Our Lady of Lourdes - Tenth Book - Part 1

  “DURING my whole life my sight had been excellent.  I could distinguish objects at an immense distance, and on the other hand I could read my book with the greatest ease, however close it might be to my eyes.  I never suffered the least weariness after passing whole nights in study.  I was sometimes astonished and delighted at the strength of my sight, which was at the same time so powerful and so clear.  I was therefore greatly surprised and cruelly disappointed when, in the course of June and July, 1862, I found my sight becoming by degrees weak, incapable of working by night, and at length so entirely unserviceable that I was obliged to give up reading and writing.  If I attempted to take up a book, at the end of three or four lines―sometimes at the first glance―I experienced such a weariness in the upper part of my eyes as to render further exertion impossible.  I consulted several physicians and more particularly two eminent men who devoted themselves especially to eye-complaints, M. Desmares and M. Giraud-Teulon.

  “The remedies prescribed for me were of little or no avail.  After a period of perfect rest, and a regimen into which iron largely entered, there was at first a slight improvement in my state, and one day I could read and write in the afternoon for a considerable time;  but the next day all my distressing symptoms returned.  It was then that I tried local remedies, cold water douches on the eye-ball cupping on the back of the neck, a general system of hydropathy and alcoholic lotions in the parts adjoining the eye.  Sometimes―though very rarely―I felt a momentary alleviation of the excessive weariness from which I was constantly suffering, but this only lasted for a few moments, and, in short, my complaint was insensibly assuming that chronic type which usually characterizes incurable infirmities.

  “In obedience to the advice of my medical attendants, I had given up my eyes to entire rest.  Not content with wearing blue spectacles whenever I left the house, I had quitted Paris for the country, and retired to my mother’s residence at Coux, on the banks of the Dordogne.  I had taken with me as my secretary a young person who read for me the books I required to consult, and wrote from my dictation.

  “September had arrived.  This state had lasted about three months, and it began to cause me the most serious uneasiness.  I suffered dreadful anxiety, which I did not mention to anyone.  My relations and friends had the same fears, though they kept them from me.  We were almost convinced that my sight was lost forever, but each of us tried to inspire hope we had ceased to have ourselves, and concealed our mutual feelings of alarm.

  “I have a very intimate friend―a friend of my earliest infancy―to whom I am in the habit of confiding my joys and sorrows.  From my dictation my secretary wrote him a letter in which I described my unhappy situation and my cruel fears for the future.

  “The friend of whom I speak is a Protestant, as is his wife also, a double circumstance which deserves being remarked.  For certain very sufficient reasons I cannot give his name here in full;  we will call him M. de _____.

  “He replied to me a few days afterwards.  His letter reached me on the 15th of September, and surprised me greatly.  I here give its contents without changing a single word:

“ ‘Your few lines, my dear friend, gave me pleasure;  but, as I have already told you, I long to hear from you in your own handwriting.  Within the last few days, on my return from Cauterets, I stopped at Lourdes, near Tarbes.  I visited the celebrated Grotto there, and heard such wonderful things relating to cures produced by its waters―more especially in cases of eye-complaints―that I beg you most seriously to give it a trial.  Were I a Catholic, a believer like you, and suffering, as you are, from any malady, I should risk the chance without hesitation.  If it is true that the sick have been suddenly cured, you may hope to swell their number;  and if it is not so, what do you risk by making the trial?  I may add that I am somewhat personally interested in this experiment.  Should it succeed, what an important fact it would be for me to ponder?  I should be brought face to face with a miraculous fact, or at least with an event to which the principal witness would be above all suspicion.

  “ ‘It appears that it is not actually necessary to go to Lourdes to use this water, as you may just as well have it forwarded to you.  You have but to write to the Curé of Lourdes on the subject and he will provide you with it.  It is necessary to go through certain preliminary formalities which I am unable to point out to you, but the Curé of Lourdes will furnish you with all particulars.  Beg him at the same time to send you a little pamphlet by the Vicar-General of Tarbes, which gives an account of the best established miraculous occurrences.’

