Our Lady of Lourdes - Sixth Book - Part 10

IT was not without some hesitation the M. Lacadé consented to sign an order of this nature, and to put such a measure into execution.  His somewhat undecided nature, fond of pursuing a middle course and liking to swim, as they said, with the current, could not but regard with considerable alarm such an act of decided hostility against the strange power which plainly hovered over all the events of which the Grotto of Lourdes was the center.  On the other hand, as should always be the case the Mayor was attached to his official position, and, as the wags asserted, somewhat in love with his official scarf.  He must however become the instrument of the Prefect’s violent course or resign his honors.  The alternative was embarrassing to the first magistrate of Lourdes, though we cannot term it a smile at the weakness of poor human nature.  M. Lacadé hoped to get out of the difficulty, by requesting the Prefect, as the condition of his attaching his own signature to the document, to insert at the biginning of the order, and, as it were, its opening sentence, “With reference to instructions addressed to him by the superior Authorities.”

“By these means,” observed the Mayor, “I am entirely freed from any responsibility as regards the public or myself.  I have not taken the initiative;  I remain neutral.  I do not command;  I am simply obeying.  I do not give this order;  I receive it.  I do not proclaim this measure;  I merely carry it into execution.  All the responsibility rests on my immediate superior, the Prefect.

From a private in a regiment of the line, this style of reasoning would have been unexceptionable.

With his mind thus set at rest, M. Lacadé watched over the execution of the Prefect’s decree.  He had it published with sound of trumpet, and placarded all over the town.  At the same time, under the protection of an armed force, and the directions of Jacomet, barriers were erected around the Rocks of Massabielle, so as to entirely prevent all access to the Grotto and the miraculous Spring, unless by breaking them down or scaling them.  Posts with notices attached to them were placed here and there, at all points whereby the people might penetrate the communal lands with which the venerated Rocks were surrounded, absolutely forbidding any one to trespass on the grounds belonging to the commune, under penalty of prosecution before the tribunals.  The Sergents de Ville and Gardes Champêtres kept watch day and night, relieving each other every hour, and drawing up official reports against such as passed the outer posts for the purpose of going and kneeling in the vicinity of the Grotto.

There was a Juge de Paix at Lourdes called Duprat.  He was as inveterate a foe to Superstition, as were the Jacomets, Massys, Dutours, and other constituted authorities.  This judge, being unable under the circumstances to inflict any but the smallest possible fines on delinquents, imagined an indirect way of rendering these fines enormous and really formidable to the poor folks who came from all directions to pray in front of the Grotto and request at the hands of the blessed Virgin, one, the recovery of health long broken; a second, the cure of a much-loved child;  a third, some spiritual grace, or some consolation in overwhelming sorrow.

Duprat, finding them guilty of a misdemeanor, sentenced the culprits to a fine of five francs each.  But, by a conception worthy of his genius, he combined in a single judgement all those who had violated the Prefect’s prohibition, whether by forming part of the same throng, or even as it appeared, by repairing to the Grotto in the course of the same day.  When he sentenced them, he made them all jointly liable for the costs.  Consequently should one or two hundred persons have gone to the Rocks of Massabielle, each of them was made liable to pay, not only for himself, but for all the rest;  or, in other words, to pay out 500 or 1000 francs.  And yet, since the individual and original sentence amounted only to a fine of five francs, this magistrate’s decision could not be appealed from to a superior court, and there was no means of obtaining redress.  The judge was omnipotent, and this is a specimen of the way in which he exerted his omnipotence.

Our Lady of Lourdes - Sixth Book - Part 9

IN the midst of all these strangely varied events, the question regarding the stables of the Prefecture was discussed with ever-increasing warmth, and had worked up the Prefect to the highest pitch of exasperation.  The month of June had arrived.  The bathing-season was commencing, and would bring to the Pyrenees invalids and tourists from every part of Europe, who would be witnesses of the scandal which the Supernatural was creating in the Department administered by Baron Massy.  The instructions of M. Rouland were of the most urgent nature, and pressed the interference of the authorities.  On the sixth of June, M. Fould, Minister of Finance, stopped at Tarbes on his way to his country residence, and had a long conference with M. Massy.  A report circulated that the events at the Grotto formed the subject of their discussion.

The fact of going to drink at a spring, the road to which passed through the common lands belonging to the town, did not, however, constitute a criminal act in the eyes of the law.  It was, therefore, of the highest importance, that the genius of the enemies of Superstition should discover some pretext for interference.  Arbitrary power has not in France, as in Russia or in Turkey, the rights of citizenship, and it requires the mask of legality.

The subtle Prefect had, on this subject, an inspiration as ingenious as it was simple.  As the Rocks of Massabielle formed part of the lands belonging to the commune of Lourdes, the Mayor, as guardian of the interests of the town, had the power of prohibiting any one from approaching them whether he might have reasons for so doing or not, in the same manner as a proprietor prohibits when he likes and whom he likes to enter his house or trespass on his estate.

