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saintly person. Ah! to see her, touch her, become lucky by gazing on her

or surreptitiously rubbing some medal against her dress. It was the

credulous passion of fetishism, a rush of believers pursuing this poor

beatified being in the desire which each felt to secure a share of hope

and divine illusion. She wept at it with very weariness, with impatient

revolt, and often repeated: "Why do they torment me like this? What more

is there in me than in others?" And at last she felt real grief at thus

becoming "the raree-show," as she ended by calling herself with a sad,

suffering smile. She defended herself as far as she could, refusing to

see anyone. Her companions defended her also, and sometimes very sternly,

showing her only to such visitors as were authorised by the Bishop. The

doors of the Convent remained closed, and ecclesiastics almost alone

succeeded in effecting an entrance. Still, even this was too much for her

desire for solitude, and she often had to be obstinate, to request that

the priests who had called might be sent away, weary as she was of always

telling the same story, of ever answering the same questions. She was

incensed, wounded, on behalf of the Blessed Virgin herself. Still, she

sometimes had to yield, for the Bishop in person would bring great

personages, dignitaries, and prelates; and she would then appear with her

grave air, answering politely and as briefly as possible; only feeling at

ease when she was allowed to return to her shadowy corner. Never, indeed,

had distinction weighed more heavily on a mortal. One day, when she was

asked if she was not proud of the continual visits paid her by the

Bishop, she answered simply: "Monseigneur does not come to see me, he

comes to show me." On another occasion some princes of the Church, great

militant Catholics, who wished to see her, were overcome with emotion and

sobbed before her; but, in her horror of being shown, in the vexation

they caused her simple mind, she left them without comprehending, merely

feeling very weary and very sad.

At length, however, she grew accustomed to Saint-Gildard, and spent a

peaceful existence there, engaged in avocations of which she became very

fond. She was so delicate, so frequently ill, that she was employed in

the infirmary. In addition to the little assistance she rendered there,

she worked with her needle, with which she became rather skilful,

embroidering albs and altar-cloths in a delicate manner. But at times

she, would lose all strength, and be unable to do even this light work.

When she was not confined to her bed she spent long days in an

easy-chair, her only diversion being to recite her rosary or to read some

pious work. Now that she had learnt to read, books interested her,

especially the beautiful stories of conversion, the delightful legends in

which saints of both sexes appear, and the splendid and terrible dramas

in which the devil is baffled and cast back into hell. But her great

favourite, the book at which she continually marvelled, was the Bible,

that wonderful New Testament of whose perpetual miracle she never

wearied. She remembered the Bible at Bartres, that old book which had

been in the family a hundred years, and whose pages had turned yellow;

she could again see her foster-father slip a pin between the leaves to

open the book at random, and then read aloud from the top of the

right-hand page; and even at that time she had already known those

beautiful stories so well that she could have continued repeating the

narrative by heart, whatever might be the passage at which the perusal

had ceased. And now that she read the book herself, she found in it a

constant source of surprise, an ever-increasing delight. The story of the

Passion particularly upset her, as though it were some extraordinary

tragical event that had happened only the day before. She sobbed with

pity; it made her poor suffering body quiver for hours. Mingled with her

tears, perhaps, there was the unconscious dolour of her own passion, the

desolate Calvary which she also had been ascending ever since her

childhood.

When Bernadette was well and able to perform her duties in the infirmary,

she bustled about, filling the building with childish liveliness. Until

her death she remained an innocent, infantile being, fond of laughing,

romping, and play. She was very little, the smallest Sister of the

community, so that her companions always treated her somewhat like a

child. Her face grew long and hollow, and lost its bloom of youth; but

she retained the pure divine brightness of her eyes, the beautiful eyes

of a visionary, in which, as in a limpid sky, you detected the flight of

her dreams. As she grew older and her sufferings increased, she became

somewhat sour-tempered and violent, cross-grained, anxious, and at times

rough; little imperfections which after each attack filled her with

remorse. She would humble herself, think herself damned, and beg pardon

of everyone. But, more frequently, what a good little daughter of

Providence she was! She became lively, alert, quick at repartee, full of

mirth-provoking remarks, with a grace quite her own, which made her

beloved. In spite of her great devotion, although she spent days in

prayer, she was not at all bigoted or over-exacting with regard to

others, but tolerant and compassionate. In fact, no nun was ever so much

a woman, with distinct features, a decided personality, charming even in

its puerility. And this gift of childishness which she had retained, the

simple innocence of the child she still was, also made children love her,

as though they recognised in her one of themselves. They all ran to her,

jumped upon her lap, and passed their tiny arms round her neck, and the

garden would then fill with the noise of joyous games, races, and cries;

and it was not she who ran or cried the least, so happy was she at once

more feeling herself a poor unknown little girl as in the far-away days

of Bartres! Later on it was related that a mother had one day brought her

paralysed child to the convent for the saint to touch and cure it. The

woman sobbed so much that the Superior ended by consenting to make the

attempt. However, as Bernadette indignantly protested whenever she was

asked to perform a miracle, she was not forewarned, but simply called to

take the sick child to the infirmary. And she did so, and when she stood

the child on the ground it walked. It was cured.

Ah! how many times must Bartres and her free childhood spent watching her

lambs--the years passed among the hills, in the long grass, in the leafy

woods--have returned to her during the hours she gave to her dreams when

weary of praying for sinners! No one then fathomed her soul, no one could

say if involuntary regrets did not rend her wounded heart. One day she

spoke some words, which her historians have preserved, with the view of

making her passion more touching. Cloistered far away from her mountains,

confined to a bed of sickness, she exclaimed: "It seems to me that I was

made to live, to act, to be ever on the move, and yet the Lord will have

me remain motionless." What a revelation, full of terrible testimony and

immense sadness! Why should the Lord wish that dear being, all grace and

gaiety, to remain motionless? Could she not have honoured Him equally

well by living the free, healthy life that she had been born to live? And

would she not have done more to increase the world's happiness and her

own if, instead of praying for sinners, her constant occupation, she had

given her love to the husband who might have been united to her and to

the children who might have been born to her? She, so gay and so active,

would, on certain evenings, become extremely depressed. She turned gloomy

and remained wrapped in herself, as though overcome by excess of pain. No

doubt the cup was becoming too bitter. The thought of her life's

perpetual renunciation was killing her.