  “This letter of my friend was eminently calculated to fill me with astonishment.  His disposition of mind is clear, positive and mathematical, lofty in its nature, but at the same time not likely to yield to the illusions of enthusiasm.  Add to this, he is a Protestant.  The advice he gave me so seriously and so urgently, amazed me more especially as coming from him.

  “I resolved, however, not to follow it.

  “ ‘It seems to me,’ I replied to him, ‘that I am   today somewhat better, and if I continue to improve I shall not have any reason to have recourse to the extraordinary remedy you propose, for which, besides, I perhaps, have not sufficient faith.’

  “Here, I must confess, not without blushing, the secret motives of my resistance.

  “Whatever I might have said, I was not wanting in faith, and though I knew nothing of the water of Lourdes, except from the impertinent strictures of some ill-thinking journals, I was morally certain that there, as well as in many other places, the power of God might manifest itself in cures.  I go further:  I had a kind of presentiment that if I tried this water―said to have gushed forth in consequence of an Apparition of the Blessed Virgin―I should be cured.  But I dreaded, I confess, the responsibility of so great a favor,  ‘If you are cured by the ordinary routine of medicine,’  I observed to myself, ‘you will be quits by paying the doctor.  You will be in the same position as your neighbor.  But if God cures you by a Miracle, by the special effect of his power and by a direct and personal intervention, it will be quite a different affair for you and you will be obliged to amend your life and become a saint.  When God shall in a manner have given you for the second time with his own hands those eyes which are now so little under your control, will you be able to suffer them―as you do at present―to stray towards objects which seduce you or wander over what may cause you sorrow?  After a miracle exerted in your favor, God will demand His recompense, and that will cost you dearer than the fees of the doctor.  It will then be your duty to overcome this evil habit, to acquire that virtue.  What may you not be obliged to do?  Ah!  it is impossible.’

  “And my wretched heart, fearing its own weakness, refused to accept the grace of God.

  “Such was my reason for rebelling against the advice tendered me of having recourse to this miraculous intervention, against this advice which Providence, always profound in its ways, sent to me by two Protestants, by two heretics, outside the Church.  My agitation, however, and my resistance were alike in vain.  An interior voice was forever telling me that the hand of man would be powerless to cure me, and that the Master, whom I had so often offended, willed Himself to restore my sight, and thus presenting me with a new life, to prove whether I should be able to employ it better.

  “In the meantime my state of health remained stationary or became slowly worse.

  “Early in October I was obliged to undertake a journey to Paris.

  “By the merest accident M. de _____ happened to be there at the same time with his wife.  The first visit I made was to them.  My friend was stopping at the house of his sister, Mme. P _____, who resides in Paris with her husband.

  “ ‘And how are your eyes?’ asked Mme. de _____, as I entered the drawing-room.

  “ ‘My eyes are always in the same state, and I begin to think my sight is lost forever.’

  “ ‘But why do you not try the remedy we advised you?’ said my friend to me.  ‘Something or other gives me hopes that you might be cured.’

  “ ‘Pshaw!’  I replied, ‘I will confess to you, that without proceeding to the length of denial and open hostility, I have not great faith in all these waters and pretended apparitions.  All that is possible, and I have no positive objection to it;  but not having studied the question, I am neither for nor against it;  it is beyond my reach.  In short, I have no wish to have recourse to the means you advise me.’

  “ ‘You bring forward no valid objections to such a step,’ he replied.  ‘According to your religious principles, you must believe, and you do believe, in the possibility of such things.  Such being the case, why should you not make the experiment?  What will it cost you?  As I have told you, the thing cannot do you any harm, since it is merely pure water, water of the same chemical composition as the most ordinary water;  and since you believe in miracles, and have faith in your religion, does it not strike you as extraordinary that you should be advised so strongly by two Protestants to have recourse to the Blessed Virgin?  I tell you beforehand, that if you are cured, it will be a terrible argument against me.’

  “Mme. de _____ joined her entreaties to those of her husband.  M. and Mme. P _____, who are both Catholics, urged me no less strongly.  I was driven into my last intrenchment.

