Drawn by an Invisible Hand

Book 2 - Part 10 - page 97

The next morning, Monday the 22nd of February, when the usual hour for the Apparition arrived, the crowd waiting for the youthful Seer on the banks of the Gave saw no signs of her coming. Her parents had sent her at sunrise to the school, and Bernadette deeming it her duty to obey, had repaired thither with a heavy heart. The Sisters, whose duties combining charity and instruction, had rendered them somewhat callous by long acquaintance with human suffering.

Towards the middle of the day the children returned home for a few moments to partake of their frugal meal.

Bernadette, her soul crushed between the two alternatives presented by her irremediable situation, walked slowly towards her home. From the tower of the Church at Lourdes the mid-day Angelus had just sounded.

At that moment an unaccountable power took possession of her all at once, acting not on her mind but her body, as an invisible arm might have done, and, driving her out of the road she was taking, forced her irresistibly in the direction of the path which lay on her right. She was impelled by it, seemingly, in the same way as a leaf, lying on the ground, is hurried along by the imperious blast of the wind. She could no more prevent herself advancing than if she had been placed suddenly on a most rapid descent. Her whole physical being was dragged towards the Grotto, to which this path led. She could not but walk, she was even obliged to run.

And yet the movement by which she was carried along was neither violent nor rough. It was irresistible; but it had nothing in it harsh or shocking to her who was under its control; on the contrary, it was supreme force co-existing with supreme mildness. The almighty hand rendered itself as soft as that of a mother, as if it had feared to injure so frail a child.

Providence, therefore, which directs all things, had solved the insoluble problem. The child, submitting to the will of her father, was not going to the Grotto, where her heart yearned to be; and yet carried away forcibly by the Angel of the Lord, she arrived there notwithstanding, thus fulfilling her promise to the Virgin without having wilfully disobeyed the paternal command.

Such phenomena have been remarked more than once in the life of certain souls, whose deep purity has been pleasing to the heart of God. Saint Philip Neri, Saint Ida of Louvain, Saint Joseph of Cupertino, Saint Rose of Lima experienced impulses of a similar or analogous nature.

The humble heart of the child, bruised and deserted, began already to smile with hope in proportion as her steps approached the Grotto. “There,” said she to herself “I shall see the beloved Apparition once more; there I shall be consoled for everything—there I shall contemplate that beautiful countenance, the sight of which ravishes me with happiness. Boundless joy will ere long succeed these cruel sorrows, for the Lady will never desert me.”

Owing to her inexperience she was not aware that the Spirit of God breathes where it wills.

A Father's Fear and a Daughter's Obedience

Book 2 - Part 9 - page 96

A Father’s Fear and a Daughter’s Obedience

Although M. Jacomet had been powerless against the simple, precise and uncontradictory answers of Bernadette, he had, nevertheless, gained a decided advantage at the close of this long struggle. He had exceedingly terrified the father of the youthful Seer, and he knew that in that quarter, at least for the time, the odds were in his favor.

François Soubirous was a very good kind of a man, but by no means a hero. Opposed to official authority, he was timid, as the lower classes and the poor usually are. To such, the least embroilment with the law is, owing to their poverty, a terrible misfortune, and they feel themselves utterly powerless to cope with arbitrary power and persecution. He believed, it is true, in the reality of the Apparitions; but as he neither comprehended their nature nor measured their importance, and even felt a certain amount of terror in connection with these extraordinary events, he saw no great inconvenience in setting his face against Bernadette’s revisiting the Grotto. He had perhaps some vague fear of displeasing the invisible Lady who was in the habit of manifesting herself to his child, but the fear of irritating a man of flesh and blood, of engaging in a struggle with so formidable a personage as the Commissary came nearer home to him and acted much more powerfully on his mind.

“You see that all these gentlemen of the place are against us,” he observed to Bernadette, “and if you return to the Grotto, M. Jacomet, who is master here, will put both of us in prison. Do not go there any more.”

“Father,” said Bernadette, “when I go there, it is not altogether of myself. At a certain moment there is something in me which calls me and attracts me to the place.”

“Be this as it may,” rejoined her Father, “I forbid you positively to go there again. You will surely not disobey me for the first time in your life.”

The poor child, thus placed in a dilemma between the promise she had made to the Apparition and the express prohibition of her father’s authority, replied: “I will in that case do all in my power to prevent myself going there and to resist the attraction which summons me to the place.”

So passed sadly away the evening of the same Sunday which had arisen in the blessed and glorious splendor of ecstasy.

The Trial of Truth and Simplicity

Book 2 - Part 8 - page 85

The highly intelligent man who was about to interrogate Bernadette flattered himself with the idea of obtaining an easy triumph. He was one of those who obstinately refused the explanation given by the savants of the place. He had no faith either in catalepsy or hallucination, or the various illusions of a morbid ecstasy. The particularity of the statements attributed to the child, and the observations made by Dr. Dozons and many other witnesses of the scenes enacted at the Grotto, seemed to him irreconcilable with such a hypothesis. With regard to the fact itself of the Apparitions, he did not believe, they say, in the possibility of those visions from the other world, and his detective genius, however much it was adapted to track rogues in their breach of the laws, could scarcely perhaps reach so far as to discover God behind a supernatural fact. Being, therefore, fully convinced in his own mind that those apparitions could not but be false, he had resolved, by fair means or foul, to discover the clue to the error, and to render the Free-thinkers in authority at Lourdes or elsewhere, the signal service of branding as an imposture, a supernatural manifestation which had gained popular credit. He had there an admirable opportunity of striking a heavy blow at the pretended authority of all the Visions of past ages, more especially should he succeed in discovering and proving that the Clergy, who so studiously kept aloof in this affair, were secretly directing it and turning it to their own advantage.

Under the supposition that God was nothing and man everything in this event, the reasoning of M. Jacomet was excellent. On the contrary supposing that God was everything in it and man nothing, the unfortunate Commissary of Police was embarking on a most perilous voyage.

In this disposition of mind, M. Jacomet, from the very first day, had caused all the proceedings of Bernadette to be carefully watched, with the view of surprising, if possible, some mysterious communication between the youthful Seer and any member of the Clergy, whether of Lourdes itself or the neighborhood. He had even, it seems, extended his official zeal so far as to place one of his creatures in the church with orders to keep his eye on the confessional. However, the children who attended the Catechism, were in the habit of going to confession by rotation once a fortnight or once a month, and Bernadette’s turn, during those days, had not yet arrived. All his conscientious efforts had therefore failed to discover any complicity in the acts of imposture which were attributed by him to Bernadette. From this he drew the conclusion that she was acting probably alone, without altogether renouncing his suspicions, for the true agent of police is always suspicious, even when he has no proofs. It is this which constitutes his peculiar type and his proper genius.

When Bernadette entered he fixed on her for a moment his sharp and piercing eyes, which he had the wonderful art of impregnating all at once with good-humor and unconstrained. Habituated as he was to take a high tone with every one, he was more than polite with the poor girl of Soubirous, the miller: he was soft and insinuating. He made her take a seat and assumed at the commencement of his interrogatory the benevolent air of a real friend.

“It appears that you are in the habit of seeing a beautiful Lady at the Grotto of Massabielle, my poor child. Tell me all about her.”

Just as he had said these words, the door of the apartment had been gently opened and some one had entered. It was M. Estrade, Receveur des Contributions Indirectes, a man of importance at Lourdes and one of the most intelligent in the place. This functionary occupied a portion of the house in which M. Jacomet resided, and having been apprised, by the uproar of the crowd, of the arrival of Bernadette, had naturally felt curious to be present at the interrogatory. He concurred, besides, with M. Jacomet in his ideas on the subject of apparitions, and, like him, believed in some trickery on the part of the child. He used to shrug his shoulders on being offered any other explanation. He considered things of this nature as being so absurd, that he had not even condescended to go to the Grotto to witness the strange scenes reported as taking place there. This philosopher seated himself a little on one side, after having made signs to the Commissary not to interrupt his proceedings. All this passed without Bernadette appearing to pay it any particular attention.

Thus the scene and the dialogue of the two interlocutors obtained a witness.

On hearing the question of M. Jacomet, the child had directed her beautifully innocent glance towards the agent of police, and set about relating in her own language, that is to say in the patois of the country, and with a sort of personal timidity which added still more to the truthfulness of her accent, the extraordinary events, with which for some days past, her life had been filled.

M. Jacomet listened to her with deep attention, still affecting an air of good-humor and kindness. From time to time he took notes on a paper which lay before him.

This was remarked by the child but it did not cause her any uneasiness. When she had finished her relation, the Commissary, with increased earnestness and sweetness of manner, put to her innumerable questions as if his enthusiastic piety was interested beyond measure in such divine wonders. He shaped all his interrogations, one after the other, without any order, in short and hurried phrases, so as not to allow the child any time for reflection.

Bernadette replied to these various questions without any trouble or shadow of hesitation, and with the tranquil composure of a person who is questioned on the aspect of a landscape or a picture immediately under his eyes. Sometimes, in order to make herself understood, she added some imitative gesture, some expressive mimicry, to supply as it were the feebleness of her expressions.

The rapid pen of M. Jacomet had in the mean time noted, as she went along, all the answers which had been given to him.