A prohibition of this kind, publicly proclaimed, exposed every visitor to the charge of a specified misdemeanor―that of the violation of property.

By so crafty a proceeding, an act, absolutely innocent in itself, was transformed into one of a criminal nature, liable to the penalties attached to it by law.

The whole scheme of M. Massy gravitated round this idea, and this plan having once been hit upon, he resolved to act and to act despotically.

The next day, the Mayor of Lourdes received instruction to issue the following order:

THE MAYOR OF THE TOWN OF LOURDES,

Considering the instructions addressed to him by the superior authorities,

The laws of the 14th and 22nd of December, 1789, of the 16th and 24th of August, 1790, of 19th and 22nd of July, 1791, and that of the 18th of July, 1837, on the Municipal Administration:

Considering, that it is important, with a view to the interests of Religion, to bring to a close the scenes so much to be regretted which are taking place at the Grotto of Massabielle, situated at Lourdes, on the left bank of the Gave;

Considering, on the other hand, that it is the duty of the Mayor to watch over the public health in his locality;

Considering, that a great number of those in his jurisdiction, as also of persons strangers to the commune, come to draw water at a certain Spring in the said Grotto;

Considering that there are serious reasons for thinking that this water contains mineral ingredients, and that it is prudent before permitting its use to wait until a scientific analysis should make known the applications which medical science may make of it;  that, in addition to this, the Law subjects the working of Springs of mineral water to the preliminary authorization of the Government;

ORDERS:

First Article.―It is forbidden to take any water from the said Spring.

Second Article.―It is equally forbidden to pass over the communal lands going by the name of the “Rive de Massabielle.”

Third Article.―To prevent access to the Grotto, a barrier will be placed at its entrance.

Notices will also be posted, as follows, “Persons are forbidden to trespass on this property.”

Fourth Aritcle.―All infraction of the present Order will be prosecuted according to Law.

Fifth Article.―The Commissary of Police, the Gendarmerie, the Gardes Champệtres, and the Authorities of the commune are charged with the execution of the present Order.

Done at Lourdes, at the Mayorality, 8th of June, 1858.

LACADÉ, Mayor,

Seen and approved, 

C. MASSY, Prefect

Our Lady of Lourdes - Sixth Book - Part 8

THE plan of the divine work developed itself by degrees with all its admirable and powerful logic.  But no one at that moment, and M. Massy less than any one else, perceived the invisible hand of God directing all things, however manifestly such was the case.  It is not in the middle of a charge that one can judge of the disposition of a battle.  The unfortunate Prefect having left the straight path, saw nothing in what was passing around him but an irritating series of vexing incidents, and an inexplicable fatality.  Remove God from certain questions and the inexplicable will meet you at every turn.  

The march of events, slow but unstoppable, was upsetting, one by one, all of unbelief, and forcing the wretched philosophy of man to beat a retreat and abandon its intrenchments one after the other.  

The Apparitions had taken place.  The Free-thinkers had, in the first instance, absolutely denied their reality, while they accused the youthful Seer of being a mere tool in the hands of others, and of engaging in a series of jugglery from mercenary motives.  This theory did not hold good when brought face to face with the child’s examination.  Her veracity made a deep impression on all.

The spirit of incredulity driven out of this, their first position, had fallen back on hallucination and catalepsy.

“She fancies she sees;  she does not see.  There is nothing in it.”

Providence, however, had assembled from every quarter of the horizon its thousands and thousands of witnesses round the child in her state of ecstacy;  and when the proper moment arrived had solemnly attested the truth of Bernadette’s narration by causing a Spring to gush forth publicly, before the spell-bound eyes of the throng which had flocked to the spot.

“There is no Spring,” the unbelievers had said.  “It is an oozing of water, a pool, a small pond.  Call it what you will, except a Spring.

But while they were solemnly and publicly denying its very existence, the Spring was increasing, almost like a being endowed with life, and assuming prodigious proportions.  More than 25,000 gallons issued daily from this strange rock.

“It is accidental, it is a singular circumstance,”  Unbelief had stammered out, reduced to desperation and recoiling from hour to hour.

And see―events following their invincible course―the most  striking cures had immediately attested in every direction the miraculous character of the Spring, and given a new and decisive proof of the reality of the all-powerful Apparition, whose gesture had sufficed to cause this Fountain of Life to gush forth from beneath the hand of a mere mortal.

The first impulse of the Philosophers had been to deny the reality of these cures, as they had denied in the first instance the sincerity of Bernadette, as they had denied the very existence of the Spring.

Yet suddenly the cures had become so numerous, so notorious, that the enemy had been obliged to beat a retreat and admit their reality.

“Well, be it so!  Cures are certainly effected, but they are owing to the impregnation of mineral substances.  The Spring possesses certain therapeutic virtues,” had been the cry of the incredulous, holding in their hands I know not what semblance of a chemical analysis.  Then the most astounding cures, which were absolutely inexplicable by a hypothesis of this nature, had been multiplied to an immense extent;  and simultaneously, though from opposite quarters, several conscientious and enlightened men, thoroughly acquainted with the science of chemistry, had boldly declared that the Spring of Massabielle did not possess in itself any mineral virtue, that it was composed of ordinary water, and that the purely official analysis furnished by M. Latour de Trie was solely intended to meet the well-known views of the Prefect.

