DURING the period of the manifestation of the Apparitions, the popular movement had been favored with the most magnificent weather. There had been an uninterrupted series of fine days, such as had not been experienced for many years past.
From the fifth of March there was a change in the weather and a heavy fall of snow. The severity of the season naturally abated for some days the concourse of visitors to the Grotto.
The miraculous cures, however, increased in number. Benoite Cazeaux, a most respectable inhabitant of Lourdes, had been confined to her bed for three years by a slow fever accompanied with pains in her side, and all her applications to the medical men of the place had been fruitless. A course of baths at Gazost had proved equally unavailing towards the recovery of her health. The medical men had become disheartened by the unsuccessful issue of all their efforts, and had ceased to visit the poor woman, regarding her as incurable. Finding herself in this desperate situation; she had had recourse to Our Lady of Lourdes, and her supposed incurable malady had suddenly disappeared in consequence of drinking one or two glasses of water from the Grotto, and the application of some lotions.
Another woman, Blaisette Soupenne, of Lourdes, about fifty years of age, had been suffering for several years from a chronic affection in her eyes, and her state was truly pitiable. In technical terms, it was a Blepharitis accompanied with atrophy. A continual flow of tears from the eyes, severe smarting pains sometimes at the same time, sometimes alternately; an eversion of the eyelids and total disappearance of the eye-lashes, the two lower lids being covered with a multitude of fleshy warts—such was the disatrous state of this unfortunate woman. It was in vain she applied lotions of cold water several times a day to her eyes, employed all the remedies prescribed by her medical advisers, or sought some relief at the baths of Barèges, Cautarets and Gazost—everything had been a failure. Abandoned by man, she had turned herself towards the Divine Goodness which had manifested itself at the Grotto. Pronounced incurable by medical science, she had addressed herself to Faith, and had besought the miraculous Lady to remove from her that cruel malady which had defied the skill of men and the agency of natural remedies. She received great relief on the application of the first lotion. At the second application, which took place the following day, the cure was complete. Tears ceased to flow from her eyes, the eyelids resumed their natural form, and the fleshy warts disappeared. From that very day the eye-lashes grew again.
In the opinion of the medical men called in to examine the above case, the supernatural effect in this marvelous cure was rendered more obvious from the fact “that the material injury,” they said, “was more striking, and that to the rapid re-establishment of the tissues in their normal and organic condition, was added the restoration of the eyelids to their original form and position. The importance of this fact is so much the greater as the malady in question is one of the most difficult to treat successfully, and in the stage it had reached a surgical operation, such as the excision of the palpebral mucous membrane, or at least a sever cauterization of the swellings and fleshy pimples of that membrane.”
These wonderful events increased daily in number. God proceeded in His work. The Blessed Virgin afforded ample display of her omnipotence.
