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.
