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wait. Such was her despair, indeed, that she even became sacrilegious.

"No, no," she stammered, "the Virgin is cruel; she is unjust, for she did

not cure me just now. Yet I felt so certain that she would grant my

prayer, I had prayed to her so fervently. I shall never be cured, now

that the first day is past. It was a Saturday, and I was convinced that I

should be cured on a Saturday. I did not want to speak--and oh! prevent

me, for my heart is too full, and I might say more than I ought to do."

With fraternal hands he had quickly taken hold of her head, and he was

endeavouring to stifle the cry of her rebellion. "Be quiet, Marie, I

entreat you! It would never do for anyone to hear you--you so pious! Do

you want to scandalise every soul?"

But in spite of her efforts she was unable to keep silence. "I should

stifle, I must speak out," she said. "I no longer love her, no longer

believe in her. The tales which are related here are all falsehoods;

there is _nothing_, she does not even exist, since she does not hear when

one speaks to her, and sobs. If you only knew all that I said to her! Oh!

I want to go away at once. Take me away, carry me away in your arms, so

that I may go and die in the street, where the passers-by, at least, will

take pity on my sufferings!"

She was growing weak again, and had once more fallen on her back,

stammering, talking childishly. "Besides, nobody loves me," she said. "My

father was not even there. And you, my friend, forsook me. When I saw

that it was another who was taking me to the piscinas, I began to feel a

chill. Yes, that chill of doubt which I often felt in Paris. And that is

at least certain, I doubted--perhaps, indeed, that is why she did not

cure me. I cannot have prayed well enough, I am not pious enough, no

doubt."

She was no longer blaspheming, but seeking for excuses to explain the

non-intervention of Heaven. However, her face retained an angry

expression amidst this struggle which she was waging with the Supreme

Power, that Power which she had loved so well and entreated so fervently,

but which had not obeyed her. When, on rare occasions, a fit of rage of

this description broke out in the ward, and the sufferers, lying on their

beds, rebelled against their fate, sobbing and lamenting, and at times

even swearing, the lady-hospitallers and the Sisters, somewhat shocked,

would content themselves with simply closing the bed-curtains. Grace had

departed, one must await its return. And at last, sometimes after long

hours, the rebellious complaints would die away, and peace would reign

again amidst the deep, woeful silence.

"Calm yourself, calm yourself, I implore you," Pierre gently repeated to

Marie, seeing that a fresh attack was coming upon her, an attack of doubt

in herself, of fear that she was unworthy of the divine assistance.

Sister Hyacinthe, moreover, had again drawn near. "You will not be able

to take the sacrament by-and-by, my dear child," said she, "if you

continue in such a state. Come, since we have given Monsieur l'Abbe

permission to read to you, why don't you let him do so?"

Marie made a feeble gesture as though to say that she consented, and

Pierre at once took out of the valise at the foot of her bed, the little

blue-covered book in which the story of Bernadette was so naively

related. As on the previous night, however, when the train was rolling

on, he did not confine himself to the bald phraseology of the book, but

began improvising, relating all manner of details in his own fashion, in

order to charm the simple folks who listened to him. Nevertheless, with

his reasoning, analytical proclivities, he could not prevent himself from

secretly re-establishing the real facts, imparting, for himself alone, a

human character to this legend, whose wealth of prodigies contributed so

greatly to the cure of those that suffered. Women were soon sitting up on

all the surrounding beds. They wished to hear the continuation of the

story, for the thought of the sacrament which they were passionately

awaiting had prevented almost all of them from getting to sleep. And

seated there, in the pale light of the lantern hanging from the wall

above him, Pierre little by little raised his voice, so that he might be

heard by the whole ward.

"The persecutions began with the very first miracles. Called a liar and a

lunatic, Bernadette was threatened with imprisonment. Abbe Peyramale, the

parish priest of Lourdes, and Monseigneur Laurence, Bishop of Tarbes,

like the rest of the clergy, refrained from all intervention, waiting the

course of events with the greatest prudence; whilst the civil

authorities, the Prefect, the Public Prosecutor, the Mayor, and the

Commissary of Police, indulged in excessive anti-religious zeal."

