Book 8 - Part 7

 

M. Lacadé did not share in the hesitation of M. Massy. A decision of this nature relieved him from the heavy onus which his complex desire of steering cautiously between the Prefect and the masses, the powers of heaven and those of man, had imposed upon him. By an illusion not uncommon in undecided characters, he imagined that he had always sided with the prevailing party, and he drew up a proclamation to that effect.

“Inhabitants of the town of Lourdes, the day we have so longed for has at length arrived; we have gained it by our wisdom, our perseverance, our faith and by our courage.”

Such was the import and tone of his proclamation, of which, unfortunately, the text has not reached us.

The proclamation was read with the sound of drums and trumpets in every quarter of the town. At the same time the following placard was posted up on all the walls:

THE MAYOR OF THE TOWN OF LOURDES,

Considering the instructions, addressed to him,

DECREES:

The decree issued by him June 8th, 1858, is revoked.

Done at Lourdes, in the Hotel of the Mayoralty, October 5th, 1858.

A. Lacadé, Mayor.

During this time, Jacomet and the Sergents de Ville repaired to the Grotto to remove the barriers and posts.

The crowd had already arrived there, and was visibly increasing. Some were praying on their knees and, striving to prevent themselves from being distracted by the external noises, thanked God for having brought to a close the scandal and persecution which had prevailed. Others remained standing, talking in low tones and waiting, not without emotion, to see what was about to occur. Women in great number were telling their beads. Many held a flask in their hands, wishing to fill it at the very spot whence the Spring was gushing forth. Flowers were thrown over the barriers into the interior of the Grotto. As to the barriers themselves, no one touched them. Those who had erected them publicly, in opposition to the power of God, must come and remove them publicly, in deference to the will of a man.

Jacomet arrived. Although, in spite of himself, he betrayed a certain degree of embarrassment and excitement of manner, and his deep humiliation might be guessed from the pallor of his countenance, he did not present, as was generally expected, the sad aspect of one who had been vanquished in the struggle. Escorted by his subordinates, furnished with axes and mattocks, he advanced boldly towards the scene of action. With an affectation which appeared singular under the circumstances, he wore the official costume appropriated to state occasions. His broad tricolored scarf girded his loins and floated over his full-dress sword. He passed through the crowd and stepped close up to the barriers. A vague tumultuous noise, a low murmur, and a few solitary cries proceeded from the multitude. The Commissary mounted on a fragment of rock and made a gesture that he wished to say a few words. Every one listened to him.

“My Friends, it is these barriers, they say, which, to my great regret, the municipality erected in obedience to the orders they received, which are now about to be demolished. Who has suffered more than myself from this obstacle opposed to your piety? I am a religious man myself, and I share your faith. But a functionary, like a soldier, has but one watchword, which is the duty—often a very painful one—of obedience. The responsibility does not rest with him. Well, my friends, when I witnessed your admirable calmness, your respect for power, and your persevering faith, I notified it to superior authorities. I pleaded your cause, my friends. I said, ‘Why should these harmless people be hindered from praying at the Grotto, and from drinking at the Spring?’ In consequence of this, every prohibition has been removed, and the Prefect and myself have resolved to demolish for ever these barriers which were so annoying to you and still more so to myself.”

The crowd maintained a cold silence. Some young men whispered together and laughed. Jacomet was visibly discomposed at the failure of his oration. He ordered his subordinates to remove the palings. It was done with considerable promptitude. A heap was made of the boards and débris near the Grotto, and the Police carried it away as soon as it was dark.

The town of Lourdes was in a great state of emotion. During the afternoon, the crowd kept going to and fro on the road leading to the Grotto. The faithful, in countless throngs, knelt devoutly before the Rocks of Massabielle. They sang canticles, and recited the litanies of the Virgin. Virgo potens, ora pro nobis. They quenched their thirst at the Spring. The believers were free, God had achieved the victory.

Book 8 - Part 6

Every one knows the theories of Science on that marvelous electric spark, which the iron threads, with which the earth is covered as with a network, transport from one pole to the other with the rapidity of lightning. Telegraphic communication, say the Savants, is nothing more nor less than a thunder-bolt.

On that day Baron Massy coincided in opinion with the Savants. The imperial telegram, bursting upon him all at once, struck him suddenly dumb, and bewildered him as completely as the sudden fall of a thunder-bolt on his house would have done. He could not believe in its reality. The more he thought of it the less possible did it appear to him to retrace his steps, condemn his previous measures, and retreat from his present position before the public gaze. He must, however, either swallow the bitter draught, or send in his resignation and bid a sad adieu to the sweets of office. Fatal alternative. The hearts of functionaries are sometimes a prey to bitter anguish.

When we are overtaken by a sudden catastrophe, we experience some difficulty in accepting it as final, and we struggle against it even when all is lost. Baron Massy did not escape an illusion of this nature. He had some vague hope that the Emperor would think better of his decision. Under this idea, he took upon himself the responsibility of keeping the despatch secret for some days and of not obeying its injunctions. He wrote to the Emperor, and in addition to this employed M. Rouland, the Minister—who was less publicly but as completely crushed as himself by the unexpected order from Biarritz—to influence the Sovereign.