  “ ‘Well,’ I said to them, ‘I am going to confess the whole truth to you and open to you my whole heart.  I am not wanting in faith, but I have faults, weaknesses, a thousand little wretchednesses―and all these, alas!  hold firmly to the most sensitive and vivants fibers of my miserable existence.  Now, a miracle such as the one of which I might possibly be the object, would impose on me the obligation of sacrificing everything and of becoming a saint;  it would be a terrible responsibility, and I am such a coward that I dread it.  If God cures me, what will He exact from me? whereas, with a doctor, a little money and the affair is settled.

  “ ‘This is disgusting is it not?  But such is the wretched pusillanimity of my heart.  You fancied my faith was wavering!  You imagined that I feared the failure of the miracle!  Undeceive yourselves.  My fear is that the miracle may succeed.’

  “My friends sought to convince me that I exaggerated the responsibility―of which I spoke―as much on the one hand as I diminished it on the other.

  “ ‘You are not less bound at the present moment to live a virtuous life than you would be, supposing the event results as we suppose.’ observed M. de _____.  ‘And, besides, even should your cure be effected by the hands of a physician, it would not, on that account, be less a favor from God, and in that case your scruples would have the same reasons for protesting against your weaknesses or your passions.’

  “All this did not appear to me perfectly correct, and M. de _____ (a logical mind if ever there was one)  probably owned to himself that his reasoning was not altogether what it might have been;  but he wished, as much as possible, to calm the apprehensions I felt so keenly, and to induce me to decide on following the advice he tendered me, even to the length of recalling to my mind himself the grave responsibility with regard to which he was then endeavoring to reassure me.

  “In vain did I attempt to combat the more and more pressing entreaties of my friend, of his wife, and of our host and hostess.  I ended, weary of the conflict, by promising to do everything they wished.

  “ ‘As soon as I procure a secretary,’  I told them, ‘I shall write to Lourdes;  but I only arrived today, and have not yet had time to look for one.’

  “But I will act as your secretary!’ exclaimed my friend.

  “ ‘Well, be it so!  Tomorrow we will breakfast together at the Café de Foy.  I will dictate a letter to you after breakfast.’

  “ ‘Why not do so at once,’ he said to me, eagerly.  ‘In that case we gain a day.’

  “Writing materials were produced from the adjoining apartment.  I dictated to my friend a letter for the Curé of Lourdes, which was posted the same evening.

  “The next day M. de _____ came to my house.

  “ ‘My good friend,’ he said to me, ‘now that the die is cast and that you have decided to make the trial, you must do it seriously, and fulfill the conditions necessary for its success, without which the experiment would be utterly useless.  Offer up the necessary prayers, go to confession, bring your soul into a suitable condition, and go through the devotional  exercises prescribed by your religion.  You understand that all this is of the most vital importance.’
  “ ‘You are perfectly right,’ I replied, ‘and I will do what you tell me.  But I must confess you are a queer Protestant.  A few days since you inculcated on me faith, now you do the same with regard to the practices of religion.  We have exchanged parts in a droll manner, and any one overhearing us―you the Protestant and I the Catholic―might well be astonished;  and I confess, alas! the impression produced would not be to my advantage.’

  “ ‘I am a scientific man,’ replied M. de _____.  ‘As we are about to make an experiment, I very naturally wish we should do it according to the prescribed conditions.  I reason on this subject as if I were reasoning on physical science or chemistry.’

  “I declare, to my shame, that I did not place myself in the state of preparation so judiciously recommended by my friend.  I was, at the time, in a very bad frame of mind;  my natural feelings were deeply agitated, troubled and inclined to evil.

  “I recognized, however, the necessity of going and throwing myself at the feet of God;  but as I had not been guilty of any of those gross and material faults, against which there is a sudden reaction in the mind, I deferred doing so from day to day.  Man rebels more against the sacrament of penance during a temptation than when the actual commission of a sin has come to overthrow and humiliate him.  It is, in fact, more difficult to combat and resist than to demand pardon after a defeat.  Who has not experienced this?

  “About a week passed away in this manner.  M. and Mme. de _____ inquired every day whether I had received any news of the miraculous water, or any letter from the Curé of Lourdes.  The Curé replied to me at length, informing me that some of the water of Lourdes had been forwarded by the railroad, and would shortly reach me.

