Book 5 - Part 11

In the course of the months of April and May, after as well as before the receipt of the letter from the Minister, the Prefect had employed his natural quickness of mind in endeavoring to find a key to these strange events at Lourdes, independent of the supernatural. Interrogatories had been renewed to no purpose, by the Parquet and Monsieur Jacomet. Neither the Commissary of Police nor M. Dutour had been able to catch the child tripping. This little shepherd-girl, thirteen or fourteen years of age, illiterate and unable to read or write, or even speak French, disconcerted by the mere force of her profound simplicity the crafty and the prudent.

A disciple of the Mesmers and the Du Potets—where from no one knew—had attempted in vain to throw Bernadette into the magnetic slumber. His passes had failed in exerting the slightest influence on her calm, and but slightly nervous temperament, and his success was limited to causing the child a head-ache. The poor little thing, however, submitted herself with resignation to the experiments and examinations of every one. It was the will of God that she should be exposed to every form of trial, and emerge triumphantly from them all, without exception.

It was understood that a foreign family of immense fortune having, as was the case with all, been fascinated with Bernadette, had proposed to adopt her, offering at the same time to her parents the sum of one hundred thousand francs, with the permission of remaining with their daughter. The disinterestedness of these good souls had not even been tempted for a moment, and they preferred remaining poor.

Everything brought to bear on Bernadette failed, the snares laid by guile, the offers of enthusiasm, the dialectics of the most acute intellects.

However great the horror M. Dutour entertained for fanaticism, he was unable to find, either in the Code of Criminal Instruction or in the Penal Code, any text which would authorize him in taking severe measures against Bernadette, and throwing her into prison. An arrest of this nature would have been illegal in the highest degree, and might be attended with very unpleasant consequences to the Magistrate by whose order it was carried into execution. In the eye of the penal law, Bernadette was innocent.

The Prefect, with his exceeding clearness of mind, took all this into consideration as thoroughly as if he had been a practical lawyer. He then entertained the idea of arriving at the same result by the employment of other means, and of proceeding by a measure emanating from the Administration to effect an incarceration, which, as it appeared to him, would be of considerable utility, but in which the Magistrates, with the codes in their hands, did not deem themselves authorized to assume the initiative.

Book 5 - Part 10

While all these Miracles were taking place in different directions, there occurred an incident, in appearance very foreign to the object of this history, but which, notwithstanding its apparent insignificance, was destined to be attended with most important consequences as events progressed.

The Prefect of the Hautes-Pyrenees made about this time the notable discovery that his carriage and saddle horses were not particularly well domiciled and that it was desirable to erect elegant and spacious stables for their accommodation.

Unfortunately the ground about the Prefecture was somewhat confined, and Baron Massy wished, above all things, to avoid disfiguring either his court-yard or his garden.

The Prefecture of Tarbes is quite close to the Cathedral. Between the two buildings was the former cemetery of the priests and canons of the Church. It is handed down by tradition that many of the noble families of the country had formerly had vaults in it, and that the ashes of their illustrious members repose below. The Prefect observed to himself that this plot of ground was the very thing for his stables and coach-houses. With Baron Massy the execution of a project followed speedily on its first conception. He had the foundations therefore dug among the tomb-stones and fragments of human bones, and the buildings necessary for the accommodation of the official horses began shortly afterwards to rise conspicuously in the cemetery. The Prefect erected his buildings exactly opposite one of the ancient doors of the Cathedral, and at a very small distance from it, so that the noise of the stable was unavoidably heard by the congregation.

Such a forgetfulness of decorum could not fail of deeply annoying the occupants of the Palace. Monseigneur Laurence strove in vain to make the Prefect understand that the ground was consecrated, that it belonged to the Church, and that neither the repose of the dead nor the devotion of the living ought to be disturbed by the pawing and neighing of horses. The Prefect, as we have observed before, could never relinquish what he had once resolved upon. By discharging his workmen and selecting another site, he would have allowed himself to have been in the wrong. Notwithstanding, therefore, the sincere desire he might have to keep the Bishop in good humor, he did not pay the slightest attention to his remonstrances. His workmen remained on the old cemetery engaged in the construction of his stables.

