Book 5 - Part 12

In the immense arsenal of our laws and regulations, there is one formidable weapon provided, as we think, somewhat imprudently, with the very praiseworthy intention of protecting an individual against himself, but which—should it chance to fall into the hands of malice and blind hatred—may give rise to the most frightful of all tyrannies; we mean the arbitrary sequestration—against which there is no power of appeal—of an innocent person.

We would be understood to allude to the law regarding Insanity. Without public discussion, or the possibility of making any defence, on the certificate of one or two medical men, declaring him to be laboring under mental alienation, an unfortunate wretch may be seized suddenly, by a simple measure of the Administration, and thrown into the most horrible of prisons—into the dungeon of a mad-house.

We believe, and we are under the necessity of believing, that, in the majority of cases, this law is equitably applied, in consequence of the general feeling of honor and the capacity of the medical body. But, we are at a loss to understand how this feeling of honor and this medical knowledge can afford just reasons for suppressing all means of defence, all publicity, and all opportunity of appeal; that the decision, with closed doors, of two medical men, should be exempted from this triple guarantee with which the Law has seen right to surround the judgments pronounced by the Magistracy.

The members of the medical profession are, doubtless, well skilled in their art, and we acknowledge that the fact of finding two of them perfectly agreed in opinion, renders the truth of their common thesis sufficiently probable; but, is there in this proceeding a certitude sufficiently grave, sufficiently evident, sufficiently clear—if we may be permitted to employ a pleonasm of this nature—to confer irrevocably the right of depriving, without any other form of procedure, a citizen of his liberty?

That medical men are actuated by a high sense of honor is equally beyond a doubt, and no one has a greater veneration than ourselves for members of their profession; but, may not—more especially in cases of mental alienation—their preconceived ideas and philosophical doctrines sometimes incline their minds, in spite of themselves, towards very deplorable errors?

One of them, M. Lélut, in a publication which has gained a certain celebrity, has ranked amongst the deranged, Socrates, Newton, Saint Theresa, Pascal, and a host of others, who, like the former, were the glory of Humanity. Would, for instance, such a Master and his pupils deserve to be invested with the right of shutting up as maniacs, without any opposing evidence, without publicity and without appeal, merely after a simple consultation, all those whom they should regard as such?

And yet, M. Lélut is a man of remarkable learning and a medical celebrity; he is a member of the Institute. What can we say of the guarantee offered by the mob of practitioners—by some of those wretched little village doctors who have succeeded to the Barber-Surgeons, with whom our ancestors were perfectly satisfied?

Convinced as he was of the absolute impossibility of the Supernatural, Baron Massy, observing the incapacity of action to which the Magistracy was reduced, hesitated not to seek for a solution of the extraordinary question, which had so suddenly arisen in his department, in calling this terrible law to his assistance.

Book 5 - Part 11

In the course of the months of April and May, after as well as before the receipt of the letter from the Minister, the Prefect had employed his natural quickness of mind in endeavoring to find a key to these strange events at Lourdes, independent of the supernatural. Interrogatories had been renewed to no purpose, by the Parquet and Monsieur Jacomet. Neither the Commissary of Police nor M. Dutour had been able to catch the child tripping. This little shepherd-girl, thirteen or fourteen years of age, illiterate and unable to read or write, or even speak French, disconcerted by the mere force of her profound simplicity the crafty and the prudent.

A disciple of the Mesmers and the Du Potets—where from no one knew—had attempted in vain to throw Bernadette into the magnetic slumber. His passes had failed in exerting the slightest influence on her calm, and but slightly nervous temperament, and his success was limited to causing the child a head-ache. The poor little thing, however, submitted herself with resignation to the experiments and examinations of every one. It was the will of God that she should be exposed to every form of trial, and emerge triumphantly from them all, without exception.

It was understood that a foreign family of immense fortune having, as was the case with all, been fascinated with Bernadette, had proposed to adopt her, offering at the same time to her parents the sum of one hundred thousand francs, with the permission of remaining with their daughter. The disinterestedness of these good souls had not even been tempted for a moment, and they preferred remaining poor.

Everything brought to bear on Bernadette failed, the snares laid by guile, the offers of enthusiasm, the dialectics of the most acute intellects.

However great the horror M. Dutour entertained for fanaticism, he was unable to find, either in the Code of Criminal Instruction or in the Penal Code, any text which would authorize him in taking severe measures against Bernadette, and throwing her into prison. An arrest of this nature would have been illegal in the highest degree, and might be attended with very unpleasant consequences to the Magistrate by whose order it was carried into execution. In the eye of the penal law, Bernadette was innocent.

The Prefect, with his exceeding clearness of mind, took all this into consideration as thoroughly as if he had been a practical lawyer. He then entertained the idea of arriving at the same result by the employment of other means, and of proceeding by a measure emanating from the Administration to effect an incarceration, which, as it appeared to him, would be of considerable utility, but in which the Magistrates, with the codes in their hands, did not deem themselves authorized to assume the initiative.

Book 5 - Part 10

While all these Miracles were taking place in different directions, there occurred an incident, in appearance very foreign to the object of this history, but which, notwithstanding its apparent insignificance, was destined to be attended with most important consequences as events progressed.

The Prefect of the Hautes-Pyrenees made about this time the notable discovery that his carriage and saddle horses were not particularly well domiciled and that it was desirable to erect elegant and spacious stables for their accommodation.

Unfortunately the ground about the Prefecture was somewhat confined, and Baron Massy wished, above all things, to avoid disfiguring either his court-yard or his garden.

The Prefecture of Tarbes is quite close to the Cathedral. Between the two buildings was the former cemetery of the priests and canons of the Church. It is handed down by tradition that many of the noble families of the country had formerly had vaults in it, and that the ashes of their illustrious members repose below. The Prefect observed to himself that this plot of ground was the very thing for his stables and coach-houses. With Baron Massy the execution of a project followed speedily on its first conception. He had the foundations therefore dug among the tomb-stones and fragments of human bones, and the buildings necessary for the accommodation of the official horses began shortly afterwards to rise conspicuously in the cemetery. The Prefect erected his buildings exactly opposite one of the ancient doors of the Cathedral, and at a very small distance from it, so that the noise of the stable was unavoidably heard by the congregation.

Such a forgetfulness of decorum could not fail of deeply annoying the occupants of the Palace. Monseigneur Laurence strove in vain to make the Prefect understand that the ground was consecrated, that it belonged to the Church, and that neither the repose of the dead nor the devotion of the living ought to be disturbed by the pawing and neighing of horses. The Prefect, as we have observed before, could never relinquish what he had once resolved upon. By discharging his workmen and selecting another site, he would have allowed himself to have been in the wrong. Notwithstanding, therefore, the sincere desire he might have to keep the Bishop in good humor, he did not pay the slightest attention to his remonstrances. His workmen remained on the old cemetery engaged in the construction of his stables.

On seeing the Prefect persist in his desecration of the tombs, Monseigneur Laurence threw off his reserve and protested energetically against his conduct. The Bishop addressed himself directly to the Minister of Public Worship, requesting authorization to pull down these unseemly and offensive buildings.

The Prefect was greatly annoyed at the very firm and dignified attitude assumed by the Bishop. He went post-haste to Paris, to argue his own case with the Minister, and endeavored to bring over the Council General to his side of the question; he sought legal opinions on the subject, and in short entered on a desperate struggle, the various episodes of which would be of no interest to our readers. The question lasted several months, and was eventually decided in accordance with the wise expostulations of Monseigneur Laurence. The grass grows once more to-day on the site of the demolished stables, and a funereal tree, planted in the centre of the cemetery, serves to mark that the ashes of the dead repose in that place.

But from the day when the Bishop issued his protest, the harmony, which, up to that period, had existed between the Head of the Department and the Head of the Diocese was broken for ever. In the heart of the Prefect this harmony was succeeded by an intense feeling of irritation. He ceased to be inclined to arrange matters amicably; perhaps his tendencies took quite the opposite direction. As he wished to encroach on the property of the Church in this miserable affair of his stables, so with regard to the question of the Apparitions, he from that time felt himself more inclined than before to encroach on the spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop.

The bridle, which up to that moment had kept him in check, was snapped. Great effects are not unfrequently produced by very insignificant causes.