  “We awaited the moment in a state of impatience which may easily be conceived;  but, would you believe it?  I felt less interest in the matter than my Protestant friends.

  “The state of my eyes was always the same.  It was absolutely impossible for me either to read or write.

  “One morning―it was Friday, October 10, 1862―I was waiting for M. de_____ in the Gallery d’Orleans at the Palais-Royal.  We had breakfasted together.  As I had arrived earlier than the appointed time, I was gazing at the different shops in the gallery, and reading the advertisements of some new books in front of Dentu’s library.  This was enough to weary my eyes excessively.  My sight had become so weak that I could not read even the largest letters without suffering from invincible lassitude.  This slight circumstance plunged me into a state of deep dejection, as it afforded me the means of measuring once more the full extent of my misfortune.

  “In the afternoon, I dictated three letters to M. de_____, and at four o’clock I left him and returned to my own residence.  As I was going upstairs, my porter called me.

  “ ‘A small box has been brought here for you from the railroad,’ he said to me.

  “I entered eagerly the porter’s lodge.  A small box was, in fact, there, bearing my address and these words―doubtless intended for the octroi ― ‘Pure Water.’

  “It was the water from Lourdes.

  “I experienced inwardly a violent emotion;  but I suffered no outward signs of it to escape me.

  “ ‘Very well,’ said I to my porter.  ‘I will take it to my apartment presently.  I shall return almost immediately.’

  “I left the house in a pensive frame of mind, and walked up and down the street for a few moments.

  “ ‘The affair is becoming serious,’  I thought to myself.  ‘De―is right;  I must prepare myself.  In the state of mind in which I have been for some time past, I cannot―unless I purify myself―ask God to perform a Miracle in my favor.  It is not with a heart still full of wretchedness of my own choosing that I can implore so great a favor from Him.  Let me use my own efforts to cure my soul, before I beseech Him to cure my body.’

  “Revolving these serious considerations in my mind, I proceeded in the direction of the residence of my confessor, M.I’ Abbe Ferraud de Missol, who lives in my immediate neighborhood.  Happily I was certain of meeting with him, as it was Friday, and he is always at home on that day.

  “He was at home;  but several persons were already in his ante-chamber waiting for him, and they would naturally see him before my turn came.  In addition to this, one of the members of his family had arrived unexpectedly on a visit.  His servant informed me of all this, and begged me to return in the evening after his dinner-hour, towards seven o’clock.

  “I resigned myself to this proposal.

  “On reaching the street-door I paused for a moment.  I hesitated between my wish to pay a visit I had much at heart, and my thought of returning to my own house to pray.  My fancy urged me violently in the direction of amusement, while a grave voice―a voice which only appeared to me to be  feeble, because I had usually been deaf to it―a deep and holy voice called me to retirement.

  “I hesitated some moments, deliberating in my own mind.

  At length the good inspiration carried the day, and I retraced my steps towards the Rue de Seine.

  “I took from my porter the little box, which was accompanied with a Notice of the Apparitions at Lourdes, and with hasty steps ascended the staircase.

  “On reaching my apartment I knelt down at the side of my bed and prayed, altogether unworthy as I felt myself to turn my eyes towards heaven and to address myself to God.

  “I then rose.  On entering my room, I had placed the little box and the pamphlet on the mantelpiece.  I glanced every moment at this box which contained the mysterious water, and it seemed to me as if something grand was going to take place in that solitary chamber.  I dreaded to touch with my impure hands the wood which contained the sacred water, and, on the other hand, I felt myself strangely tempted to open it, even before making my confession as I had proposed doing.  This struggle lasted some moments;  it ended in a prayer.

  “ ‘Yes, my God,’  I exclaimed, “I am a miserable sinner, unworthy to raise my voice towards Thee, and to touch an object which Thou hast blessed.  But it is the very excess of my misery which should excite thy compassion.  My God, I come to Thee and to the Blessed Virgin Mary, full of faith and unreserved confidence;  and from the depth of the abyss, I cry out unto Thee.  Tonight I shall confess my sins to Thy minister, but my faith cannot and will not wait.  Forgive me, O Lord, and heal me.  And Thou, O Mother of Mercy, come to the assistance of thy unfortunate child.’