On seeing the Prefect persist in his desecration of the tombs, Monseigneur Laurence threw off his reserve and protested energetically against his conduct. The Bishop addressed himself directly to the Minister of Public Worship, requesting authorization to pull down these unseemly and offensive buildings.

The Prefect was greatly annoyed at the very firm and dignified attitude assumed by the Bishop. He went post-haste to Paris, to argue his own case with the Minister, and endeavored to bring over the Council General to his side of the question; he sought legal opinions on the subject, and in short entered on a desperate struggle, the various episodes of which would be of no interest to our readers. The question lasted several months, and was eventually decided in accordance with the wise expostulations of Monseigneur Laurence. The grass grows once more to-day on the site of the demolished stables, and a funereal tree, planted in the centre of the cemetery, serves to mark that the ashes of the dead repose in that place.

But from the day when the Bishop issued his protest, the harmony, which, up to that period, had existed between the Head of the Department and the Head of the Diocese was broken for ever. In the heart of the Prefect this harmony was succeeded by an intense feeling of irritation. He ceased to be inclined to arrange matters amicably; perhaps his tendencies took quite the opposite direction. As he wished to encroach on the property of the Church in this miserable affair of his stables, so with regard to the question of the Apparitions, he from that time felt himself more inclined than before to encroach on the spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop.

The bridle, which up to that moment had kept him in check, was snapped. Great effects are not unfrequently produced by very insignificant causes.

Book 5 - Part 9

 
It was not only at Lourdes that miraculous cures had taken place. Many, whose maladies prevented them from repairing to the Grotto, had procured some of the water and found their most inveterate symptoms suddenly disappear.

At Nay, in the Basses Pyrenees, there was a young lad, about fifteen years of age, called Henry Busquet, who had fallen into hopelessly bad health. He had, in 1856, a violent and long typhoid fever, the result of which was that an abscess had formed on the right side of his neck, spreading imperceptibly to the top of his chest and the extremity of his cheek. The abscess was about as big as your hand. This caused the lad such intense suffering as to force him at times to roll himself on the ground.

The medical man who attended him, Doctor Subervielle, a practitioner of great repute in his district, lanced the abscess about four months after its first formation, and there issued from it a vast quantity of sero-purulent matter; but this operation did not conduce to the recovery of Henry. After having tried several unavailing remedies, the Doctor thought of the waters at Cauterets. In 1857, in the course of the month of October—a season of the year when the rich frequenters of the baths having taken their departure, those in poorer circumstances repair to them—young Busquet went to Cauterets and took a course of fifteen baths. These proved more prejudicial than useful to him and served but to aggravate his sores. His malady increased in violence notwithstanding some momentary relief. The unfortunate lad had, in the parts mentioned above, an extensive ulcer, which emitted an abundant suppuration, covering the top of his chest and all one side of his neck, and threatening to spread to his face. In addition to this, two fresh glandular swellings of considerable size had arisen at the side of this terrible ulcer.

Such was the state of this poor lad when, happening to hear the marvelous effects of the water of the Grotto spoken of, he had thoughts of undertaking the journey to Lourdes. He wished to leave home and make the pilgrimage on foot; but he presumed too much on his own strength, and his parents refused to take him there.

Henry, who was very pious, was haunted with the idea that he would be cured by the Virgin who had appeared to Bernadette. He requested a woman, one of his neighbors who was going to Lourdes, to draw for him a little of the water at the Spring. She brought him a bottle-full of it on the evening of Wednesday, April the 28th, the Feast of the Patronage of St. Joseph.

Towards eight o’clock at night, before retiring to rest, the lad knelt down and prayed to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary.

His family, consisting of his father, mother and several brothers and sisters, joined with him in prayer. They were all excellent people, simple and full of faith: one of the daughters is at the present moment a religieuse with the Sisters of Saint André.