Driven thus from all the intrenchments in which, after successive defeats, they had sought refuge;  pursued by the blasting evidence of facts;  curshed beneath the weight of their own admissions;  unable to retract these successive and forced admissions, which had been publicly registered in their own journals, what had the Philosophers and Free-thinkers to do?  The Philosophers and Free-thinkers had but to humbly surrender their arms to Truth.  They had but to bow their heads, to bend their knees, and to believe;  they had but to do what is done by the ripe ears of corn, when the wheat, that gift of God, comes by degrees to fill their grains, as is mentioned by the author of the Essays.  “It has happened,”  says Montaigne,  “to really learned persons, as it happens to spikes of corn.  They stand erect and hold their heads high, as long as they are empty;  but, when they are full and heavy with ripe grain, they begin to bow down and lower themselves towards the ground.  In like manner, men, after having tried everything and sounded everything have renounced their presumption and acknowledged their natural condition.”

It may be, the Philosophers of Lourdes did not possess enough of largeness and strength of mind to apprehend the good seed of truth.  It may be, their pride rendered them inflexible and impervious to the clearest evidence.  One thing is certain, that, with the exception of a few who were happily converted, there did not happen to them what happens “to really learned persons,” and they continued “to hold their heads high,”  like the empty ears of corn.

Not only did they maintain their attitude of incredulity;  but impiety, driven with shame and disgrace from quibble to quibble, from sophism to sophism, from one falsehood to another, and reduced to the most absurd shifts, suddenly threw off the mask, and exposed its full deformity.  It passed, we would say, from the realm of discussion and reasoning, which derive considerable moral support from the exasperation of the Free-thinkers, who were entirely discomfited, humiliated, and consequently furious.

He also had been vanquished to far in the anologous if not identical struggle into which he had entered with the Supernatural.  All his efforts had failed. 

Issuing from the inmost recess of a solitary rock and announced by the voice of a child, the Supernatural had commenced its march, overturning all obstacles, dragging the multitude and its train, and gaining on its passage the enthusiastic shouts, prayers, cries of gratitude, and exclamations of the popular faith.  

Once more, what still remained to be done?  

To withstand the clearest evidence, and to take violent measures against the throng of believers.

Our Lady of Lourdes - Sixth Book - Part 7

THE Prefect saw more and more the hopelessness of being able to have recourse to coercive measures, owing to this amazing tranquillity, this calm not less irritating than it was marvelous, which reigned of its own accord among these countless multitudes.  There was nothing to lay hold of.  He must either retrace his steps, and relinquishing the path he had hitherto pursued, leave the population absolutely free to take their own course, or, by adopting measures of violence and persecution, oppose, on some pretext or other, an arbitrary barrier to the popular movement.  He must either beat a retreat or boldly advance.

On the other hand, the variety and suddenness of the cures effected, appeared to many persons of judgment to be but lamely accounted for by the therapeutic and mineral properties of the new Spring.  The accuracy of the scientific decision furnished by M. Latour de Trie, was called into question.  A chemist of the town, M. Thomas Pujo, asserted that the water was merely ordinary water, and did not contain any medical properties.  Many very competent professors of chemistry in the district were of the same opinion.  The analysis of Latour de Trie was declared by men of science to be erroneous.  These rumors gained so much ground that the Municpal Council of Lourdes began to stir in the business.  The Mayor could not well refuse―in opposition to the wishes of all―to allow a second examination of the water of the Spring to be made.  Without consulting the Prefect, which, as it appeared to him, would have been useless―so deeply convinced was the latter that M. Latour was correct in his report―he got a resolution passed by the Municipal Council, authorizing him to intrust Professor Filhol, one of the greatest chemists of the present day, with a new and definitive analysis.  The council voted at the same time the funds necessary to remunerate the illustrious savant.

M. Filhol was a man of weight in modern science, and there would evidently be no appeal against his verdict.

Of what nature would his analysis prove to be?  The Prefect was not sufficiently versed in chemistry to know.  But we believe, without any fear of deceiving ourselves on the subject, that he must have been somewhat uneasy.  The verdict pronounced by the eminent Professor of Chemistry in the Faculty of Toulouse might seriously derange the plans and contrivances of M. Massy.  He really had not time to lose.  Here again he must beat a retreat or advance boldly.  In the midst of so many different party feelings, and numerous calculations, Bernadette could not escape being exposed to fresh attempts, but they proved as useless as the former ones.  She was preparing to make her first communion, and she made it on the third of June, the feast of Corpus Christi.  It was the same day on which the Municipal Council of Lourdes commissioned M. Gilhol to analyze the water of the mysterious Spring which had some time back gushed forth from under the hand of the youthful Seer, when in her state of ecstacy.  God entering into her child-like and girlish heart, was also making the analysis of a pure wave, and we may well imagine that He could not but admire and bless, in her virgin soul, the freshest of Springs and the mot limpid of crystals.