Book 5 - Part 9

 
It was not only at Lourdes that miraculous cures had taken place. Many, whose maladies prevented them from repairing to the Grotto, had procured some of the water and found their most inveterate symptoms suddenly disappear.

At Nay, in the Basses Pyrenees, there was a young lad, about fifteen years of age, called Henry Busquet, who had fallen into hopelessly bad health. He had, in 1856, a violent and long typhoid fever, the result of which was that an abscess had formed on the right side of his neck, spreading imperceptibly to the top of his chest and the extremity of his cheek. The abscess was about as big as your hand. This caused the lad such intense suffering as to force him at times to roll himself on the ground.

The medical man who attended him, Doctor Subervielle, a practitioner of great repute in his district, lanced the abscess about four months after its first formation, and there issued from it a vast quantity of sero-purulent matter; but this operation did not conduce to the recovery of Henry. After having tried several unavailing remedies, the Doctor thought of the waters at Cauterets. In 1857, in the course of the month of October—a season of the year when the rich frequenters of the baths having taken their departure, those in poorer circumstances repair to them—young Busquet went to Cauterets and took a course of fifteen baths. These proved more prejudicial than useful to him and served but to aggravate his sores. His malady increased in violence notwithstanding some momentary relief. The unfortunate lad had, in the parts mentioned above, an extensive ulcer, which emitted an abundant suppuration, covering the top of his chest and all one side of his neck, and threatening to spread to his face. In addition to this, two fresh glandular swellings of considerable size had arisen at the side of this terrible ulcer.

Such was the state of this poor lad when, happening to hear the marvelous effects of the water of the Grotto spoken of, he had thoughts of undertaking the journey to Lourdes. He wished to leave home and make the pilgrimage on foot; but he presumed too much on his own strength, and his parents refused to take him there.

Henry, who was very pious, was haunted with the idea that he would be cured by the Virgin who had appeared to Bernadette. He requested a woman, one of his neighbors who was going to Lourdes, to draw for him a little of the water at the Spring. She brought him a bottle-full of it on the evening of Wednesday, April the 28th, the Feast of the Patronage of St. Joseph.

Towards eight o’clock at night, before retiring to rest, the lad knelt down and prayed to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary.

His family, consisting of his father, mother and several brothers and sisters, joined with him in prayer. They were all excellent people, simple and full of faith: one of the daughters is at the present moment a religieuse with the Sisters of Saint André.

Henry went to bed. Doctor Subervielle had charged him repeatedly never to use cold water, as it would inevitably lead to a serious complication of his malady; but at that moment Henry was thinking of something else than medical prescriptions. He removed the bandages and lint which covered his ulcer, and with a piece of linen soaked in the water from the Grotto, he bathed and washed his sores in the miraculous fluid. He was not wanting in faith. “It must be,” he thought to himself, “that the Virgin will effect my cure.” He went to sleep with this hope in his breast and fell into a deep slumber.

On awaking, what he had hoped proved a reality: all his pain had ceased, all his sores were closed; the glandular swellings had disappeared. The ulcer had become a solid scar, as solid as if it had been slowly healed by the hand of time. The eternal power which had stepped in and effected the cure, had performed in a few moments the work of several months or several years. His recovery had been complete, sudden and without any intermediate state of convalescence.

The medical men in their Report addressed to the Commission (from which we have derived the technical terms employed in our narration), humbly acknowledged the miraculous nature of the young lad’s recovery.

“All affections of this nature,” observed one of them, “can only be cured very slowly, because they are connected with scrofulous diathesis, and involve the necessity of an entire change in the system. This consideration alone, placed in opposition with the suddenness of the cure, is sufficient to prove that the fact in question deviates from the ordinary action of nature. We rank it among facts which fully and evidently possess a supernatural character.”

The lad’s usual medical attendant, Doctor Subervielle, declared this sudden cure—as indeed did every one—to be marvelous and divine; but the restless skepticism, which often lurks at the bottom of the hearts of members of the Faculty, waited for time to afford full proof of the truth of his theory.

“Who knows,” M. Subervielle was often in the habit of saying, “but what this malady may recur when Henry reaches the age of eighteen? Up to that period I shall be always in a state of anxiety.”

The eminent physician who spoke thus was not destined to rejoice at seeing the cure of Henry confirmed by time. He died a short time after this and his death was a calamity to that part of the country.

As to young Henry Busquet, the author of this book, in accordance with his practice of ascertaining the truth of facts by personal investigation, availed himself of the opportunity of seeing him and hearing the circumstances from his own lips.

Henry told us his story, with which we are already acquainted from official reports and the testimony of several individuals. He related it to us as if it had been the simplest thing in the world, without showing surprise or astonishment. To the strong good sense of Christians, like Henry, sprung from the lower classes, whose minds have not been led astray by sophistry, the supernatural does not appear extraordinary, still less contrary to reason. They find it strictly conformable with common sense. If they are sometimes surprised at being restored to health by the aid of a physician, it is to them no matter for astonishment that God, who had power sufficient to create man, should, in his loving kindness, cure him when attacked with sickness. They see clearly at a glance that a miracle, far from disturbing order, is, on the contrary, one of the laws of eternal order. If God, in His mercy, has conferred on certain waters the virtue of removing maladies of certain kinds—if He cures indirectly those who employ, according to certain conditions, such material agency, have we not greater reason to believe that He will effect a direct cure in those who address themselves directly to Him? Such is the reasoning of the humbler classes.

It was our great wish to see with our own eyes and touch with our own hands the traces of this terrible sore, which had been so miraculously cured. The place where the ulcer was is marked by an immense scar. It is now long since the lad passed safely through the crisis of his eighteenth year and there has been no hint of any return of his cruel malady. He has never suffered again from any running nor shown any tendency to glandular swellings, and he enjoys perfect health. Henry Busquet is now a man of five and twenty years of age, strong and hearty. Like his father, he is a plasterer by trade. On Sundays he plays the trombone in the brass band at the Fanfare de l’Orphéon, an instrument on which he displays no small talent. He has a splendid voice. If ever you happen to go to the town of Nay, you will not fail of hearing him through the windows of some house, either being built or repaired, for, when on the scaffolding, he is wont to sing at the top of his voice from morning till night. You may listen to him without any fear of your ears being offended by any coarse song. His charming voice delights in gay and innocent ballads, not unfrequently in the canticles of the Church. The singer has not forgotten that it is to the Blessed Virgin he owes his life.

Book 5 - Pts 7&8

 

A singular circumstance, which perhaps passed unnoticed at the time, derived importance from what followed, and struck the attention of many. We cannot refrain from pointing it out.

One of the highest privileges of sovereignty is the right of granting pardon, and when a king wishes to solemnize his accession to the throne, he issues an amnesty to those who have made themselves amenable to the law.

The power of the Queen of Heaven was greater, and she exerted it in a higher degree. She willed that there should not be any guilty of crime. The Apparitions which had already taken place, and those which took place later on, were spread over two periods of three months; at the commencement of each of which the assizes were held. Now during these two judicial quarters, there was not a single crime committed or a single criminal condemned, throughout the Department. The session of the March assizes had only to examine a single case anterior to the date of the Apparitions, and this single case terminated in an acquittal. The next session, which was to be in June, had only two cases to pronounce upon, both connected with occurrences anterior to this same period.

It appears to us that this wonderful coincidence, this mysterious mark of divine influence which hovered over the whole country, this entirely extraneous proof, this moral prodigy, this miracle extending over a whole diocese, is eminently calculated to afford food for reflection to the most frivolous minds.

How came it that during so long a time the arm of the criminal was stayed? Is that imposture, hallucination or catalepsy? How was it that the sword of justice was not required to strike a blow? How came this peace, this truce of God? Precisely at that very moment. Setting aside the reason we have assigned, we challenge unbelief to endeavor to discover the cause of this surprising fact, of this strange coincidence. It will make the attempt in vain.

The Queen of Heaven had passed by, the Queen of Heaven had left her blessing.

Bernadette received constant visits from the innumerable strangers whom piety or curiosity brought in crowds to Lourdes. They were of all classes, of all professions, and of every school of philosophy. No one was offended at the simple and sincere language of the youthful Seer; no one after seeing her and hearing her speak dared to say that she was telling falsehoods.

