interested. They no longer took their eyes off this little girl on whom
a miracle had been performed, but scanned her from head to foot as
though seeking for some sign of the prodigy. Those who were able to
stand rose up in order that they might the better see her, and the
others, the infirm ones, stretched on their mattresses, strove to raise
themselves and turn their heads. Amidst the suffering which had again
come upon them on leaving Poitiers, the terror which filled them at the
thought that they must continue rolling onward for another fifteen
hours, the sudden advent of this child, favoured by Heaven, was like a
divine relief, a ray of hope whence they would derive sufficient
strength to accomplish the remainder of their terrible journey. The
moaning had abated somewhat already, and every face was turned towards
the girl with an ardent desire to believe.
This was especially the case with Marie, who, already reviving, joined
her trembling hands, and in a gentle supplicating voice said to Pierre,
“Question her, pray question her, ask her to tell us everything—cured,
O God! cured of such a terrible complaint!”
Madame de Jonquiere, who was quite affected, had leant over the
partition to kiss the girl. “Certainly,” said she, “our little friend
will tell you all about it. Won’t you, my darling? You will tell us
what the Blessed Virgin did for you?”
“Oh, certainly! madame-as much as you like,” answered Sophie with her
smiling, modest air, her eyes gleaming with intelligence. Indeed, she
wished to begin at once, and raised her right hand with a pretty
gesture, as a sign to everybody to be attentive. Plainly enough, she
had already acquired the habit of speaking in public.
She could not be seen, however, from some parts of the carriage, and an
idea came to Sister Hyacinthe, who said: “Get up on the seat, Sophie,
and speak loudly, on account of the noise which the train makes.”
This amused the girl, and before beginning she needed time to become
serious again. “Well, it was like this,” said she; “my foot was past
cure, I couldn’t even go to church any more, and it had to be kept
bandaged, because there was always a lot of nasty matter coming from
it. Monsieur Rivoire, the doctor, who had made a cut in it, so as to
see inside it, said that he should be obliged to take out a piece of
the bone; and that, sure enough, would have made me lame for life. But
when I got to Lourdes and had prayed a great deal to the Blessed
Virgin, I went to dip my foot in the water, wishing so much that I
might be cured that I did not even take the time to pull the bandage
off. And everything remained in the water, there was no longer anything
the matter with my foot when I took it out.”
A murmur of mingled surprise, wonder, and desire arose and spread among
those who heard this marvellous tale, so sweet and soothing to all who
were in despair. But the little one had not yet finished. She had
simply paused. And now, making a fresh gesture, holding her arms
somewhat apart, she concluded: “When I got back to Vivonne and Monsieur
Rivoire saw my foot again, he said: ‘Whether it be God or the Devil who
has cured this child, it is all the same to me; but in all truth she
/is/ cured.’”
This time a burst of laughter rang out. The girl spoke in too
recitative a way, having repeated her story so many times already that
she knew it by heart. The doctor’s remark was sure to produce an
effect, and she herself laughed at it in advance, certain as she was
that the others would laugh also. However, she still retained her
candid, touching air.
But she had evidently forgotten some particular, for Sister Hyacinthe,
a glance from whom had foreshadowed the doctor’s jest, now softly
prompted her “And what was it you said to Madame la Comtesse, the
superintendent of your ward, Sophie?”
“Ah! yes. I hadn’t brought many bandages for my foot with me, and I
said to her, ‘It was very kind of the Blessed Virgin to cure me the
first day, as I should have run out of linen on the morrow.’”
This provoked a fresh outburst of delight. They all thought her so
nice, to have been cured like that! And in reply to a question from
Madame de Jonquiere, she also had to tell the story of her boots, a
pair of beautiful new boots which Madame la Comtesse had given her, and
in which she had run, jumped, and danced about, full of childish
delight. Boots! think of it, she who for three years had not even been
able to wear a slipper.
Pierre, who had become grave, waxing pale with the secret uneasiness
which was penetrating him, continued to look at her. And he also asked
her other questions. She was certainly not lying, and he merely
suspected a slow distortion of the actual truth, an easily explained
embellishment of the real facts amidst all the joy she felt at being
cured and becoming an important little personage. Who now knew if the
cicatrisation of her injuries, effected, so it was asserted,
completely, instantaneously, in a few seconds, had not in reality been
the work of days? Where were the witnesses?