Napoleon III. paid as little attention to the objections of the Minister as he had done to the entreaties and supplications of the Prefect. The judgment he had pronounced was based on the evidence which had been laid before him, and was irrevocable. The steps which had been taken only served to apprize his Majesty that the Prefect had dared to neglect his orders and defer their execution. A second despatch was sent from Biarritz. It was so worded as to render further observations or delay out of the question.

Baron Massy had only to choose between his pride and his position as Prefect. He made this melancholy choice, and his humility induced him to retain office.

The Head of the Department therefore resigned himself to the virtue of obedience. However, notwithstanding the imperious dispatches of his Master, he still endeavored, not to protract the struggle—for that was no longer possible—but to mask his retreat and to avoid the public surrender of his arms.

Owing to some little indiscretions in the Bureau, perhaps also from something which dropped from those who had gone as ambassadors to the Emperor, the purport of the orders from Biarritz had transpired to a certain extent. They formed the topic of conversation everywhere. These rumors were neither confirmed nor contradicted by the Prefect. He ordered Jacomet and his subordinates to suspend all prosecutions and to discontinue all surveillance. Such moderation following immediately on the reports in circulation with regard to the Emperor’s instructions would, in his opinion, be sufficient to cause things to go on in their usual course, and the Decree might fall into desuetude without the necessity of its being publicly withdrawn. It was even probable that the people of the district, on recovering their full liberty of action, would hasten to tear up and throw into the Gave the posts bearing the notices forbidding any trespass on the lands of the commune, as well as the barriers which prevented all access to the Grotto.

M. Massy was deceived in his calculations, plausible as they were. In spite of the forbearance of the Police, and the reports in circulation which had not been officially contradicted—perhaps for these very reasons—the people feared some snare. They continued to go and pray on the opposite bank of the Gave. The infractions of the law were, as formerly, only isolated instances. No one touched the posts or the barriers. Instead of falling of its own accord, as the Prefect had fondly hoped, the statu quo maintained itself obstinately unchanged.

The character of Napoleon III., and the precise nature of the orders transmitted from Biarritz duly considered, a situation of this nature was perilous for the Prefect. Baron Massy was too intelligent not to appreciate this. Every moment he had cause to fear that the Emperor might be apprised all at once of the manner in which he was attempting to tack. Every hour, doubtless, he dreaded to receive some terrible missive, which would crush him forever and banish him into nothingness, that is to say, out of the luminous sphere of government, into that external darkness, where the unfortunate non-official world wears out its fretful existence.

The end of September had arrived.

It happened that, during these perplexities, M. Fould had had occasion once more to visit Tarbes, and even to take Lourdes on his way. Did he increase the Prefect’s terror when speaking to him of his Master? Did the Baron receive some new telegram couched in still more alarming language than the other two? We cannot tell. One thing is certain, that on the third of October, owing to some cause unknown, M. Massy became as supple as a reed trampled under the foot of a passer-by, and his arrogant stiffness seemed to give way to a sudden and complete prostration.

The next day, in the name of the Emperor, he issued an order to the Mayor of Lourdes to rescind the Decree publicly, and to have the posts and barriers removed by Jacomet.

Book 8 - Part 5

 
The polemical discussion of the press on the subject of the Grotto was exhausted. In France and in foreign countries, the public conscience had been enabled to judge, not of the reality of the supernatural occurrences, but of the violent oppression which liberty of belief and right of examination were undergoing in a corner of the Empire. The miserable sophisms of anti-christian fanaticism, and of intolerance pretending to be philosophical, had not been able to withstand the forcible logic of the Catholic journals. The Débats, the Siècle, the Presse, and the vile crowd of irreligious papers were silent, probably regretting that they had engaged in so unfortunate a war, and had given so much publicity to such extraordinary facts. They had only succeeded in propagating and spreading in every country the fame of so many miracles. From Italy, Germany, and countries still more distant, persons wrote to Lourdes begging that a few drops of the sacred water might be forwarded to them.

At the Ministry of Public Worship, M. Rouland persisted in wishing to oppose himself to the most sacred of liberties and in pretending to arrest the march of events.

At the Grotto, Jacomet and the Gardes persisted in watching day and night, and in dragging the believers to the bar of the tribunals. M. Duprat was constantly engaged in condemning delinquents.

Placed between such a Minister to support him and such agents to execute his wishes, Baron Massy remained gallantly in his absolutely illogical position and viewed with complacency the omnipotence of his arbitrary power. More and more exasperated at seeing himself deprived, by the episcopal inquiry and the analysis of M. Filhol, of the vain pretexts of religion and public order with which he had originally sought to veil his intolerance, he abandoned himself with pride to the bitter joy of enforcing measures of pure unmitigated tyranny. He remained deaf to the unanimous cry which greeted his ears. To every reason adduced, to the most undeniable evidence, he opposed his own will: “Such is my good pleasure.” It was sweet to him to be stronger in his individual capacity than the multitudes, stronger than the Bishop, stronger than good common sense, stronger than the miracles, stronger than the God of the Grotto. Etiamsi omnes, ego non.