In the midst of excited parties and numberless discussions, this little girl, by an inconceivable privilege, inspired every one with respect, and was never, for a single moment, exposed to the attacks of calumny. Such was the halo of her innocence, that she was never personally assailed: she was protected by an invisible ægis.

Bernadette was, in every respect, a child of very ordinary intelligence, but she seemed to rise above herself whenever she had to bear testimony to the truth of the Apparition. She was never discomposed by any objection.

Her answers, at times, displayed considerable depth of thought. M. de Ressegnier, Counselor General and formerly Deputy for the Basses-Pyrénées, came to see her, accompanied by several ladies of his family. He made her enter into the most minute details connected with the Visions.

On Bernadette telling him that the Apparition expressed herself in the patois of Béarn, he exclaimed

“You are not telling the truth, my child! God and the Blessed Virgin do not understand your patois, and know nothing of such a miserable dialect.”

“If they did not know it,” she replied, “how could we know it ourselves? And if they did not understand it, who could render us capable of understanding it?”

Her repartees were not deficient in wit.

“How could the Blessed Virgin have ordered you to eat grass? Did she take you for a beast of the field,” observed a sceptic to her one day.

“Do you think of that when you are eating salad?” she replied, smiling archly.

Her answers were remarkable for their artless simplicity. This same M. de Ressegnier happened to be speaking to her of the beauty of the Apparition at the Grotto.

“Was she as beautiful as any of the company now present,” he asked her.

Bernadette glanced slowly round the charming circle of ladies, married and unmarried, who had accompanied her visitor, and with almost a little pout of disdain she replied:

“Oh! it was quite a different thing from all that!”

“All that,” was the élite of the society of Pau.

She used to disconcert those who proposed to her subtle questions in hopes of causing her embarrassment.

“If the Curé were to formally prohibit your going to the Grotto, what would you do?” some one said to her.

“I would obey him.”

“But if you received at the same time from the Apparition a command to repair thither, how would you act between these two contrary orders?”

The child without the slightest hesitation answered at once:

“I should go to ask permission from the Curé.”

Nothing either then or later caused her to lose her graceful simplicity. She never spoke of the Apparition unless she was interrogated on the subject. She always regarded herself as the most backward of all the children at the school superintended by the Sisters, who found some difficulty in teaching her to read and write. The mind of this child was elsewhere, or, if we dared to penetrate the recesses of her exquisite nature so imbued with grace, we would rather say her soul, which doubtless felt little curiosity towards mere earthly learning, was playing truant in the thickets of Paradise.

During the hours of recreation she was confounded with the rest of her companions. She liked to play.

Sometimes a visitor, it might be a stranger from a distance, requested the Sisters to show him this youthful Seer, this being so privileged by the Lord, this beloved of the Virgin, this Bernadette whose name had already acquired so much celebrity

“There she is,” said the Sister, pointing her out with her finger among the rest of the children.

The visitor on turning his eyes in that direction beheld a little weakly child, miserably dressed, playing at base, blind-man’s buff, or with her skipping rope, entirely taken up with the pleasures of childhood. But what she preferred to any thing else was to figure as the thirtieth or fortieth in one of those immense circles which children make, holding each other’s hands and singing all the while.

The Mother of God, while visiting Bernadette, while allotting to her the part of a witness of divine things, while making her the center of vast throngs, and as it were, an object of pilgrimage, had, by a miracle greater than all the others, protected her candor and her innocence, and had granted her the extraordinary, nay, divine gift, of remaining a child.

Book 5 - Part 6

The road to the Rocks of Massabielle continued to be thronged. Never did an uproarious cry escape from the crowd, nor was there any agitation in this popular stream whose waves were incessantly renewed. Canticles, litanies, vivats in honor of the Virgin were all that struck the ear, and all that M. Jacomet and his police could register in their Reports. It was something more than order; it was a state of pious recollection.

The artisans of Lourdes had widened the road which had been laid out some fifteen or twenty days previously on the slopes of Massabielle by the quarry-men. They had blown up the rock with powder, and reduced it in many places, so that they had made a broad and very commodious road on those precipitous declivities. It was a work of considerable toil, requiring trouble, time, and outlay of money. These good-hearted fellows devoted themselves to the task every evening, on their return from the work-yards in which they were employed from morning to night. They rested from the toil of their hard day’s work in laboring at this road, which led the way to God: In labore requies. Towards night-fall they might be seen clinging like a nest of ants to the side of the steep descent, digging, wheeling barrows, boring the rock, inserting powder and shivering vast blocks of marble or granite.

“Who will pay you?” they were asked.

“The Blessed Virgin,” was the reply.

Before retiring from their labor, they descended altogether into the Grotto and offered up their prayers in common.

In the midst of this magnificence of nature, beneath that lovely starry heaven, these Christian scenes offered a spectacle of simplicity and grandeur redolent of the primitive ages of the Church.

The outward appearance of the Grotto gradually changed. Up to that date tapers had been burned in it as a sign of veneration. About this time there were placed in it vases of flowers, either growing naturally or arranged in bouquets by pious hands, statues of the Virgin and ex-votos as marks of gratitude. A small balustrade had been erected by the workmen to protect these fragile articles from the involuntary accidents which might have happened from the too great eagerness of the throng.

Several persons, having received some special grace by the intervention of Our Lady of Lourdes, brought with them by way of homage to the place of the Vision their little gold cross and chain, and placed their pious offering under the guardianship of the public faith. As it was from that time the general cry of the country that the command of the Apparition must be obeyed, and a chapel erected, it became the custom to throw pieces of money into the Grotto. Considerable sums, amounting to several thousand francs, lay consequently exposed in the open air, without any outward protection, night and day; and such was the respect inspired by this spot, a short time before entirely unknown—such was the moral effect produced on souls, that not a single evil-doer was to be met with in the whole country to attempt a sacrilegious robbery.

But what made this more wonderful was the fact that, a few months previously, several churches in the neighbourhood had been plundered. The Virgin willed not that the slightest souvenir of crime should be connected with the origin of the pilgrimage it was her wish to establish.

Book 5 - Part 5

Some young women of Lourdes, of exemplary virtue, among whom we will only mention by name, Marie Courrège, a pious servant-maid respected by every one, had the same vision as Bernadette, at the Grotto, separately, twice or thrice. This was vaguely rumored abroad, but had no influence on the mass of the public. Some little children had also visions, but of a perfectly distinct and rather alarming nature. When the divine Supernatural manifests itself, the diabolical Supernatural strives to mingle itself with it. This is a truth proved in almost every page of the history of the Fathers of the Desert and of the Mystics. The abyss was troubled and the Evil Angel had recourse to his counterfeits for the purpose of troubling the souls of believers.

These various facts, which did not attract much observation at the time, are not sufficiently precise (more especially as some of their details have been forgotten) to be consigned to the pages of History. We merely point them out that we may not incur the blame of neglect. The true visions were only important so far as they affected individuals, the remainder died away of themselves.

Book 5 - Part 4

Easter-Sunday had arrived. Notwithstanding the pious apprehensions of the Minister of Public Worship, the marvellous occurrences at Lourdes had not, "weakened the religious feeling of the population of the district." Numerous conversions had taken place, and the confessionals were in a state of siege. Usurers and robbers had made restitution of their ill-gotten gains, and many scandals had ceased. The Faithful crowded to the Holy Table.

On Easter-Monday, the fifth of April, that is to say the very day the Prefect had visited the Bishop, the Mother of God had once more by an internal call, summoned the daughter of the miller, and the child, soon followed by an immense crowd, had repaired to the Grotto, where, as on the preceding days, the Heavens had opened themselves before her eyes, and displayed to her the Virgin Mary in a state of glory.

That day a very singular occurrence took place before the wonder-struck eyes of the multitude.