Then it was that after having attempted in this manner to weary and perplex the mind of the child by entering into such a minute infinity of details—then it was that the formidable agent of police assumed, without passing through any intermediate stage, a menacing and terrible expression of countenance and suddenly changed his tone:

“You are a liar,” he exclaimed with violence and as if seized suddenly with rage; “you are deceiving everybody, and unless you confess the truth at once, I will have you arrested by the Gendarmes.”

Poor Bernadette was as much stupefied at the aspect of this sudden and formidable metamorphosis as if she had felt the icy rings of a serpent suddenly twisting itself among her fingers, instead of the harmless branch of a tree which she had fancied she had been carrying in her hand. She was stupefied with horror, but, contrary to the deep calculations of Jacomet, she was not agitated. She preserved her tranquillity as if her soul had been sustained by some invisible hand against so unexpected a shock.

The Commissary had risen to his feet with a glance at the door as if to hint that he had only to make a sign to call in the Gendarmes and send the visionary to prison.

“Sir,” said Bernadette, with a calm and peaceful firmness, which, in this wretched little peasant-girl had an incomparably simple grandeur, “you may have me arrested by the Gendarmes, but I can only say what I have already said. It is the truth.”

“We shall see about that,” said the Commissary resuming his seat and judging by a glance of his experienced eye that threats were absolutely powerless on this extraordinary child.

M. Estrade, who had been a silent and impartial witness of the scene described above, was divided between feelings of immense astonishment with which Bernadette’s accent of conviction had inspired him, and of admiration, in spite of himself, of the skilful strategy of Jacomet, the aim of which as it was unfolded before him, he thoroughly understood.

This struggle between such strength coupled with craft, and mere childish weakness with no other defensive weapon than simplicity, assumed a totally unexpected character.

Jacomet, however, armed with the notes which he had been taking for the last three quarters of an hour, applied himself to recommencing his interrogatory, but in a different order and in a thousand captious shapes, proceeding always, according to his method, with sudden and rapid questions and demanding immediate answers. He had no doubt of being able by such means to drive the little girl to contradict herself, at least in some of the minor details. Were this done, the imposture was exposed and the game was in his own hands. But he exhausted in vain all the dexterity of his mind in the multiplied evolutions of this subtle manoeuvre. In nothing did the child contradict herself, not even in that imperceptible point, that minute iota spoken of in the Gospel. To the same questions, in whatever terms proposed, she invariably replied, if not in the same words, at least with the same facts and in the same shade of meaning. M. Jacomet meanwhile held out, if it was only with the object of wearying still more this artless child whom he hoped to find at fault. He turned and twisted her account of the Apparitions into every possible shape, without being able to impair it. He was like a wild beast trying to make an impression with its fangs on a diamond.

“Well,” said he at length to Bernadette, “I am going to draw up the report of your examination, and you shall hear it read.”

He wrote rapidly two or three pages, frequently consulting his notes. He had designedly introduced into certain details some variations of slight importance, as, for instance, the form of the robe and the length or position of the Virgin’s veil. This was a new snare, but it was as useless as all the rest. While he was reading and saying, from time to time, “That is correct is it not?” Bernadette, as simple and meek as she was unshaken, replied humbly but firmly:

“No; I did not say so, but so.”

And she re-established the inexactly-stated particular in its original truth and shade of meaning. For the most part, Jacomet contested the point.

“But you did say so! I wrote it down at the time. You have said so-and-so to several persons in the town,” etc., etc.

“No,” answered Bernadette; “I did not say so, and could not have said so, for it is not true.”

And the Commissary was always obliged to yield to the child’s objections.

The modest and invincible self-possession of this little girl was, indeed, most remarkable, and the surprise of M. Estrade, on observing it, increased. Personally Bernadette was, and appeared to be, extremely timid, and her bearing was humble and even somewhat confused before strangers. And yet, in anything touching the reality of the Apparitions, she displayed uncommon force of mind and energy of affirmation. When her testimony to what she had seen was in question, she gave her replies without hesitation and with undisturbed composure. But even then it was easy to divine in her the virgin modesty of a soul which would gladly have concealed itself from the sight of every one.

It was plain to be seen that she triumphed over her habitual timidity solely from respect for the internal truth, of which she was the messenger to mankind, and from love for the “Lady” who had appeared to her at the Grotto. She needed all the feeling of her office to enable her to surmount the innate tendency of her nature, which, under any other circumstances, was timid and disliked anything like publicity.

The Commissary betook himself once more to threats.

“If you persist in going to the Grotto, I shall have you put in prison, and you shall not leave this place until you promise to go there no more.”

“I have promised to the Vision to go there,” observed the child. “And, besides, when the moment arrives, I am urged on by something which comes within me and calls me.”

The interrogatory, as we see, verged to a close. It had been long, and could not have lasted less than an hour, at least. Outside, the crowd, not without a feeling of restless impatience, awaited the coming out of the child whom they had seen that very morning transfigured in the light of a divine ecstasy. From the apartment, in which passed the scene which we have just described, might be heard confusedly the cries, words, questions and thousand different noises which serve to form the tumult of a crowd. The uproar seemed to increase and assume a menacing tone. At a certain moment there was a peculiar kind of agitation in the crowd as if some one, whose presence had been greatly desired and long expected, had arrived in the midst of it.

Almost immediately, repeated knocks at the door of the house were heard, but they did not appear to affect the Commissary. The blows became more violent. The man who struck them shook the door at the same time and endeavored to force it. Jacomet rose in a state of irritation and went to open it himself.

“You cannot come in here,” said he furiously. “What do you want?”

“I want my daughter,” answered the miller, Soubirous, effecting his entrance by force, and following the Commissary into the room in which Bernadette was.

The sight of the peaceful countenance of his daughter calmed the anxious agitation of her father, and he once more subsided into a poor man of the humbler class, who could not help trembling in presence of a personage who, notwithstanding his inferior position, was, owing to his activity and intelligence, the most important and formidable man in the district.

Francois Soubirous had taken off his Bearnois biret and was twirling it in his hands. As nothing escaped the notice of Jacomet, he saw, at a glance, that the miller was frightened. Resuming his air of good-humor and compassionate pity, he clapped him familiarly on the shoulder.

“Friend Soubirous,” said he to him, “take care, mind what you are about. Your daughter is on the eve of getting herself into trouble, and is on the straight road to prison. I am willing not to send her there this time, but only on condition of your forbidding her to return to the Grotto, where she is acting a farce. On the first repetition of the offence, I shall be inflexible, and, besides, you know that the Procureur Impérial treats such matters earnestly.”

“Since such is your wish, Monsieur Jacomet,” answered the poor father, panic-struck, “I will forbid her to go there and her mother likewise, and, as she has always obeyed us, she will certainly not go there.”

“At any rate, if she goes there, and this scandal continues, I shall call you to account as well as her,” said the formidable Commissary, resuming his tone of menace and dismissing them by a gesture.

Cries of satisfaction were uttered by the crowd at the moment Bernadette and her father came out. The child then returned home, and the multitude dispersed through the town.

The Commissary of Police and the Receveur being left alone, communicated to each other the impressions made on them by this strange interrogatory.

“What firm resolution in her depositions!” exclaimed M. Estrade, who had been struck with profound astonishment.

“What invincible persistence in her falsehood!” replied Jacomet, stupefied at having been vanquished.

“What truth in her accents!” continued the Receveur. “Nothing in her language or bearing bore the slightest appearance of contradiction. It is clear she believes she has seen something.”

“What artful cunning!” rejoined the Commissary. “In spite of my efforts she never fell into any discrepancy. She has her story at her fingers’ ends.”

Both the Commissary and M. Estrade persisted in their incredulity regarding the actual fact of the Apparition. But a shade of difference already separated their two negations, and this shade of difference was as a gulf between them. The one supposed Bernadette to be dexterous in falsehood, the other set her down as sincere in her illusion.

“She is artful,” said the former.

“She is sincere,” observed the latter.

Bernadette Before the Authorities

Book 2 — Part 7 - page 83

A threatening murmur went through the multitude. Many of those who were there had, the same morning, seen the humble child transfigured by the divine ecstasy and illuminated by rays from on high.

For them, this little girl blessed by God had about her something sacred. They thrilled with indignation on seeing the agent of police lay hands on her, and would have interfered on her behalf had not a priest, who at that moment came out of the church, made signs to the crowd to remain quiet. “Let,” he said, “the authorities act as they will.” By a wonderful coincidence, such as is often to be met with in the history of supernatural events, where any one gives himself the trouble, or rather the pleasure of sifting them, the Universal Church had sung that very day, the first Sunday in Lent, those immortal words destined to comfort and console the innocent and the weak in the presence of persecution. “God hath confided thee to the care of His Angels, that they may watch over thee in thy way. They will bear thee up in their hands, lest thy feet should be dashed against, and wounded by the stones in thy path. Trust in him: He will protect thee under the shadow of his wings. His almighty Power shall encompass thee as with an invisible shield. Go boldly! thou shalt crush the Asp and the Serpent under thy feet; the lion and the dragon shall be brought low by thee. ‘Because he hath hoped in me,’ says the Lord, ‘I will deliver him—I will protect him because he hath confessed my name. He shall call on me and I will graciously hear him. I am with him in the day of trouble.’”

The Gospel for the day related how the Saviour of men, eternal type of the just upon earth, had to undergo His temptations; and it gave all the details of his famous struggles against, and victory over the Evil Spirit, in the solitude of the desert: Ductus est Jesus in desertum, ut tentaretur a Diabolo.