It was under such circumstances that two eminent personages, Mgr. de Salinis, Archbishop of Auch, and M. de Rességuier, formerly deputy, waited upon the Emperor, who was at that moment at Biarritz. Napoleon III. received at the same time from different quarters petitions urgently demanding and claiming in virtue of the most sacred rights, the withdrawal of the arbitrary and violent measures of Baron Massy.

“Sire,” so ran one of these petitions, “we do not pretend to decide in any way the question of the Apparitions of the Virgin, although, on the faith of astounding miracles, which they claim to have seen with their own eyes, almost all, in these districts, believe implicitly in the reality of these supernatural manifestations. What is certain and beyond all dispute, is, that this Spring, which gushed forth all at once—and which has been closed to us in spite of the scientific analysis which proclaimed it to be entirely innocuous—has not done any harm to any one; what is certain is, that, on the contrary, a great number of persons declare that they have recovered their health by its means. In the name of the rights of conscience, which are quite independent of all human power, allow those who believe to go and pray there, if it suits them to do so. In the name of mere humanity allow the sick to go there to be cured, if such is their hope. In the name of intellectual liberty, allow those minds which seek for light from study and investigation to go there to discover their error or find the truth.”

The Emperor, as we have stated above, was quite disinterested in the question, or rather he was interested in not employing his strength in a sterile opposition to the progress of events. He was interested in listening to the cry of souls demanding the liberty of their faith, to the cry of intellect demanding the liberty of studying and seeing for itself. He was interested in being just, and in not galling by a gratuitous exercise of arbitrary power and a plain refusal of justice, those who believed what they had seen with their own eyes, as well as those, who though not yet convinced, claimed the right of investigating publicly the mysterious occurrences which were exciting the attention of the whole of France.

We have seen what impossible fictions the worthy Minister Rouland had accepted as incontestable truths. The information forwarded to the Emperor by his Excellency was by no means calculated to enlighten the former on the subject. The polemical discussions in the journals, although they had triumphantly displayed the rights of one party and the intolerance of the other, had not succeeded in giving him any very clear idea of the actual state of things. It was only at Biarritz that it was presented to him as a whole, and that he was made acquainted with all its details.

Napoleon III. was by no means demonstrative, and it rarely happened that his thoughts were expressed by words. They were to be inferred from his actions. On learning the absurd measures of violence by which the Minister, the Prefect and their subordinates were bringing discredit on the supreme power by following their own caprice, a flash of cold anger, it is said, lighted up his jaded eye; he shrugged his shoulders convulsively, and a cloud of deep displeasure passed over his brow. He rang the bell violently.

“Take this to the telegraph,” he said.

It was a laconic dispatch for the Prefect of the Hautes Pyrénées, ordering, on the part of the Emperor, the immediate withdrawal of the Decree regarding the Grotto of Lourdes, and directing that for the future the people should be allowed perfect freedom of action.

Book 8 - Part 4

While God thus left his work to be discussed by man, He did not cease to grant visible graces to those humble and believing souls, who repaired to the miraculous Fountain to implore the sovereign power of the Virgin Mother.

A child at St. Justin, in the department of Gers, Jean-Marie Tambourné, had been for some months entirely disabled in his right leg. He suffered such excruciating pains in it, that his limbs had been violently twisted out of shape; and his foot, completely turned outwards by his attacks of suffering, had formed a right angle with the other foot. His general health had been speedily impaired and disorganized owing to his state of continual suffering, which deprived him of sleep as well as of appetite. His parents, who were in tolerably easy circumstances, had exhausted, in hopes of effecting his cure, all the treatment recommended by the medical men of the place. Nothing could overcome the poor child’s inveterate infirmity. Recourse had been had to the waters of Blousson, and to medicinal baths, but almost everything had failed. Very slight temporary alleviation of his sufferings constantly led to disastrous relapses.

His parents had lost all confidence in any means recommended by science. Disgusted with the vain efforts of medical men, they turned their hopes towards the Mother of Mercy, who, as it was said, had appeared at the Rocks of Massabielle. On the twenty-third of September, 1858, Jean-Marie was taken by his mother to Lourdes in a public conveyance. The distance was long, being about fifty kilomètres. On reaching the town, the mother, carrying her unfortunate son in her arms, repaired to the Grotto. She bathed him in the miraculous water, praying at the same time fervently to Her, who has willed to be called in the Rosary, “Health of the weak.” The child had fallen into a kind of ecstatic state. His eyes were wide open and his mouth half closed. He seemed to be contemplating some strange spectacle.

“What is the matter with you?” enquired his mother.

“I see God and the Blessed Virgin,” he replied.