The taper, which Bernadette had either brought with her, or received from one of the bystanders, was of considerable size and she had rested it on the ground, supporting it at the bottom between the fingers of her hands, which were half clasped. The Virgin appeared to her. And behold, by an instinctive movement of adoration, the youthful Seer, falling in a state of ecstacy before the Immaculate Beauty, slightly raised her hands and let them rest calmly, and without thinking of what she was doing, on the lighted end of the taper. And then the flame began to pass between her fingers, which were half open, and to mount above them, flickering in different directions, according as the light breeze blew. Bernadette, however, remained motionless and absorbed in the heavenly contemplation, utterly unconscious of the phenomenon which caused so much astonishment to the multitude around her. Those who witnessed it pressed closely on each other in order to obtain a better view. M.M. Jean-Louis Fourcade, Martinou, Estrade, Caillet, warden of the forest, the demoiselles Tard’hivail, and a hundred other persons were spectators of this unheard of incident. M. Dozons had remarked by his watch that this extraordinary state lasted more than a quarter of an hour. All at once a slight shudder was perceptible in the frame of Bernadette. Her features lost their lofty expression. The Vision had vanished and the child resumed her natural state. The bystanders seized her hand but it presented nothing unusual to the eye. The flame had spared the flesh of the youthful Seer during her ecstasy at the feet of Mary. The crowd, not without sufficient reasons, exclaimed that a Miracle had been performed. One of the spectators however, wishing to test the fact, took the taper which was still lighted and applied it to Bernadette’s hand, without her being aware of what he was doing.

“Ah! Sir,” she exclaimed, drawing back quickly, “you are burning me.”

The occurrences at Lourdes had produced such an excitement in the surrounding districts, and the influx of strangers was so great, that on that day the multitude which had in a moment flocked around Bernadette amounted to nearly ten thousand persons, and these had not been warned beforehand, as was the case during the Quinzaine.

Book 5 - Part 3

Monseigneur Laurence, as we have already observed, was still in a state of doubt as to the judgment he should form on the events which had occurred at Lourdes. Not being on the spot, not seeing directly the marvels which were in process of accomplishment, and deriving what little knowledge he had of them from the reports of ecclesiastics who had not themselves been eye-witnesses of the facts, he had not yet come to any full conviction. He was waiting.

Under these circumstances, to formally prohibit Bernadette from going to the Grotto when she felt herself called to the place by a voice from on high, would have been to attack the most sacred liberty the soul can enjoy, and this, Churchmen can respect even in a child: but to employ words of council and to pledge Bernadette not to repair to the Rocks of Massabielle, unless under the immediate influence of that irresistible suggestion, this was what the Bishop deemed it prudent to order the Curé of Lourdes to undertake, in order to prevent, as far as lay in his power, the Civil Authorities from entering on the dangerous path of persecution, to which his admirable foresight shewed him they were tending.

What in reality held the Prefect back, was not so much a question of principle as a personal consideration. He felt he must look twice before attempting a religious coup d’état with a Prelate so universally venerated as Monseigneur Laurence, more especially after having lived with him up to that moment in the most perfect harmony. Baron Massy was too deeply imbued with the political feeling of the affairs of administration not to hesitate in breaking up this feeling of cordiality, and in violently invading a jurisdiction which belonged of right to the Bishop, and to him only.

Book 5 - Part 2

On the strength of this letter, M. Massy addressed himself to the Bishop, begging him, formally, to prohibit Bernadette from repairing to the Grotto. He naturally brought forward the interests of religion, which were compromised by these hallucinations or deceptions, and the deplorable effects which things of this nature were producing on all serious minds, which sincerely sought to reconcile Catholicism with philosophy and modern ideas. As to the supposition of there being any reality in the Apparitions, M. Massy, following in the wake of M. Rouland, did not deign to notice it. The Prefect and the Minister agreed in treating such superstitions with contempt.

The Prefect was clever, but the Bishop in his turn was shrewd, and it was not easy to pass off on him the shadow for the substance. Monseigneur Laurence discerned, clearly, two things:

The first was, that the Authorities (and, by this word, we understood only the Prefect and the Minister, who happened to be in power for the time being), would have been very glad to have put the Clergy prominently forward, while, at the same time, they dictated to them their course of action. Now, Monseigneur Laurence had too high a sense of his duties as Bishop to become a mere tool in the hands of others.

The second was, that the Minister possibly and the Prefect certainly were tempted to have recourse to violent measures, that is to say, to oppose material force to opinion. Now, Monseigneur Laurence was too prudent not to exert every effort in order to avoid an evil of such magnitude.

It was necessary therefore for him, on the one hand to resist energetically the pressure brought to bear upon him by the Civil Authorities, and on the other not to irritate them; to reject their unreasonable demands as inadmissible, and at the same time to maintain a spirit of harmony.

Amidst these difficulties of so opposite a nature, the Bishop succeeded in steering a middle course.

At the same time that he stemmed the popular enthusiasm which urged him to proclaim the Miracle officially, he resisted the Minister and the Prefect, who requested him to condemn it without investigation. Impassible in the midst of the agitations of the multitude, and the blind prejudices of men in power, he was determined not to pronounce his judgment until he was thoroughly acquainted with the merits of the case, to refrain from any premature decision and to keep the future in reserve.

However, perceiving as he did, the undisguisedly hostile disposition of the Administration, he recognized it to be his duty to do all in his power to prevent the Civil Authorities from betaking themselves to deplorable acts of violence. They must be deprived of all pretext for adopting such a line of conduct. Since the Temporal Power inclined towards inconsiderate measures, the Spiritual Power must have prudence for both. Since the Prefect had not prudence enough, the Bishop must have it in excess: it was in his opinion, the only way of having enough.

Book 5 - Part 1

The question which had mounted from M. Jacomet to the Prefect had continued its upward flight, and reached the Ministry of Public Worship.

On the 12th and 26th of March, the Prefect had sent in his reports to his Excellency, confining himself, until an answer was received, to the steps we have already mentioned.

The Ministry of Public Worship was not then, as is the case now, united to the department of Justice, but to that of Public Instruction. Monsieur Rouland was the Minister.

Formerly Procureur General, and at the date of our story, Minister of Public Instruction, M. Rouland had, at one and the same time, in regard to religious matters, the traditional and suspicious formalism of the old parliamentary body, and the ideas and feelings current in the University of France. Of a dogmatic turn of mind, deeply convinced of his own importance, his very philosophy tinged with sectarianism, an extravagant admirer of his own wisdom, and easily irritated against anything which did not square with his own systematic ideas, M. Rouland was unable to admit for one moment the reality of the Visions and Miracles at Lourdes. Such being the case, though at a distance of two hundred and fifty leagues from the spot where the events occurred, and having no other documents than two letters received from the Prefect, he solved the question with that decisive tone which settles matters of importance without even condescending to discuss them. Notwithstanding the advice he gave the Prefect to act prudently, it was plain that he had decided in his own mind not to tolerate either the Apparitions or the Miracles. As was always the case, in similar circumstances, the Minister assumed the attitude of a defender of the interests of religion. We subjoin a copy of the letter written by him to M. Massy, bearing date the twelfth of April.

“MONSIEUR LE PREFET:

“I have examined the reports, which you had the goodness to forward to me on the twelfth and twenty-sixth of April, on the subject of a pretended apparition of the Virgin, said to have occurred in a Grotto at no great distance from the town of Lourdes. It is of importance, in my opinion, to put a stop to proceedings which would result in compromising the true interests of Catholicism, and weakening the religious feeling of the population of the district.

“Legally, no one can establish an oratory or place of public worship, without the double authorization of the civil and religious authorities. We should then be justified, were we to carry out the law rigorously, in immediately closing the Grotto, which has been transformed into a kind of chapel.

“But, serious inconveniences would, in all probability, arise from putting this law suddenly into force. It would, therefore, be better to confine ourselves to preventing the youthful visionary from revisiting the Grotto, and to taking such measures as shall insensibly divert public attention, by rendering the visits to the spot less frequent from day to day. I could not, however, Monsieur le Préfet, give you more precise instructions at the present moment; it is a question which requires most especially tact, prudence and firmness, and, in this respect, any recommendations from me are unnecessary.

“It will be indispensable for you to act in concert with the Clergy; and I cannot lay too much stress on the advisability of your communicating, personally, with the Bishop of Tarbes in this delicate affair, and I authorize you to tell the Prelate, from me, that I do not think it expedient to permit a state of things to continue unchecked, which cannot fail of affording a pretext for fresh attacks on the Clergy and Religion.”

