the divine light which gleamed in her eyes as she fixed them on his
own. She had forgotten her own sufferings; that which she had asked for
was his conversion; and that prayer of faith, emanating, pure and
candid, from that dear, suffering creature, upset his soul. Yet why
should he not believe some day? He himself had been distracted by all
those extraordinary narratives. The stifling heat of the carriage had
made him dizzy, the sight of all the woe heaped up there caused his
heart to bleed with pity. And contagion was doing its work; he no
longer knew where the real and the possible ceased, he lacked the power
to disentangle such a mass of stupefying facts, to explain such as
admitted of explanation and reject the others. At one moment, indeed,
as a hymn once more resounded and carried him off with its stubborn
importunate rhythm, he ceased to be master of himself, and imagined
that he was at last beginning to believe amidst the hallucinatory
vertigo which reigned in that travelling hospital, rolling, ever
rolling onward at full speed.
V
BERNADETTE
THE train left Bordeaux after a stoppage of a few minutes, during which
those who had not dined hastened to purchase some provisions. Moreover,
the ailing ones were constantly drinking milk, and asking for biscuits,
like little children. And, as soon as they were off again, Sister
Hyacinthe clapped her hands, and exclaimed: “Come, let us make haste;
the evening prayer.”
Thereupon, during a quarter of an hour came a confused murmuring, made
up of “Paters” and “Aves,” self-examinations, acts of contrition, and
vows of trustful reliance in God, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints,
with thanksgiving for protection and preservation that day, and, at
last, a prayer for the living and for the faithful departed.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
It was ten minutes past eight o’clock, the shades of night were already
bedimming the landscape—a vast plain which the evening mist seemed to
prolong into the infinite, and where, far away, bright dots of light
shone out from the windows of lonely, scattered houses. In the
carriage, the lights of the lamps were flickering, casting a subdued
yellow glow on the luggage and the pilgrims, who were sorely shaken by
the spreading tendency of the train’s motion.
“You know, my children,” resumed Sister Hyacinthe, who had remained
standing, “I shall order silence when we get to Lamothe, in about an
hour’s time. So you have an hour to amuse yourselves, but you must be
reasonable and not excite yourselves too much. And when we have passed
Lamothe, you hear me, there must not be another word, another sound,
you must all go to sleep.”
This made them laugh.
“Oh! but it is the rule, you know,” added the Sister, “and surely you
have too much sense not to obey me.”
Since the morning they had punctually fulfilled the programme of
religious exercises specified for each successive hour. And now that
all the prayers had been said, the beads told, the hymns chanted, the
day’s duties were over, and a brief interval for recreation was allowed
before sleeping. They were, however, at a loss as to what they should
do.
“Sister,” suddenly said Marie, “if you would allow Monsieur l’Abbe to
read to us—he reads extremely well,—and as it happens I have a little
book with me—a history of Bernadette which is so interesting—”
The others did nor let her finish, but with the suddenly awakened
desire of children to whom a beautiful story has been promised, loudly
exclaimed: “Oh! yes, Sister. Oh! yes, Sister—”
“Of course I will allow it,” replied Sister Hyacinthe, “since it is a
question of reading something instructive and edifying.”
Pierre was obliged to consent. But to be able to read the book he
wished to be under the lamp, and it was necessary that he should change
seats with M. de Guersaint, whom the promise of a story had delighted
as much as it did the ailing ones. And when the young priest, after
changing seats and declaring that he would be able to see well enough,
at last opened the little book, a quiver of curiosity sped from one end
of the carriage to the other, and every head was stretched out, lending
ear with rapt attention. Fortunately, Pierre had a clear, powerful
voice and made himself distinctly heard above the wheels, which, now
that the train travelled across a vast level plain, gave out but a
subdued, rumbling sound.
Before beginning, however, the young priest had examined the book. It
was one of those little works of propaganda issued from the Catholic
printing-presses and circulated in profusion throughout all
Christendom. Badly printed, on wretched paper, it was adorned on its
blue cover with a little wood-cut of Our Lady of Lourdes, a naive
design alike stiff and awkward. The book itself was short, and half an
hour would certainly suffice to read it from cover to cover without
hurrying.
Accordingly, in his fine, clear voice, with its penetrating, musical
tones, he began his perusal as follows:—
“It happened at Lourdes, a little town near the Pyrenees, on a
Thursday, February 11, 1858. The weather was cold, and somewhat cloudy,
and in the humble home of a poor but honest miller named Francois
Soubirous there was no wood to cook the dinner. The miller’s wife,
Louise, said to her younger daughter Marie, ‘Go and gather some wood on
the bank of the Gave or on the common-land.’ The Gave is a torrent
which passes through Lourdes.
