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Chapter 42 of "Our Lady of Lourdes" explores the skepticism surrounding the miraculous spring at the Grotto. The chapter depicts the opposition from local authorities and philosophers who dismiss the spring as a mere puddle and deny the reported cures. Despite the increasing evidence and public belief, the clergy remain cautious, while skeptics grow increasingly isolated as more people witness and accept the miracles. The chapter highlights the tension between faith and skepticism as the events at unfold.
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IN the evening of the same day, a time usually devoted to amusement after the cares of business, the enemies of superstition assembled in great force at the club and round the tables of the cafés, and great agitation pervaded their Sanhedrin.
“There has never been a spring of water in that place,” exclaimed one of the most strong-headed of the party. “It is but a pool of water, formed, I know not how, by some accidental infiltration, and which must have been discovered by the merest chance by Bernadette when she stirred up the ground. Nothing is more natural.”
“Evidently,” they answered on all sides.
“Nevertheless,” some one ventured to observe, “they pretend that the water flows.”
“Not the least in the world,” exclaimed several voices. “We went there ourselves: it is nothing more nor less than a pool of water. The common people with their usual exaggeration, pretend to say that the water flows. This is not true; we put the thing to the test yesterday, on the first rumor reaching us, and it is nothing but a muddy puddle.”
These assertions were looked upon as satisfactory and consistent by the philosophic and learned world. It was the official version of the story, and was received as certain and incontestible. So credulous are even the incredulous in whatever seems to help their own arguments, so completely do the followers of Free Examination discard anything like investigation in matters of this nature, and so obstinate are they in maintaining the grounds they have once taken, even when disproved by facts themselves, that, six weeks after this period, and in spite of the crushing evidence of the existence of a copious fountain, which as every one might prove for himself, supplied more than 25,000 gallons of water a day, this absolute denial of any spring of water, this impudent version of the puddle, passed current and was even boldly printed in the journals of the Free-thinkers. This would be hardly credible, if we did not give a proof of it at random, extracted from the official journal of the department.
With regard to the asserted cures, they were denied unprovisionally, as had been the case with the Spring of water. All of them, without any exception, were unconditionally rejected with shruggings of shoulders and loud laughter, as indeed had been that of Louis Bourriette.
“Bourriette is not cured,” said one.
“He was never sick,” replied another.
“He imagines he is cured; he believes he sees,” insinuated a young man of the school of M. Renan.
“The effect of the imagination on the nerves is sometimes surprising,” rejoined a physiologist.
“There is not such person as Bourriette in existence,” exclaimed sturdily a new arrival, striking at once the root of the question.
The attitude assumed by the philosophical heads of the place was summed up in theses four or five formularies, as far as these extraordinary cures, so much bruited among the common people, were concerned.
It was a matter of astonishment to them that such grave and highly educated men as M. Dufo, who was then president-elect of the Order of Barristers, as Doctor Dozon, as M. Estrade, as the Commandant of the Garrison, as the retired Intendant Militaire, M. de Lafitte, should have displayed such inconceivable weakness as to allow themselves to be deluded by all that was taking place.
In the course of this day so pregnant with events, Bernadette had been summoned to the chamber of the Tribunal, either before or after the sitting of the court, and the dialectics brought into play by the Procureur Impérial, the Substitut and the Judges had not been more successful in producing any variation or contradiction in her story than the genius of M. Jacomet, in spite of his long experience in the Police.
The Procureur Impérial, followed by his Substitut, had pronounced his own opinion in the matter some days before and nothing could shake the firmness of his mind. He deplored this invasion of fanaticism and was determined to discharge his duty energetically. Owing to I know not what circumstances, and as is seldom the case in such immense assemblages, no disorder arose, and the laudable zeal of the Procureur Impérial was doomed to a state of complete inaction and to an attitude of expectation. In the midst of this vast movement of men and ideas which stirred up the whole country, it would seem an invisible hand protected those innumerable crowds and hindered them from giving, even innocently, the slightest pretext for the forcible interference of the law-officers, police or civil administration. Whether they liked it or not, these formidable personages had at least for the time their hands tied, and they were not to be untied until the moment when the mysterious Apparition of the Grotto had completed her work. These multitudes then could come with perfect security; these multitudes so vast to the bodily eye which saw them meeting from every side of the horizon; so insignificant to the spiritual eye after comparing them with the millions of men destined to repair to the same spot in the future as a place of pilgrimage. An invisible ægis seemed to defend from all danger those first witnesses whom the Blessed Virgin had summoned: “Nolite timere, pusillus grex.”