Book 4 - Part 14

The Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ had not said,—“I am Mary, the Immaculate;” She had said,—“I am the Immaculate Conception,” as if to mark the absolute, and, as it were, substantial character of the divine privilege granted to Her alone since Adam and Eve were created by God. It is as if she had said, not, “I am pure,” but, “I am purity itself;” not, “I am a Virgin,” but, “I am the incarnate and living Virginity;” not, “I am white,” but, “I am whiteness!”

Any thing that is white may cease to be so; but, Whiteness is always white. It is its essence and not its quality.

Mary is more than conceived without sin: She is the Immaculate Conception itself; the essential and superior type; the archetype of unsullied humanity, of humanity as it proceeded from the hands of God without having been tainted by the original stain by the impure element which the fault of our first Parents mixed with the very source of that vast river of generations, which has flowed for the last six thousand years, and of which, each of us, is a fleeting wave.

What would you do, if you wished to draw water pure from a muddy spring? You would pass it through a filter, and the water clears itself of its grosser elements. You then pass it through a second filter, then through a third, and so on. The time soon comes when the water becomes entirely pure and clear,—a liquid diamond. In the same manner did God act, when the original Spring was troubled. He chose a particular family in this world, and watched over it from age to age, from Seth unto Noah, from Shem unto David, from David even unto Joachim and Anne, the parents of the Blessed Virgin. And, when this human blood was thus filtered, so to speak, in spite of the accidents of some intermediate guilty persons, through nearly fifty generations of patriarchs and just men, there came into the world a creature absolutely pure; a creature without stain; a daughter of Adam entirely immaculate. She was called Mary, and Her fruitful Virginity produced Jesus Christ.

The Virgin, at that moment, had desired to attest by her presence and her miracles, the last dogma defined by the Church, and proclaimed by St. Peter, speaking by the voice of Pius IX.

It was the first time in her life that the little shepherd-girl, to whom the divine Virgin had just appeared, had heard the words: “Immaculate Conception;” and, being entirely ignorant of their meaning, she exerted herself to the utmost on her way back to Lourdes to retain them in her memory.

“I repeated them to myself all along the road, in order not to forget them,” she told us, one day; “and, up to the very door of the presbytery to which I was going, I kept saying, Immaculate Conception, Immaculate Conception, at each step I made, as I wished to take to the Curé the exact words of the Vision, in order that the chapel might be built.”

Book 4 - Part 13

 

Since the last day of the Quinzaine, Bernadette had several times re-visited the Grotto, but much like any other simple individual, that is to say, without bearing in her heart the irresistible voice which was wont to summon her to the spot.

She heard this voice, however, once more on the twenty-fifth of March, in the course of the morning and immediately proceeded towards the Rocks of Massabielle. Her countenance was beaming with hope. She felt within herself that she was going to see the Apparition once more, and that Paradise would throw its eternal gates half open to her ravished eyes.

It may be easily conceived that she had become ere this an object of general attention at Lourdes, and she could not take a step without becoming “the observed of all observers.”

“Bernadette is going to the Grotto,” was the observation of the one to the other as she was seen passing by.

A moment afterwards, a crowd, issuing from all the houses and collecting from all the alleys, rushed in the same direction and reached the Grotto at the same time with the child.

In the valley, the snow had melted within the last two or three days, but still remained on the crests of the neighboring peaks. The weather was fine and clear, and not a speck was to be seen in the calm blue of the firmament. The sun seemed to rise with royal pomp from the bosom of the white mountains and threw a splendor over his cradle of snow.

It was the anniversary of the day on which the Angel Gabriel had descended to the purest of virgins, the Virgin of Nazareth, and had saluted her in the name of the Lord. The Church was celebrating the feast of the Annunciation.

While the crowd was hurrying to the Grotto, and amongst it might be noticed the greater number of those who had been cured—Louis Bourriette, the widow Crouzat, Blaisette Soupene, Benoite Cazeaux, Auguste Bordes, and twenty more, the Catholic Church, at the close of her morning office, was intoning those wonderful words, “At that moment shall the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf shall recover their hearing, the lame shall leap like the deer, for the waters have burst forth in the desert, and torrents in the wilderness.”

Bernadette had not been deceived by the joyful presentiment she had felt. The voice which had called her was the voice of the faithful Virgin.

As soon as the child had fallen on her knees the Apparition made herself manifest. As ever before, an ineffable aureole beamed around her, of boundless splendor and infinite sweetness; it was like the eternal glory of absolute peace. As ever before, her veil and her robe falling in chaste folds were white like the glistening snow. The two roses which blossomed on her feet had the yellow tinge which pervades the base of heaven at the first light of the virgin dawn. Her girdle was blue as the azure firmament.

Bernadette, plunged in ecstasy, had forgotten earth in the presence of her spotless beauty.

“O Lady,” she said to her, “would you have the goodness to inform me who you are and what is your name?”

The queenly Apparition smiled but gave no reply.

But at that very moment, the Universal Church proceeding with the solemn prayers of her Office, was exclaiming:

“O holy and immaculate Virginity, what praises can I give unto Thee? In truth, I know not, for thou hast borne in thy womb Him whom the Heavens cannot contain.”

Bernadette heard not these distant voices, nor could she surmise these profound harmonies. Notwithstanding the silence on the part of the Vision, she urged her request, and repeated:

“O Lady, would you have the kindness to inform me who you are and what is your name?”

The Apparition appeared to become more radiant, as if her joy kept increasing, and yet she did not reply to the child’s question. But the Church, spread over the whole of Christendom, was continuing her prayers and chants and had reached those words:

“Wish me joy, all ye who love the Lord, for when I was yet a child, the Most High hath loved me, and from my womb was produced the God-Man. All generations shall proclaim me Blessed, for God hath deigned to regard the lowliness of his hand-maiden; and from my womb was produced the God-Man.”

Bernadette redoubled the urgency of her request and pronounced for the third time the words:

“O Lady, would you have the kindness to inform me who you are and what is your name?”

The Apparition appeared to enter more and more into the glory of beatitude, and as if absorbed in her own felicity, continued to return no answer.

But, by an extraordinary coincidence the universal choir of the Church was at that moment bursting forth into a song of joy and pronouncing the earthly name of the marvelous Apparition, “Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee, blessed art Thou among women.”

Bernadette pronounced once more these suppliant words:

“O Lady, I beseech you, have the kindness to inform me who you are and what is your name?”

The hands of the Apparition were clasped with fervor and her countenance was radiant with the splendors of infinite beatitude. It was Humility crowned with Glory. At the same time that Bernadette was contemplating the Vision, the Vision was doubtless contemplating, in the bosom of the divine Trinity, God the Father of whom She was the daughter; God the Holy Ghost of whom She was the Spouse, and God the Son of whom She was the Mother.

At the last question of the child She unclasped her hands, slipping over Her right arm the chaplet, whose alabaster beads were strung on a golden thread. She then opened both of Her arms and bent them towards the ground, as if to show to the earth Her Virgin hands, full of blessings. Afterwards, raising them towards the eternal region, from which on that very day centuries before the divine Messenger of the Annunciation had descended, She joined them again fervently, and gazing up to Heaven with an expression of unspeakable gratitude, She pronounced the following words:

“I am the Immaculate Conception.”

The Vision disappeared, and the child, like the multitude, found herself opposite a solitary rock.

At her side, the miraculous Fountain, falling through its wooden conduit into its rustic basin, soothed the ear with the peaceful murmur of its waters.

It was the day and the hour, when Holy Church was intoning in her Office the magnificent hymn—

“O most glorious of Virgins:

Sublimis inter sidera.”
(Exalted above the stars)

Book 4 - Part 12

 

During the period of the manifestation of the Apparitions, the popular movement had been favored with the most magnificent weather. There had been an uninterrupted series of fine days, such as had not been experienced for many years past.

From the fifth of March, there was a change in the weather and a heavy fall of snow. The severity of the season naturally abated for some days the concourse of visitors to the Grotto.

The miraculous cures, however, increased in number. Benoîte Cazeaux, a most respectable inhabitant of Lourdes, had been confined to her bed for three years by a slow fever accompanied with pains in her side, and all her applications to the medical men of the place had been fruitless. A course of baths at Gazost had proved equally unavailing towards the recovery of her health.