Did Bernadette often think of Lourdes whilst she was at Saint-Gildard?

What knew she of the triumph of the Grotto, of the prodigies which were

daily transforming the land of miracles? These questions were never

thoroughly elucidated. Her companions were forbidden to talk to her of

such matters, which remained enveloped in absolute, continual silence.

She herself did not care to speak of them; she kept silent with regard to

the mysterious past, and evinced no desire to know the present, however

triumphant it might be. But all the same did not her heart, in

imagination, fly away to the enchanted country of her childhood, where

lived her kith and kin, where all her life-ties had been formed, where

she had left the most extraordinary dream that ever human being dreamt?

Surely she must have sometimes travelled the beautiful journey of memory,

she must have known the main features of the great events that had taken

place at Lourdes. What she most dreaded was to go there herself, and, she

always refused to do so, knowing full well that she could not remain

unrecognised, and fearful of meeting the crowds whose adoration awaited

her. What glory would have been hers had she been headstrong, ambitious,

domineering! She would have returned to the holy spot of her visions,

have worked miracles there, have become a priestess, a female pope, with

the infallibility and sovereignty of one of the elect, a friend of the

Blessed Virgin. But the Fathers never really feared this, although

express orders had been given to withdraw her from the world for her

salvation's sake. In reality they were easy, for they knew her, so gentle

and so humble in her fear of becoming divine, in her ignorance of the

colossal machine which she had put in motion, and the working of which

would have made her recoil with affright had she understood it. No, no!

that was no longer her land, that place of crowds, of violence and

trafficking. She would have suffered too much there, she would have been

out of her element, bewildered, ashamed. And so, when pilgrims bound

thither asked her with a smile, "Will you come with us?" she shivered

slightly, and then hastily replied, "No, no! but how I should like to,

were I a little bird!"

Her reverie alone was that little travelling bird, with rapid flight and

noiseless wings, which continually went on pilgrimage to the Grotto. In

her dreams, indeed, she must have continually lived at Lourdes, though in

the flesh she had not even gone there for either her father's or her

mother's funeral. Yet she loved her kin; she was anxious to procure work

for her relations who had remained poor, and she had insisted on seeing

her eldest brother, who, coming to Nevers to complain, had been refused

admission to the convent. However, he found her weary and resigned, and

she did not ask him a single question about New Lourdes, as though that

rising town were no longer her own. The year of the crowning of the

Virgin, a priest whom she had deputed to pray for her before the Grotto

came back and told her of the never-to-be forgotten wonders of the

ceremony, the hundred thousand pilgrims who had flocked to it, and the

five-and-thirty bishops in golden vestments who had assembled in the

resplendent Basilica. Whilst listening, she trembled with her customary

little quiver of desire and anxiety. And when the priest exclaimed, "Ah!

if you had only seen that pomp!" she answered: "Me! I was much better

here in my little corner in the infirmary." They had robbed her of her

glory; her work shone forth resplendently amidst a continuous hosanna,

and she only tasted joy in forgetfulness, in the gloom of the cloister,

where the opulent farmers of the Grotto forgot her. It was never the

re-echoing solemnities that prompted her mysterious journeys; the little

bird of her soul only winged its lonesome flight to Lourdes on days of

solitude, in the peaceful hours when no one could there disturb its

devotions. It was before the wild primitive Grotto that she returned to

kneel, amongst the bushy eglantine, as in the days when the Gave was not

walled in by a monumental quay. And it was the old town that she visited

at twilight, when the cool, perfumed breezes came down from the

mountains, the old painted and gilded semi-Spanish church where she had

made her first communion, the old Asylum so full of suffering where

during eight years she had grown accustomed to solitude--all that poor,

innocent old town, whose every paving-stone awoke old affections in her

memory's depths.

And did Bernadette ever extend the pilgrimage of her dreams as far as

Bartres? Probably, at times when she sat in her invalid-chair and let

some pious book slip from her tired hands, and closed her eyes, Bartres

did appear to her, lighting up the darkness of her view. The little

antique Romanesque church with sky-blue nave and blood-red altar screens

stood there amidst the tombs of the narrow cemetery. Then she would find

herself once more in the house of the Lagues, in the large room on the

left, where the fire was burning, and where, in winter-time, such

wonderful stories were told whilst the big clock gravely ticked the hours

away. At times the whole countryside spread out before her, meadows

without end, giant chestnut-trees beneath which you lost yourself,

deserted table-lands whence you descried the distant mountains, the Pic

du Midi and the Pic de Viscos soaring aloft as airy and as rose-coloured

as dreams, in a paradise such as the legends have depicted. And

afterwards, afterwards came her free childhood, when she scampered off

whither she listed in the open air, her lonely, dreamy thirteenth year,

when with all the joy of living she wandered through the immensity of

nature. And now, too, perhaps, she again beheld herself roaming in the

tall grass among the hawthorn bushes beside the streams on a warm sunny

day in June. Did she not picture herself grown, with a lover of her own

age, whom she would have loved with all the simplicity and affection of

her heart? Ah! to be a child again, to be free, unknown, happy once more,

to love afresh, and to love differently! The vision must have passed

confusedly before her--a husband who worshipped her, children gaily