Just then Madame de Jonquiere began to relate that she had been at the
hospital at the time referred to. “Sophie was not in my ward,” said
she, “but I had met her walking lame that very morning—”
Pierre hastily interrupted the lady-hospitaller. “Ah! you saw her foot
before and after the immersion?”
“No, no! I don’t think that anybody was able to see it, for it was
bound round with bandages. She told you that the bandages had fallen
into the piscina.” And, turning towards the child, Madame de Jonquiere
added, “But she will show you her foot—won’t you, Sophie? Undo your
shoe.”
The girl took off her shoe, and pulled down her stocking, with a
promptness and ease of manner which showed how thoroughly accustomed
she had become to it all. And she not only stretched out her foot,
which was very clean and very white, carefully tended indeed, with
well-cut, pink nails, but complacently turned it so that the young
priest might examine it at his ease. Just below the ankle there was a
long scar, whose whity seam, plainly defined, testified to the gravity
of the complaint from which the girl had suffered.
“Oh! take hold of the heel, Monsieur l’Abbe,” said she. “Press it as
hard as you like. I no longer feel any pain at all.”
Pierre made a gesture from which it might have been thought that he was
delighted with the power exercised by the Blessed Virgin. But he was
still tortured by doubt. What unknown force had acted in this case? Or
rather what faulty medical diagnosis, what assemblage of errors and
exaggerations, had ended in this fine tale?
All the patients, however, wished to see the miraculous foot, that
outward and visible sign of the divine cure which each of them was
going in search of. And it was Marie, sitting up in her box, and
already feeling less pain, who touched it first. Then Madame Maze,
quite roused from her melancholy, passed it on to Madame Vincent, who
would have kissed it for the hope which it restored to her. M.
Sabathier had listened to all the explanations with a beatific air;
Madame Vetu, La Grivotte, and even Brother Isidore opened their eyes,
and evinced signs of interest; whilst the face of Elise Rouquet had
assumed an extraordinary expression, transfigured by faith, almost
beatified. If a sore had thus disappeared, might not her own sore close
and disappear, her face retaining no trace of it save a slight scar,
and again becoming such a face as other people had? Sophie, who was
still standing, had to hold on to one of the iron rails, and place her
foot on the partition, now on the right, now on the left. And she did
not weary of it all, but felt exceedingly happy and proud at the many
exclamations which were raised, the quivering admiration and religious
respect which were bestowed on that little piece of her person, that
little foot which had now, so to say, become sacred.
“One must possess great faith, no doubt,” said Marie, thinking aloud.
“One must have a pure unspotted soul.” And, addressing herself to M. de
Guersaint, she added: “Father, I feel that I should get well if I were
ten years old, if I had the unspotted soul of a little girl.”
“But you are ten years old, my darling! Is it not so, Pierre? A little
girl of ten years old could not have a more spotless soul.”
Possessed of a mind prone to chimeras, M. de Guersaint was fond of
hearing tales of miracles. As for the young priest, profoundly affected
by the ardent purity which the young girl evinced, he no longer sought
to discuss the question, but let her surrender herself to the consoling
illusions which Sophie’s tale had wafted through the carriage.
The temperature had become yet more oppressive since their departure
from Poitiers, a storm was rising in the coppery sky, and it seemed as
though the train were rushing through a furnace. The villages passed,
mournful and solitary under the burning sun. At Couhe-Verac they had
again said their chaplets, and sung another canticle. At present,
however, there was some slight abatement of the religious exercises.
Sister Hyacinthe, who had not yet been able to lunch, ventured to eat a
roll and some fruit in all haste, whilst still ministering to the
strange man whose faint, painful breathing seemed to have become more
regular. And it was only on passing Ruffec at three o’clock that they
said the vespers of the Blessed Virgin.
“/Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genitrix/.”
“/Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi/.”*
* “Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”
As they were finishing, M. Sabathier, who had watched little Sophie
while she put on her shoe and stocking, turned towards M. de Guersaint.
“This child’s case is interesting, no doubt,” he remarked. “But it is a
mere nothing, monsieur, for there have been far more marvellous cures
than that. Do you know the story of Pierre de Rudder, a Belgian
working-man?”
Everybody had again begun to listen.