The poor woman on hearing these words experienced a profound commotion in her heart. A strange perspiration stood in beads on her face. The child had come to himself again.

“Mother,” he exclaimed, “my ailment is gone! I do not feel any more pain. I can walk. I feel as well as I was long ago!”

Jean-Marie spoke the truth. Jean-Marie was cured. He returned to Lourdes on foot. He dined and slept there. Simultaneously with the disappearance of his infirmity and pain, his appetite and sleep returned. The next day, his mother returned to the Grotto to bathe him once more, and had a mass of thanksgiving celebrated in the parish-church of Lourdes. Then, both started on their return homewards, but on foot, and not in any vehicle.

When, after having slept en route, they reached St. Justin, the child perceived his father, who was on the high-road, looking out, no doubt, for the carriage which was to bring home his pilgrims. Jean-Marie recognizing him from afar, let go his mother’s hand and began to run towards him.

The father almost fainted at the sight. But his dearly-loved child was already in his arms. “Father,” he exclaimed, “the Blessed Virgin has cured me!”

The fame of this event spread like wild-fire in the town, where Jean-Marie was known by every one. People came to see him in crowds from all quarters.

The sister of a notary at Tarbes, Mademoiselle Jeanne-Marie Massot-Bordenave, had remained, in consequence of a long and serious illness, almost entirely deprived of the use of her hands and feet. She could only walk with the greatest difficulty. As to her hands, they were constantly swollen, of a purple color, and causing her pain, and almost entirely useless. Her fingers, bent and stiff, could not be straightened, and were the victims of a complete paralysis. Having been to see her brother at Tarbes, she had returned to her own residence at Arras, in the canton of Aucun. She was alone in the intérieur of the diligence. A flask of wine given to her by her brother having by accident become uncorked and upset, she could neither pick it up nor replace the cork, owing to the complete weakness of her fingers.

Lourdes happened to be in her way home. She stopped there and repaired to the Grotto.

Scarcely had she plunged her hand into the miraculous water, when she instantly felt them restored to life. Her fingers had straightened themselves, and had suddenly refound their strength and flexibility. Delighted, perhaps beyond her fondest hopes, she plunged her feet also into the miraculous water, and they were cured in the same way her hands had been. She fell on her knees. What did she say to the Virgin? How did she thank her? Such prayers, such bursts of gratitude, may be divined, but they cannot be written.

After this, she put on again her stockings and shoes, and, with a firm step, took the road leading to the town.

A young girl was walking in the same direction, who was returning from the wood, and carrying on her head an enormous fagot. The weather was warm, and this poor peasant was bathed with perspiration. Exhausted with fatigue, she sat down on a large stone at the side of the road, placing at her feet her burden, which was too heavy for her weakness. At that moment, Jeanne-Marie Massot passed before her, returning active and radiant with joy from the divine Fountain. A good thought descended into her heart. She drew near to the young peasant-girl.

“My child,” she said to her, “the Lord has just granted me a most remarkable favor. He has cured me; He has removed my burden from me. In my turn, I should like to assist and relieve you.”

Saying these words, Marie Massot raised, with her hands so recently restored to life, the heavy fagot thrown on the ground, placed it on her head, and in this manner re-entered Lourdes from which, less than an hour before, she had issued infirm and paralyzed. The first fruits of her restored strength had been nobly employed—they had been consecrated to charity. “Freely ye have received—freely give,” is a text to be found somewhere in Holy Writ.

A woman in the decline of life, Marie Capdevielle of the small town of Livron, in the vicinity of Lourdes, had been also cured of a most severe deafness which was beginning to become inveterate.

“It appears to me,” she used to say, “as if I were in another world, when I hear the church-bells, which I had not heard for upwards of three years.”

These cures and many others continued to attest, in a manner not to be gainsaid, the direct intervention of God. God manifested his power in restoring health to the sick; and, it was clear that, if He had permitted persecution, it was necessary for the carrying out of his designs. It depended upon Him to cause its cessation, and for that purpose to incline, as was pleasing to Him, the will of the great ones of earth.

Book 8 - Part 3

Outside the events themselves and the Miracle, the mandate of the Bishop of Tarbes was the center of attack. Philosophy, in virtue of the infallibility of its dogmas, was indignant at the idea of investigation, scientific study and experiments. “When an individual, laboring under hallucination, sends a paper on perpetual motion or squaring the circle to the Academy of Sciences, the Academy passes to the order of the day without losing its time in examining lucubrations of the kind. There is no place for investigation when Miracles are in question; in the name of reason, Philosophy passes to the order of the day. To examine supernatural facts, would be to admit their possibility and by so doing repudiate our own principles. In such matters proofs and evidence go for nothing. We do not enter into discussions on what is impossible, we shrug our shoulders and there is nothing to be said.”