Such were the texts so replete with consolation for innocent and persecuted weakness, which the Church had proclaimed; such were the mighty souvenirs which she had revived and the memory of which she celebrated the very day on which, in the depth of an obscure town among the mountains, an agent of the civil power arrested, in the name of the law, an ignorant little girl, in order to conduct her into the presence of the most crafty of the representatives of Authority.

The multitude had followed Bernadette as she was carried off by the official agent, in a great state of excitement and grief. The office of the Commissary of Police was not far off. The Sergent entered with the child, and leaving her by herself in the passage, returned to lock and bolt the door.

A moment afterwards, Bernadette was ushered into the presence of M. Jacomet.

An immense crowd remained standing outside.

The Arrest of Bernadette

Book 2 — Part 6 - page 81

During the whole morning after the Mass, and up to the hour of Vespers, nothing was bruited abroad at Lourdes but these strange events, of which, as might be expected, the most opposite interpretations were given. To those who had seen Bernadette in her state of ecstasy, proof had appeared in a form which they asserted to be irresistible. Some of them illustrated their convictions with not inappropriate comparisons.

“In our valleys the Sun displays itself late, concealed as it is towards the East, by the Peak and the mountain of Ger. But, long before we can see it, we can remark in the West, the reflection of its rays on the sides of the mountains of Batsurguères, which become resplendent, while we are still in the shade; and then, although we do not actually see the sun, but only the reflection of its rays on the declivities, we boldly assert its presence behind the huge masses of the Ger. ‘Batsurguères sees the sun,’ we say, ‘and, were we on the same level as Batsurguères, we should see it also.’ Well it is precisely the same thing when we gaze on Bernadette lighted up by this invisible Apparition: the certainty is the same, the evidence altogether similar. The countenance of the youthful Seer appears all at once so clear, so transfigured, so dazzling, so impregnated with divine rays, that this marvelous reflection which we perceive gives us full assurance of the existence of the luminous centre which we do not perceive. And, if we had not in ourselves to conceal it from us, a whole mountain of faults, wretchedness, material pre-occupations, and carnal opacity,—if we, also, were on a level with the innocence of childhood, this eternal snow never trodden by human foot, we should see actually, and not merely reflected, the object contemplated by the ravished Bernadette, which, in her state of ecstasy, sheds its rays over her features.”

Reasoning such as this, excellent perhaps in itself, and conclusive for those who had witnessed this unheard-of spectacle, could not satisfy those who had not seen anything. Providence—supposing it really to have taken a part in these proceedings—must it would appear, confirm its agency by proofs, which, if not better (for scarcely any one resisted these after having experienced them), should at least be more material, continuous, and, in some measure, more palpable to the senses.

It may be, the profound design of God tended that way; and that His object in calling together such vast multitudes was to have, at the necessary moment, a host of unobjectionable witnesses.

At the conclusion of Vespers, Bernadette left the church with the rest of the congregation. She was, as you may well imagine, the object of general attention. She was surrounded and overwhelmed with questions. The poor child was distressed by this concourse of people, and, having returned simple answers, endeavored to get through in order to return home.

At that moment, a man in the uniform of the police, a Sergent de Ville, or officer of the police, approached her and touched her on the shoulder.

“In the name of the law,” said he.

“What do you want with me?” inquired the child.

“I have orders to arrest you and take you with me.”

“And where?”

“To the Commissary of Police. Follow me!”

Pray for Sinners

Book 2 — Part 5 - page 78

It was the third day of the Quinzaine, the twenty-first of February, the first Sunday in Lent. Before sunrise, an immense crowd, consisting of several thousand persons, had assembled in front of and all around the Grotto, on the banks of the Gave and in the meadow-island. It was the hour when Bernadette usually came. She arrived enveloped in her white capulet, followed by some of her family, her mother or her sister. Her parents had attended during her ecstasy the day before; they had seen her transfigured, and now they believed.

The child passed through the crowd, which respectfully made way for her, simply in a composed and unembarrassed manner; and, without appearing to be conscious of the universal attention she excited, she proceeded, as if she was doing the simplest thing in the world, to kneel down and pray beneath the niche around which the wild rose festooned its branches.

A few moments afterwards, you might have seen her brow light up and become radiant. The blood, however, did not mantle her visage; on the contrary, she grew slightly pale, as if nature somewhat succumbed in presence of the Apparition which manifested itself to her. All her features assumed a lofty and still more lofty expression, and entered, as it were, a superior region, a country of glory, significant of sentiments and things which are not found here below. Her mouth, half-open, was gasping with admiration, and seemed to aspire to heaven. Her eyes, fixed and blissful, contemplated an invisible beauty, which no one else perceived but whose presence was felt by all, seen by all, so to say, by reverberation on the countenance of the child. This poor little peasant girl, so ordinary in her habitual state, seemed to have ceased to belong to this earth.

It was the Angel of Innocence, leaving the world for a moment behind and falling in adoration at the moment the eternal gates are opened and the first view of Paradise flashes on the sight.

All those who have seen Bernadette in this state of ecstacy, speak of the sight as of something entirely unparalleled on earth. The impression made upon them is as strong now, after the lapse of ten years, as on the first day.

What is also remarkable, although her attention was entirely absorbed by the contemplation of the Virgin, full of Grace, she was, to a certain degree, conscious of what was passing around her.

At a certain moment her taper went out; she stretched out her hand that the person nearest to her might relight it.

Some one having wished to touch the wild rose with a stick, she eagerly made him a sign to desist, and an expression of fear passed over her countenance.

“I was afraid,” she said, afterwards, with simplicity, “that he might have touched the ‘Lady’ and done her harm.”

One of the observers, whose name we have already mentioned, Doctor Dozons, was at her side.

“There is nothing here,” he thought, “either of the rigidity of catalepsy or of the unconscious ecstacy of hallucination; it is an extraordinary fact, of a class entirely unknown to Medical Science.”

He took the child’s arm and felt her pulse. To this she did not appear to pay any attention. Her pulse was perfectly calm, and beat as regularly as when she was in her ordinary state.

“There is, consequently, no morbid excitement,” observed the learned Doctor to himself, more and more unsettled in his views.

At that moment the youthful Seer advanced, on her knees, a few paces forward into the Grotto. The Apparition had removed from her original place, and it was now through the interior opening that Bernadette was able to perceive her.

The glance of the Blessed Virgin seemed, in a moment, to run over the whole earth, after which she fixed it, impregnated with sorrow, on Bernadette, who still remained kneeling.

“What is the matter with you? What must be done?” murmured the child.

“Pray for sinners,” replied the Mother of the human race.

On perceiving the eternal serenity of the Blessed Virgin thus veiled with sorrow as with a cloud, the heart of the poor shepherd-girl experienced all at once a feeling of cruel suffering. An inexpressible sorrow spread itself over her features. From her eyes, which remained wide open and constantly fixed on the Apparition, two tears rolled upon her cheeks and staid there without falling.

A ray of joy returned at length to light up her countenance, for the Virgin had herself doubtless turned her glance in the direction of Hope, and had contemplated, in the heart of the Father, the inexhaustible source of infinite mercy which descends on the world in the name of Jesus, and by the hands of the Church.

It was at this moment that the Apparition disappeared. The Queen of Heaven had just re-entered her kingdom.

The aureole, as was its wont, lingered a few moments, and then became gradually obliterated like a luminous mist which melts and disappears in the air.

The features of Bernadette lost by degrees their lofty expression. It seemed as if she passed from the land of sunshine into that of shade, and the ordinary type of earth resumed possession of that countenance which, but a moment before, had been transfigured.

She was now nothing more than a humble shepherd-girl,—a little peasant,—with nothing outwardly to distinguish her from other children.

The crowd pressed around her, panting for breath, and in an extraordinary state of anxiety, emotion, and pious recollection. We shall have, elsewhere, an opportunity of describing their bearing.

The Civil Authorities Take Alarm

Book 2 - Part 4 - page 73

However, this was not sufficient. Truth requires to pass through another crucible. It behoves her, without any external support, relying on herself, and herself alone, to resist the great human forces let loose upon her. It is necessary for her to have persecutors, furious enemies and adversaries skilled in laying snares. When Truth passes through such trials, the weak tremble and fear lest the work of God should be overthrown. Quid timetis, modicæ fidei. The very men who menace her now are her bulwarks hereafter.

Such furious opponents attest to the eyes of ages, that such a belief has not been established clandestinely or in the shade, but rather in the face of enemies, whose interest it was to see and control everything; they attest to the eyes of ages that its foundations are solid, since so many united efforts were not able to shake them even at the moment when they arose in their original weakness: they attest that its basis is pure, since after examining everything through the magnifying glass of malevolence and hatred, they failed in detecting in it any vice or stain. Enemies are witnesses above suspicion, who in spite of themselves depose, before posterity, in favor of the very thing they would willingly have hindered or destroyed. Consequently, if the Apparitions of the Grotto were the starting-point of a divine work, the hostility of the mighty ones of the world, must necessarily go side by side with the withdrawal of the Clergy.

God had equally provided for this. While the ecclesiastical authority, personified in the Clergy, maintained the wise reserve advised by the Curé of Lourdes, the civil authority was equally preoccupied with the extraordinary movement which was in course of arising in the town and its vicinity, and which, pervading by degrees the whole Department, had already crossed its limits in the direction of Béarn.