The medical men had become disheartened by the unsuccessful issue of all their efforts, and had ceased to visit the poor woman, regarding her as incurable. Finding herself in this desperate situation, she had had recourse to Our Lady of Lourdes, and her supposed incurable malady had suddenly disappeared in consequence of drinking one or two glasses of water from the Grotto, and the application of some lotions.

Another woman, Blaisette Soupenne, of Lourdes, about fifty years of age, had been suffering for several years from a chronic affection in her eyes, and her state was truly pitiable. In technical terms, it was a blepharitis accompanied with atrophy. A continual flow of tears from the eyes, severe smarting pains sometimes at the same time, sometimes alternately; an eversion of the eyelids and total disappearance of the eye-lashes, the two lower lids being covered with a multitude of fleshy warts—such was the disastrous state of this unfortunate woman. It was in vain she applied lotions of cold water several times a day to her eyes, employed all the remedies prescribed by her medical advisers, or sought some relief at the baths of Barèges, Cauterets and Gazost—everything had been a failure.

Abandoned by man, she had turned herself towards the Divine Goodness which had manifested itself at the Grotto. Pronounced incurable by medical science, she had addressed herself to Faith, and had besought the miraculous Lady to remove from her that cruel malady which had defied the skill of men and the agency of natural remedies. She received great relief on the application of the first lotion. At the second application, which took place the following day, the cure was complete. Tears ceased to flow from her eyes, the eyelids resumed their natural form, and the fleshy warts disappeared. From that very day the eye-lashes grew again.

In the opinion of the medical men called in to examine the above case, the supernatural effect in this marvelous cure was rendered more obvious from the fact “that the material injury,” they said, “was more striking, and that to the rapid re-establishment of the tissues in their normal and organic condition, was added the restoration of the eyelids to their original form and position. The importance of this fact is so much the greater as the malady in question is one of the most difficult to treat successfully, and in the stage it had reached in the case of Blaisette Soupenne, necessitated a surgical operation, such as the excision of the palpebral mucous membrane, or at least a severe cauterization of the swellings and fleshy pimples of that membrane.”

These wonderful events increased daily in number.

God proceeded in His work. The Blessed Virgin afforded ample display of her omnipotence.

Book 4 - Part 11

Those of unbelief, irritated by these events they appeared to despise, and in regard to which they dared not risk the decisive proof of a public investigation, sought other means of ridding themselves of such stubborn facts. They had recourse to a manoeuvre which in its extreme cleverness and machiavelic type showed all the resources of intellect which hatred of the Supernatural induced the cluster of Free-thinkers to employ. Instead of investigating the miracles which were really true, they invented false ones, reserving to themselves the right of exposing the imposture at a later period. Their journals made no mention, either of Louis Bourriette, or of the child of Croisine Ducouts, or of Blaise Maumus, or of the widow Crozat, or of Marie Daube, or of Bernarde Soubie, or of Fabien Baron, or of Jean Crassus, or of Augusto Borde, or in fact of hundreds of others. But they treacherously fabricated an imaginary legend, hoping to propagate it by means of the press, and refute it at their ease later on.

This assertion may appear strange, but we assert nothing without having the proofs in our hands.

“Do not be astonished,” observed the journal of the Prefecture, the Ère Impériale, “if there are still to be found persons who persist in maintaining that the young girl is predestinated and endowed with supernatural power. For them it is affirmed,

“1. That a dove hovered the day before yesterday over the head of the child during the time her state of ecstasy lasted.

“2. That the young girl has breathed on the eyes of a little blind child and restored her sight.

“3. That she has cured another child whose arm was paralyzed.

“4. Lastly, that a peasant from the valley of Campan, having declared that he was not the dupe of these scenes of hallucination, the little girl had the same evening procured his fish to be turned into snakes, which snakes devoured this irreverential man, leaving no trace of his bones.”

As to the real cures, the miracles fully authenticated, and the bursting forth of the fountain, the crafty editor took good care not to mention them. With no less art, he did not give any names, in order to avoid being contradicted.

“Such is the present state of things, and all this might have been obviated at Lourdes if the parents of the girl had followed the advice of the medical men and sent her to the hospital.”

We may remark that none of the medical men had up to that time offered advice of the kind.

After having invented these fables, the pious and judicious writer sounded the alarm in the name of reason and the faith.

“Such is the opinion,” he continued, “of all reasonable people, who are actuated by feelings of real piety, who have a real love and respect for religion, who look upon the mania of superstition as highly dangerous, and who hold fast to the principle that the Church alone is competent to pronounce on the genuineness of miraculous facts.”

The remarkable diplomacy which had dictated these articles, was worthily crowned by this devout ebullition of faith and this closing genuflexion. Such are the ordinary formularies of all those who would reduce to the confined limits of their own systems the position which it pleases God to occupy in this nether world. As regards the last affirmation propounded as a principle, when miraculous facts are in question, is it necessary to say that they command respect or not, according to their own merits, as indeed do all facts, and derive their peculiar character, not from the Church, by which they are only recognised, but from God himself, by whose power they are directly produced? The decision of the Church does not create a miracle, it only authenticates it, and on her authoritative examination and affirmation the faithful believe. But no law, either as regards faith or reason prevents Christians, who are witnesses of a fact plainly supernatural, from recognizing, of their own accord, its miraculous character. Such an abdication of their reason and common sense has never been exacted from believers by the Church. She only reserves to herself the right of judging without appeal in the last resort.

“It does not appear up to the present moment,” were the closing words of the article, “that the religious authorities have thought what is going on worthy of any serious attention.”

On this last point, the editor of the journal which supported the views of the Administration was in error, as our readers have already learned in the course of this narration. However, this observation of his—and in this respect at least it was of great value—proved for futurity and for History that the Clergy had been entire strangers to the events which had taken place up to that moment, and that those events were continuing to take place without the slightest connivance on their part.

The poor Lavedan, the local organ of Lourdes, though placed in the very centre of all that was occurring, felt itself crushed by the stubbornness of facts, and had all at once subsided into absolute silence. This silence was destined to endure for several weeks. It never alluded in the most distant manner to these events, so unheard of in their nature, or to the immense concourse of people they attracted. You would have thought it was published for the benefit of readers in some other quarter of the globe, had not its columns been filled with articles borrowed in all directions from the public prints and directed against Superstition in general.

Book 4 - Part 10

On the supposition that the Parquet (government prosecutors), at whose anti-superstitious tendencies we have already hinted, were right in the decision they had come to of denying everything connected with the Apparition, they had, in these miracles, so publicly attested and proclaimed, an excellent opportunity of instituting a rigid investigation and of prosecuting, if necessary, the authors or propagators of these reports, calculated as they were to lead astray the public conscience and trouble the minds of many.

Unlike the Apparitions which had been visible to Bernadette alone, these cures were open to universal scrutiny. They were numerous, and, far from being isolated cases, they already mounted to five and twenty or thirty. They were within reach of any one who wished to investigate them. Every one might verify, study, or analyze them in order to recognize their truth or demonstrate that they were false.

The Supernatural was abandoning the invisible: it was becoming material and palpable to the senses. In the persons of the sick restored to health, of paralytics who recovered the power of motion, it appealed to all, as did Jesus Christ to the Apostle Thomas, “Look at my feet, look at my hands. See these darkened eyes which have refound the blessings of light. Look at those restored to life who were but now in the agony of death; those now hearing who were formerly deaf; those now running with the agility of strength and health who not long since were lame.”

The Supernatural had, so to speak, incarnated itself in all these incurables who had been cured so suddenly, and, publicly attesting its own claims, courted inquiry, investigation and prosecution. It became possible, if we may be permitted to use such an expression, to lay violent hands upon it and arrest it like any other criminal.

Here lay, as every one perceived, the very core of the question. Some satisfactory method of treating these inconceivable facts, which were so entirely opposed to all received notions, must be discovered. There was therefore hardly any one who did not endeavor to guess the crafty and energetic means which would be employed by that fraction of the official world which had hitherto displayed so firm a resolution of unceasingly persecuting and finally crushing fanaticism.

What kind of interrogatories would be instituted by the Police? With what kind of judicial examinations would the Parquet commence? To what severe measures would the Administration have recourse?

