THE scene just recounted had lasted about a quarter of an hour: not that Bernadette was conscious of the exact lapse of time, but she was enabled to compute it by the fact of her having been able to recite the five decades of her chaplet.
Bernadette being completely restored to herself, finished taking off her shoes and stockings, and fording the little stream, rejoined her companions. Absorbed as she was with the thought of what she had just seen, she no longer feared the coldness of the water. All the childish faculties of the humble little girl were concentrated to the end of turning over and over again in her heart the remembrance of this unheard of vision.
Jeanne and Marie had observed her fall on her knees and engaged in prayer; but this, thank God, is not an event of rare occurrence among the children of the Mountain, and being occupied in their task, they had not paid any attention to the circumstance.
Bernadette was surprised at the complete calmness of her sister and Jeanne, who having just then completed their work, had entered the Grotto and had commenced to play as if nothing extraordinary had taken place.
“Have you seen nothing?” asked she. They then remarked that she appeared agitated and excited.
“No,” they replied. “Have you seen anything?”
Whether the youthful Seer feared to profance what so entirely filled her mind, by repeating it, or wished to digest it in silence, or was restrained by some feeling of timidity, it is difficult to say; but she obeyed that seemingly instinctive necessity of humble minds to conceal, as if a treasure, the peculiar graces with which God has favored them.
“If you have seen nothing,” she rejoined, “I have nothing to tell you.”
The little fagots were soon arranged and the three girls started on their return to Lourdes.
Bernadette, however, had not been able to dissimulate the troubled state of her mind. While on the way home, Marie and Jeanne urged her to tell them what she had seen. The little shepherd-girl gave way to their entreaties, having previously exacted a promise of secrecy.
“I have seen,” she said, “something clothed in white;” and she described to them, in the best language she could, her marvelous vision.
“Now you know what I have seen,” she said at the termination of her narration; “but I beg of you not to say anything about it.”
Marie and Jeanne had no doubts on the subject. The soul, in its first purity and innocence, is naturally prone to belief, and doubt is not the fault of simple childhood. Besides, the touching and sincere accents of Bernadette, who was still agitated and deeply impressed by what she had seen, swayed them irresistibly. Marie and Jeanne did not doubt, but they were terrified. The children of the poor are always timid. This may be easily explained, from the fact that suffering reaches them from all quarters.
“It is, perhaps, something to do us harm,” they observed. “Do not let us go there again, Bernadette.”
The confidantes of the little shepherd-girl had scarcely reached home when they found themselves unable to keep the secret any longer. Marie related all the circumstances to her mother.
“It is all nonsense,” said the mother. “What is this your sister tells me?” she continued, interrogating Bernadette.
The latter re-commenced her narration and her mother shrugged her shoulders.
“You are deceived. It was nothing at all. You fancied you saw something and have seen nothing. It is mere folly and nonsense.”
Bernadette persisted in what she had said.
“At all events,” rejoined the mother, “do not go there any more. I forbid you to do so.”
This prohibition weighed heavily on the heart of Bernadette; for since the Apparition had vanished it had been her greatest wish to see it again. However, she sumitted and made no reply.
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