NOTWITHSTANDING the disquietude and suspicion which pervaded official quarters, the fame of these marvelous events had been spread in all the surrounding districts with electrical rapidity.
The whole of Bigorre and Béarn, previously agitated by the first reports of the Apparition, was stirred to its depths on receiving intelligence of the bursting forth of the Spring and the subsequent miraculous cures. All the high-roads throughout the department were covered with travelers, hastening to their destination. Every moment, from all sides, by every road and every path which terminated in Lourdes, there arrived a motley crowd of vehicles of every description, carriages, wagons, chars-à bancs, men on horseback and pedestrians.
Even at night this rush suffered little diminution. The inhabitants of the mountain came down by starlight in order to reach the Grotto by morning.
The travelers, who had arrived in the first instance, had for the most part remained at Lourdes, not wishing to lose any of these extraordinary scenes which had certainly not been paralleled for centuries past. The hotels, inns and private houses overflowed with people. It became almost impossible to provide lodgings for the fresh crowds which continued to pour in. Many passed the night in prayer in front of the illuminated Grotto, for the purpose of securing places nearer the youthful Seer on the morrow.
Thursday, the fourth of March, was the last day of the Quinzaine.
When day-break began to silver the horizon, the approaches to the Grotto were more densely crowded than on any of the preceding days.
A painter such as Raphael of Michael Angelo, might have derived from this living spectacle a subject for an admirable picture.
Here, an old mountaineer, bent beneath the weight of years, and venerable as a patriarch, supporting himself with his trembling hands upon his enormous staff shod with iron, met your view.
Around him was crowded all his family, from the grandmother, an ancient matron with attenuated features, her face tanned and wrinkled, hooded in her flowing black cloak lined with red, down to the youngest boy, who stood on tip-toe in order to obtain a better view. The young maidens of the mountain, their hands clasped with fervor, beautiful, calm and grave as the splendid Virgins of the Campagna of Rome, prayed alone or in groups. Many of them were dropping through their fingers the rustic beads of their chaplet. Some of them were reading in silence some book of prayer. Others holding in their hand or even on their head an earthen jar, to be filled with the miraculous water, recalled to the imagination the biblical countenances of Rebecca or Rachel.
There you saw the peasant of Gers with his enormous head, his bull neck and face apoplectic, and coarse-featured like that of Vitellius. At his side appeared in profile the finely-marked head of the Bearnais, which has been rendered so familiar by the innumerable portraits of Henry IV.
The Basques, of middle stature, but appearing tall owing to their wonderful erectness, with fine open chests, rather high shoulders and limbs indicative of great agility, looked on perfectly motionless, and seemed rooted to the soil. Their high forehead, narrow and prominent chin, their visage thin and in the shape of a V, their characteristic features and the distinctness of their type, indicated the primordial purity of their race, which is perhaps, the most ancient in the land of the Gauls.
Men of the world, of all professions, magistrates, shop-keepers, notaries, advocates, doctors and clerks, displaying forms less rough but at the same time less marked, more humble or more polished, more distinguished in the opinion of some, more vulgar in that of others, were mingled in great numbers with the crowd.
The ladies, in bonnets and veils, with their hands buried in their muffs, seemed, in spite of all their precautions, to suffer from the frosty morning air, and might be seen changing their position and moving about in hopes of keeping themselves warm.
A few Spaniards scattered here and there, remarkable for their impassible dignity, and enveloped in the capacious folds of their large cloaks, stood waiting with the immobility of statues. They kept their eyes fixed on the Grotto and prayed. They scarcely turned their heads when any incident or the undulation of the crowd forcibly withdrew them from their contemplation; their darkly luminous eyes flashed for a moment on the multitude and they resumed their prayers.
In many places the pilgrims, fatigued with their journey, or their stations during the night, were sitting on the ground. Some of them with prudent foresight, had with them knapsacks furnished with provisions. Others carried in a sling a bottle-gourd filled with wine. Many of the children had fallen asleep stretched on the ground, and their mothers stripping themselves of their capulets, cautiously covered them with them.
A few troopers, belonging to the cavalry regiment at Tarbes or the depot at Lourdes, had come mounted and stationed themselves out of the way of the bustle in the bed of the Gave. Many of the pilgrims, and others brought there by mere curiosity, had climbed into the trees, and from their isolated heads, which towered above the rest and were very conspicuous, all the fields, meadows, roads, hillocks, and eminences which commanded the Grotto, were seen literally covered with an innumerable multitude of men, women and children, of old men, persons of all classes, workmen, peasants and soldiers, all agitated, closely packed together, and swaying to and fro like ripe ears of corn. The picturesque costumes of those districts flaunted their gaudy colors in the first rays of the sun, whose disk was beginning to appear from behind the peaks of the Ger. From a distance, the hills of Vizens, for instance, the capulets of the women, some white as snow, others of a brilliant scarlet, combined with the large blue caps of the peasants of Béarn, shone like daisies, poppies and corn-flowers from the midst of this harvest of human beings. The helmets of the troopers stationed in the bed of the Gave flashed in the early rays which broke from the east.
