THE polemical discussion of the press on the subject of the Grotto was exhausted. In France and in foreign countries, the public conscience had been enabled to judge, not of the reality of the supernatural occurrences, but of the violent oppression which liberty of belief and right of examination were undergoing in a corner of the Empire. The miserable sophisms of anti-Christian fanaticism, and of intolerance pretending to be philosophical, had not been able to withstand the forcible logic of the Catholic journals. The Debats, the Siecle, the Presse, and the vile crowd of irreligious papers were silent, probably regretting that they had engaged in so unfortunate a war, and had given so much publicity to such extraordinary facts. They had only succeeded in propagating and spreading in every country the fame of so many miracles. From Italy, Germany, and countries still more distant, persons wrote to Lourdes begging that a few drops of the sacred water might be forwarded to them.
At the Ministry of Public Worship, M. Rouland persisted in wishing to oppose himself to the most sacred of liberties and in pretending to arrest the march of events.
At the Grotto, Jacomet and the Gardes persisted in watching day and night, and in dragging the believers to the bar of the Tribunals. M. Duprat was constantly engaged in condemning delinquents.
Placed between such a Minister to support him and such agents to execute his wishes, Baron Massy remained gallant in his absolutely illogical position and viewed with complacency the omnipotence of his arbitrary power. More and more exasperated at seeing himself deprived, by the episcopal inquiry and the analysis of M. Filhol, of the vain pretexts of religion and public order with which he had originally sought to veil his intolerance, he abandoned himself with pride to the bitter joy of enforcing measures of pure unmitigated tyranny. He remained deaf to the unanimous cry which greeted his ears. To every reason adduced, to the most undeniable evidence, he imposed his own will: “Such is my good pleasure.” It was sweet to him to be stronger in his individual capacity than the multitudes, stronger than the bishop, stronger than good common sense, stronger than the miracles, stronger than the God of the Grotto. Etiamsi omnes, ego non.
It was under such circumstances that two eminent personages, Mgr. de Salinis, Archbishop of Auch, and M. de Rességnier, formerly deputy, waited upon the Emperor, who was at that moment at Barritz. Napoleon III received at the same time from different quarters petitions urgently demanding and claiming in virtue of the most sacred rights, the withdrawal of the arbitrary and violent measures of Baron Massy. “Sire,” so ran one of these petitions, “we do not pretend to decide in any way the question of the Apparitions of the Virgin, although, on the faith of astounding miracles, which they claim to have seen with their own eyes, almost all, in these districts, believe implicitly in the reality of these supernatural manifestations. What is certain and beyond all dispute is that this Spring, which gushed forth all at once―and which has been closed to us in spite of the scientific analysis which proclaimed it to be entirely innocuous―has not done any harm to any one; what is certain is that, on the contrary, a great number of persons declare that they have recovered their health by its means. In the name of the rights of conscience, which are quite independent of all human power, allow those who believe to go and pray there, if it suits them to do so. In the name of mere humanity allow the sick to go there to be cured, if such is their hope. In the name of intellectual liberty allow those minds which seek, for light from study and investigation, to go there to discover their error or find the truth.”
The Emperor, as we have stated above, was quite disinterested in the question, or rather he was interested in not employing his strength in a sterile opposition to the progress of events. He was interested in listening to the cry of souls demanding the liberty of their faith, to the cry of intellect demanding the liberty of studying and seeing for itself. He was interested in being just, and in not galling by a gratuitous exercise of arbitrary power and a plain refusal of justice, those who believed what they had seen with their own eyes, as well as those, who though not yet convinced, claimed the right of investigating publicly the mysterious occurrences which were exciting the attention of the whole of France.
We have seen what impossible fictions the worthy Minister Rouland had accepted as incontestable truths. The information forwarded to the Emperor by his Excellency was by no means calculated to enlighten the former on the subject. The polemical discussions in the journals, although they had triumphantly displayed the rights of one party and the intolerance of the other, had not succeeded in giving him any very clear idea of the actual state of things. It was only at Biarritz that it was presented to him as a whole, and that he was made acquainted with all its details.
Napoleon III was by no means demonstrative, and it rarely happened that his thoughts were expressed by words. They were to be inferred from his actions. On learning the absurd measures of violence by which the Minister, the Prefect and their subordinates were bringing discredit on the supreme power by following their own caprice, a flash of cold anger, it is said, lighted up his jaded eye; he shrugged his shoulders convulsively, and a cloud of deep displeasure passed over his brow. He rang the bell violently.
“Take this to the telegraph,” he said.
It was a laconic dispatch for the Prefect of the Hautes Pyrenees, ordering, on the part of the Emperor, the immediate withdrawal of the Decree regarding the Grotto of Lourdes, and directing that for the future the people should be allowed perfect freedom of action.
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