“This man,” continued M. Sabathier, “had his leg broken by the fall of
a tree. Eight years afterwards the two fragments of the bone had not
yet joined together again—the two ends could be seen in the depths of a
sore which was continually suppurating; and the leg hung down quite
limp, swaying in all directions. Well, it was sufficient for this man
to drink a glassful of the miraculous water, and his leg was made whole
again. He was able to walk without crutches, and the doctor said to
him: ‘Your leg is like that of a new-born child.’ Yes, indeed, a
perfectly new leg.”
Nobody spoke, but the listeners exchanged glances of ecstasy.
“And, by the way,” resumed M. Sabathier, “it is like the story of Louis
Bouriette, a quarryman, one of the first of the Lourdes miracles. Do
you know it? Bouriette had been injured by an explosion during some
blasting operations. The sight of his right eye was altogether
destroyed, and he was even threatened with the loss of the left one.
Well, one day he sent his daughter to fetch a bottleful of the muddy
water of the source, which then scarcely bubbled up to the surface. He
washed his eye with this muddy liquid, and prayed fervently. And, all
at once, he raised a cry, for he could see, monsieur, see as well as
you and I. The doctor who was attending him drew up a detailed
narrative of the case, and there cannot be the slightest doubt about
its truth.”
“It is marvellous,” murmured M. de Guersaint in his delight.
“Would you like another example, monsieur? I can give you a famous one,
that of Francois Macary, the carpenter of Lavaur. During eighteen years
he had suffered from a deep varicose ulcer, with considerable
enlargement of the tissues in the mesial part of the left leg. He had
reached such a point that he could no longer move, and science decreed
that he would forever remain infirm. Well, one evening he shuts himself
up with a bottle of Lourdes water. He takes off his bandages, washes
both his legs, and drinks what little water then remains in the bottle.
Then he goes to bed and falls asleep; and when he awakes, he feels his
legs and looks at them. There is nothing left; the varicose
enlargement, the ulcers, have all disappeared. The skin of his knee,
monsieur, had become as smooth, as fresh as it had been when he was
twenty.”
This time there was an explosion of surprise and admiration. The
patients and the pilgrims were entering into the enchanted land of
miracles, where impossibilities are accomplished at each bend of the
pathways, where one marches on at ease from prodigy to prodigy. And
each had his or her story to tell, burning with a desire to contribute
a fresh proof, to fortify faith and hope by yet another example.
That silent creature, Madame Maze, was so transported that she spoke
the first. “I have a friend,” said she, “who knew the Widow Rizan, that
lady whose cure also created so great a stir. For four-and-twenty years
her left side had been entirely paralysed. Her stomach was unable to
retain any solid food, and she had become an inert bag of bones which
had to be turned over in bed, The friction of the sheets, too, had
ended by rubbing her skin away in parts. Well, she was so low one
evening that the doctor announced that she would die during the night.
An hour later, however, she emerged from her torpor and asked her
daughter in a faint voice to go and fetch her a glass of Lourdes water
from a neighbour’s. But she was only able to obtain this glass of water
on the following morning; and she cried out to her daughter: ‘Oh! it is
life that I am drinking—rub my face with it, rub my arm and my leg, rub
my whole body with it!’ And when her daughter obeyed her, she gradually
saw the huge swelling subside, and the paralysed, tumefied limbs
recover their natural suppleness and appearance. Nor was that all, for
Madame Rizan cried out that she was cured and felt hungry, and wanted
bread and meat—she who had eaten none for four-and-twenty years! And
she got out of bed and dressed herself, whilst her daughter, who was so
overpowered that the neighbours thought she had become an orphan,
replied to them: ‘No, no, mamma isn’t dead, she has come to life
again!’”
This narrative had brought tears to Madame Vincent’s eyes. Ah! if she
had only been able to see her little Rose recover like that, eat with a
good appetite, and run about again! At the same time, another case,
which she had been told of in Paris and which had greatly influenced
her in deciding to take her ailing child to Lourdes, returned to her
memory.
“And I, too,” said she, “know the story of a girl who was paralysed.
Her name was Lucie Druon, and she was an inmate of an orphan asylum.
