WHILE, at the Bishop’s palace, matters were treated with such extreme circumspection, the civil authorities were in the greatest state of perplexity with regard to what was passing at Lourdes. The préfecture of Tarbes was occupied by M. Massy, and the Ministry of Public Worship by M. Rouland.
The Baron M. Massy, Prefect of the Hautes-Pyrenees, was a good but independent Catholic, and decidedly opposed to anything like Superstition. He professed, as a good Christian, to believe the miracles recounted in the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles; but outside these prodigies, which are, in some measure, official, he did not admit the Supernatural.
Miracles having been indispensable in order to found the Church and give her authority, he accepted them as being a necessity of the period of formation. But, in his opinion, God ought to stop there and be satisfied with this minimum of the Supernatural so fairly conceded. In the eyes of this official personage, the part of God was fixed and regulated by the orthodox Credo and the concordats of the Church. It was established, formed into a code, and drawn up into articles of faith and articles of law. These mysteries were respected by the faithful, and the various Governments had put up, as well as they could, with these distant facts which affected them but little. God should not, therefore, transgress those limits and proceed to trouble the constitutional course of things by inopportune interference or by personal acts of power. Let him allow the constituted authorities to act—per me reges regnant—and let Him remain henceforth in the invisible depths of the Infinite. The Prefect, having bowed his lofty intellect to faith in the miracles recorded in the Gospels, was not unlike those excellent persons who, in the apportionment of their income, assign to charity a fixed sum, beyond which they make it a rule never to give anything, and when the Supernatural presented itself, he was tempted to say to it, “Walk on, my friend, you have already received your dole.”
M. Massy was, as we see, very orthodox; but, on theoretical grounds, he dreaded the invasion of the Supernatural, while, practically, he feared the encroachments of the Clergy. “Nothing too much,” was his motto. This was all very well, but those who are always repeating this generally end by making the measure too narrow and not giving enough. The summum jus, the strict right, approximates closely to the summa injuria, or last degree of injustice. The Latins, with their habitual good sense, pretended that it was precisely the same thing.
Wedded to his ideas of government, and essentially official, he was for whatever was established, solely owing to the fact of its having been established. Whatever was, ought to be. A state of things existing was a principle justificatus in semetipsum. Whatever was legal was legitimate. In vain was he told, Dura lex. He answered, Sed lex. He went even further. Like many men who have grown old in the affairs of government, he was tempted to believe that the slightest deviation from ordinary routine was an attempt against eternal right. He confounded arrangement with order, and mistook regulation for law.
M. Massy, was, however, remarkably intelligent, and administered the affairs of the department confided to him with talent. He took in, at a glance, the real state of things, and his judgment was prompt. Unfortunately, men have often, in the world, faults closely allied to their good qualities, and this valuable faculty of seeing and deciding, as it were, by intuition, sometimes led him into error. Depending, perhaps, somewhat too much on his first cursory view of a question, it happened sometimes that he acted prematurely. When this was the case, he was guilty of the serious fault of being unable to acknowledge that he had been deceived; and notwithstanding the precipitation of some of his decisions, he was never known to swerve from the course he had once resolved to take, whether men, ideas, or facts were at stake.
In such circumstances, which, however, rarely occurred he usually displayed obstinancy and a determination to march on against the obstacles which, from the very nature of things, were opposed to his progress. It is assuredly a great quality to persevere without flinching in any fixed line of conduct, but only on the supposition that we never fall into error and are always proceeding in the right path. When we are unfortunate enough to get heedlessly entangled in a blind alley, this quality degenerates into a great vice, and we end by breaking our head against the wall.
Up to that time the Prefect and the Bishop had lived on a perfectly good understanding. M. Massy was Catholic, not only in what he believed, but in practice also. Everybody did justice to his exemplary morality and to his domestic virtues, and he met with just appreciation from the Bishop. The Prefect, on his part, could not but admire and love the eminent qualities of the Bishop. The prudence of the latter, united to his knowledge of mankind, had always avoided any occasions of collision between the spiritual and temporal authorities, so that not only peace but the most cordial harmony existed between the head of the Diocese and the head of the Department.
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