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 all together 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 neighborhood 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.
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 all together 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 neighborhood 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.
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