Continuing his perusal in this fashion, Pierre saw the real story rise up

before him with invincible force. His mind travelled a short distance

backward and he beheld Bernadette at the time of the first apparitions,

so candid, so charming in her ignorance and good faith, amidst all her

sufferings. And she was truly the visionary, the saint, her face assuming

an expression of superhuman beauty during her crises of ecstasy. Her brow

beamed, her features seemed to ascend, her eyes were bathed with light,

whilst her parted lips burnt with divine love. And then her whole person

became majestic; it was in a slow, stately way that she made the sign of

the cross, with gestures which seemed to embrace the whole horizon. The

neighbouring valleys, the villages, the towns, spoke of Bernadette alone.

Although the Lady had not yet told her name, she was recognised, and

people said, "It is she, the Blessed Virgin." On the first market-day, so

many people flocked into Lourdes that the town quite overflowed. All

wished to see the blessed child whom the Queen of the Angels had chosen,

and who became so beautiful when the heavens opened to her enraptured

gaze. The crowd on the banks of the Gave grew larger each morning, and

thousands of people ended by installing themselves there, jostling one

another that they might lose nothing of the spectacle! As soon as

Bernadette appeared, a murmur of fervour spread: "Here is the saint, the

saint, the saint!" Folks rushed forward to kiss her garments. She was a

Messiah, the eternal Messiah whom the nations await, and the need of whom

is ever arising from generation to generation. And, moreover, it was ever

the same adventure beginning afresh: an apparition of the Virgin to a

shepherdess; a voice exhorting the world to penitence; a spring gushing

forth; and miracles astonishing and enrapturing the crowds that hastened

to the spot in larger and larger numbers.

Ah! those first miracles of Lourdes, what a spring-tide flowering of

consolation and hope they brought to the hearts of the wretched, upon

whom poverty and sickness were preying! Old Bourriette's restored

eyesight, little Bouhohort's resuscitation in the icy water, the deaf

recovering their hearing, the lame suddenly enabled to walk, and so many

other cases, Blaise Maumus, Bernade Soubies,* Auguste Bordes, Blaisette

Soupenne, Benoite Cazeaux, in turn cured of the most dreadful ailments,

became the subject of endless conversations, and fanned the illusions of

all those who suffered either in their hearts or their flesh. On

Thursday, March 4th, the last day of the fifteen visits solicited by the

Virgin, there were more than twenty thousand persons assembled before the

Grotto. Everybody, indeed, had come down from the mountains. And this

immense throng found at the Grotto the divine food that it hungered for,

a feast of the Marvellous, a sufficient meed of the Impossible to content

its belief in a superior Power, which deigned to bestow some attention

upon poor folks, and to intervene in the wretched affairs of this lower

world, in order to re-establish some measure of justice and kindness. It

was indeed the cry of heavenly charity bursting forth, the invisible

helping hand stretched out at last to dress the eternal sores of

humanity. Ah! that dream in which each successive generation sought

refuge, with what indestructible energy did it not arise among the

disinherited ones of this world as soon as it found a favourable spot,

prepared by circumstances! And for centuries, perhaps, circumstances had

never so combined to kindle the mystical fire of faith as they did at

Lourdes.

* I give this name as written by M. Zola; but in other works on

Lourdes I find it given as "Bernarde Loubie--a bed-ridden old

woman, cured of a paralytic affection by drinking the water of

the Grotto."--Trans.

A new religion was about to be founded, and persecutions at once began,

for religions only spring up amidst vexations and rebellions. And even as

it was long ago at Jerusalem, when the tidings of miracles spread, the

civil authorities--the Public Prosecutor, the Justice of the Peace, the

Mayor, and particularly the Prefect of Tarbes--were all roused and began

to bestir themselves. The Prefect was a sincere Catholic, a worshipper, a

man of perfect honour, but he also had the firm mind of a public

functionary, was a passionate defender of order, and a declared adversary

of fanaticism which gives birth to disorder and religious perversion.