The enemies of Superstition applied most urgently to the Mayor of Lourdes in order to induce him to issue an order prohibiting all access to the Rocks of Massabielle, which formed part of the public lands belonging to the commune. Such an order, they thought, would inevitably be infringed in the then excited state of popular feeling and would give rise to innumerable proceedings. It would be resisted and resistance would be followed by arrests, and if the judicial authority, including that of the police and the administration, could once take the matter in hand, it would easily carry everything before it, as it would be supported by all the powers of the State.
M. Lacadé, Mayor of Lourdes, was a most upright and excellent man and had deservedly acquired the general respect of the public. Every one in the town of Lourdes did justice to his rare personal qualities, and his enemies—or such as were jealous of him—never reproached him with anything worse than a certain timidity which prevented him from taking a decided course between extreme parties, and a somewhat too great attachment to his functions as Mayor, though, as every one allowed, he discharged them in a decidedly superior manner.
He refused to issue the order which was solicited from him.
“I do not know where the truth lies in the midst of so much clamor,” he replied, “and it is not for me to pronounce either for or against. As long as there is no disorder I let things take their course. It is for the Bishop to decide the question, as it regards religion; it is for the Préfet to decide measures which are in the jurisdiction of Administration. For myself, I wish to keep clear of the whole business, and I shall only act in my capacity of Mayor on the express order of the Préfet.”
Such, if not the very language, was the import of his reply to the worrying applications urged upon him by the Philosophers of Lourdes, who, as regarded Christian belief, resembled in that respect the philosophers of all times and places. The pretended liberty of Thought rarely tolerates the liberty of Belief.
Since the gushing forth of the Spring the Apparition had not re-iterated her command to Bernadette to go to the Priests and demand from them the erection of a chapel. On the next day, as we have already related, the Vision had not manifested herself, so that, since that moment, Bernadette had not made her appearance at the presbytery. The Clergy, notwithstanding the rising tide of popular faith and the increasing rumors of miracles which were spread by the multitudes, continued to remain strangers to all the manifestations of enthusiasm which took place around the Grotto.
“Let us wait patiently,” they said. “In human affairs it is enough to be prudent once. In things pertaining to God our prudence should be seventy-fold.”
Not a single priest therefore appeared in the ceaseless procession which was repairing to the miraculous Spring of water. Owing therefore to the Clergy having made a point of keeping aloof, and to the municipal authorities refusing to act and oppose their veto, the popular movement had free course and was always on the increase, like the rivers of their country at the period of the melting of the snow. It overflowed on all sides perpetually advancing and covering the surrounding country with its innumerable waves. The advocates of repression began to feel how powerless they were to resist a current of such formidable strength and to see clearly that all opposition would be swept away like a dyke of straw by this sudden and mightly irruption. They were forced to resign themselves to allow free passage to these multitudes which had been invisibly upheaved and put in motion by the breath of God.
At the Grotto the greatest order was maintained, notwithstanding so vast a concourse of people. They continued drawing water from the Fountain, singing canticles and devoting themselves to prayer.
The soldiers of the Garrison, agitated in common with all the people of the country, had requested permission from the Commandant of the fort to repair, themselves, to the Rocks of Massabielle. With the instinct of discipline developed in their case by military system, they took measures of their own accord to obviate obstructions, to leave certain passages free and to prevent the crowd from approaching too near to the dangerous banks of the Gave, stationing themselves for this purpose on both sides of the river and assuming spontaneoulsy a certain amount of authority, which no one, as was reasonable, dreamt of disputing.
Some days passed by in this manner, during which the Apparition manifested herself without any new peculiarity except that the Spring of water was always increasing in volume and the miraculous cures effected by it were multiplied more and more. There was a moment of profound astonishment in the camp of the Free-thinkers. The facts were becoming so numerous, so amply proved and so patent that almost every moment the ranks of the incredulous suffered from desertion. The best and the most upright among them suffered themselves to be gained by the evidence adduced. There remained, however, an indestructible number of minds arrogating to themselves superior strength, but whose strength in point of fact consisted in rejecting all proofs and refusing to give way to truth. This would appear impossible did not every one know that a great part of the Jewish people resisted the miracles even of Jesus Christ and His Apostles, and that four centuries of miracles were necessary to open the eyes of the pagan world.
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