Although no disorder had occurred, this class, so prone to take umbrage, was rendered uneasy by these pilgrimages, these crowds in a state of pious recollection, and this child in a state of ecstacy.

In the name of liberty of conscience, was there no means of preventing these persons from praying, and above all from praying where they liked? Such was the problem which official liberalism began to propose to itself.

The different degrees, M. Dutour, Procureur Imperial, M. Duprat, Juge de Paix; the Mayor, the Substitute, the Commissary of Police and many others besides, took and gave the alarm. A miracle in the midst of the 19th Century, going forth all at once without asking permission and without any preliminary authorization, was viewed by some as an intolerable outrage on civilization, a blow against the safety of the state; and it was necessary for the honor of our enlightened epoch that this should be set to rights. The majority of these gentlemen besides, did not believe in the possibility of supernatural manifestations and could not be induced to see anything in it but an imposture or the effects of a malady. At all events, several of them felt themselves instinctively opposed to any event, of whatever nature which could directly or indirectly tend to increase the influence of Religion, against which they were actuated either by blind prejudices or avowed hatred.

Without returning to the reflections which we made a short time since, it is truly a remarkable thing to see that the Supernatural, whenever it appears in the world, constantly encounters, though under different names and aspects, the same opposition, the same indifference, the same hostility.

With certain shades of distinction, Herod, Caïaphas, Pilate, Joseph of Arimathea, Peter, Thomas, the Holy Women, the open enemy, the coward, the weak, the feeble, the devoted, the sceptic, the timid, the hero, belong to all times.

The Supernatural, more especially, never escapes the hostility of a party more or less considerable of the official world. Only this opposition proceeds sometimes from the master, sometimes from his underlings.

The most intelligent of the little band of the functionaries of Lourdes, at that time, was undoubtedly M. Jacomet, although, in a hierarchic point of view, M. Jacomet was the lowest of all, inasmuch as he filled the humble post of Commissary of Police. He was young, of great sagacity in certain circumstances, and gifted with a facility of speaking not found generally among his peers. His shrewdness was extreme. No one ever more thoroughly understood the genus “Scoundrel.” He was wonderfully apt in foiling their tricks, and the anecdotes, on this head, recorded of him are astonishing. He did not understand so well the ways of honest men. Quite at ease in complicated affairs, anything simple troubled him. Truth disconcerted him and excited his suspicions—anything disinterested was an object of distrust to him, and sincerity was a torture to his mind, always on the watch to discover duplicity and evasion. In consequence of this monomania, Sanctity would, doubtless, have appeared to him the most monstrous of impostures, and would have met no mercy at his hands. Such whims are frequently found among men of this profession, their employment habituating them to ferret out offences and detect crimes. They acquire, in the long run, a remarkably restless and suspicious turn of mind, which inspires them with strokes of genius when they have to do with rogues, and enormous blunders when they have to do with honest people. Though young, M. Jacomet had contracted this strange malady of old police-officers. In fact, he was like those horses of the Pyrenees, which are sure-footed in the winding and stony mountain-paths, but which stumble every two hundred paces on broad, level roads; like those night-birds which can only see in the dark, and which, in broad daylight, dash themselves against the walls and trees.

Perfectly satisfied with himself, he was discontented with his position, to which his intelligence rendered him superior. Hence arose a certain restless pride and an ardent wish to signalize himself. He had more than influence, he had an ascendancy over his superiors, and he affected to treat the Procureur Imperial and all the other legal functionaries on a footing of perfect equality. He mixed himself up with everything, domineered everybody, and almost entirely managed the affairs of the town. In all matters regarding the canton of Lourdes, the Prefect of the Department, Baron Massy, only saw through the eyes of Jacomet.

Such was the Commissary of Police, such was the really important personage of Lourdes when the Apparitions at the Grotto of Massabielle took place.

The Prudence of the Clergy at Lourdes

Book 2 - Part 3 - page 66 

All these facts had naturally made a strong impression on the Clergy of the town; but, with wonderful tact and good sense, they had from the very first assumed the most prudent and reserved attitude.

The Clergy, surprised, like all around them, at the singular event which had so suddenly taken possession of public opinion, were busily engaged in endeavoring to determine its nature. Whereas the Voltaireanism of the place, in the largeness of its ideas, admitted only one solution as possible, the Clergy perceived several. The fact might be natural, in which case it was the result of a fine piece of acting or of a most singular malady, but it might be supernatural, and the question to be solved was whether this Supernatural was diabolical or divine. God has his miracles, but the Demon has his prestiges. The clergy were fully aware of all these things, and determined to study extremely carefully the most trifling circumstances of the event in progress. They had, besides, from the first moment, received the rumor of so surprising a fact with the greatest distrust. However, it might possibly be of a divine nature, and ought not therefore to be pronounced upon lightly.

The child, whose name had suddenly become so celebrated in the whole country, was entirely unknown to the priests of the town. Since her return to the house of her parents at Lourdes, a period of fifteen days, she had attended the Catechism, but had not been remarked by the Abbé Pomian, who was employed this year in instructing the children of the parish. He had, however, once or twice asked her questions, but without knowing her name or paying any attention to her outward appearance, lost, as she was, among a crowd of children, and quite unknown, as those who come last generally are.

When the whole population were rushing to the Grotto towards the third day of the Quinzaine, demanded by the mysterious Apparition, the Abbé Pomian, wishing to know by sight the extraordinary child of whom every one was talking, called her by name, to take part in the Catechism, as was his custom, when he wished to put questions to any of his little charges. At the name of Bernadette Soubirous, a little girl, fragile in appearance, and meanly dressed, rose from her seat. The ecclesiastic remarked in her only two things—her simplicity and extreme ignorance in all religious matters.

The parish was presided over at that moment by a priest of whom we must furnish a portrait.

The Abbé Peyramale, then verging on his fiftieth year, had been, for the last two years, curé doyen of the town and canton of Lourdes. He was, by nature, rough, perhaps somewhat extreme in his love of what was good, but softened by Grace, which still, however, now and then suffered glimpses to escape of the primitive stock, knotty, but in the main good, on which the delicate but powerful hand of God had engrafted the christian and the priest. His natural impetuosity entirely calmed, as far as he was himself concerned, had turned into pure zeal for the house of God.

In the pulpit, his preaching was always apostolical, sometimes harsh; it persecuted everything of an evil tendency, and no abuse, no moral disorder, from whatever quarter it might proceed, was treated by him with indifference or weakness. Sometimes the society of the place, whose vices or caprices had been lashed by the burning words of its pastor, had exclaimed loudly against him. This had never disturbed him, and, with God’s assistance, he had almost always issued victorious from the struggle.

These men with strict ideas of duty are a source of annoyance to many, and they are seldom pardoned for the independence and sincerity of their language. However, the one in question was forgiven; for when he was seen trudging through the town with his patched and darned cassock, his coarsely-mended shoes and his old, shapeless, three-cornered hat, every one knew that the money which might have been devoted to his wardrobe was employed in succoring the unfortunate. This priest, austere though he was in morals and severe in doctrine, possessed an inexpressible kindness of heart, and he expended his patrimony in doing good as secretly as he could. But his humility had not succeeded, as he would have wished, in concealing his life of devotedness. The gratitude of the poor had found a voice: besides, in small towns, the private life of an individual is soon exposed to the light of day, and he had become an object of general veneration. You had only to see the way in which his parishioners took off their hats to him as he passed in the street; only to hear the familiar, affectionate and pleased accent with which the poor, sitting on the steps of their door, said, “Good morning Monsieur le Curé!” to divine that a sacred bond, that of good modestly done, united the pastor to his flock. The Free-thinkers said of him, “He is not always agreeable, but he is charitable and does not care for money. He is one of the best of men, in spite of his cassock.” Entirely unrestrained in manner, and overflowing with good-humor in private life, never suspecting any evil, and suffering himself even sometimes to be deceived by people who took advantage of his kindness, he was, in his capacity of priest, prudent even to the verge of distrust in whatever regarded the things of his ministry and the eternal interest of Religion. The man might sometimes be encroached upon—the priest never. There are graces attached to a particular state of life.

This eminent priest combined with the heart of an Apostle good sense of rare strength and a firmness of character which nothing could bend when the Truth was in question. The events of the day could not fail of bringing to light these first-rate qualities. Providence had not acted without design in placing him at this epoch at Lourdes.

The Abbé Peyramale, placing a strong check on his own somewhat sanguine nature, before permitting his Clergy to take a single step or to show themselves at the Grotto, which he did not even visit himself, determined to wait until these events had assumed some definite character—until proofs had been produced one way or other and judgment had been pronounced by ecclesiastical authority. He appointed some intelligent laymen, on whom he could depend, to repair to the Rocks of Massabielle every time Bernadette and the multitude proceeded thither, and to keep him, day by day and hour by hour, thoroughly acquainted with what was going on. But at the same time that he took proper measures to be informed of every particular, he neglected nothing which might prevent the Clergy from being compromised in this affair, the true nature of which was still a matter of doubt.

“Let us remain quiet,” he said to those who were impatient. “If, on the one hand, we are strictly obliged to examine with extreme attention what is now going on, on the other, common prudence forbids us to mix ourselves up with the crowd which rushes to the grotto chaunting canticles. Let us refrain from appearing there, nor expose ourselves to the risk of consecrating by our presence an imposture or an illusion, or of opposing by a premature decision and hostile attitude, a work which possibly may come from God.