There could not have been less than twenty thousand persons spread over the banks of the Gave, and this multitude was incessantly recruited by the arrival of new pilgrims from all quarters.
On these countenances were dipicted prayer, curiosity, and scepticism. Every class, every idea, every sentiment was represented in this immense multitude. There was to be found there the roughhewn Christian of the first ages, who knows that with God all things are possible. Further on might be seen the Christian tormented with doubts, who had come before these wild rocks in search of arguments for the firmer establishment of his faith. The believing woman was also there, demanding from the divine Mother the recovery of some dear one brought low by sickness, or the conversion of some beloved soul. There also was the decided rejecter of the Supernatural, having eyes which would not see and ears which would not hear. And lastly, there might be found there the frivolous-minded man, oblivious of his own soul’s best interests, in search only, beneath Heaven, which was half-opened to his gaze, of the amusement of his curiosity in what to his eyes was a trivial spectacle.
Around this crowd and along the road the Constables and the Gendarmes kept going to and fro in a state of nervous anxiety. The Deputy, having on his official scarf, remained motionless.
On a little eminence might be seen Jacomet and the Procureur Impérial, closely watching the state of things and prepared to take rigorous measures on the slightest appearance of disorder.
There proceeded from the multitude an immense, vague, confused and indescribable murmur, formed of a thousand different noises, of words, conversations, prayers and exclamations, resembling the unappeasable roar of the ocean.
Suddenly an exclamation broke forth from the lips of all, “There is the youthful Saint! there is the youthful Saint!” and an extraordinary agitation pervaded the whole crowd. The hearts of all, even of the coldest, were stirred with emotion: every head was lifted and every eye directed to the same point.
Bernadette, accompanied by her mother, had just made her appearance on the path laid out by the Brotherhood of Quarry-men some days before, and was calmly descending towards this sea of human beings. Although she had this vast multitude before her eyes and was doubtless filled with happiness at seeing so many testimonials of adoration for “the Lady” she was entirely absorbed with the thought of seeing once more that incomparable Beauty. Who cares to gaze on earth when heaven is on the point of throwing wide its gates? She was so completely engrossed with the joyful hope which filled her heart that the cries of “There is the youthful Saint,” and the testimonials of popular veneration did not appear to reach her. She was so full of the image of the Vision, she was so perfectly humble, that she had not even vanity enough to cause her to blush or to suffer from confusion.
The Gendarmes, however, had hastened to the spot, and breaking through the crowd in front of Bernadette, formed an escort for the child and effected a passage for her up to the Grotto.
These excellent fellows, like the soldiers, believed, and their sympathizing and pious deportment prevented the crowd from being irritated at such an employment of armed force, and further disappointed the calculations of the crafty.
The thousand cries of the multitude had by degrees subsided, and a great silence ensued. There could not be greater recollection in any of the Churches of Christendom during Mass, on the occasion of an ordination or a first communion. Every one, to a certain degree, held his breath. No one shutting his eyes would have imagined that so vast a crowd was there assembled, and amid the universal silence the murmur of the Gave would alone have struck his ear. Those who were near the Grotto could distinguish the bubbling of the miraculous Spring as it flowed calmly into the little reservoir through the little wooden pipe which had been placed for that purpose.
When Bernadette prostrated herself, every one, by a unanimous movement, knelt down.
Almost simultaneously the superhuman rays of ecstacy lighted up the transfigured features of the child. We shall not describe again this marvelous spectacle of which we have more than once endeavored to convey some idea to our reader. It was a spectacle ever new, as is the rising of the sun every morning. The power which produces such splendors has the infinite at its disposal, and employs it unceasingly to diversify the external form of its eternal unity; but the pen of a poor author commands only limited resources and pale colors. If Jacob, the son of Isaac, wrestled with the Angel, the artist, in his weakness, cannot wrestle with God; and there is a time, when feeling his utter inability to express by his art all the delicate gradations of the divine work, he is silent and confines himself to the act of adoration. I leave, therefore, to souls which peruse my feeble lines the task of imagining all the successive joys, all the melting feelings, all the graces and celestial inebriation which the blessed Vision of the immaculate Virgin, the admirable Beauty with which God himself was charmed, caused to pass over the innocent brow of the enraptured Bernadette.
The Apparition, as on the preceding days, had commanded the child to drink at and wash herself in the Fountain, and to eat of the plant to which we have already referred; she had afterwards renewed her order to her to go and tell the Priests that she desired a chapel built on the spot and processions to repair to it.
The child had besought the Apparition to inform her of her name, but the radiant “Lady” had not returned any answer to the question. The moment for doing so had not yet arrived. It behoved that Her name should be first inscribed on the earth and engraved on the heart by uncounted deeds of mercy. The Queen of Heaven wished to be identified by her benefits; She intended that the grateful voice of every mouth should name Her and glorify Her before She answered and said: “Your heart has not deceived you; it is I indeed.”