  “Having thus refreshed myself with prayer, I summoned courage to open the little box of which I have spoken.  It contained a bottle full of water.

  “I removed the cork, poured some of the water into a cup and took a napkin out of my commode.  These common preparations, which I went through with a particular attention, were impressed―as I still remember―with a secret solemnity, which struck me myself, as I went to and fro in my chamber.  In that chamber I was not alone;  it was manifest that God was there.  The Blessed Virgin, whom I had invoked, was doubtless there also.

  “Faith, fervent and ardent, had inflamed my soul.

  “When my preparations were all finished, I knelt down again.

  “ ‘O Blessed Virgin Mary,’ I said with a loud voice, ‘have pity on me and heal my physical and moral blindness.’

  “On saying these words, with my heart full of confidence, I rubbed successively both my eyes and my forehead with the towel I had just soaked in the water of Lourdes.  What I am now describing did not occupy the space of thirty seconds.

  “Judge of my astonishment―I had almost said my horror.  Scarcely had I applied this miraculous water to my eyes and brow when I felt myself all at once cured, immediately, without any intermediate state and with a suddenness which I can only compare in my imperfect language to that of a flash of lightning.

  “Strange contradiction of human nature!  A moment before I believed in my faith, which promised me my cure;  and now I could not believe my senses which assured me that the cure was accomplished.

  “No!  I did not believe my senses, and that to such a degree that in spite of the astounding effect already produced, I committed the fault of Moses and struck the rock twice.  In other words, for some time longer, I continued to pray and moisten my eyes and my brow, not daring to rise, not daring to test the reality of my cure.
  “However, at the expiration of ten minutes, the strength I continued to feel in my eyes and entire absence of any heaviness in my sight, left no longer any room for doubt.

  “ ‘I am cured!’  I exclaimed.

  “And I ran to take a book―no matter what―to read.  I stopped all at once.  ‘No! no!’  I said to myself, ‘it is not any kind of book that I can take up at this moment.’

  “I went to seek the Notice of the Apparitions which was lying on the mantel-piece.  Certainly, this was but an act of justice.

  I read one hundred and four pages without interruption, and without experiencing the slightest fatigue.  Twenty minutes before I could not have read three lines.

  “And if I did stop at page 104 it was because it was thirty-five minutes past five in the evening, and at that hour, towards the middle of October, it is almost dark at Paris.  When I laid aside the book, the gas was being lighted in the shops of the street in which I resided.

  “In the evening I made my confession and informed the Abbé Ferraud of the great favor the Blessed Virgin had just conferred on me.  Although far from being prepared, as I have already said, I was permitted by him to communicate the next morning, in order to thank God for so special and extraordinary a benefit, and to fortify the resolutions which an  event of such a nature could not fail of giving birth to in my heart.

  M. and Mme. de_____were―as you may easily imagine―singularly affected by this occurrence in which Providence had caused them to take so direct a part.  What were their reflections regarding it?  By what thoughts were they visited?  What passed in the interior of those two souls?  It is their secret and the secret of God.  What little I succeeded in discovering with regard to their feelings, I have not been authorized to impart to others.

  “Be this as it may, I knew the nature of my friend.  I left him to his own reflections, without pressing him to come to any conclusion.  I knew, and I know still, that God has His appointed hour, and knows His own designs.  His agency was so distinctly visible in all that had happened, that I feared to interfere myself, in spite of my great wish― which was well-known to my friends―that they should enter the only Church which contains God in all His fullness.

  “I regret being unable to pause here in order to contemplate for an instant in my memory those two beings―so dear to me―receiving by the rebound of the Miracle, accomplished in my favor, the first shocks, which Truth gives to such as she wishes to conquer .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     

   .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .  

  “Seven years have elapsed since my miraculous cure.  My sight is excellent.  It is not ever wearied by reading, hard work, or sitting up at night.  God grant me grace never to employ it save in the cause of right.”