Such was the theme on which turned—in a thousand different forms—the ardent and exasperated polemical discussion of the irreligious portion of the press. In vain did it obstinately persist in denials and misrepresentations; it dreaded any investigation. False theories delight in resting on the fleeting waves and indistinct mists of pure speculation. By I know not what instinct of self-preservation, they shrink from broad day-light and dare not descend with firm step on the broad plain of experimental method. They have a foreboding that defeat awaits them there.

In this desperate struggle against the evidence of facts and the rights of reason, the skin-deep liberalism of the Journal des Débats peeled off and fell, like theatrical varnish, leaving visible, with scarcely any attempt at concealment, the ground-work of furious intolerance which is concealed beneath the stately phrases of philosophy. The Journal des Débats, in an article from the pen of M. Prévost-Paradol, displayed its alarm beforehand at the immense range which the Report of the Commission and the verdict of the Bishop would infallibly have, and he made that his starting-point to appeal to the secular arm and to conjure Cæsar to put a stop to the whole matter.

“It is evident,” said he, “that a striking manifestation of the divinity in favor of a certain form of worship is a high testimony to its peculiar truth, its superiority to all the rest, and to its incontestable right to the government of souls. It is therefore an event of a nature calculated to bring in its train numerous adhesions, whether as regards dissenters or unbelievers; in a word, it is an instrument of proselytism.” He put in a strong light the political importance of the result of the inquiry.

“If this decision is favorable to the Miracle, it tends to a certain point, to break in that part of France the balance between the religious and the civil power. The Ministers of a form of worship in favor of which such prodigies are authenticated are vastly different personages from those anticipated, organized and placed under certain regulations by the terms of the Concordat. They have an influence of quite another nature over the population, and in case of any collection they dispose of it with an authority totally different from that of the Council of State and of the Prefect.

“We have sufficiently proved,” continued the writer in the Débats, “the importance which, in several points of view, the decision of the Episcopal Commission of Tarbes must necessarily have. Now, there is here a truth which we should bear in mind, and of which M. de Morny has just reminded the Council-General of Puy de Dôme with justifiable urgency. It is that nothing of importance can be legally done in France without the previous authorization of the Administration. If a stone cannot be moved, as M. de Morny well remarked, or a well dug without the consent of the Administration, how much more necessary must its consent be in order to establish a Miracle or found a Pilgrimage. Any one who is conversant with religious matters, and particularly with the opening of temples, or of schools of dissenting communes, knows perfectly well that the administrative authority has not one plea, but ten; not one article of the law, but twenty or thirty which confer on it supreme power in such matters. The meeting of the Commission of the Diocese of Tarbes may be prevented or dissolved in a hundred ways by the Concordat, by the penal Code, by the law of 1824, by the decree of February 1852, by the central authority, by the municipal authority, by all the authorities possible. Further than this, the decision of this Commission when promulgated may be annulled in reality by the legal opposition of the administrative authority to the erection of a chapel or to the licensed use of the marvelous water. The same authority has the power of prohibiting and dispersing all assemblages of persons, and of prosecuting their instigators, etc.”

Having reached this point, having warned Cæsar, and cried out lustily his caveant consules, the crafty writer resumed—for form’s sake—his mantle of liberalism. “What are we aiming at,” he observed hypocritically, “in establishing this preventive right of the Administration? Is it to exhort it to avail itself of it? God forbid?” And he thus rejoined, by a back door, the ranks of the friends of liberty.

In the departments, the journals tamely re-echoed those of Paris. The battle was commenced everywhere and by all. The sergeants, corporals, the rank and file of literature stepped to the front in the wake of the Marshals of Free-thought. At Tarbes, the Ère Impériale, inspired by the Prefect, rammed his carbine with arguments fresh from Paris, and fired close to the muzzle, every second day, at the Supernatural. The little Lavedan, itself, damped, it is true, by the water of the Grotto—and assisted, it is said, by Jacomet, exerted itself to level at the Miracle its hebdomadal pistol, which regularly missed fire once a week.

The Univers, the Union, the majority of the Catholic journals supported the universal shock gallantly. Powerful talents placed themselves at the service of Truth, which was still more powerful. The Christian press re-established the reality of History and put to flight the miserable quibbles of philosophical fanaticism.

“In face of the unexplained occurrences to which a supernatural character is attributed by the faith or the credulity of the multitude, the civil authority,” observed M. Louis Veuillot, “has—without information, but also without success—decided the question in the negative. The spiritual authority is now interfering in its turn; it is its right and its duty. Before judging, it seeks information. It has instituted a Commission, a kind of tribunal of investigation, in order to discover facts, study their nature, and to determine their character. If they are true, and possess a supernatural character, the Commission will say so. If they are false, or only produced by natural causes, it will state this. What more can our adversaries desire from us? Would they have the Bishop abstain, at the risk of slighting a grace which God might deign to grant to his diocese, or, in the other case, suffer a superstition to strike its roots deep into the hearts of the faithful?