“As for our going there as mere spectators, the peculiar costume we wear makes that impossible. The people of the neighborhood, seeing a priest in their midst, would naturally form a group around him, in order that he might walk at their head and intone the prayers. Now, should he give way to the pressure of the public, or to his own inconsiderate enthusiasm, and it should be discovered later on that these Apparitions were illusions or lies, it is clear to every one to what extent Religion would be compromised in the person of the Clergy. If they resisted, on the contrary, and later on the work of God became manifest, would not that opposition be attended with the same evil consequences?

“Let us then take no part at present, since we could but compromise God, either in the works which he intends to accomplish or in the sacred Ministry which he has vouchsafed to confide to us.”

Some, in the ardor of their zeal, urged some course of action.

“No,” he answered them firmly, “we should only be warranted in interfering in the case that some manifest heresy, some superstition or disorder should arise from that quarter. Then only our duty would be clearly traced out by the facts themselves. The fruits proving bad we should judge the tree to be bad, and we ought to hasten to the rescue of our flock on the first symptom of evil. Up to the present moment, nothing of the kind has arisen; on the contrary, the crowd, perfectly recollected, confines itself to praying to the Blessed Virgin, and the piety of the faithful seems ever on the increase.

“Let us then endeavor to wait for the supreme decision which the wisdom of the Bishop shall promulgate touching these events, while we submit ourselves, apart, to a necessary examination.

“If these facts proceed from God, they are in no need of us, and the Almighty will well be able, without our puny aid, to surmount all obstacles and turn every thing to suit his designs.

“If, on the other hand, this work is not from God, He will Himself mark the moment when we ought to interfere and combat in his name. In a word let providence act.”

Such were the profound reasons and considerations of deep wisdom which determined the Abbé Peyramale formally to prohibit all the priests in his jurisdiction from appearing at the Grotto of Massabielle, as also to abstain from going there himself. Monseigneur Laurence, Bishop of Tarbes, approved highly of this prudent reserve, and extended even to all the priests of his diocese the prohibition of mixing themselves up in any way in the events at Lourdes. When any question respecting the pilgrimage of the Grotto was put to a priest, either at the tribunal of Penance or elsewhere, the answer was determined on beforehand:

“We do not go there ourselves, and are consequently unable to pronounce on these facts with which we are not sufficiently acquainted. But it is plainly allowable for any of the faithful to go there, if such is their pleasure, and examine facts on which the Church has not yet pronounced any decision. Go, or stay away: it is not our business to advise you or dissuade you from doing so—neither to authorize nor to forbid you.”

It was, we must allow, very difficult to maintain such an attitude of strict neutrality; for each priest had to struggle on this occasion not only against the force of public opinion, but further against his own individual desire—and that certainly a legitimate one—to assist in person at the extraordinary things, which were, perhaps, on the point of being accomplished.

This line of conduct, however difficult it might be to keep, was nevertheless observed.

In the midst of whole populations, stirred up all at once like an ocean by a strange unknown blast, and driven towards the mysterious rock where a supernatural Apparition conversed with a child, the entire body of the Clergy, without one single exception, kept aloof and did not make their appearance. God, who was invisibly directing all things, gave his priests the strength necessary not to give way to this unheard of current, and to remain immovable in the bosom of this prodigious movement. This immense withdrawal on the part of the Clergy ought to show manifestly that the head and action of men went for nothing in these events, and that we must seek their cause elsewhere, or to speak more correctly, higher.

The Skeptics and the First Investiators

Second Book - Part 2 - page 64

Such were the observations which were exchanged from morning to night among the sagacious intellects which then represented Medicine and Philosophy at Lourdes. The greater part of these thinkers had seen enough of Bernadette to establish the fact that she was not acting a part. This satisfied their spirit of inquiry. From the fact of her evident sincerity they concluded that she must be either mad or cataleptic. Their strength of mind did not permit them to admit even the possibility of any other explanation. When it was suggested to them to study the fact, to see the child, to go to or to revisit the Grotto, to follow in all their details these surprising phenomena, they shrugged their shoulders, laughed as the so-called philosophers only can laugh, and observed, “We know all this by heart. A crisis of this kind is by no means rare. Before a month is over, this child will be raving mad and probably paralyzed.”

There were some, however, who were not satisfied with such superficial reasoning.

“Phenomena of this nature are rare,” observed Doctor Dozons, one of the most eminent physicians in the town; “and for my own part I shall not allow this opportunity of examining them carefully to escape. The advocates of the Supernatural cast them so often in the teeth of men of our profession, that I should be wanting in curiosity were I not to study attentively and go to the bottom of this much-vexed question, de visu and by personal experience, now that they are produced at the present moment under my very eyes.”

M. Dufo, an advocate, and several members of the bar; M. Pougat, president of the Tribunal, and a great number of other persons, determined to devote themselves, during the fifteen days announced beforehand, to the most scrupulous investigation, and to be as much as possible in the first ranks. The number of observers increased in proportion to the interest excited by the facts.

Some of the medical profession, some autochthon Socrates’, some local Philosophers, terming themselves Voltairians to induce others to believe that they had read Voltaire, firmly resisted their own curiosity, and held it a point of honor not to figure among the stupid crowd which was increasing daily in number. As it almost always happens, the grand principle of these fanatics of Free-thinking was not to examine at all. In their view, no fact deserved attention which deranged the inflexible dogmas which they had learned in the Credo of their newspaper. From the heights of their infallible wisdom, at their shop-doors, in front of the cafés, or at the windows of the club, these intellects of the highest order smiled with ineffable disdain as they saw pass by the innumerable stream of humanity which was borne along—by I know not what wild spirit of enthusiasm—toward the Grotto.

When All Lourdes Began to Talk

Second Book - Part 1 - page 59

On her return to Lourdes, Bernadette had to inform her parents of the promise she had made to the mysterious Lady, and of the fifteen consecutive days in which she was to repair to the Grotto. On the other hand, Antoinette and Madame Millet recounted what had past, the marvelous transfiguration of the child during her ecstasy, the words of the Apparition and the invitation to return during the Quinzaine. The rumor of these strange events spread immediately in every direction, and, being no longer confined to the lower classes, threw the whole society of the country, from very different motives, into the most profound state of agitation. This Thursday, 18th of February, 1858, was market day at Lourdes. As usual, the attendance was numerous, so that, the same evening, the news of Bernadette’s visions, whether true or false, was dispersed in the mountains and valleys, at Bagnères, Tarbes, Cautarès, Saint Pé, nay, in all directions in the Department, and in the nearest towns of Béarn. On the morrow, about a hundred persons were assembled at the Grotto at the moment of Bernadette’s arrival. The following day, there were not less than four or five hundred; and, on Sunday morning, the crowd collected was computed at several thousands.

And yet, what did they see? What did they hear under these wild rocks? Nothing, absolutely nothing, save a poor child praying, who claimed to see, and who claimed to hear. The more apparently insignificant the cause, the more inexplicable, humanly speaking, was the effect.

“It must be,” argued believers, “either that the reflection from on high was really visible on this child, or that the breath of God which stirs up hearts as it wills, had passed over this multitude. Spiritus ubi vult spirat.

An electric current, an irresistible power from which no one could escape, appeared to have aroused up the entire population at the word of an ignorant shepherd girl. In the work-shops and yards, in the interior of families, at the parties of the higher classes, among clergy and laymen, at the houses of rich and poor, at the club, in the cafés and hotels, on the squares, in the streets, evening and morning, in public and private, nothing else was talked of. Whether any one sympathized with or was opposed to it, or, without taking part either way was simply curious and inquisitive to learn the truth, there was not a single individual in the country who was not strongly—I had almost said entirely—engrossed in the discussion of these singular events.

Popular instinct had recognized the personality of the Apparition without waiting for her to declare her name. “It is, beyond a doubt, the Holy Virgin,” was repeated by the multitude on every side. In presence of the essentially insignificant authority of a little girl not yet fourteen years of age, who pretended to see and hear what no one around her saw or heard, the philosophers of the place had fair play against Superstition.

This child is not even old enough to take an oath, and her testimony would scarcely be received at any of the tribunals when deposing to the most insignificant fact; and would you believe her, when the question in point is an impossible event, an Apparition? Is it not evidently a farce concocted for the sake of raising money by her own family, or by the clerical party? It only requires two sharp eyes to see through this wretched intrigue. In less than ten minutes any one of us might have seen through it.

Some of those who held this language determined to see Bernadette, to ask her questions and be present at her ecstasies. The child’s answers were simple, natural, free from contradictions, and given with an accent of truth which it was impossible to mistake, so as generally to produce the conviction in the most prejudiced minds of her entire sincerity. With regard to her ecstasies, those who had seen at Paris the greatest actresses of our day, agreed that art could not go so far. The supposition of the whole thing being a piece of acting, could not hold out against the evidence of four and twenty hours.

The Savants, who at first had permitted the philosophers to decide the point, now took a high tone.

“We know this state perfectly well,” they declared. “Nothing is more natural. This little girl is sincere, perfectly sincere in her answers; but she is in a state of hallucination. She fancies she sees, and does not see; she believes she hears, and does not hear. As regards her ecstasies—in which she is equally sincere—they are not acted nor do they proceed from art. It is a purely medical question. The young Soubirous suffers from attacks of a certain malady: she is cataleptic. In a derangement of the brain, complicated with a muscular and nervous agitation, we have a full explanation of the phenomena which makes so much noise among the vulgar. Nothing is more simple.”