The Administration, the Parquet, and the Police did nothing at all, and, directing their attention in other quarters, did not think it advisable to run any risk in a public investigation of facts so notorious and so bruited abroad over the whole surrounding district.

What was the meaning of this singular forbearance in presence of such striking prodigies? It meant that Incredulity acts prudently.

Even in the midst of their transport and passion, parties, religious as well as political, have sometimes a certain instinct of self-preservation which warns them of the extreme danger into which they are on the point of rushing and forces them to recoil. They cease all at once to advance towards the logical development of their situation and have not courage to attack their enemy on that decisive point towards which they were blindly hurrying, uttering triumphant shouts in anticipation of victory.

They are suddenly brought to understand that they would be entirely, suddenly and hopelessly vanquished, and that such a line of action can only terminate in their death. In such a case what do they do? They retrace their steps and carry on a guerilla warfare on less dangerous ground.

This is all very well in military affairs; but in the order of ideas it appears difficult to reconcile this kind of prudence with entire sincerity of belief. It supposes a vague disquietude as to the value of our own line of argument, and a vague presentiment of the absolute certainty of the things we are opposing.

To fear to face the investigation of any fact, the existence of which would lead to the entire overthrow of such or such a doctrine, is to declare ourselves that we have internal doubts of what we assert so boldly; it is to show that we fear the truth to be known; it is to take to flight without attempting the struggle and to tremble at the approach of light.

Such were the reflections that occurred to the strongest minds in the place on perceiving this retreat and withdrawal of actual hostilities in presence of the events which were occurring.

Incredulity ought to have been convinced, but such was not the case. It was only disconcerted and overwhelmed by the force of circumstances, by the evidence adduced and by the sudden invasion of the Supernatural. Those know but little of the human heart who think that the most conclusive and indubitable proofs are sufficient to bring men, who have already made up their mind, to a humble acknowledgment of their error. The free-will of man has the terrible power of resisting every thing—even God Himself.

It is in vain that the Sun gives light to the world and illuminates the infinite space in which the globes of our universe pursue their course: we have only to shut our eyes in order to resist his omnipotence and to extinguish his very being. The soul also as well as the body may in the same manner shut its senses to the light of truth. The darkness does not proceed from the weakness of the understanding: it is the result of an act of the will, which persists and takes pleasure in its self-imposed blindness.

However, in matters of this kind, men feel the necessity of a certain amount of self-deception, and to quiet their consciences are obliged to keep up the show of sincerity. They have not sufficient determination to deny or to oppose resolutely and face to face what is plainly acknowledged to be truth. What then is their line of conduct? They make it their study to remain in a kind of obscurity, which permits them to struggle against truth without seeing clearly, and which serves them in some measure as an excuse.

Forgetting that ignorance, when voluntary, does not remove responsibility, they reserve to themselves the right of replying: “Nay, Lord, I was ignorant;” and for this reason they make up their minds to deny every thing, and limit themselves to shrugging their shoulders without caring or wishing to take the trouble of getting to the bottom of things. The contempt which they affect outside is but the hypocrisy of the fear they experience within.

Thus it was that the incredulous, brought face to face with the supernatural cures which were being effected on all sides, refused to give themselves the trouble of examination, and dared not hazard investigation. Notwithstanding the challenges issued to them and the railleries of those who believed, they turned a deaf ear to whatever tended to produce a public debate on these miraculous cures. They affected not to busy themselves with the divine phenomena which were submitted to their senses, which were notorious, which claimed universal attention and might have been easily studied, continuing to produce theories on hallucinations—a vague and mist-clad region, in which they might talk and declaim at their ease, without being foiled by the stubbornness of facts, which were palpable, manifest and impossible to gainsay.

The supernatural, therefore, courted discussion, and that to the fullest extent. The Free-thinkers declined the challenge and beat a retreat. By so doing they acknowledged their own discomfiture and condemnation.

Book 4 - Part 9

Other cures continued to take place in all directions. It would be impossible to report each particular case, not only from their number but from the fact that the author of this book has made it a rule not to bring forward anything in this class of facts of which he has not himself proved the exactitude, not only from the depositions of actual witnesses of what took place, but also from those persons who were themselves favored with such marvelous graces. Notwithstanding the interest which attaches to every supernatural fact, we have been obliged to confine ourselves within certain limits. We have been forced, not without regret, to discard from our narrative many of these wonderful prodigies, which we had ourselves perfectly verified, and limit ourselves to producing a circumstantial history of the most striking miracles.

We will, however, risk quoting from the official report of the Commission named later on to investigate these events, a few of the cures which took place about this time, which were duly authenticated, and of which, consequently, the fame was spread from the very first throughout the district.

The restaurateur, Blaise Maumus, on plunging his hand into the Spring had himself witnessed the dissolving and disappearance of an enormous wen he had in the joint of his wrist. The widow Crouzat, who had been so deaf for the last twenty years as to be unable to hear the Offices, suddenly recovered her hearing on making use of this water. In a similarly miraculous manner, Auguste Borde, who had long been lame owing to an accident, found his leg become straight again and recover its strength and natural shape.

All the persons we have just mentioned belonged to Lourdes, and any one who wished it could hear from them a full account of these extraordinary facts.

Book 4 - Part 8

Although the crowd was, as we have already stated, more particularly dense in the morning at the time of Bernadette’s arrival, it was not to be supposed that solitude reigned during the latter part of the day at the Rocks of Massabielle. All the afternoon there was perpetual going to and fro on the road leading to the Grotto, which, from that time, was to be so celebrated. Every one examined it in all directions, many prayed in front of it, and some broke off fragments of it in order to keep them as pious souvenirs.

On that day, towards four o’clock, there were still five or six hundred persons, employed as above-mentioned, on the banks of the Gave.

At the same moment, a heart-rending scene was passing round a cradle in a squalid house at Lourdes, in which resided Jean Beauhohorts, a day-laborer, and his wife Croisine Ducouts.

In the cradle there lay a child about two years old, who was sickly, and of a wretched constitution. He had never been able to walk, was constantly out of health, and, from his birth, had been wasted by slow fever of a consumptive nature, which nothing had succeeded in reducing. Notwithstanding the skillful attention of a medical man of the place, M. Peyrus, the child was rapidly approaching his end. Death was spreading its livid hues on a countenance which had been reduced by protracted sufferings to a deplorable state of emaciation.

The father and mother kept their eyes fixed on their dying child, the former, calm in his grief, while the latter seemed plunged in despair.

One of their neighbors, Françonnette Gozos, was already busying herself in preparing a shroud for the poor child’s burial and, at the same time, using her best efforts to induce the mother to listen to some words of consolation.

The latter was crushed with grief, and anxiously watched the progress of the last agony of death. The child’s eye had become glazed, his limbs were absolutely motionless, and his breathing was imperceptible.

“He is dead,” said the father.

“If he is not dead,” observed the neighbor, “he is on the point of death, my poor friend. Go and weep by the fire, while I, ere long, fold him up in his shroud.”

Croisine Ducouts, the mother of the child, did not appear to hear what was said to her. A sudden idea had just taken possession of her mind, and her tears ceased to flow.

“He is not dead!” she exclaimed; “and the Holy Virgin of the Grotto is going to effect his cure for me.”

“Grief has turned her head,” said Beauhohorts, sadly.

He and the neighbor endeavored in vain to dissuade the mother from her project. The latter had just taken the already motionless body of her child out of the cradle and wrapped it up in her apron.

“I go at once to the Virgin!” she exclaimed, making her way to the door.

“But my dear Croisine,” said her husband and Françonnette to her, “if our poor Justin is not quite dead, you are going to kill him outright.”

The mother, as if beside herself with grief, refused to listen to their expostulations.

“What matters it whether he dies here or at the Grotto? Allow me to implore the mercy of the Mother of God.”

Saying this she left the house, carrying the child in her arms.

As she had said, “she went at once to the Virgin.” She walked at a rapid pace, praying aloud, invoking Mary, and appearing to all who met her like an insane person.

It was about five o’clock in the evening, and there were some hundreds of persons before the Rocks of Massabielle.