“The Bishop cannot fail to have remarked the strangeness of this conviction, which is establishing itself among a whole people, on the word of a poor illiterate little girl. He must have asked himself the question—How came these cures, which are said to be effected by a few drops of pure water, either employed as a lotion or drank by the sufferers? And if there were in reality no cures, it is necessary for us to know why it was so generally believed that they had taken place. Now, supposing that the water is pure, as the chemists say, and that nevertheless the cures are certain, as has been affirmed up to the present time by many invalids and some doctors, we do not see any difficulty in recognizing in this supernatural and miraculous agency, with all due deference to the explanations offered by the Siècle.”

This vigorous polemical writer faced all his enemies at the same time. A stroke of his pen was sufficient to upset the absurd prejudice of denying Miracles altogether, and of refusing even an examination of those astounding facts which whole multitudes saw with their eyes and proclaimed on their knees.

“If M. Guéroult were told that, in the name of Christ, a great miracle was being performed on the Place de la Concorde, he would not go to see it. He would do well, since he is determined to remain incredulous; before such a spectacle he would not be certain of finding such a natural explanation as would dispense him from going to confession. But he would do better to see the Miracle and believe, yielding to the testimony which God, in His mercy, might be willing to give him. In either case, we would have him to understand that the crowd would not be much troubled at his absence, and would experience no uneasiness at hearing him declare that what had been seen was the simplest thing in the world, and that the crowd was merely suffering from hallucination. Things would pass in Paris exactly as at Lourdes. There would be a general cry that a Miracle had taken place, and, if it really was a Miracle, the Miracle would produce its effect; in other words, that many men who have not hitherto sought to decipher the divine will, or have not succeeded in doing so, would know it and put it in practice; they would love God with all their heart and all their soul and all their mind, and their neighbor as themselves. Such is the end God would attain by Miracles. Woe to those who refuse to profit by them.”

“Those who reject the Supernatural,” observed one of the ancients, “sap the foundations of all philosophy. They do so, in fact, and especially since the advent of Christianity, because wishing to withdraw God from the world, they are left without any explanation of the world or of humanity. This God whom they exclude, some deny His existence, in order to get rid of Him altogether; others banish Him into vacuity, as exacting nothing and having nothing to exact from mankind, whom he abandons to chance, after having created them in a freak of his disdainful power. Some, denying and affirming His existence at the same time, as if they wished to glut their ingratitude by a double insult, pretend to discover Him everywhere, which dispenses them from acknowledging and adoring Him anywhere. However, around them and within themselves, humanity cries aloud and confesses God. They answer with sophisms, which do not really satisfy them, and by sarcasms, the compass of which they, with difficulty, hide from themselves; and lastly, their science and their reason, driven into absurdities, stop their eyes and their ears. They sap the foundations of philosophy. Does God, compassionating the faith of the weak, which these false Doctors would abuse, show Himself by one of those unusual strokes of His power, which does not on that account cease to be one of the laws of the world? They reject it. Look! We do not wish to see! David has said of the sinner, ‘He has sworn in his heart to sin; he refuses to understand lest he should be forced to do well.’

“Ah! doubtless,” exclaims elsewhere the indignant logician, “there exists a miserable crowd at whom all these common-places may be boldly flung; but there are also, even at Lourdes, readers whose good sense rebels and asks what becomes of history, palpable facts and right and simple reason in systems of the kind, ‘with their decision to refuse all examination, and their negation a priori.’

“As to preventing the Episcopal Commission performing its duties, we doubt if there are laws conferring this power on the State; if there are, the wisdom of the State should abstain from putting them in force. On the one hand nothing could be more favorable to the growth of Superstition: popular credulity would go astray to its heart’s content, for ‘there is no law which can oblige the Bishop to pronounce his judgment on a fact of which he cannot know anything, and of which he is even forbidden to know anything.’ The enemies of Superstition have only one thing to do, which is to institute a Commission themselves, have a counter-investigation, and publish its result; provided, of course, that the Episcopal Commission concluded in favor of the Miracle. For, if it came to the conclusion that the facts were false or only produced by illusion, there was nothing more to be said on the subject.”

In the midst of the great excitement of the public mind, the Catholic press displayed truly admirable reserve, in refusing to pronounce any judgment regarding what had occurred at the Rocks of Massabielle and the miraculous cures. It did not wish to anticipate in any way the decision of the Episcopal Commission. It confined itself to refuting calumnies, gross libels and sophisms, to maintaining the grand historical thesis of the Supernatural, and to reclaiming, in the name of reason, the rights of investigation and the liberty of intelligence.

“The occurrences at Lourdes,” observed the Univers, “have not yet been either verified or stamped with any decided character. They may arise from miraculous agency, or from a mere illusion. The debate will be settled by the Bishop’s decision.

“As regards ourselves, we think we have replied to whatever has been advanced seriously, or merely speciously, respecting the affair at Lourdes. Here we shall pause. It was not our part to allow the press to incrust these facts with all the lies it could invent; it would not be our part to reply to the derision which it has showered so unsparingly upon them. Wise men will appreciate the wisdom and good faith of the Church, and, as is usually the case, after all this disturbance, Truth will obtain in the world her little nucleus of adherents,—pusillus grex—which is, however, sufficient to maintain the reign of truth in the world.”