The little weekly newspaper of the locality, Le Lavedan, an advanced journal which habitually appeared behind its time, deferred its issue a day or two in order to speak of this event, and, in as hostile an article as it could produce, summed up the lofty speculations of philosophy and medicine, elaborated by the clear heads of the place. From that moment—that is to say, from the Friday night and the Saturday—the idea of the whole thing being a piece of acting had been abandoned in face of the clearness of the facts, and the free-thinkers did not return to it any more, as may be proved by all the newspapers then issued.

In conformity with the universal tradition of High Criticism in matters of religion, the excellent editor of the Lavedancommenced with a little spice of calumny and insinuated that Bernadette and her companions were thieves.

“Three young children had gone to pick up some branches of trees which had been felled near the gates of the city. These girls, being surprised in the very act by the proprietor, fled as quick as their legs could carry them to one of the grottoes, which are contiguous to the forest road of Lourdes.”

The Free-thinkers have always written History in this manner. After this straight-forward action, which proved his good-will and admirable sense of justice, the editor of the Lavedan gave a tolerably correct account of what had taken place at the Rocks of Massabielle. Indeed, the facts were too notorious and had been witnessed by too many to be denied.

“We will not relate,” he added, “the innumerable versions which have been given on this subject; we will only say that the young girl goes every morning to pray at the entrance of the Grotto,—a taper in her hand—and escorted by more than five hundred persons. There she may be seen passing from the greatest state of collectedness to a sweet smile, and falling once more into the highest state of ecstasy. Tears escape from her eyes, which are perfectly motionless, and remain constantly fixed on that part of the Grotto where she fancies she sees the Blessed Virgin. We shall make our readers acquainted with the further progress of this adventure, which finds every day new adepts.”

Not a word of acting or of jugglery. They knew well that this hypothesis fell to the ground on your first conversation with Bernadette, on your first glance at her ecstasy and the tears which momentarily inundated her cheeks. The excellent Editor affected to pity her, in order to induce others to believe that she was an invalid. He never mentioned her without calling her, in accents of gentle compassion, “the poor visionary.” “Everything,” he said, from the opening of his article, “leads to the supposition that this young girl suffers from an attack of catalepsy.”

“Hallucination,” “catalepsy,” were the two great words in the mouths of the savants at Lourdes.

“Be sure of one thing,” they often said, “there is no such thing as anything supernatural. Science has abolished it. Science explains everything, and in science alone can you find anything certain. It compares and judges and looks to nothing but facts. The supernatural was all very well in those ignorant ages when the world was brutalized by superstition and unable to observe things accurately; but, in the present day, we defy its being brought forward, for we are here. In the present instance, we have an example of the stupidity of the common people. Because a little girl is out of health, and, when attacked by fever, has all kinds of crotchets in her head, these blockheads loudly proclaim a miracle. Human folly must, indeed, be boundless to see an Apparition in what does not appear, and detect a voice in what is heard by no one. Let this pretended Apparition cause the sun to stand still, like Joshua; let her strike the rock, like Moses, and make water gush from it; let her cure those pronounced incurable; let her, in some way or other, command nature as its mistress—then we will believe. But who does not know that things of this nature never do happen and never have happened.”

The Promise of Fifteen Days

First Book - Part 16 - page 52

The repairs of M. de Lafitte’s mill had been completed, and the mill-stream restored to its usual channel, so that it was impossible to reach their place of destination by Ile du Chalet, as had been the case on the former occasion. It was necessary to scale the side of the Espélugnes, taking a miserable road which led to the forest of Lourdes, and then descend by a breakneck path to the Grotto, in the midst of the rocks and steep and sandy declivity of Massabielle.

Bernadette’s companions were somewhat afraid on meeting these unexpected difficulties. She herself, on the contrary, on reaching the place felt her heart thrill, and was impatient to arrive at the Grotto. It seemed to her as if some invisible being bore her along and lent her unwonted energy. Though usually so frail, she felt herself strong at that moment. Her step became so rapid in ascending the hill, that Antoinette and Madame Millet, strong and young as they were, experienced some difficulty in following her. Her asthma which usually obliged her to walk slowly, seemed for the moment to have disappeared. She was neither out of breath nor tired when she reached the summit. While her companions were bathed with perspiration, her visage was calm and tranquil. She descended the rocks, though for the first time in her life, with the same ease and activity, being conscious as it were of some invisible supporter by whom she was guided and sustained. On these almost peaked declivities, in the midst of these rolling stones, on the edge of the abyss, her step was as firm and fearless as if she had been walking on the broad and level surface of a high-road. Madame Millet and Antoinette did not venture to follow her at this, to them, impossible pace, but descended slowly and cautiously, as was indeed necessary in so perilous a path. Bernadette accordingly reached the Grotto a few moments before them. She prostrated herself and commenced to recite her chaplet, gazing at the same time on the niche, festooned with the branches of the wild rose, which was still empty.

All at once she uttered a cry. The well-known brilliancy of the aureola began to shed its rays within the cavern. A voice, which called her, became audible. The marvelous apparition stood there once more a few paces above her. The admirable Virgin inclined her head, all-luminous with eternal serenity, toward the child, and with a motion of her hand signed to her to draw near.

Just at this moment Bernadette’s two companions, Antoinette and Madame Millet, arrived, after having gone through the most painful exertions. They perceived the features of the child to be in a state of ecstatic transfiguration.

She heard and saw them.

“She is there,” she said. “She makes a sign for me to advance.

“Ask her if she is angry at our being with you. Should such be the case, we will retire.”

Bernadette regarded the Virgin, invisible to all save herself, listened for a moment, and turned again toward her companions.

“You may remain,” she answered.

The two women kneeled down by the side of the child and lighted a wax taper which they had brought with them.

It was doubtless the first time since the creation of the world that a light of the kind had shone in this wild spot. This act so simple, which seemed to inaugurate a sanctuary, had in itself a mysterious solemnity.

Under the supposition that the Apparition was divine, this sign of visible adoration, this lowly little flame lighted by two poor country women, would never more be extinguished, but would increase in volume from day to day through the long series of future ages. In vain would the breath of incredulity exhaust itself in efforts, in vain would the storm of persecution arise; this flame, fed by the faith of the people would continue to mount towards the throne of God, steady and inextinguishable. While these rustic hands, doubtless unconscious of the importance of the act, lighted the flame for the first time with so much simplicity in this unknown grotto in which a child was praying, the dawn, first of silvery whiteness, had assumed successively golden and purple tints, and the sun, which despite the clouds, was shortly to inundate the earth with his light, began to appear from behind the crest of the mountains.

Bernadette in an ecstasy of delight contemplated the faultless beauty. Tota pulchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te.

Her companions addressed themselves to Bernadette afresh.

“Advance towards Her since She calls you and makes signs to you. Approach. Demand from Her who she is, and why She comes here? Is it a soul from Purgatory that entreats for prayers and would have Masses said for it? Beg her to write on this piece of paper what She wishes. We are disposed to do all she desires, all that may be necessary for her repose.”

The youthful Seer took the paper, pen and ink handed to her and advanced toward the Apparition, who seeing her approach encouraged her with a Mother’s glance.

However, at each step which the child took, the Apparition drew back by degrees into the interior of the cavern. Bernadette lost sight of her for a moment and entered under the vault of the grotto from below. There, always above her but much nearer in the opening of the niche, she saw again the radiant Virgin.

Bernadette, holding in her hands the writing materials which had just been given her, stood on tiptoe in order to be able to reach with her tiny arms the height where the supernatural Being was standing.

Her two companions also advanced with the object of trying to hear the conversation about to be engaged in. But Bernadette without turning and apparently in obedience to a gesture of the Apparition, signed to them with her hand not to approach. Covered with confusion they retired a little on one side.

“O Lady,” said the child, “if you have anything to communicate to me, would you have the kindness to inform me in writing who you are and what you desire?”

The divine Virgin smiled at this simple request. Her lips opened and she spoke.

“There is no occasion,” she replied, “to commit to writing what I have to tell you. Only do me the favor to come here every day for fifteen days.”

“I promise you this,” exclaimed Bernadette.

The Virgin smiled anew and made a sign of being satisfied, thereby showing her entire confidence in the word of this poor peasant-girl who was but fourteen years old.

She knew that the little shepherd-girl of Bartrès was like those pure children whose fair heads Jesus loved to caress, saying: “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

She also replied to the promise of Bernadette by a solemn engagement.

“And I,” she said, “I promise to render you happy, not in this but in the other world.”

Bernadette, without losing sight of the Apparition, returned to her companions. She remarked that the Virgin while She followed her Herself with Her eyes, suffered Her gaze to remain for upwards of a moment with an expression of kindness on Antoinette Peyret, the unmarried one of the two, who was a member of the Congregation of the Children of Mary. She repeated to them what was passing.

“She is gazing on you at this moment,” said the youthful Seer to Antoinette.

The latter was deeply impressed by these words, and since that time has been living on this souvenir.\

“Ask Her,” said they, “if it would be displeasing to Her if we were to accompany you here every day during the fifteen days?”

Bernadette put the question to the Apparition.

“They may return with you,” replied the Virgin, “and others besides. I desire to see many persons here.”

In saying these words she disappeared, leaving behind her that luminous brightness which had surrounded her, and which itself vanished by degrees. On this as on other occasions the child remarked a peculiarity which seemed to be as it were the law of the aureola with which the Virgin was constantly surrounded.