She continued to receive numerous visits and notwithstanding her ardent wish for concealment and retirement.  She was always the simple, innocent child, whose portrait we have attempted to draw.  She fascinated all who approached her by her candor, her striking sincerity and delicate perfume of calm piety.

One day, a lady, after having held a conversation with her, in an impulse of enthusiastic veneration which may be easily uderstood by those who have known Bernadette, wished to exchange her chaplet of precious stones for the one ordinarily used by the child:

“Keep you own, Madam,” she replied, showing her simple auxiliary of prayer.  “Here is mine, and I would not change it.  It is poor like myself, and is, on that account, more befitting my state of indigence.”

An ecclesiastic endeavored to prevail on her to accept a piece of silver  She refused, and he urged her to take it.  She refused it again so formally that any further pressing seemed useless.  The priest however, would not acknowledge himself beaten. 

“Take it,” said he, “it is not for yourself but for the poor, and you will have the pleasure of giving alms.”

“Do that yourself, Father, in my intention,” replied the child,  “and that will avail more than if I did it myself.”  

It was poor Bernadette’s intention to serve God without payment, and to fulfil the mission she had received from on high without emerging from her state of noble poverty.  And yet, she and her family were at times in want of bread.

About this time, the Prefect’s official salary was raised to 25,000 francs.  M. Jacomet received a donation.  The Minister of Public Worship, in a letter which was communicated to several funcitonaries, assured the Prefect of his perfect satisfaction, and praising him for all he had hitherto done, he pressed upon him the adoption of energetic measures, adding that it was necessary at any cost to make an end of the Grotto and the miracles at Lourdes.

In this quarter, as in all the rest, the Prefect must either beat a retreat or advance boldly.

But what could be done?

Our Lady of Lourdes - Sixth Book - Part 6

THE Press of Paris and of the province began to occupy themselves with the occurrences at Lourdes;  and far beyond the range of the Pyrenees, public attention was being turned by degrees towards the Grotto of Massabielle.

The Prefect’s measures were highly commended by the organs of the Free-thinkers, and not less vehemently censured by the Catholic journals.  The latter, while they hazarded no judgment as to the reality of the Apparitions and miracles, claimed that a question of this nature should be decided by the ecclesiastical authority and not prematurely settled by the arbitrary power of the Prefect.  

The innumerable miracles which were being accomplished either at the Grotto or at a distance, attracted a vast concourse of invalids and pilgrims to Lourdes.  The analysis of Latour de Trie and the pretended mineral properties attributed to the new Spring by the medical men who supported the Prefect, added still more to the reputation of the Grotto, and induced even those to flock there who reckoned on the resources of Nature only for their recovery.  On the other hand, these polemical discussions, by exciting the minds of all, added to the multitude of those who believed a multitude of others who were actuated by feelings of mere curiosity.  All the means employed by the party of unbelief produced an effect diametrically contrary to the one they had proposed to themselves.  Owing to the irresistible turn events had taken―a turn regarded as fatal by some, as providential by others―the influx of people, which it had been the wish of the authorities to check, assumed more and more considerable porportions.  This influx was the more accelerated and developed owing to the fact that, as if to give every one a chance, the material difficulties which were opposed to traveling by the rigor of winter had gradually disappeared.  The month of May had returned.  The lovely weather of spring seemed to court pilgrims to repair to the Grotto by all the flowery paths which wind here and there through woods and across meadows and vineyards in that land of rugged mountains, verdant hills and umbrageous valleys.

Out of humor and powerless, the Prefect saw the gradual increase and extension of this orderly and prodigious heaving, which bore multitudes of Christians in ever renewed phalanxes, to come and kneel and drink at the foot of a solitary rock.

The measures already taken had, it is true, deprived the Grotto of its resemblance to an oratory, but in reality it remained much as it was before, as far as the veneration of the people went.  Crowds flocked from every part to the place where the miracle had taken place.

Contrary to the hope of the Free-thinkers, the fears of the Faithful and the expectations of all, no disorder of any description arose from this unheard-of movement of men, women, children, believers, unbelievers, and of those who were utterly indifferent on the subject.  An invisible hand seemed to protect these crowds against themselves, when, without leader or guide, they rushed day by day to the number of several thousand pilgrims towards the miraculous Fountain.