We see that, in this vast polemical war, which was stirred up on this grand question of Miracles owing to the events at Lourdes, the two camps were animated with the most opposite spirit.

On the one side, the Catholics appealed for a fair investigation; on the other, the pseudo-philosophers dreaded the approach of light. The former said, “Let an inquiry be instituted;” the latter exclaimed, “Let all debates be cut short!” The motive of one party was liberty of conscience; while the other entreated Cæsar to suppress by violence this religious movement, and to stifle it, not by force of argument, but by the brutality of power.

Every one of impartial mind, placed by his ideas or position outside the mêlée, could not but perceive in the clearest point of view, that justice, truth, and reason, were on the side of the Catholics. For this, it was sufficient not to be blinded by the fury of the struggle or the force of prejudice.

Although the Administration, in the person of a Commissary, a Prefect, and a Minister, had unfortunately played a most foolish part in this grave affair, there existed one powerful man who had never acted in it, and who, whatever might be his religious, philosophical, and political ideas, was in a condition to decide with perfect impartiality. The fact of the Supernatural having manifested itself or not at the gates of Lourdes, was a matter of utter indifference, as far as his schemes and the progress of his own affairs were concerned. Neither his ambition, nor his vanity, nor his doctrinal views, nor his antecedents, were pledged on either side of the question. Where is the mind, which, in such circumstances, would not deal equitably, and give reason and justice their due? Men do not violate Justice and outrage Truth, except when they deem it of utility to trample them under foot, in view of some powerful interest connected with fortune, ambition, or pride.

The man of whom we are speaking was called Napoleon III., and was, by chance, Emperor of the French.

Impassible as was his wont, mute as the sphinxes of granite which guard the gates of Thebes, he followed the polemical combat, watching the fluctuations of the battle, and waiting until the conscience of the public, so to say, dictated to him his decision.

Book 8 - Part 2

To the official and officious enemies of Superstition, there remained one last weapon to be employed, one final struggle to be attempted. If the battle seemed to be definitely lost in the Pyrenees, they might possibly reconquer their position at Paris, and make themselves masters of public opinion in France and in Europe, before the cosmopolite band of tourists and bathers, on their return to their own firesides, should have spread everywhere their vexatious impressions and severe judgments.

A formidable campaign was organized by the irreligious press of Paris, the province and foreign countries, against the events at Lourdes and the Bishop’s pastoral letter.

While the generals of Free-thought were engaged in the decisive combat on this vast battle-field, the Prefect of the Hautes-Pyrenees, like Kellermann at Valmy, received instructions to maintain his line of operations—come what might—not to give way an inch and not to capitulate, at any price, in face of the enemy. They well knew Baron Massy’s intrepidity, and were aware that neither arguments, nor reason, nor moral considerations, nor the spectacle of the most astounding Miracles would triumph over his invincible firmness. He would hold his ground even though it were crumbling beneath his feet. Even the absurdity of their position would be ably defended by him.

The Journal des Débats, the Siècle, the Presse, the Indépendance Belge, and several foreign journals struck the blow simultaneously, and rushed to the attack with violence. The most insignificant journals of the most insignificant countries, deemed it an honor to figure in this muster of shields against the Supernatural. We find, in fact, among those which took part in the struggle, even a paltry little newspaper of Amsterdam, the Amsterdaamsche Courant.

Some, as the Presse for instance, by the pen of M. Guéroult, or the Siècle by that of M. M. Bénard and Jourdan, attacked Miracles in their very principle, declaring that they had had their day, that they did not enter into any discussion with them, and that in a question already judged a priori by the great lights of philosophy, to examine was inconsistent with the dignity of Free Examination.

“Miracles,” observed M. Guéroult, “belong to a series of civilization which is fast disappearing. If God does not change, the idea which mankind forms of Him changes from epoch to epoch in proportion to the degree of light and morality they have attained. Ignorant people, who have no suspicion of the important harmony of the laws of the universe, see everywhere those laws reversed. From day to day God appears to them, talks to them, converses with them and sends angels to them.

“In proportion as Societies are enlightened, men become educated, and the sciences of observation come to counterbalance the flights of the imagination, all this mythology vanishes. Man is not less religious on this account; he is in reality more so, but it is after another fashion. He sees no longer face to face gods or goddesses, angels or demons. He strives to decipher the divine will written in the laws of the world. Miracles, which at certain epochs, might be the conditions of faith and serve as exterior coverings of deep truths, have become in our days the bugbears of all serious convictions.”

M. Guéroult declared that if he were told of a most striking supernatural fact as being in the process of accomplishment in his immediate neighborhood, on the Place de la Concorde, “he would not go out of his way to see it. If such adventures can take their place for an instant in the superstitious baggage of the ignorant masses, they do but provoke in men of enlightenment—in those, whose opinion, in process of time, becomes that of the world—the repulsion of distrust and the smile of disdain.”