Henry went to bed. Doctor Subervielle had charged him repeatedly never to use cold water, as it would inevitably lead to a serious complication of his malady; but at that moment Henry was thinking of something else than medical prescriptions. He removed the bandages and lint which covered his ulcer, and with a piece of linen soaked in the water from the Grotto, he bathed and washed his sores in the miraculous fluid. He was not wanting in faith. “It must be,” he thought to himself, “that the Virgin will effect my cure.” He went to sleep with this hope in his breast and fell into a deep slumber.

On awaking, what he had hoped proved a reality: all his pain had ceased, all his sores were closed; the glandular swellings had disappeared. The ulcer had become a solid scar, as solid as if it had been slowly healed by the hand of time. The eternal power which had stepped in and effected the cure, had performed in a few moments the work of several months or several years. His recovery had been complete, sudden and without any intermediate state of convalescence.

The medical men in their Report addressed to the Commission (from which we have derived the technical terms employed in our narration), humbly acknowledged the miraculous nature of the young lad’s recovery.

“All affections of this nature,” observed one of them, “can only be cured very slowly, because they are connected with scrofulous diathesis, and involve the necessity of an entire change in the system. This consideration alone, placed in opposition with the suddenness of the cure, is sufficient to prove that the fact in question deviates from the ordinary action of nature. We rank it among facts which fully and evidently possess a supernatural character.”

The lad’s usual medical attendant, Doctor Subervielle, declared this sudden cure—as indeed did every one—to be marvelous and divine; but the restless skepticism, which often lurks at the bottom of the hearts of members of the Faculty, waited for time to afford full proof of the truth of his theory.

“Who knows,” M. Subervielle was often in the habit of saying, “but what this malady may recur when Henry reaches the age of eighteen? Up to that period I shall be always in a state of anxiety.”

The eminent physician who spoke thus was not destined to rejoice at seeing the cure of Henry confirmed by time. He died a short time after this and his death was a calamity to that part of the country.

As to young Henry Busquet, the author of this book, in accordance with his practice of ascertaining the truth of facts by personal investigation, availed himself of the opportunity of seeing him and hearing the circumstances from his own lips.

Henry told us his story, with which we are already acquainted from official reports and the testimony of several individuals. He related it to us as if it had been the simplest thing in the world, without showing surprise or astonishment. To the strong good sense of Christians, like Henry, sprung from the lower classes, whose minds have not been led astray by sophistry, the supernatural does not appear extraordinary, still less contrary to reason. They find it strictly conformable with common sense. If they are sometimes surprised at being restored to health by the aid of a physician, it is to them no matter for astonishment that God, who had power sufficient to create man, should, in his loving kindness, cure him when attacked with sickness. They see clearly at a glance that a miracle, far from disturbing order, is, on the contrary, one of the laws of eternal order. If God, in His mercy, has conferred on certain waters the virtue of removing maladies of certain kinds—if He cures indirectly those who employ, according to certain conditions, such material agency, have we not greater reason to believe that He will effect a direct cure in those who address themselves directly to Him? Such is the reasoning of the humbler classes.

It was our great wish to see with our own eyes and touch with our own hands the traces of this terrible sore, which had been so miraculously cured. The place where the ulcer was is marked by an immense scar. It is now long since the lad passed safely through the crisis of his eighteenth year and there has been no hint of any return of his cruel malady. He has never suffered again from any running nor shown any tendency to glandular swellings, and he enjoys perfect health. Henry Busquet is now a man of five and twenty years of age, strong and hearty. Like his father, he is a plasterer by trade. On Sundays he plays the trombone in the brass band at the Fanfare de l’Orphéon, an instrument on which he displays no small talent. He has a splendid voice. If ever you happen to go to the town of Nay, you will not fail of hearing him through the windows of some house, either being built or repaired, for, when on the scaffolding, he is wont to sing at the top of his voice from morning till night. You may listen to him without any fear of your ears being offended by any coarse song. His charming voice delights in gay and innocent ballads, not unfrequently in the canticles of the Church. The singer has not forgotten that it is to the Blessed Virgin he owes his life.