The Magistracy, represented by M. Dutour, and the Police, personified in M. Jacomet, regarded this strange spectable with feelings of unbounded astonishment.  Did it add to their exasperation?  We cannot tell.  Yet, to men of a certain turn of mind, who push their ideas of authority to extremes, the sight of a multitude so wonderfully orderly and peaceful is an almost insulting and perfectly revolutionary anomaly.  When order maintained by itself, all the functionaries who only exist for the purpose of maintaining order experience a sense of vague uneasiness.  Accustomed to mix themselves up in every thing in the name of the Law, to keep up discipline, issue orders, summon, punish, pardon and to see everything and every individual depending upon them either personally or officially, they experience a feeling bordering on distraction when they find themselves face to face with a multitude of men who dispense with them altogether and do not afford them any pretext for interfering, showing their importance or encroaching on their liberty.  Order of this kind which ignores them is in their eyes the height of disorder.  If so fatal an example was generally followed, there would be no necessity for any Procureurs Impériaux, the Commissaries of Police would vanish from the scene, and the stars of Prefects themselves would begin to pale.

Baron Massy had full power to order the removal of all the objects deposited at the Grotto.  By no law, however, was such a deposit regarded as criminal, and it was impossible to prohibit such offerings or to punish the donors.  In consequence of this the Grotto was often filled with lighted tapers, flowers, ex-votos, and even with silver or gold pieces towards the erection of the building demanded by the Virgin.  The pious faithful wished by so doing to testify to the Queen of Heaven their good-will, even though it might be unavailing, together with their zeal and their love.  “What does it matter if the money is taken away.  It will at least have been offered.  The taper will have shed it transient light in honor of our Mother, and the bouquet will for an instant have perfumed the blessed rock, on which Her feet rested.”  Such were the thoughts of these truly Christian souls.

Jacomet and his agents accordingly came to carry off every thing.  Much emboldened since he had escaped the perils of the fourth of May, the Commissary affected the most contemptuous and brutal conduct, sometimes hurling various objects into the Gave, before the offended eyes of believers.  Sometimes, also, he found himself obliged to preserve, in spite of himself, the festal air which marked those blessed places.  It was when, the piety of believers having scattered the leaves of countless roses around the Grotto, it was out of the question for him to pick up the thousand remnants of flowers and the numberless petals which served to form this brilliant and fragrant carpet. 

The crowds, however, continued to pray on their knees, without making any reply to his provoking conduct, and they allowed everything to be done with a patience which God alone can give to a justly excited multitude.

One evening a report was spread that the Emperor of the Minister had requested the prayers of Bernadette.  M. Dutour uttered a cry of triumph and made all preparations for saving the State.  Three respectable women, who, as it appeared, had originated the assertion, where dragged into court and the Procureur insisted on the full rigor of the French law being enforced against them.  Notwithstanding his wrath and eloquence the judges acquitted two and only condemned the third to a fine of five francs.  The Procureur protested against the weakness of the Judges, persisted in his public accusation, and in his exasperation, or rather desperation, appealed from their decision to the Judges of the Imperial Court at Pau, who, treating his anger with ridicule, not only confirmed the acquittal of the two women, but refused to ratify the very slight sentence pronounced on the third, dismissing the case altogether.

This little incident, so utterly insignificant in itself, only figures in our story to show how anxiously the officials of the Parquet were on the lookout, how actively they were in search of misdemeanors and opportunities of displaying severity, since they were irritated with such miserable trifles, and employed their time in prosecuting poor simple-minded women, whose innocence was to be shortly afterwards publicly proclaimed by the Imperial Court. 

The population remained calm.  No pretext was furnished by them for severities on the plea of maintaining order. 

One night, when it was pitch dark, some unknown persons tore up the pipe of the miraculous Spring and choked its waters under shapeless heaps of rocks, earth and sand.  Who was it that raised this monument of darkness against the divine work?  What impious and at the same time cowardly hands committed this sacrilege, while shunning the observation of their fellows?  No one knows.  But when day broke and the profanation became known, a murmur of indignation, as might have been anticipated, issued from the crowds who had rushed to the spot, and on that day the people might be seen on the roads and in the street moving to and fro in a state of agitation resembling that of the ocean when it foams and surges and roars beneath the blast of a hurricane.  The Police, Magistrates and Sergents de Ville were on the alert, watching, listening and reconnoitering, but were unable to detect an act of violence or a single cry of sedition.  The influence from above, divine in its nature, which preserved order among these excited crowds, was plainly invincible.  Who then―let us repeat the question―had committed this nocturnal deed?  The Parquet and the Police could never discover who it was, in spite of making the most active search.  There were not wanting, however, some prejudiced persons bold enough to suspect―doubtless unjustly―the Parquet and Police of having themselves been the authors of the sacrilege, hoping by this means to provoke disorder which might furnish them with a pretext for having recourse to severe measures.  The municipal authorities protested strongly against the imputation that they had connived at this scandalous proceeding.  The same night, or early the next morning, the Mayor ordered the pipe to be replaced, and all the rubbish with which the new ‘spring was obstructed to be swept from off the pavement of the Grotto  It was the Mayor’s policy to avoid any decidedly personal interference and to allow matters to rest as they were.  He was ready to act, but only as a subordinate, when expressly enjoined to do so by the Prefect and on the latter’s responsibility.