She was quite young and could not even kneel down. Her limbs were bent
like hoops. Her right leg, the shorter of the two, had ended by
becoming twisted round the left one; and when any of the other girls
carried her about you saw her feet hanging down quite limp, like dead
ones. Please notice that she did not even go to Lourdes. She simply
performed a novena; but she fasted during the nine days, and her desire
to be cured was so great that she spent her nights in prayer. At last,
on the ninth day, whilst she was drinking a little Lourdes water, she
felt a violent commotion in her legs. She picked herself up, fell down,
picked herself up again and walked. All her little companions, who were
astonished, almost frightened at the sight, began to cry out ‘Lucie can
walk! Lucie can walk!’ It was quite true. In a few seconds her legs had
become straight and strong and healthy. She crossed the courtyard and
was able to climb up the steps of the chapel, where the whole
sisterhood, transported with gratitude, chanted the /Magnificat/. Ah!
the dear child, how happy, how happy she must have been!”
As Madame Vincent finished, two tears fell from her cheeks on to the
pale face of her little girl, whom she kissed distractedly.
The general interest was still increasing, becoming quite impassioned.
The rapturous joy born of these beautiful stories, in which Heaven
invariably triumphed over human reality, transported these childlike
souls to such a point that those who were suffering the most grievously
sat up in their turn, and recovered the power of speech. And with the
narratives of one and all was blended a thought of the sufferer’s own
ailment, a belief that he or she would also be cured, since a malady of
the same description had vanished like an evil dream beneath the breath
of the Divinity.
“Ah!” stammered Madame Vetu, her articulation hindered by her
sufferings, “there was another one, Antoinette Thardivail, whose
stomach was being eaten away like mine. You would have said that dogs
were devouring it, and sometimes there was a swelling in it as big as a
child’s head. Tumours indeed were ever forming in it, like fowl’s eggs,
so that for eight months she brought up blood. And she also was at the
point of death, with nothing but her skin left on her bones, and dying
of hunger, when she drank some water of Lourdes and had the pit of her
stomach washed with it. Three minutes afterwards, her doctor, who on
the previous day had left her almost in the last throes, scarce
breathing, found her up and sitting by the fireside, eating a tender
chicken’s wing with a good appetite. She had no more tumours, she
laughed as she had laughed when she was twenty, and her face had
regained the brilliancy of youth. Ah! to be able to eat what one likes,
to become young again, to cease suffering!”
“And the cure of Sister Julienne!” then exclaimed La Grivotte, raising
herself on one of her elbows, her eyes glittering with fever. “In her
case it commenced with a bad cold as it did with me, and then she began
to spit blood. And every six months she fell ill again and had to take
to her bed. The last time everybody said that she wouldn’t leave it
alive. The doctors had vainly tried every remedy, iodine, blistering,
and cauterising. In fact, hers was a real case of phthisis, certified
by half a dozen medical men. Well, she comes to Lourdes, and Heaven
alone knows amidst what awful suffering—she was so bad, indeed, that at
Toulouse they thought for a moment that she was about to die! The
Sisters had to carry her in their arms, and on reaching the piscina the
lady-hospitallers wouldn’t bathe her. She was dead, they said. No
matter! she was undressed at last, and plunged into the water, quite
unconscious and covered with perspiration. And when they took her out
she was so pale that they laid her on the ground, thinking that it was
certainly all over with her at last. But, all at once, colour came back
to her cheeks, her eyes opened, and she drew a long breath. She was
cured; she dressed herself without any help and made a good meal after
she had been to the Grotto to thank the Blessed Virgin. There! there’s
no gainsaying it, that was a real case of phthisis, completely cured as
though by medicine!”
Thereupon Brother Isidore in his turn wished to speak; but he was
unable to do so at any length, and could only with difficulty manage to
say to his sister: “Marthe, tell them the story of Sister Dorothee
which the priest of Saint-Sauveur related to us.”