Book 5 - Pts 7&8

 

A singular circumstance, which perhaps passed unnoticed at the time, derived importance from what followed, and struck the attention of many. We cannot refrain from pointing it out.

One of the highest privileges of sovereignty is the right of granting pardon, and when a king wishes to solemnize his accession to the throne, he issues an amnesty to those who have made themselves amenable to the law.

The power of the Queen of Heaven was greater, and she exerted it in a higher degree. She willed that there should not be any guilty of crime. The Apparitions which had already taken place, and those which took place later on, were spread over two periods of three months; at the commencement of each of which the assizes were held. Now during these two judicial quarters, there was not a single crime committed or a single criminal condemned, throughout the Department. The session of the March assizes had only to examine a single case anterior to the date of the Apparitions, and this single case terminated in an acquittal. The next session, which was to be in June, had only two cases to pronounce upon, both connected with occurrences anterior to this same period.

It appears to us that this wonderful coincidence, this mysterious mark of divine influence which hovered over the whole country, this entirely extraneous proof, this moral prodigy, this miracle extending over a whole diocese, is eminently calculated to afford food for reflection to the most frivolous minds.

How came it that during so long a time the arm of the criminal was stayed? Is that imposture, hallucination or catalepsy? How was it that the sword of justice was not required to strike a blow? How came this peace, this truce of God? Precisely at that very moment. Setting aside the reason we have assigned, we challenge unbelief to endeavor to discover the cause of this surprising fact, of this strange coincidence. It will make the attempt in vain.

The Queen of Heaven had passed by, the Queen of Heaven had left her blessing.

Bernadette received constant visits from the innumerable strangers whom piety or curiosity brought in crowds to Lourdes. They were of all classes, of all professions, and of every school of philosophy. No one was offended at the simple and sincere language of the youthful Seer; no one after seeing her and hearing her speak dared to say that she was telling falsehoods.

In the midst of excited parties and numberless discussions, this little girl, by an inconceivable privilege, inspired every one with respect, and was never, for a single moment, exposed to the attacks of calumny. Such was the halo of her innocence, that she was never personally assailed: she was protected by an invisible ægis.

Bernadette was, in every respect, a child of very ordinary intelligence, but she seemed to rise above herself whenever she had to bear testimony to the truth of the Apparition. She was never discomposed by any objection.

Her answers, at times, displayed considerable depth of thought. M. de Ressegnier, Counselor General and formerly Deputy for the Basses-Pyrénées, came to see her, accompanied by several ladies of his family. He made her enter into the most minute details connected with the Visions.

On Bernadette telling him that the Apparition expressed herself in the patois of Béarn, he exclaimed

“You are not telling the truth, my child! God and the Blessed Virgin do not understand your patois, and know nothing of such a miserable dialect.”

“If they did not know it,” she replied, “how could we know it ourselves? And if they did not understand it, who could render us capable of understanding it?”

Her repartees were not deficient in wit.

“How could the Blessed Virgin have ordered you to eat grass? Did she take you for a beast of the field,” observed a sceptic to her one day.

“Do you think of that when you are eating salad?” she replied, smiling archly.

Her answers were remarkable for their artless simplicity. This same M. de Ressegnier happened to be speaking to her of the beauty of the Apparition at the Grotto.

“Was she as beautiful as any of the company now present,” he asked her.

Bernadette glanced slowly round the charming circle of ladies, married and unmarried, who had accompanied her visitor, and with almost a little pout of disdain she replied:

“Oh! it was quite a different thing from all that!”

“All that,” was the élite of the society of Pau.

She used to disconcert those who proposed to her subtle questions in hopes of causing her embarrassment.

“If the Curé were to formally prohibit your going to the Grotto, what would you do?” some one said to her.