At times, the people, fearing not to have sufficient control over their agitated feelings, took precautions against themselves.  The Association of Stonehewers, in number four or five hundred, had resolved to make a grand peaceable demonstration at the Grotto, repairing to it in procession and singing hymns on the occasion of their patronal feast, Ascension day, which fell that year on the thirty-first of May.  Feeling, however, their hearts indignant and their hands quivering in presence of the measures taken by the authorities they were afraid of themselves and renounced their project.  They confined themselves to supressing on that day, from a feeling of respect to the Blessed Virgin who had appeared at Lourdes, the annual ball which served to conclude their Feast.

“We do not wish,” they said, “That any disorder, however involuntary, or any amusement not recognized by the Church, should afflict the eyes of the Virgin who has visited us.”

Our Lady of Lourdes - Sixth Book - Part 5

AT the Grotto, the miraculous Fountain continued to pour forth its limpid and abundant waters with that character of tranquil perennity remarkable in the beautiful springs which gush from amid rocks.

The supernatural Apparition ceased not to assert her claims and prove her existence by the benefits she conferred.

At one time rapid as the flash of lightning which reads the clouds, at another slow in its progress as the light of morning which rises and sheds its rays gradually over the surface of the earth, the Grace of God continued to descend visibly and invisibly on the assembled throngs.

We can only speak of graces which were obvious to the senses.

About a league and half from Lourdes, at Loubajac, there lived an excellent peasant woman, formerly a hard worker, but who for the last eighteen months had been reduced by an accident to the most painful state of inaction.  Her name was Catharine Latapie-Choust.  In October 1856, having climbed an oak for the purpose of shaking down the acorns, she lost her balance and had a serious fall, from the effects of which her right arm and hand were dislocated.  The necessary operation, as we learn from the report of the case and the official statement now before us, which was immediately and successfully performed by a skillful medical man, had almost brought her arm back to its normal state, without however being able to cure its extreme weakness.  But the stiffness of the three most important fingers of her hand defied all the care and attention which were lavished upon her.  The thumb, fore and middle finger remained bent inwards and entirely paralyzed, so that it was impossible for her to straighten them, or indeed to move them in any way.  The unfortunate peasant woman, who was still young, having barely attained her thirty-eighth year, was unable to sew, spin, knit or attend to household matters.  Her doctor, after having attended her for a length of time to no purpose, had informed her that she was incurable, and that she must resign herself to the loss of the use of her hand.  Such a sentence from the lips of so competent a judge was for this unfortunate creature the announcement of an irreparable misfortune.  To the poor labor is the only resource, and their being obliged to do nothing is tantamount to inevitable destitution.

Catharine had become enceinte (pregnant)  nine or ten months after her accident, and her time was approaching when the divine events at the Grotto of Massabielle occurred.  One night she felt herself all at once aroused, as it were, by a sudden idea.  “A Spirit within me”―she informed the author of this book―“a Spirit within me, said to me, with a kind of irresistible force, ‘Go to the Grotto!  Go to the Grotto and you will be cured!’”  Who was this mysterious being who spoke thus, and whom this ignorant peasant woman―ignorant, at least, as far as all human knowledge went―called “a Spirit?”  The secret is, doubtless, known to her Guardian-angel.

It was three o’clock in the morning.  Catharine called her two children, who were already well grown, to accompany her.

“Remain at your work,” she said to her husband.  “I am going to the Grotto.”

“In your present advanced state, it is impossible,” he rejoined.  “It is a journey of three leagues to Lourdes―there and back.”

“Nothing is impossible.  I am going to be cured.”

No objections were of avail, and she started with her two children.  It was a lovely moonlight.  The awful silence of night, disturbed, from time to time, by mysterious noises;  the profound solitude of the scene, dimly lighted and peopled with indistinct forms, terrified the children.  They trembled and paused at every step;  but they were re-assured by their mother.  Catharine had no fear, and felt that she was advancing towards Life.

She reached Lourdes at day-break.  She met Bernadette.  Some one informed her it was the youthful Seer.  Catharine made no reply, but approaching the child so blessed by God and beloved by Mary, she humbly touched her dress.  She then pursued her way towards the Rocks of Massabielle, where, notwithstanding the early hour of the morning, a multitude of pilgrims had assembled, and were devoutly kneeling.

Catharine and her children knelt also and prayed.  After having prayed, Catharine rose and went to bathe her hand calmly in the marvelous water.

Immediately her fingers were straightened.  Immediately her fingers became supple and life returned to them.  The divine Virgin had cured one pronounced incurable.

How did Catharine take this?  She felt no surprise.  She uttered no cry, but, kneeling down once more, she offered a prayer of thanksgiving to Mary and to God.

For the first time, for eighteen months, she prayed with joined hands, and clasped her fingers together.  

She remained thus a long time absorbed in this act of gratitude.  Such moments are sweet: the soul loves to forget itself in them, and it seems as if Paradise were once more restored to its gaze.