Other journals devoted themselves gallantly to the disfigurement of facts. At the same time that it attacked the very principle of miracles, the Siècle, in spite of the evidence adduced, and the vast body of water which the Spring produced daily, still stuck, in its capacity of a very advanced journal, to the hackneyed theory of hallucination and oozing.

“It seems to us a matter of difficulty,” observed M. Bénard, with all the pomp of learning, “how they managed to manufacture a miracle out of the hallucination, true or false, of a miserable little girl of fourteen years of age, and the oozing of some pure water in a Grotto.”

As to the miraculous cures they disposed of them by a single word. “The hydropathists also pretend to effect the most brilliant cures with pure water, but they have not yet proclaimed from the house-tops that they work Miracles.”

But the most curious specimen of the good faith of the Free-thinkers, or of their sagacious investigation of this matter, is to be found in the Dutch journal we named above, the grave narration of which was re-produced in the French papers. This friend of enlightenment instructed the world and recounted the events which had occurred as follows:

“A new manifestation, destined to rouse and nourish the ardor of the faithful for the worship of the Blessed Virgin, was imminent. The deliberations of the Bishops on this point resulted in the preparation of the famous Miracle of Lourdes. Every one knows that the Bishop of Tarbes has appointed a Commission charged with investigating the fact. The so-called conclusions of the Report of the Commission, which is composed of ecclesiastics and individuals paid by the Clergy, were prepared long before the first meeting. The pretended shepherd-girl Bernadette is not an innocent shepherd-girl, but a young girl belonging to the city, of highly cultivated mind and crafty intellect, who has passed several months in a nunnery where she has been duly tutored in the part she was to play. There, before a small number of confederates, trial-representations were given long before she was brought on the public scene. As we see, nothing was wanting to this comedy, not even rehearsals. If at any time there happens to be a dearth of dramatists at Paris, persons may be found among the superior Clergy who will fill up the gap in the most superior style. Besides, the liberal press has turned the whole affair into ridicule from beginning to end, and it is very possible that the Clergy, for their own interest, will recognize the necessity of being prudent.”

The information obtained by the journalists could only be compared with that which had captivated the simple faith of his Excellency, M. Rouland. The public, as we see, were not treated more respectfully than a Minister.

In this manner is not unfrequently formed the opinion of those who are termed by M. Guéroult, in his article, “enlightened men,” doubtless in allusion to the torrent of light which the press throws upon them.

Book 8 - Part 1

The mandate of the Bishop instituting a Commission of Inquiry, coupled with the analysis furnished by M. Filhol, took away from Baron Massy, M. Rouland and M. Jacomet, all pretext for persevering in violent measures as well as for maintaining round the Grotto rigorous prohibitions, barriers and sentinels.

In justification of the prohibition of trespass on the communal grounds they had said, “Considering that it is important, in the interests of Religion, to put a stop to the deplorable scenes at the Grotto of Massabielle.” Now, the Bishop by declaring the state of things to be sufficiently grave to warrant his interference, and by taking in hand the investigation of whatever regarded the “interests of Religion,” disarmed the civil power of this motive, which it had so loftily invoked.

In justification of the prohibition of going to drink water at the Spring which had gushed forth from beneath the hands of Bernadette when in a state of ecstasy, they had said, “Considering that it is the duty of the Mayor to watch over the public health; considering that there are serious reasons for believing that this water contains mineral compounds, and that it is prudent—before permitting its use—to wait until a scientific analysis shall make known the manner in which it may be applied by the science of medicine. . . .” Now by declaring that the water did not contain any mineral compound, and by establishing that it might be drunk with impunity, M. Filhol demolished, in the name of Science and Medicine, this pretended reason, “the public health.”

If then the civil power had alleged these motives as straightforward reasons, and not as specious pretexts; if it had acted “in the interests of Religion and of the public health,” and not under the influence of evil passions and intolerance; if, in a word, it had been sincere, and not actuated by hypocrisy, it would, in the present stage of events, have had nothing to do but to cancel its prohibitions and remove its barriers; it would have had nothing to do but to leave the people absolutely free to drink at the Fountain, whose perfect harmlessness had been proclaimed by Science; it would have had nothing to do but to acknowledge their right to go and kneel at the foot of those mysterious Rocks, where from henceforth the Church kept watch.

It did nothing of the kind.

To this solution of the question, so clearly pointed out by logical reasoning and conscience, there was one potent obstacle—Pride. Pride bore the sway from the bottom to the top of the ladder, from Jacomet up to Rouland, including, of course, the Baron, and all their philosophizing Sect. It seemed hard to them to recoil and surrender their arms.

Pride never submits. It would rather boldly intrench itself in the illogical than bow to the authority of Reason. Furious, beside itself, driven to the most absurd shifts, it raises itself to its full height against evidence. It says, “Non serviam,” like the Satan of holy writ. It resists, refuses to give way and becomes inflexible—until all at once the crash comes and it is contemptuously shivered into atoms.