursed by the Creator of the earth? Ah! it is just the contrary; he is the beloved one of the universal Father. While the World has been cursed for ever by the infallible word of Christ, it is the poor, the suffering, the humble, the insignificant who are the “good society” in the eyes of God, the chosen company in which his heart delights. “Ye are my friends,” he tells them in his Gospel.

He does more. He identifies himself with them and only opens the kingdom of heaven to the rich on condition of their having been the benefactors of the poor. “Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these little ones, ye have done it unto me.”

So, when the Son of God came upon earth, it was His will to be born, to live and to die in the midst of the poor—to be Himself poor. It was from among them He chose his Apostles, his principal disciples, the first-born of his Church. In the long history of that Church, it was upon the poor that He generally poured forth his choicest spiritual graces. In all ages—with some slight exceptions—Apparitions, Visions, especial Revelations, have been the privilege of the poor and little ones whom the world despises.

When God, in His wisdom, deems fit to manifest himself sensibly to men by these mysterious phenomena, He descends, as do the kings of the earth when traveling, into the houses of His ministers or of His particular friends. And this is the reason of His habitual choice of the dwellings of the poor and the humble.

For nearly two thousand years past has the word of the Apostle been verified, “God hath chosen what is weak according to the world to confound that which is powerful.”

The recital undertaken by us will perhaps furnish some proof of these high truths.

 

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Our Lady of Lourdes - First Book Part 3

OUR LADY OF LOURDES

FIRST BOOK - PART 3 

Such was the state of Lourdes ten years ago. The railroad did not then pass by it, nor was it indeed in contemplation. One marked out more direct appeared to be intended beforehand for the line of the Pyrenees.

The whole of the town and the fortress, as we have already observed, are situated on the right bank of the Gave, which after breaking — in its course from the south — against the enormous rock that serves as a pedestal to the castle, makes immediately a bend at right angles and takes suddenly a westerly direction.

An ancient bridge, built some little distance above the first houses of the town, serves as a means of communication with the country, meadows, forests and mountains on the left bank.

On this last bank, a little above the bridge and opposite to the castle, a large canal is formed from the water of the Gave. This canal rejoins its parent stream about a kilometre further down, after passing the rocks of Massabielle, the base of which it washes.

The long island formed by the Gave and this canal is one vast and verdant tract of meadow land and is known by the name of l’Ile du Chalet, or more commonly le Chalet.

The mill of Savy, the only one on the left bank, is built across the canal and serves as a bridge between the island meadow and the main land.

In 1858 there was scarcely a wilder, more savage or solitary spot in the environs of the busy little town we have described, than the Rocks of Massabielle, at the foot of which the mill-stream rejoined the Gave.

A few paces above this junction, on the bank of the stream, the abrupt rock was pierced at its base by three irregular caverns, curiously placed above each other and communicating with one another like holes in a gigantic sponge.

The singularity of these caverns renders them somewhat difficult to describe.

The first and the largest was on a level with the ground. It had almost the appearance of a booth at a country fair, or of a badly shaped and very high oven cut vertically through the centre, so as only to form a semi-dome. The entrance in the shape of an arch very much askew was about thirteen feet high. The breadth and depth of the grotto could not have been less than three times its height. The rock sloped back from the entrance, like the roof of a garret seen from below, and became narrower on either side.

Above, somewhat to the right of the spectator, were two superimposed apertures in the rock, forming as it were annexes or dependencies of this larger one.

Viewed from the outside the principal of these two openings was oval in form and about the size of a window in a house or a niche in a church. It sloped slightly up as it receded; then, at the depth of about six feet, forked; one branch descending to the grotto beneath, the other turning back on itself as far as the exterior of the rock and forming the second upper aperture of which we have spoken, but being of no importance except that it gave light in every way to this supplementary cavity.

An eglantine or wild rose, springing from a fissure in the rock, trailed its long branches at the base of this niche-like orifice.

At the foot of this little series of caverns, which the eye could take in at a glance, but of which it is very difficult by mere description to convey a correct idea, the mill-stream rushes over a chaos of enormous rocks, fallen from the mountains, to reunite with the Gave five or six paces below.

The grotto was exactly in front of the Ile du Chalet which, as we have already observed, was formed by the Gave and the canal.