Sudden and violent pains recalled to the mind of Catharine the consciousness that she was still on earth, on this earth of sighs and tears, where the curse originally hurled against the guilty woman, ancestress of the human race, has not ceased to weigh on her innumerable posterity.  We said that Catharine was in the last stage of pregnancy.  As this poor woman was still on her knees, she felt herself suddenly overtaken with the first and terrible pangs of child-birth.  She trembled as she reflected that she had not time even to return to Lourdes, and that she would be delivered before the throng which surrounded her.  She regarded this crowd for an instant with an anguish of fear.

This terror, however, was of short duration.  Catharine turned herself anew towards that sovereign Virgin whom Nature obeys.

“Good Mother,” she said to her with simplicity, “Thou who hast just obtained for me so great a favor, spare me the shame of being delivered before this concourse of people, and grant, at least, that I may be enabled to return home ere I bring into the world the babe I bear within me.”

Immediately all her pangs subsided, and the Spirit, the Spirit within her of whom she spoke to us, and whom we believe to have been her Guardian-angel, said to her, “Be calm;  go without fear; you will reach home without any accident.”

“Let us rise now and go,” said Catharine to her two children.

On this she took them by the hand and proceeded in the direction of Loubajac, without allowing any one to suspect the crisis which had threatened her, and without displaying any uneasiness, not only to the by-standers but even to the midwife of her own village, who chanced to be there, and was recognized by her in the midst of the pilgrims.  Happier than we can express, she traversed calmly, and without hastening her pace, the long route and bad roads which separated her from home.  The two children were no longer afraid, as they had been during the night:  the sun had risen, and their mother was cured.

On reaching her house, Catharine wished to pray again, but immediately the pangs of labor came once more upon her.  A quarter of an hour afterwards she was delivered, and became the mother of a third son.

At the same period, a woman of Lamarque, Marianne Garrot, had been relieved, in less than ten days, by simple lotions of the water from the Grotto, of a milk-colored eruption, which extended over the whole of her face, and had resisted every kind of treatment for upwards of two years.  Doctor Amadon, of Pontac, her medical adviser, certified the fact, and, at a later period, bore exceptionable testimony to it before the Episcopal Commission.

At Bordères, near Nay, Marie Lanou-Domengè, a widow, eighty years of age, had for the last three years suffered from a partial paralysis in her left side.  She could not move a step without the assistance of others, and was, in consequence of her infirmity, incapable of any kind of labor.

Doctor Poneymiroo, of Mirepoix, after having in vain employed certain remedies to restore animation to her atrophied limbs, had ceased to attend her in his medical capacity, though he continued to visit her.

Hope, however, quits unwillingly the mind of the sick.  “When shall I get better?”  was the good woman’s question whenever she met Doctor Poneymiroo.

“You will get better when such is God’s will,” was the invariable reply of the Doctor, who was far from thinking, when he thus expressed himself, that his words were prophetical.

“Why should I not believe this word and address myself directly to the divine goodness,” observed the old peasant woman to herself one day, on hearing the Spring of Massabielle mentioned in conversation.

She dispatched some one to Lourdes to procure a small quantity of the healing water at the Spring itself.

When it was brought to her, she was seized with great emotion.

“Take me out of my bed,” she said, “and hold me upright.”

They raised her and dressed her hastily, almost in a feverish state of excitement.  Both the spectators and actors in this scene were troubled.

Two persons raised her and held her standing upright, supporting her under her shoulders.

They presented her a glass of the water from the Grotto.  Marie stretched her trembling hand towards the water of deliverance, and plunged into it her fingers.  She then made the sign of the Cross upon herself, after which she raised the glass to her lips and slowly drank its contents, doubtless absorbed in some fervent prayer, which she uttered in a low tone.

She was pale―so pale, that for a moment the bystanders thought she was on the point of fainting.

But while they were exerting themselves to prevent her from falling, she held herself erect, trembled and gazed around her.  She uttered a cry, as it were, of triumphant joy.

“Let me go!  Let me go quickly.  I am cured.”

Those who were supporting her half withdrew their arms hesitatingly.  Marie immediately darted forward and began to walk with confidence, as if she had never been suffering from illness.

Some one, who, in spite of all this, entertained some fears about her, gave her a cane with which to support herself.

Marie looked at the cane and smiled.  She then took it, and, with a gesture of contempt, threw it to a distance from her as an article of no further use.

From that day she betook herself once more to hard work in the fields.

Some visitors having come to see her in order to ascertain the truth of the fact, asked her if she could walk in their presence.

“Walk?  Gentlemen,”  she exclaimed,  “I am going to run.”

And suiting the action to the words she commenced to run before them.

This happened in the month of May.  In the month of July following, Marie, the vigorous octogenarian, was pointed out by one to another as a phenomenon, who was gallantly reaping the corn, and was far from being the last in the fatiguing labor of the harvest.

Her medical man, the highly honorable Doctor Poneymiroo, praised God for so evident a miracle, and later on, he signed, with the Commission of Investigation, the official report of the extraordinary events we have just described, with reference to which he did not hesitate to acknowledge  “the direct and evident agency of divine power.”

