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.”