These caverns were called the Grotto of Massabielle from the name of the rocks of which it formed a part. In the patois of the country “Massabielle” signifies “Old Rocks.”

Lower down on the banks of the Gave there was a steep and rugged hillock which, as well as these rocks, belonged to the commune of Lourdes, and where the poor of the town used to bring their pigs to feed. On the approach of a storm the grotto served them as a place of shelter, as also to the few fishermen who were wont to fish with nets in this part of the Gave.

As in all caverns of this nature the rock was dry in fine weather and slightly humid when it rained. This occasional humidity and imperceptible dripping of the wet season was only observable on one side, that to your right on entering. It is precisely on this side that the rain usually comes, driven by the westerly wind; and the rock being very slender and full of clefts in this place suffered in the same way as do houses with the same exposure and built with indifferent mortar.

The left side and the bottom not being thus exposed were always as dry as the floor of a drawing-room. The accidental humidity of the western wall served even to set off by contrast the burning dryness of the northern, eastern and southern portions of the grotto.

Above this triple cavity arose almost in a peak the enormous mass of the Rocks of Massabielle, garlanded in many a place with ivy and box, heather and moss. Tangled brambles, hazels and wild roses, a few trees, whose branches were often broken by the wind, extended their roots into the fissures of the rocks, wherever the falling in of the mountain or the breath of heaven had afforded them a handful of earth for their nourishment. The eternal sower, He whose invisible hand fills the immensity of space with suns and planets, He who has produced out of nothing the ground on which we tread, the vegetable and animal kingdoms, the Creator of so many millions of men who have peopled the earth, and so many millions of angels who people heaven, that God, whose wealth is boundless and power unlimited, does not intend that a single atom should be lost in the immense regions of his works. And this is why He leaves nothing barren which is capable of production; this is why over the entire extent of our globe innumerable germs float in the air, covering the vegetation wherever it appears, were there only room for the existence of a blade of grass or for the growth of the tiniest moss.

And in the same way, O Divine Sower! thy graces, like an invisible dust of fruitful seeds, float around our souls on the watch for a fertile soil. And if we are so barren, it is because we present to Thee sometimes hearts harder and more arid than the rock, sometimes beaten paths for ever trodden by the feet of the passers by, sometimes thickets of thorns solely occupied by rank weeds which choke the good seed.

 

 

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Our Lady of Lourdes - First Book Parts 1&2

OUR LADY OF LOURDES

FIRST BOOK - PARTS 1&2 

The small town of Lourdes is situated in the department of the Hautes-Pyrenees, at the embouchure of the seven valleys of the Lavedan, between the last undulations of the hills terminating the plain of Tarbes and the first escarpments with which the Grande Montagne commences. Its houses, scattered irregularly over an uneven surface, are grouped as it were in defiance of order at the base of an enormous rock, entirely isolated; on the summit of which, rises like the nest of an eagle, a formidable castle. At the foot of this rock, beneath the shade of alders, oaks and poplars, the Gave hurries rapidly along, breaking its foaming waters against a bar of pebbles, and serving to turn the noisy wheels of three or four mills built on its banks. The din of these mills and the murmur of the wind in the branches of the trees are mingled with the sound of its gliding waves.

The Gave is formed by the several torrents of the upper valleys, which in their turn themselves issue from the eternal glaciers and stainless snows which mask in the depths of the chain, the arid sides of the Grande Montagne. The most important of these tributaries proceeds from the cascade of Gavarine, which falls, as every one knows, from one of those rare peaks which no human foot has yet been able to scale.

Leaving on its right the town, the castle and all the mills of Lourdes (with the exception of one built on its left bank), the Gave, as if anxious to reach its ultimate destination, flows rapidly towards the town of Pau, which it hurries by in order to join the Adour and finally the ocean.

In the environs of Lourdes, the scenery on the banks of the Gave is sometimes wild and savage, sometimes charming; verdant meadows, cultivated fields, thick woods and lofty rocks, are reflected by turns in its waters. Here, the eye gazes over smiling and cultivated farms, the most graceful landscape, the high road to Pau, continually dotted with carriages, horsemen and travelers on foot; there, over stern mountains in all the terror of their solitude.