Our Lady of Lourdes - Sixth Book - Part 4

TO all these of the medical sect, now at bay, there was wanting a sure and official point d’ appui.  M. Massy had already meditated seeking this point d’ appui in one of the most admirable and incontestable sciences of the present day―Chemistry.  With this object he had addressed himself through the Mayor of Lourdes to a Chemist of tolerable celebrity in the Department, M. Latour de Trie.

To have it attested―not in detail by the examination of each case, but wholesale and in a mass―that all these cures which were increasing in number and starting up as formidable opponents, were entirely natural, owing to the innate properties of this new Spring, appeared to him a master-stroke;  and he believed that by doing so he should merit the gratitude of Science and of Philosophy, and, to omit nothing, of the higher Administration represented in the person of M. Rouland, the Minister.

Perceiving that it was plainly impossible to have Bernadette arrested as insane, he urged on the analysis which was to establish officially, in the very face of the cures, the mineral and therapeutic properties of the water of the Grotto.  He was impatient to rid himself of this encroaching Super-natural, which after having caused the Spring to gush forth, was now healing the sick and threatened to bear down all opposition.  A really official analysis might be productive of great service, even if it left this accursed Supernatural tolerably strong in many quarters.

The Chemist of the Prefecture therefore set to work to make this precious study of the water which had gushed forth at Massabielle, and perfectly conscientiously if not completely scientifically he found at the bottom of his retorts a solution in exact conformity with the explanations of the medical men, the thesis of the philosophers and the wishes of the Prefect.  Was Truth as well satisfied with this analysis as the prefecture, Philosophy and the Faculty might possibly be?  This is a question which they did not perhaps think of proposing to themselves at the time, but which the future was destined to charge itself with the decision.

However this may be, here is the summary analysis which M. Latour de Trie, Chemist to the Administration, addressed officially, on the sixth of May, to the Mayor of Lourdes, by whom it was immediately forwarded to Baron Massy:

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS.―The water of the Grotto at Lourdes is very limpid, free from any smell and without any peculiar taste.  Its specific gravity is very nearly that of distilled water.  Its temperature at the Spring is 15° Cent.

It contains the following compouds:

1. Chlorides of sodium, calcium and magnesium abundantly.

2. Carbonates of sodium, calcium and magnesium.

3. Silicates of sodium and aluminium

4. Oxide of iron.

5. Sulphate of sodium and carbonate of sodium.

   6. Phosphate: traces.

7. Organic matter: ulmine.

We certify the entire absence of sulphate of calcium or selenite in this water.

This peculiarity, which is somewhat remarkable, is quite in its favor and ought to make us regard it as being very light, easy of digestion and communicating to the animal economy a disposition favorable to the balance of vital action.

We do not believe we are prejudging in saying on taking into consideration the ensemble and the quality of the substances of which this water is composed, that medical science will not be slow in recognizing in it certain special curative properties which may lead to its being classed in the number of waters which form the mineral wealth of our Department.  

Be pleased to accept, etc.,

Latour de Trie.

Discipline is not carried to the same extent in civil as in military affairs, and in the former, owing to want of skill, the manœuvres are sometimes failures.  The Prefect in the midst of his pre-occupations had neglected to issue his instructions to the editorial department of the Prefectoral organ, the Êre Impérial, the consequence of which was that while the Chemist of the Prefecture was asserting one thing, the Journalist of the Prefecture was as distinctly affirming the other;  while the former paid homage to the Spring of Lourdes, as one of the future therapeutic and mineral riches of the Pyrenees, the latter alluded to it as dirty water, and indulged himself in sundry pleasantries at the expense of the cures effected.  “It is unnecessary to say,” he wrote the very day on which M. Latour de Trie had sent in his report, the sixth of May, “that this famous Grotto pours out a perfect flood of miracles and that our Department is drenched with them.  At the corner of every field you may meet with persons, who tell you the thousands of cures effected by the use of the dirty water.  Very soon the doctors will have nothing to do, and all who have hiterto suffered from rheumatism or affetions of the chest, will have disappeared from the Department.”

In spite of these little discrepancies which he might have avoided, it is only fair to acknowledge that the prefect was a man of considerable activity.  On the fourth of May, towards noon, he had made his speech to the Mayors of the cantons of Lourdes and issued his orders.  On the evening of the same day the Grotto had been stripped of its offerings and ex-votos.  On the morning of the fifth of May he had become aware of the utter impossibility of arresting Bernadette and abandoned the design.  On the evening of the 6th, the analysis furnished by his Chemist had reached his hands.

Armed with this last and highly important document he was waiting to see what course thing would take.

What indeed would happen at Lourdes?  What would take place at the Grotto?  What would be the next step of Bernadette, whose slightest movements were narrowly watched by the Argus eyes of Jacomet and his agents?  During the great heats which were already commencing, would not the Fountain, as many asserted, be dried up and everything be brought to a stand still?  What line of conduct would be pursued by the populations.?  Such were the preoccupations, hopes and disquietudes which filled the breast of Baron Massy, Prefect of the Empire.