Our Lady of Lourdes - Second Book - Part 11

SHORTLY before Bernadette’s arrival at the Grotto, the mysterious power which had borne her along seemed to be diminished, if not to have altogether ceased.  She walked slower, and felt a degree of fatigue which was unusual to her;  for this was precisely the spot where, on other days, an invisible power seemed at one and the same time to drive her towards the Grotto and support her in the exertion of walking.  On that day, she did not experience either this secret attraction or mysterious support.  She had been driven towards the Grotto, but she had not been attracted towards it.  The power, which had seized her, had marked out to her the path of duty and shown that, above all things, she must obey and keep the promise she had given to the Apparition;  but, she had not, as on former occasions, heard the interior Voice and experienced the all-powerful attraction.  Any one accustomed to the analysis of mental feelings will appreciate these shades of difference which are more easily understood than expressed.

Although the vast majority of the multitude which had remained all the morning in the vain expectation of seeing Bernadette arrive had dispersed, there was still at that moment a considerable crowd assembled in front of the Rocks of Massabielle.  Some had come there to pray—others actuated by mere curiosity.  Many of these, having from a distance observed Bernadette walking in that direction, had rushed to the spot and reached it simultaneously with her.

The child, according to her usual habit, knelt down humbly and began to recite her chaplet, keeping her eyes fixed on the opening festooned with moss and wild branches where the celestial Vision had, already six times, deigned to appear.

The crowd wrapped in attention, curious, collected and breathing thick with the intensity of their feelings, expected every moment to see the countenance of the child become radiant and indicate by its lustre that the superhuman Being was standing before her.

A considerable period of time elapsed in this way.

Bernadette prayed fervently, but no portion of her motionless features was lighted up from the divine reflection.  The marvelous Vision did not manifest herself to her eyes, and the child was not heard when she earnestly besought the realization of her hopes.

Heaven, like earth, seemed to abandon her and to remain as hard to her prayer and her tears, as the rocks of marble before which her knees were bent.

Of all the trials to which she had been exposed since the previous evening this was the most cruel, and her cup of bitterness was full to overflowing.

“Why hast thou disappeared?”  thought the child, “and why dost thou abandon me?”

The marvelous Being seemed herself in fact to reject her also, and by ceasing to manifest herself to her, to justify those who opposed her and leave the victory in the hands of her enemies.

The crowd was disconcerted and interrogated poor Bernadette.  Those around her asked her a thousand questions.

“To-day,” replied the child, her eyes red with tears, “the ‘Lady’ has not appeared to me.  I have not seen any thing.”

“You must now be convinced,” said some, “that it was an illusion, my poor little girl, and that there has never been anything;  it was merely your fancy.”
In fact,” added others, “if the Lady appeared yesterday, why should she not have appeared today?”

“On the other days, I saw her as plainly as I now see you,” said the child;  “and we conversed together.  But to-day, she is no longer there, and why it is so, I know not.”

“Pshaw!” rejoined a Sceptic, “the Commissary of Police has succeeded, and you will see an end of all this.”

   De par le roi, défense à Dieu

De faire miracle en ce lieu.

Believers who happened to be there were troubled in heart, and did not know what to say.

As to Bernadette, sure as she was of herself and of the past, not a shadow of doubt flitted across her mind.  She was, however, profoundly mournful, and shed tears and prayed on regaining her father’s house.

She attributed the absence of the Apparition to some feeling of dissatisfaction.  “Could I have committed any fault?”  she asked herself.  But her conscience did not reply to her with any reproach.  Meanwhile, her feeling of enthusiasm towards the divine Vision, whom she evidently longed to contemplate, was one of redoubled fervor.  She sought in the simplicity of her soul what measure she could take to see her again, and she discovered none.  She felt her utter absence of power to evoke this immaculate Beauty which had appeared to her, and turning her heart to God, she wept, not knowing that to weep is to pray.

There remained, however, a secret hope in the innermost depths of her sorrowing soul, and some rare rays of joys, piercing here and there all these sombre clouds, passed at intervals over her heart, strengtthening her faith in the divine Apparition, which she never ceased to love and in which she believed, although it was no longer presented to her sight.  And yet, doubtless, the poor and ignorant child did not and could not know the meaning of the words which were being chanted at the moment in the Epistle of the Mass:  “Ye shall rejoice in God, should it be necessary for you to be grieved with divers trials, to the end that, thus strengthened, your faith infinitely more precious than gold (which is also tried by fire), may turn into praise, into glory, and into honor for the manifestation of Jesus Christ, whom ye love always, although ye have not seen Him;  Him, in whom ye believe, although ye see him not now;  and, for the very reason that ye thus believe, ye shall be crowned with indescribable and glorious joy.”

In the same way she had no presentiment of the event which was on the eve of being accomplished, and she was unable, humble peasant girl as she was, either to know or to apply to the Rock of Massabielle those words which the Priests of the entire Universe pronounced that very day in the Gospel for the Mass,—“Super hanc petram ædificabo Ecclesiam meam,”  “On this rock I will build my Church.”  She did not divine that very shortly, that is to say, on the morrow of these hours passed in bitter tears, she would herself announce prophetically, and demand, in the name of the Apparition, the erection of a temple on those lonely rocks.

All these things were hidden in the unfathomable obscurity of the future.

“Where do you come from?”  said her father to her, the moment she came in.

She related to them what had just happened.

“And you say,” continued her parents, “that some power carried you along in spite of yourself?”

“Yes,” answered Bernadette.

“That is true,”  they thought to themselves, “for this child has never told a falsehood.”

Bernadette’s father reflected for some moments.  It seemed as if there was a kind of struggle going on within his mind.  At length he raised his head and seemed to arrive at a difinite resolution.

“Well,”  he rejoined, “since it is so, since some superior power has dragged you there, I no longer forbid you to go to the Grotto, and leave you free to do as you like.”

An expression of joy of the purest and lovely kind lighted up Bernadette’s countenance.

Neither the miller nor his wife had taken any objection to the absence of the Apparition on that day.  Perhaps, in the bottom of their hearts, they attributed its cause to the opposition they had offered, from fear of the civil power, to superhuman commands.