“When the vision takes place,” she said in her way of speaking, “I see the light first and then the ‘Lady’; when the vision ceases it is the ‘Lady’ that disappears first and the light afterwards.”

Who Is the Lady?

First Book - Part 15 - page 51

During the first days of the week, many persons of the lower classes came to the house of the Soubirous’ to put questions to Bernadette. The child’s answers were clear and precise. She might possibly be laboring under an illusion, but no one could see her or hear her speak without being convinced of her good faith. Her perfect simplicity, her innocent youth, and the irresistible emphasis of her language, something,—what I know not, in all this,—inspired confidence, and most frequently produced conviction. All those who saw her and conversed with her, were entirely convinced of her veracity, and fully persuaded that something very extraordinary had taken place at the Rocks of Massabielle.

However, the mere declaration of a little ignorant girl could not suffice to establish a fact so entirely out of the ordinary course of things. Stronger proofs were necessary than the word of a child. Besides, what was the nature of this Apparition, even granting its reality? Was it a spirit of light, or an angel from the abyss? Was it not some soul in a state of suffering wandering to and fro and demanding the prayers of others? Or further, such or such a one who had died long ago in the country in the odor of piety, and whose glory was now being made manifest? Faith and superstition—each proposed their hypotheses.

Might it have been the funereal ceremonies of Ash-Wednesday which served to incline a young girl and a lady of Lourdes to one of these solutions? Did the glittering whiteness of the attire of the Apparition suggest to their minds the idea of a shroud and a phantom? We know not. The young girl was called Antoinette Peyret, a member of the Congregation of the Children of Mary; the other was Madame Millet.

“It is doubtless some soul from Purgatory which entreats for Masses,” thought they.

And they went in search of Bernadette.

“Ask this Lady who she is and what she wishes,” said they to her. “Let her explain this to you, or, as you may not be able to understand her well, let her commit it so writing, which would be still better.”

Bernadette, who was strongly urged by some internal impulse to re-visit the Grotto, obtained fresh permission from her parents, and the following morning at about six o’clock, with the break of dawn, after having assisted in the church at the half-past five o’clock Mass, she proceeded in the direction of the Grotto, accompanied by Antoinette Peyret and Madame Millet.

The Story Spreads Through Lourdes

First Book - Part 14 - page 49

On her way back to Lourdes, Bernadette was filled with joy. She pondered in the depth of her soul on these strikingly extraordinary events. Her companions experienced a kind of vague terror. The transfiguration of Bernadette’s countenance had proved to them the reality of a supernatural apparition. Everything that exceeds nature is a source of terror to it. “Depart from us, Lord, lest we should die,” was the exclamation of the Jews in the Old Testament.

“We are afraid, Bernadette. Let us not return here again. Perhaps what you have seen comes to do us harm,” said her timid companions to the youthful Seer.

The children returned, according to promise, in time for Vespers. When the office was over, the fineness of the weather attracted many of the inhabitants to prolong their walk as they chatted together, enjoying the last rays of the sun, so mild in these splendid winter days. The story of the little girls circulated here and there among these various groups. By this means, a rumor of these strange events began to be spread abroad in the town. The report, which at first had only agitated a humble knot of children, grew rapidly in proportion like a wave, and penetrated from one to another into the masses of the population. The quarriers, very numerous in that part of the country, the seamstresses, the artisans, the peasants, the female servants, the nurses, the poorer classes in general, talked of this asserted apparition among themselves—some believing, others disputing it; some only laughing at it, while many exaggerated it. With one or two exceptions, the bourgeoisie did not even take the trouble of thinking for a moment about such childish stories.

Singularly enough, Bernadette’s father and mother, though fully convinced of their child’s sincerity, regarded the Apparition as an illusion.

“She is but a child,” they said. “She fancied she saw something, but she has not seen anything. It is only the imagination of a young girl.”

However, the extraordinary, preciseness of Bernadette’s story puzzled them. At times, carried away by the earnestness of their daughter, they felt themselves shaken in their incredulity. Much as they wished her not to return to the Grotto, they did not venture actually to forbid her doing so. However, she did not return there until the following Thursday.

The Second Apparition

First Book - Part 13 - page 46

The sun rose brightly on the Sunday morning, and the weather was splendid. There are often in the valleys of the Pyrenees, days warm and mild, like those of spring, which seem to have strayed into the lap of winter.

On returning from Mass, Bernadette begged her sister Marie, Jeanne and some other girls, to urge her mother to remove her prohibition and to permit them to re-visit the Rocks of Massabielle.

“Perhaps it is something wicked,” said the children.

Bernadette replied, that she could not believe such to be the case, as she had never seen a countenance of such marvelous goodness.

“At all events,” rejoined the little girls, who, being better educated than the poor shepherd-girl of Bartrès, knew a little of the catechism—“at all events, you must throw some holy water over it. If it is the Devil, he will depart. You shall say to it, if you come on the part of God, approach; if you come from the Devil, depart.”

This was not precisely the formulary for exorcism; but in point of fact these little theologians of Lourdes reasoned on the case with as much prudence and discretion as any Doctor in the Sorbonne.

It was therefore carried in this youthful council, to take some holy water with them. Besides, in consequence of all these conversations, a certain amount of apprehension had entered the mind of Bernadette.

Nothing remained now but to obtain permission. The children demanded this in a body after the mid-day repast. The mother was at first unwilling to grant their request, alleging that as the Gave flowed by and washed the Rocks of Massabielle, their going there might be attended with danger; that the hour of Vespers—which they must on no account miss—was near at hand, and that all this story was childish. But we know how difficult it is to resist the prayers and entreaties of a troop of children. All promised prudence, expedition and good behavior, and the Mother ended by giving way.

The little group proceeded to the Church and devoted a few moments to prayer. One of Bernadette’s companions had brought with her a pint bottle which was duly filled with holy water.

On their first arrival at the Grotto, there was no manifestation of any kind.

“Let us pray,” said Bernadette, “and recite the chaplet.”

The children accordingly kneeled down, and commenced to recite the Rosary.

All at once the countenance of Bernadette appeared to be transfigured, and was so in reality. An extraordinary emotion was depicted on her countenance, and her glance, more brilliant than usual, seemed to inhale a divine light.

The marvelous apparition had just become manifest to her eyes; her feet resting on the rock; and clothed as on the former occasion.

“Look!” she said; “she is there.”

Alas! the sight of the other children was not miraculously released, as was her own, from the veil of flesh which hinders us from distinguishing spiritualized bodies. The little girls perceived naught but the solitary rock and the branches of the wild rose which descended in a thousand wild arabesques to the base of the mysterious niche, in which Bernadette contemplated an unknown Being.

However, the expression of Bernadette’s countenance was of such a nature, as to leave no room for doubt. One of the girls placed the bottle of holy water in the hands of the youthful Seer.

Then Bernadette, remembering the promise she had made, rose, and shaking the little bottle briskly several times, sprinkled the marvelous Lady, who stood, graciously, a few paces in front of her in the interior of the niche.

“If you come on the part of God, approach,” said Bernadette.

At these words and actions of the child, the Virgin bowed several times and advanced almost to the edge of the rock. She appeared to smile at the precautions and hostile weapons of Bernadette, and her countenance lighted up at the sacred name of God.

“If you come on the part of God, draw near,” repeated Bernadette.

But, when she observed her beauty so gloriously brilliant and so resplendent with celestial goodness, she felt her heart fail her at the moment of adding—“If you come on the part of the Devil, depart.” These words which had been dictated to her, appeared monstrous in the presence of this incomparable Being, and they fled forever from her thought without having mounted to her lips.

She prostrated herself afresh and continued to recite the chaplet, to which the Virgin appeared to listen as her own beads glided through her fingers.

At the close of this prayer the Apparition vanished.

The Desire to See the Lady Again

First Book - Part 12 - page 45

Two days, the Wednesday and Thursday passed away. This extraordinary event was never for a moment absent from the thoughts of Bernadette, and formed the constant subject of her conversations with her sister Marie, Jeanne and some other children. The remembrance of the celestial Vision in all its sweetness, was still in the depths of Bernadette’s soul. A passion—if we may use a word so often profaned to designate so pure a sentiment—had sprung up in the heart of the innocent little girl: the ardent desire of again seeing the incomparable Lady. The name of “Lady,” was the one she had given her in her rustic language. However, when any one asked her whether this Apparition bore any resemblance to any lady she might see in the street or in the church, to any one of those celebrated for their exceeding beauty throughout the country, she shook her head and smiled sweetly; “Nothing of all this gives you any idea of it,” she answered. “The beauty she possesses is not to be expressed by language.”

It was, therefore, her great desire to see her once more. The minds of the other children were divided between fear and curiosity.

The Secret of the Vision

First Book - Part 11 - page 43

The scene just recounted had lasted about a quarter of an hour: not that Bernadette was conscious of the exact lapse of time, but she was enabled to compute it by the fact of her having been able to recite the five decades of her chaplet.

Bernadette being completely restored to herself, finished taking off her shoes and stockings, and fording the little stream, rejoined her companions. Absorbed as she was with the thought of what she had just seen, she no longer feared the coldness of the water. All the childish faculties of the humble little girl were concentrated to the end of turning over and over again in her heart the remembrance of this unheard of vision.