The castle of Lourdes, almost impregnable before the invention of artillery, was in days of yore the key of the Pyrenees. It has been handed down by tradition that Charlemagne, at war with the Infidels, was long unable to take possession of it. Just as he was on the point of raising the siege, an eagle, winging his flight above the highest tower of the beleaguered fortress, let fall upon it a splendid fish which it had just captured in a lake in the neighborhood.

Whether it was that on this particular day the laws of the Church prescribed abstinence, or that the fish was a christian symbol still popular at that epoch, one thing is certain—the Saracen chief Mirat, who occupied the castle, regarded the occurrence in the light of a prodigy, and became a convert to the true faith. It needed nothing less than this miraculous conversion of Mirat and his subsequent baptism, to re-incorporate this castle into the domains of Christendom. Further, the Saracen, as the chronicle informs us, expressly stipulated, that “having become the champion of Our Lady, the Mother of God, he would have it understood, both in his own case and in that of his descendants, that his dignity of Count, free from all earthly fiefdom, was held from Her alone.”

The punning coat of arms of the town testify to this extraordinary fact of the eagle and the fish. Lourdes bears on a field gules three towers or, faced with stone-work sable on a rock argent. The center tower, higher than that on either side, is surmounted by an eagle with outstretched wings sable, holding in his beak a trout argent.

During the whole period of the Middle Ages, the castle of Lourdes was a center of terror to the surrounding country. Sometimes in the name of the English, sometimes in that of the counts of Bigorre, it was occupied by a kind of free-booting captains, who, in point of fact, warred strictly on their own account, and levied contributions on the inhabitants of the plain in a circle of forty or fifty leagues. Their incredible audacity, we are told, carried them even to the extent of laying violent hands on persons and property up to the very gates of Montpelier, after which they sought security, like veritable birds of prey, in their own inaccessible aërie.

In the eighteenth century the castle of Lourdes was converted into a state prison. It was the Bastile of the Pyrenees. The Revolution opened the gates of this prison to three or four persons confined in it by the arbitrary power of despotism, and in return peopled it with several hundreds of criminals, who, to tell the truth, were culpable in a very different way. A contemporary author has noticed on the prison register the offences of these unfortunate wretches. He gives us specimens of the designations of the crimes attached to the name of each prisoner: “Unpatriotic—Having refused the kiss of peace to citizen N—— before the altar of our country—Troublesome—A drunkard—Cold as ice toward the Revolution—Hypocritical in disposition and reserved in his opinions—A peaceable Harpagon, indifferent towards the Revolution, etc., etc.”

From this we perceive that the Revolution had just reasons for complaining of the arbitrary power of kings, and had substituted a regime of mild toleration and entire liberty for the terrible despotism of the monarchy.

During the Empire the Castle of Lourdes preserved its character of state-prison, and only lost it on the return of the Bourbons. Since the Restoration, the terrible castle of the middle ages having become in the natural order of things a place of fourth or fifth-rate importance, is now peaceably garrisoned by a company of infantry under the orders of a commandant. The town has nevertheless remained the key of the Pyrenees, but in quite a different point of view to what it was formerly.

Lourdes is the point of intersection of all the roads leading to the warm baths, whether you go to Barèges, to Saint Sauveur, to Cautarets, to Bagnères de Bigorre, or from Cauterets or Pau you attempt to reach Luchou, you must always pass through Lourdes. From the earliest times since the baths of the Pyrenees have been visited by strangers, the innumerable diligences employed for the conveyance of passengers to the baths during the summer season were in the habit of stopping at the Hotel de la Poste. Travelers were usually allowed time to dine, to visit the castle, and to admire the scenery before resuming their journey.

We see then that for the last one or two centuries this little town has been constantly traversed by those resorting to the baths, and by tourists from every corner of Europe. A tolerably advanced state of civilization has been the result.

In 1858, the period when this history commences, the greater part of the Parisian newspapers had long been regularly received at Lourdes. Several of its inhabitants took in the Revue des deux Mondes. As is everywhere the case, the cabarets and cafés supplied their customers with three numbers of the Siecle—to-day’s, yesterday’s and the day before yesterday’s. The Bourgeoisie and the Clergy were divided between the Journal des Débats, the Presse, the Moniteur, the Univers and the Union.