“Sister Dorothee,” began the peasant girl in an awkward way, “felt her
leg quite numbed when she got up one morning, and from that time she
lost the use of it, for it got as cold and as heavy as a stone. Besides
which she felt a great pain in the back. The doctors couldn’t
understand it. She saw half a dozen of them, who pricked her with pins
and burnt her skin with a lot of drugs. But it was just as if they had
sung to her. Sister Dorothee had well understood that only the Blessed
Virgin could find the right remedy for her, and so she went off to
Lourdes, and had herself dipped in the piscina. She thought at first
that the water was going to kill her, for it was so bitterly cold. But
by-and-by it became so soft that she fancied it was warm, as nice as
milk. She had never felt so nice before, it seemed to her as if her
veins were opening and the water were flowing into them. As you will
understand, life was returning into her body since the Blessed Virgin
was concerning herself in the case. She no longer had anything the
matter with her when she came out, but walked about, ate the whole of a
pigeon for her dinner, and slept all night long like the happy woman
she was. Glory to the Blessed Virgin, eternal gratitude to the most
Powerful Mother and her Divine Son!”
Elise Rouquet would also have liked to bring forward a miracle which
she was acquainted with. Only she spoke with so much difficulty owing
to the deformity of her mouth, that she had not yet been able to secure
a turn. Just then, however, there was a pause, and drawing the wrap,
which concealed the horror of her sore, slightly on one side, she
profited by the opportunity to begin.
“For my part, I wasn’t told anything about a great illness, but it was
a very funny case at all events,” she said. “It was about a woman,
Celestine Dubois, as she was called, who had run a needle right into
her hand while she was washing. It stopped there for seven years, for
no doctor was able to take it out. Her hand shrivelled up, and she
could no longer open it. Well, she got to Lourdes, and dipped her hand
into the piscina. But as soon as she did so she began to shriek, and
took it out again. Then they caught hold of her and put her hand into
the water by force, and kept it there while she continued sobbing, with
her face covered with sweat. Three times did they plunge her hand into
the piscina, and each time they saw the needle moving along, till it
came out by the tip of the thumb. She shrieked, of course, because the
needle was moving though her flesh just as though somebody had been
pushing it to drive it out. And after that Celestine never suffered
again, and only a little scar could be seen on her hand as a mark of
what the Blessed Virgin had done.”
This anecdote produced a greater effect than even the miraculous cures
of the most fearful illnesses. A needle which moved as though somebody
were pushing it! This peopled the Invisible, showed each sufferer his
Guardian Angel standing behind him, only awaiting the orders of Heaven
in order to render him assistance. And besides, how pretty and
childlike the story was—this needle which came out in the miraculous
water after obstinately refusing to stir during seven long years.
Exclamations of delight resounded from all the pleased listeners; they
smiled and laughed with satisfaction, radiant at finding that nothing
was beyond the power of Heaven, and that if it were Heaven’s pleasure
they themselves would all become healthy, young, and superb. It was
sufficient that one should fervently believe and pray in order that
nature might be confounded and that the Incredible might come to pass.
Apart from that there was merely a question of good luck, since Heaven
seemed to make a selection of those sufferers who should be cured.
“Oh! how beautiful it is, father,” murmured Marie, who, revived by the
passionate interest which she took in the momentous subject, had so far
contented herself with listening, dumb with amazement as it were. “Do
you remember,” she continued, “what you yourself told me of that poor
woman, Joachine Dehaut, who came from Belgium and made her way right
across France with her twisted leg eaten away by an ulcer, the awful
smell of which drove everybody away from her? First of all the ulcer
was healed; you could press her knee and she felt nothing, only a
slight redness remained to mark where it had been. And then came the
turn of the dislocation. She shrieked while she was in the water, it
seemed to her as if somebody were breaking her bones, pulling her leg
away from her; and, at the same time, she and the woman who was bathing
her, saw her deformed foot rise and extend into its natural shape with
the regular movement of a clock hand. Her leg also straightened itself,
the muscles extended, the knee replaced itself in its proper position,
all amidst such acute pain that Joachine ended by fainting. But as soon
as she recovered consciousness, she darted off, erect and agile, to
carry her crutches to the Grotto.”
M. de Guersaint in his turn was laughing with wonderment, waving his
hand to confirm this story, which had been told him by a Father of the
Assumption. He could have related a score of similar instances, said
he, each more touching, more extraordinary than the other. He even
invoked Pierre’s testimony, and the young priest, who was unable to
believe, contented himself with nodding his head. At first, unwilling
as he was to afflict Marie, he had striven to divert his thoughts by
gazing though the carriage window at the fields, trees, and houses
which defiled before his eyes. They had just passed Angouleme, and
meadows stretched out, and lines of poplar trees fled away amidst the
continuous fanning of the air, which the velocity of the train
occasioned.