Under his orders at Lourdes there was a Commissary of Police, a man of

great intelligence and shrewdness, who had hitherto discharged his

functions in a very proper way, and who, legitimately enough, beheld in

this affair of the apparitions an opportunity to put his gift of

sagacious skill to the proof. So the struggle began, and it was this

Commissary who, on the first Sunday in Lent, at the time of the first

apparitions, summoned Bernadette to his office in order that he might

question her. He showed himself affectionate, then angry, then

threatening, but all in vain; the answers which the girl gave him were

ever the same. The story which she related, with its slowly accumulated

details, had little by little irrevocably implanted itself in her

infantile mind. And it was no lie on the part of this poor suffering

creature, this exceptional victim of hysteria, but an unconscious

haunting, a radical lack of will-power to free herself from her original

hallucination. She knew not how to exert any such will, she could not,

she would not exert it. Ah! the poor child, the dear child, so amiable

and so gentle, so incapable of any evil thought, from that time forward

lost to life, crucified by her fixed idea, whence one could only have

extricated her by changing her environment, by restoring her to the open

air, in some land of daylight and human affection. But she was the chosen

one, she had beheld the Virgin, she would suffer from it her whole life

long and die from it at last!

Pierre, who knew Bernadette so well, and who felt a fraternal pity for

her memory, the fervent compassion with which one regards a human saint,

a simple, upright, charming creature tortured by her faith, allowed his

emotion to appear in his moist eyes and trembling voice. And a pause in

his narrative ensued. Marie, who had hitherto been lying there quite

stiff, with a hard expression of revolt still upon her face, opened her

clenched hands and made a vague gesture of pity. "Ah," she murmured, "the

poor child, all alone to contend against those magistrates, and so

innocent, so proud, so unshakable in her championship of the truth!"

The same compassionate sympathy was arising from all the beds in the

ward. That hospital inferno with its nocturnal wretchedness, its

pestilential atmosphere, its pallets of anguish heaped together, its

weary lady-hospitallers and Sisters flitting phantom-like hither and

thither, now seemed to be illumined by a ray of divine charity. Was not

the eternal illusion of happiness rising once more amidst tears and

unconscious falsehoods? Poor, poor Bernadette! All waxed indignant at the

thought of the persecutions which she had endured in defence of her

faith.

Then Pierre, resuming his story, related all that the child had had to

suffer. After being questioned by the Commissary she had to appear before

the judges of the local tribunal. The entire magistracy pursued her, and

endeavoured to wring a retractation from her. But the obstinacy of her

dream was stronger than the common sense of all the civil authorities put

together. Two doctors who were sent by the Prefect to make a careful

examination of the girl came, as all doctors would have done, to the

honest opinion that it was a case of nervous trouble, of which the asthma

was a sure sign, and which, in certain circumstances, might have induced

visions. This nearly led to her removal and confinement in a hospital at

Tarbes. But public exasperation was feared. A bishop had fallen on his

knees before her. Some ladies had sought to buy favours from her for

gold. Moreover she had found a refuge with the Sisters of Nevers, who

tended the aged in the town asylum, and there she made her first

communion, and was with difficulty taught to read and write. As the

Blessed Virgin seemed to have chosen her solely to work the happiness of

others, and she herself had not been cured, it was very sensibly decided

to take her to the baths of Cauterets, which were so near at hand.

However, they did her no good. And no sooner had she returned to Lourdes

than the torture of being questioned and adored by a whole people began

afresh, became aggravated, and filled her more and more with horror of

the world. Her life was over already; she would be a playful child no

more; she could never be a young girl dreaming of a husband, a young wife

kissing the cheeks of sturdy children. She had beheld the Virgin, she was

the chosen one, the martyr. If the Virgin, said believers, had confided

three secrets to her, investing her with a triple armour as it were, it

was simply in order to sustain her in her appointed course.

The clergy had for a long time remained aloof, on its own side full of

doubt and anxiety. Abby Peyramale, the parish priest of Lourdes, was a