Lourdes boasted a club, a printing establishment and a newspaper. The Sous-préfet resided at Argelès; but the grief experienced by the inhabitants of Lourdes at being deprived of this functionary, was somewhat alleviated by the joy of having the Tribunal de première instance, that is to say three Judges, a Procureur Imperial and a Substitut. As inferior satellites of this luminous centre, there gravitated around it a Juge de Paix, a commissary of Police, six Huissiers and seven Gendarmes (one of them a Brigadier). Within the town there was a hospital and a prison, and, as we shall have perhaps an opportunity of explaining, circumstances occurred when some strong-minded persons, nourished on the wholesome and humanitarian doctrines of the Siecle, pretended it would be necessary to place the criminals in the hospital and transfer the sick to the prison.

But in addition to these powerful reasoners, at the bar of Lourdes and in the medical profession, there might be found men equally learned and distinguished in manner—men of remarkable powers of mind and of impartial observation, such as are not always to be met with in places of greater importance.

The mountain races are generally gifted with firm and practical good sense. The population of Lourdes having had little admixture with foreign blood, was excellent. Few places could be cited in France where the schools are more numerously attended than at Lourdes. There is not a boy in the place who does not go for several years to some lay institution or to the school conducted by the Brothers; not a little girl who does not in the same manner attend the school of the Sisters at Nevers, until she has completed the education adapted to her place in society. With more instruction than the working classes of most of our cities, the people of Lourdes have, at the same time, the simplicity of rural life. They are warm in their affections, upright in heart, abounding in southern wit, and strictly moral. They are honest, devout, and averse to innovations.

Certain local institutions, dating from time immemorial, serve to maintain this happy state of things. The inhabitants of these regions long before the pretended discoveries of modern progress, had understood and reduced to practice under the shadow of the Church, those ideas of joint responsibility and prudence which have given birth to our mutual aid societies. Societies of such a description exist at Lourdes and have been in operation for centuries past; they date from the middle ages; they have emerged victoriously from the Revolution, and the philanthropists would have long ere this sung their praises, had they not derived their vitality from the religious principle and were they not still called, as in the fifteenth century, “Brotherhoods.”

“Almost all the people,” says M. de Lagreze, “enter these associations which combine philanthropy with devotion. Those of the laboring class, united under the name of confrères, place their work under the patronage of heaven and mutually exchange assistance and christian charity. The common coffer receives the weekly offering of the workman when in high health and full vigor, to return it one day to him when laid low by sickness or distress. When a workman dies the expenses of his funeral are paid by the association, and its members accompany him to his last resting place. Each Brotherhood (with the exception of two which share the high altar between them, has a private chapel, the name of which is assumed by the members and the expenses of which are defrayed by the offertory on Sunday. The Brotherhood of Notre Dame de Grace is composed of husbandmen; that of Notre Dame de Carmel, of slaters; that of Notre Dame de Monsarrat, of masons; that of Saint Anne, of cabinet-makers; that of Saint Lucy, of tailors and seamstresses; that of the Ascension, of quarry men; that of the Holy Sacrament, of church-wardens; that of Saint John and St. James, of all those who have received either of these names in baptism.”

The women are in the same manner members of similar religious associations. One of them, “The Congregation of the Children of Mary,” is of a peculiar character. It is also, though in a spiritual point of view, a mutual aid society. In order to obtain admission into this Congregation, which is of course confined to the laity, the candidate must have been long known as of irreproachable character. Little girls think of it long before they become young women. The members of this Congregation pledge themselves never to incur danger of falling by frequenting worldly society—in which the religious spirit is lost—not to follow the absurdities of fashion, and on the other hand to attend punctually the meetings and instructions which take place every Sunday. Admission into the Congregation is deemed an honor, while exclusion from it is considered a disgrace. The good effected by this association in preserving a high tone of morality in the country and preparing young women for their maternal duties is incalculable. Consequently, in a great number of dioceses many Confréries have been founded on the model of this Mother Congregation.

The whole country has a peculiar devotion for the Virgin. Numerous sanctuaries are consecrated to her in the Pyrenees from Piétat or Garaison to Bétharram. All the altars in the parish church at Lourdes are dedicated to the Mother of God.

 

 

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