“I would obey him.”

“But if you received at the same time from the Apparition a command to repair thither, how would you act between these two contrary orders?”

The child without the slightest hesitation answered at once:

“I should go to ask permission from the Curé.”

Nothing either then or later caused her to lose her graceful simplicity. She never spoke of the Apparition unless she was interrogated on the subject. She always regarded herself as the most backward of all the children at the school superintended by the Sisters, who found some difficulty in teaching her to read and write. The mind of this child was elsewhere, or, if we dared to penetrate the recesses of her exquisite nature so imbued with grace, we would rather say her soul, which doubtless felt little curiosity towards mere earthly learning, was playing truant in the thickets of Paradise.

During the hours of recreation she was confounded with the rest of her companions. She liked to play.

Sometimes a visitor, it might be a stranger from a distance, requested the Sisters to show him this youthful Seer, this being so privileged by the Lord, this beloved of the Virgin, this Bernadette whose name had already acquired so much celebrity

“There she is,” said the Sister, pointing her out with her finger among the rest of the children.

The visitor on turning his eyes in that direction beheld a little weakly child, miserably dressed, playing at base, blind-man’s buff, or with her skipping rope, entirely taken up with the pleasures of childhood. But what she preferred to any thing else was to figure as the thirtieth or fortieth in one of those immense circles which children make, holding each other’s hands and singing all the while.

The Mother of God, while visiting Bernadette, while allotting to her the part of a witness of divine things, while making her the center of vast throngs, and as it were, an object of pilgrimage, had, by a miracle greater than all the others, protected her candor and her innocence, and had granted her the extraordinary, nay, divine gift, of remaining a child.

Book 5 - Part 6

The road to the Rocks of Massabielle continued to be thronged. Never did an uproarious cry escape from the crowd, nor was there any agitation in this popular stream whose waves were incessantly renewed. Canticles, litanies, vivats in honor of the Virgin were all that struck the ear, and all that M. Jacomet and his police could register in their Reports. It was something more than order; it was a state of pious recollection.

The artisans of Lourdes had widened the road which had been laid out some fifteen or twenty days previously on the slopes of Massabielle by the quarry-men. They had blown up the rock with powder, and reduced it in many places, so that they had made a broad and very commodious road on those precipitous declivities. It was a work of considerable toil, requiring trouble, time, and outlay of money. These good-hearted fellows devoted themselves to the task every evening, on their return from the work-yards in which they were employed from morning to night. They rested from the toil of their hard day’s work in laboring at this road, which led the way to God: In labore requies. Towards night-fall they might be seen clinging like a nest of ants to the side of the steep descent, digging, wheeling barrows, boring the rock, inserting powder and shivering vast blocks of marble or granite.

“Who will pay you?” they were asked.

“The Blessed Virgin,” was the reply.

Before retiring from their labor, they descended altogether into the Grotto and offered up their prayers in common.

In the midst of this magnificence of nature, beneath that lovely starry heaven, these Christian scenes offered a spectacle of simplicity and grandeur redolent of the primitive ages of the Church.

The outward appearance of the Grotto gradually changed. Up to that date tapers had been burned in it as a sign of veneration. About this time there were placed in it vases of flowers, either growing naturally or arranged in bouquets by pious hands, statues of the Virgin and ex-votos as marks of gratitude. A small balustrade had been erected by the workmen to protect these fragile articles from the involuntary accidents which might have happened from the too great eagerness of the throng.

Several persons, having received some special grace by the intervention of Our Lady of Lourdes, brought with them by way of homage to the place of the Vision their little gold cross and chain, and placed their pious offering under the guardianship of the public faith. As it was from that time the general cry of the country that the command of the Apparition must be obeyed, and a chapel erected, it became the custom to throw pieces of money into the Grotto. Considerable sums, amounting to several thousand francs, lay consequently exposed in the open air, without any outward protection, night and day; and such was the respect inspired by this spot, a short time before entirely unknown—such was the moral effect produced on souls, that not a single evil-doer was to be met with in the whole country to attempt a sacrilegious robbery.