Jeanne and Marie had observed her falling on her knees and engaged in prayer; but this, thank God, is not an event of rare occurrence among the children of the Mountain, and being occupied in their task, they had not paid any attention to the circumstance.

Bernadette was surprised at the complete calmness of her sister and Jeanne, who having just then completed their work, had entered the Grotto and had commenced to play as if nothing extraordinary had taken place.

“Have you seen nothing?” asked she. They then remarked that she appeared agitated and excited.

“No,” they replied. “Have you seen anything?”

Whether the youthful Seer feared to profane what so entirely filled her mind, by repeating it, or wished to digest it in silence, or was restrained by some feeling of timidity, it is difficult to say; but she obeyed that seemingly instinctive necessity of humble minds to conceal, as if a treasure, the peculiar graces with which God has favored them.

“If you have seen nothing,” she rejoined, “I have nothing to tell you.”

The little fagots were soon arranged and the three girls started on their return to Lourdes.

Bernadette, however, had not been able to dissimulate the troubled state of her mind. While on the way home, Marie and Jeanne urged her to tell them what she had seen. The little shepherd-girl gave way to their entreaties, having previously exacted a promise of secrecy.

“I have seen,” she said, “something clothed in white;” and she described to them, in the best language she could, her marvelous vision.

“Now you know what I have seen,” she said at the termination of her narration; “but I beg of you not to say anything about it.”

Marie and Jeanne had no doubts on the subject. The soul, in its first purity and innocence, is naturally prone to belief, and doubt is not the fault of simple childhood. Beside, the touching and sincere accents of Bernadette, who was still agitated and deeply impressed by what she had seen, swayed them irresistibly. Marie and Jeanne did not doubt, but they were terrified. The children of the poor are always timid. This may be easily explained, from the fact that suffering reaches them from all quarters.

“It is, perhaps, something to do us harm,” they observed. “Do not let us go there again, Bernadette.”

The confidantes of the little shepherd-girl had scarcely reached home when they found themselves unable to keep the secret any longer. Marie related all the circumstances to her mother.

“It is all nonsense,” said the mother. “What is this your sister tells me?” she continued, interrogating Bernadette.

The latter re-commenced her narration and her mother shrugged her shoulders.

“You are deceived. It was nothing at all. You fancied you saw something and have seen nothing. It is mere folly and nonsense.”

Bernadette persisted in what she had said.

“At all events,” rejoined the mother, “do not go there any more. I forbid you to do so.”

This prohibition weighed heavily on the heart of Bernadette; for since the Apparition had vanished, it had been her greatest wish to see it again. However, she submitted and made no reply.

The Sign of the Cross

First Book - Part 10 - page 41

The child, in the first moment of astonishment, had seized her chaplet, and holding it between her fingers, wished to make the sign of the Cross and carry her hand to her bosom. But she trembled to such a degree that she had not the faculty of raising her arm; it fell powerless on her bended knees.

Nolite timere, “do not fear,” said Jesus to his disciples, when he came to them walking on the waves of the sea of Tiberias.

The fixed gaze, and the smile of the incomparable Virgin, seemed to say the same thing to the little, terrified shepherd-girl.

With a grave and sweet gesture, which had the air of an all-powerful benediction for earth and heaven, she herself made the sign of the Cross, as with the view of re-assuring the child. The hand of Bernadette, raising itself by degrees; as if invisibly lifted by Her who is called the Succor of Christians, made the sacred sign at the same moment.

Ego sum: nolite timere. “It is I, be not afraid,” said Jesus to his disciples.

The child was no longer afraid. Dazzled, fascinated, having nevertheless occasional doubts about herself, and rubbing her eyes, her gaze constantly attracted by this celestial apparition, she humbly recited her chaplet: “I believe in God: Hail, Mary, full of Grace—”

At the moment of her closing it by singing, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,” etc., etc., the Virgin, so radiant with light, all at once disappeared, and doubtless re-entered the eternal Heavens, the abode of the Holy Trinity.

Bernadette experienced the feeling of one descending or falling from a great height. She glanced around her. The Gave was pursuing its murmuring course over the pebbles and broken rocks; but its murmur seemed to her hoarser than before, the waters more sombre, the landscape dull, and the light of the sun even not so clear. Before her were extended the Rocks of Massabielle, beneath which her companions were busily occupied in gathering morsels of wood. Above the Grotto, the niche where the wild rose trailed its branches was always open; but nothing unwonted appeared about it. There remained in it no trace of the divine visit, and it was no longer the Gate of Heaven.

The Lady of the Grotto

First Book - Part 9 - page 38

Above the Grotto, in front of which Marie and Jeanne, eagerly bending to the ground were picking up pieces of dead wood, in the rustic niche formed by the rock, a woman of incomparable splendor stood upright, in the midst of a superhuman brightness.

The ineffable light which floated around her neither pained nor distressed the eyes, as does the brilliancy of sunshine. Far from this being the case, this aureole, intense as a pencil of rays, and calm as a profundity of shade, invincibly attracted the gaze, which seemed to bathe itself in it and rest on it with exquisite delight! It was, like the morning star, light combined with coolness. There was, in addition to this, nothing vague or vaporous in the Apparition herself. She had not the transitory form of a fantastic vision, she was a living reality, a human body which the eye pronounced palpable, like the flesh of us all, and which only differed from an ordinary person by its aureole and its divine beauty.

She was of middle height. She appeared to be quite young, and had the grace of the age of twenty years. But, without losing aught of its tender delicacy, this lustre, so fleeting in time, had in her the stamp of eternity, Further, in her features so divinely marked, there were mingled in some sort, but without disturbing their harmony, the successive and distinct beauties of the four seasons of human life. The innocent candor of the Child, the absolute purity of the Virgin, the tender seriousness of the highest of Maternities, and Wisdom superior to that of all accumulated ages, were summed up and melted into each other, without injuring the effect of each in this marvelous countenance of youthful womanhood. To what can we compare it in this fallen world, where the rays of the beautiful are scattered, broken and tarnished, and where they never appear to us without some impure admixture? Any image, any comparison would be a degradation of this unutterable type. No majesty existing in the universe, no distinction of this world, no simplicity here below, could convey any idea of it or assist us to comprehend it better. It is not with earthly lamps that we can render visible, and, so to say, light up the stars of heaven.

Even the regularity and the ideal purity of these features, in which nothing clashed, shields them from any attempt at description. Need we however say, that the oval curve of the countenance was infinitely graceful; that the eyes were blue and so sweet that they seemed to melt the heart of every one upon whom they turned their gaze? The lips breathed forth divine goodness and kindness. The brow seemed to contain supreme wisdom, that is to say, the union of omniscience with boundless virtue.

Her garments of an unknown texture, and doubtless woven in the mysterious loom which furnishes attire for the lilies of the valley, were white as the stainless mountain snow, and more magnificent in their simplicity than the gorgeous robe of Solomon in all his glory. Her robe, long and training, falling in chaste folds around her, suffered her feet to appear reposing on the rock, and lightly pressing the branches of the wild rose which trailed there. On each of them in their virgin nudity there expanded the mystic rose of a bright, golden color.

In front, a girdle—blue as the heavens—was knotted half-way round her body and fell in two long bands reaching within a short distance of her feet. Behind, a white veil fixed around her head and enveloping in its ample folds, her shoulders and the upper part of her arms, descended as far as the hem of her robe.

She wore neither rings, nor necklace, nor diadem, nor jewels of any description; none of those ornaments with which human vanity has decorated itself in all ages. A chaplet, with beads as white as drops of milk strung on a chain of the golden hue of harvest, hung from her hands, which were fervently clasped. The beads of the chaplet glided one after the other through her fingers. The lips however of this Queen of Virgins, remained motionless. Instead of reciting the rosary, she was perhaps listening in her own heart to the eternal echo of the Angelic Salutation, and to the vast murmur of the invocations coming from the earth.

She was silent; but later her own words, and the miraculous events which we shall have to recount, plainly testified that She was the Immaculate Virgin, the most august and holy Mary, mother of God.

This marvelous apparition gazed on Bernadette, who, in the first shock of amazement, had, as we have already said, sunk down, and without assigning any reason to herself, had suddenly prostrated herself on her knees.

The Lady Appears

First Book - Part 8 - page 37

She was engaged in taking off her first stocking when she heard around her as it were, the sound of a blast of wind, rising in the meadow-tract with an indescribable character of irresistible might.

She believed it to be a sudden hurricane, and turned herself round instinctively. To her great surprise, the poplars which border the Gave were perfectly motionless. Not the slightest breeze stirred their still branches.

“I must have been deceived,” she said to herself. As she thought again about this noise, she did not know what to believe.

She began once more to remove her shoes and stockings.

At this moment, the impetuous roaring of this unknown blast became audible afresh.

Bernadette raised her head, gazed in front of her, and uttered, or rather strove to utter, a loud cry, which was stifled in her throat. She shuddered in all her limbs, and confounded, dazzled, and crushed in a certain manner by what she saw before her, she sank down, bowed herself entirely to the earth and fell on both knees.

A truly unheard-of spectacle had just met her gaze. The narration of the child; the innumerable interrogations which a thousand sharp-sighted and inquisitive minds have put to her since that period; the precise and minute particularities into which so many intellects on the watch for discrepancies have forced her to descend, allow us to trace—with a hand as sure of each detail as of the general physiognomy—the wonderful and astounding portrait of the marvelous Being who appeared at that instant to the eyes of the terrified and transported Bernadette.