The poor mother forced her way through the crowd, with her precious burden in her arms. At the entrance of the Grotto she prostrated herself and prayed, after which she dragged herself on her knees towards the miraculous Spring. Her face was burning, her eyes sparkling and full of tears, and the state of disorder of her entire person proved the intensity of her grief.

She had reached the basin which had been dug by the quarry-men. The water was of an icy temperature.

“What is she going to do?” observed the spectators to themselves.

Croisine drew out of her apron the body of her dying child, which was in a state of complete nudity. She made the sign of the Cross on him and herself, and afterwards, without hesitation, and in a quick and determined manner, plunged the child up to his neck in the icy water of the Spring.

A cry of terror, and a murmur of indignation arose from the crowd.

“The woman is insane!” they exclaimed on all sides, pressing round her to hinder her putting her plan into execution.

“Would you kill your child?” said some one to her, rudely.

It seemed as if she were deaf. She remained motionless as a statue—the statue of Sorrow, Prayer, and Faith.

One of the by-standers touched her on the shoulder. The mother turned round on this, still keeping her child in the water of the Fountain.

“Let me alone, let me alone!” she exclaimed in a voice at once energetic and beseeching. “I wish to do all in my power—God and the Blessed Virgin will do the rest.”

The complete immobility of the child and the cadaverous hues of his face, were remarked by several of those present.

“The child is already dead,” they said. “Let her alone; grief has turned the poor mother’s head.”

No; grief had not turned her head. It led her, on the contrary, into the path of the loftiest faith, of that absolute, unhesitating, undecaying faith which God has solemnly promised never to resist.

The earthly mother felt within her, that she was addressing herself to the heart of that Mother who is in heaven. Thence arose her boundless confidence which neutralized the terrible reality of the dying body she held in her hands. Doubtless, she saw as plainly as the multitude around her, that ice-cold water such as that in which she was plunging her child, was calculated, in ordinary circumstances infallibly to kill the little helpless being to whom she was so fondly attached, and suddenly to terminate his agony by the stroke of death. No matter! Her arm remained steady and her Faith was strong.

For a whole quarter of an hour, before the astonished eyes of the multitude, in the midst of the cries, reproaches, and insults heaped upon her by the crowd of by-standers, she kept her child immersed in the mysterious water which had but lately gushed forth at a gesture from the all-powerful Mother of that God, who, for our sins, died and rose again.

What a sublime spectacle of Catholic faith! This woman precipitated her dying child into the most imminent of earthly dangers, to find in it, in the name of the Virgin Mary, the cure which comes from heaven. Humanly speaking, she was urging him in the direction of death, in order to lead him supernaturally to life! Jesus commended the faith of the Centurion. Truly, that displayed by this poor mother strikes us as being still more worthy of admiration.

The Heart of God could not but be touched by an act of faith, at once so simple and so grand. Our Father, who is at the same time, so invisible and so manifest, bent Himself, doubtless, at the same time as the Blessed Virgin, over so moving and religious a scene, and He blessed the Christian woman, who believed with all the fervor of primitive times.

The child had remained motionless as a corpse during this long immersion. The mother wrapped him once more in her apron, and hastily returned home.

His body was cold as ice.

“You see now that he is dead,” said the father.

“No,” said Croisine, “he is not dead! The Blessed Virgin will effect his recovery.”

With these words the poor woman laid the child down in his cradle. He had scarcely been there a few moments, when the mother, having bent her ear attentively over him, suddenly exclaimed:

“He is breathing!”

Beauhohorts advanced rapidly and listened in his turn. Little Justin was certainly breathing. His eyes were closed, and he slept a calm and deep slumber.

The mother did not weep. During the evening and following night, she came every moment to listen to her child’s respiration, which became stronger and more regular, and she waited with anxiety for the moment of his awaking.

This took place at break of day.

The child’s emaciation had not disappeared, but there was some color in his cheeks, and his features wore an air of repose. The mild ray of life sparkled in his laughing eyes, which were turned towards his mother.

During his slumber, deep as that sent of yore by God upon Adam, the mysterious and omnipotent hand, from which every thing good emanates, had re-animated and strengthened—we dare not say resuscitated—his body, which, but a short time before, was motionless and chill.

The child sought his mother’s breast and drew from it long draughts. Though he had never walked, he wished to leave his cradle and walk about the room. But Croisine, notwithstanding the courage and entire faith she had displayed the previous day, dared not trust too much in his recovery, and trembled at the thought of the danger he had escaped. She resisted the repeated solicitations of the child, and refused to remove him from the cradle.

Thus the day passed by. The child constantly demanded nourishment from his mother’s breasts. Night at length came, and was passed as calmly as the one preceding it. The father and mother left the house at day-break, in order to proceed to their daily toil, and their little Justin was still sleeping in his cradle.

When the mother opened the door on her return, she almost fainted at the sight presented to her view.

The cradle was empty. Justin had risen without any assistance from where his mother had laid him; he was on his legs going to and fro, touching the different articles of furniture, and disarranging the chairs. In short, the little paralyzed child was walking.

A mother’s heart alone can imagine the cry of joy emitted by Croisine at such a spectacle. She wished to rush forward, but could not, so great was her emotion. Her limbs trembled. Her sense of happiness seemed to deprive her of strength, and she supported herself against the door. A vague fear, however, in spite of herself, was mingled with her beaming happiness.

“Take care, you will fall down!” she cried out with anxiety.

He did not fall; his step was firm, and he ran and threw himself into the arms of his mother, who embraced him with tears in her eyes.

“He was cured from yesterday,” thought she to herself; “since he wished to leave his cradle and walk, and I, like an infidel, have hindered him, owing to my want of faith.”

“You now see that he was not dead, and that the Blessed Virgin has saved him,” she observed to her husband, on his return home.

Such were the words of this happy mother.

Françonnette Gozos, who had, only two nights since, been present at what was supposed to be poor Justin’s death-agony, and had arranged the shroud for his interment, happened to arrive at the same time, and could scarcely believe her eyes. She was never tired of gazing at the child, as if she wished to convince herself of his identity.

“It is certainly he!” she exclaimed. “It is certainly poor little Justin!”

They knelt down.

His mother joined the child’s hands to raise them towards heaven; and, all together, they offered thanksgivings to the Mother of Mercies.

His malady never returned. Justin grew rapidly and suffered from no relapse. Since that period, eleven years have elapsed. The writer of these pages determined to see him, not very long since. He is strong and in good health; only his mother grieves that he sometimes plays truant when sent to school, and reproaches him with gadding about more than he ought.

M. Peyrus, the medical man, who had attended the child, frankly allowed the impossibility of explaining this extraordinary occurrence according to the ordinary rules of medical science.

The Doctors Vergez and Dozons undertook, separately, an examination of this fact so highly interesting, both as regards Science and Truth, and, like M. Peyrus, they could but attribute it to the omnipotent agency of God. All united in establishing three circumstances which manifestly impressed on this cure a supernatural character—the duration of the immersion—its immediate effect—and the faculty of walking displayed as soon as the child had quitted his cradle.

The conclusions of M. Vergez’ report were unmistakable on this head.

“A bath of cold water of a quarter of an hour’s duration, in the month of February, inflicted on a child in the agony of death, must, in his opinion, and according to all the data, theoretical and experimental, of medical science, produce immediate death. For,” added the skillful physician, “if affusions of cold water, especially when applied repeatedly, may be of the utmost service in severe adynamic affections, their use is subject to certain rules which cannot be transgressed without exposing life to real danger. As a general rule, the duration of the application of cold water should not exceed a few minutes, because the depression occasioned by cold would destroy all power of reaction in the system.

“Now, the woman Ducouts, having plunged her child in the water of the Fountain, kept him in it for upwards of a quarter of an hour. She therefore sought the cure of her son by means absolutely condemned by experience and the rationale of medical science, and yet she did not on that account obtain it less immediately; for, a few moments later, he fell into a calm and deep sleep which lasted for about twelve hours. And in order that this fact should stand out in the clearest light, and that not the slightest incertitude should hover over the reality and instantaneousness of its production, the child, who had never walked, escaped from his cradle, and commenced walking about with the confidence which is usually only the result of practice, showing by this that this cure was effected without any intermediate state of convalescence, in a manner altogether supernatural.”