But what made this more wonderful was the fact that, a few months previously, several churches in the neighbourhood had been plundered. The Virgin willed not that the slightest souvenir of crime should be connected with the origin of the pilgrimage it was her wish to establish.

Book 5 - Part 5

Some young women of Lourdes, of exemplary virtue, among whom we will only mention by name, Marie Courrège, a pious servant-maid respected by every one, had the same vision as Bernadette, at the Grotto, separately, twice or thrice. This was vaguely rumored abroad, but had no influence on the mass of the public. Some little children had also visions, but of a perfectly distinct and rather alarming nature. When the divine Supernatural manifests itself, the diabolical Supernatural strives to mingle itself with it. This is a truth proved in almost every page of the history of the Fathers of the Desert and of the Mystics. The abyss was troubled and the Evil Angel had recourse to his counterfeits for the purpose of troubling the souls of believers.

These various facts, which did not attract much observation at the time, are not sufficiently precise (more especially as some of their details have been forgotten) to be consigned to the pages of History. We merely point them out that we may not incur the blame of neglect. The true visions were only important so far as they affected individuals, the remainder died away of themselves.

Book 5 - Part 4

Easter-Sunday had arrived. Notwithstanding the pious apprehensions of the Minister of Public Worship, the marvellous occurrences at Lourdes had not, "weakened the religious feeling of the population of the district." Numerous conversions had taken place, and the confessionals were in a state of siege. Usurers and robbers had made restitution of their ill-gotten gains, and many scandals had ceased. The Faithful crowded to the Holy Table.

On Easter-Monday, the fifth of April, that is to say the very day the Prefect had visited the Bishop, the Mother of God had once more by an internal call, summoned the daughter of the miller, and the child, soon followed by an immense crowd, had repaired to the Grotto, where, as on the preceding days, the Heavens had opened themselves before her eyes, and displayed to her the Virgin Mary in a state of glory.

That day a very singular occurrence took place before the wonder-struck eyes of the multitude.

The taper, which Bernadette had either brought with her, or received from one of the bystanders, was of considerable size and she had rested it on the ground, supporting it at the bottom between the fingers of her hands, which were half clasped. The Virgin appeared to her. And behold, by an instinctive movement of adoration, the youthful Seer, falling in a state of ecstacy before the Immaculate Beauty, slightly raised her hands and let them rest calmly, and without thinking of what she was doing, on the lighted end of the taper. And then the flame began to pass between her fingers, which were half open, and to mount above them, flickering in different directions, according as the light breeze blew. Bernadette, however, remained motionless and absorbed in the heavenly contemplation, utterly unconscious of the phenomenon which caused so much astonishment to the multitude around her. Those who witnessed it pressed closely on each other in order to obtain a better view. M.M. Jean-Louis Fourcade, Martinou, Estrade, Caillet, warden of the forest, the demoiselles Tard’hivail, and a hundred other persons were spectators of this unheard of incident. M. Dozons had remarked by his watch that this extraordinary state lasted more than a quarter of an hour. All at once a slight shudder was perceptible in the frame of Bernadette. Her features lost their lofty expression. The Vision had vanished and the child resumed her natural state. The bystanders seized her hand but it presented nothing unusual to the eye. The flame had spared the flesh of the youthful Seer during her ecstasy at the feet of Mary. The crowd, not without sufficient reasons, exclaimed that a Miracle had been performed. One of the spectators however, wishing to test the fact, took the taper which was still lighted and applied it to Bernadette’s hand, without her being aware of what he was doing.

“Ah! Sir,” she exclaimed, drawing back quickly, “you are burning me.”

The occurrences at Lourdes had produced such an excitement in the surrounding districts, and the influx of strangers was so great, that on that day the multitude which had in a moment flocked around Bernadette amounted to nearly ten thousand persons, and these had not been warned beforehand, as was the case during the Quinzaine.