Our Lady of Lourdes - First Book - Part 14

  ON her way back to Lourdes, Bernadette was filled with joy.  She pondered in the depth of her soul on these strikingly extraordinary events.  Her companions experienced a kind of vague terror.  The transfiguration of Bernadette’s countenance had proved to them the reality of a supernatural apparition. Everything that exceeds nature is a source of terror to it.  “Depart from us, Lord, lest we should die,” was the exclamation of the Jews in the Old Testament.

  “We are afraid, Bernadette.  Let us not return here again.  Perhaps what you have seen comes to do us harm,” said her timid companions to the youthful Seer.

  The children returned, according to promise, in time for Vespers.  When the office was over, the fineness of the weather attracted many of the inhabitants to prolong their walk as they chatted together, enjoying the last rays of the sun, so mild in these splendid winter days.  The story of the little girls circulated here and there among these various groups.  By this means, a rumor of these strange events began to be spread abroad in the town.  The report, which at first had only agitated a humble knot of children, grew rapidly in proportion like a wave, and penetrated from one to another into the masses of the population.  The quarriers, very numerous in that part of the country, the seamstresses, the artisans, the peasants, the female servants, the nurses, the poorer classes in general, talked of this asserted apparition among themselves—some believing, others disputing it;  some only laughing at it, while many exaggerated it.  With one or two exceptions, the bourgeoisie did not even take the trouble of thinking for a moment about such childish stories.  

  Singularly enough, Bernadette’s father and mother, though fully convined of their child’s sincerity, regarded the Apparition as an illusion.

  “She is but a child, they said.  “She fancied she saw something, but she has not seen anything.  It is only the imagination of a young girl.”

  However, the extraordinary preciseness of Bernadette’s story puzzled them.  At times, carried away by the earnestness of their daughter, they felt themselves shaken in their incredulity.  Much as they wished her not to return to the Grotto, they did not venture actually to forbid her doing so.

  However, she did not return there until the following Thursday.