“Marie had an elder sister, named Bernadette, who had lately arrived
from the country, where some worthy villagers had employed her as a
shepherdess. She was a slender, delicate, extremely innocent child, and
knew nothing except her rosary. Louise Soubirous hesitated to send her
out with her sister, on account of the cold, but at last, yielding to
the entreaties of Marie and a young girl of the neighbourhood called
Jeanne Abadie, she consented to let her go.
“Following the bank of the torrent and gathering stray fragments of
dead wood, the three maidens at last found themselves in front of the
Grotto, hollowed out in a huge mass of rock which the people of the
district called Massabielle.”
Pierre had reached this point and was turning the page when he suddenly
paused and let the little book fall on his knees. The childish
character of the narrative, its ready-made, empty phraseology, filled
him with impatience. He himself possessed quite a collection of
documents concerning this extraordinary story, had passionately studied
even its most trifling details, and in the depths of his heart retained
a feeling of tender affection and infinite pity for Bernadette. He had
just reflected, too, that on the very next day he would be able to
begin that decisive inquiry which he had formerly dreamt of making at
Lourdes. In fact, this was one of the reasons which had induced him to
accompany Marie on her journey. And he was now conscious of an
awakening of all his curiosity respecting the Visionary, whom he loved
because he felt that she had been a girl of candid soul, truthful and
ill-fated, though at the same time he would much have liked to analyse
and explain her case. Assuredly, she had not lied, she had indeed
beheld a vision and heard voices, like Joan of Arc; and like Joan of
Arc also, she was now, in the opinion of the devout, accomplishing the
deliverance of France—from sin if not from invaders. Pierre wondered
what force could have produced her—her and her work. How was it that
the visionary faculty had become developed in that lowly girl, so
distracting believing souls as to bring about a renewal of the miracles
of primitive times, as to found almost a new religion in the midst of a
Holy City, built at an outlay of millions, and ever invaded by crowds
of worshippers more numerous and more exalted in mind than had ever
been known since the days of the Crusades?
And so, ceasing to read the book, Pierre began to tell his companions
all that he knew, all that he had divined and reconstructed of that
story which is yet so obscure despite the vast rivers of ink which it
has already caused to flow. He knew the country and its manners and
customs, through his long conversations with his friend Doctor
Chassaigne. And he was endowed with charming fluency of language, an
emotional power of exquisite purity, many remarkable gifts well fitting
him to be a pulpit orator, which he never made use of, although he had
known them to be within him ever since his seminary days. When the
occupants of the carriage perceived that he knew the story, far better
and in far greater detail than it appeared in Marie’s little book, and
that he related it also in such a gentle yet passionate way, there came
an increase of attention, and all those afflicted souls hungering for
happiness went forth towards him. First came the story of Bernadette’s
childhood at Bartres, where she had grown up in the abode of her
foster-mother, Madame Lagues, who, having lost an infant of her own,
had rendered those poor folks, the Soubirouses, the service of suckling
and keeping their child for them. Bartres, a village of four hundred
souls, at a league or so from Lourdes, lay as it were in a desert
oasis, sequestered amidst greenery, and far from any frequented
highway. The road dips down, the few houses are scattered over
grassland, divided by hedges and planted with walnut and chestnut
trees, whilst the clear rivulets, which are never silent, follow the
sloping banks beside the pathways, and nothing rises on high save the
small ancient romanesque church, which is perched on a hillock, covered
with graves. Wooded slopes undulate upon all sides. Bartres lies in a
hollow amidst grass of delicious freshness, grass of intense greenness,
which is ever moist at the roots, thanks to the eternal subterraneous
expanse of water which is fed by the mountain torrents. And Bernadette,
who, since becoming a big girl, had paid for her keep by tending lambs,
was wont to take them with her, season after season, through all the
greenery where she never met a soul. It was only now and then, from the
summit of some slope, that she saw the far-away mountains, the Pic du
Midi, the Pic de Viscos, those masses which rose up, bright or gloomy,
according to the weather, and which stretched away to other peaks,
lightly and faintly coloured, vaguely and confusedly outlined, like
apparitions seen in dreams.
Then came the home of the Lagueses, where her cradle was still
preserved, a solitary, silent house, the last of the village. A meadow
planted with pear and apple trees, and only separated from the open
country by a narrow stream which one could jump across, stretched out
in front of the house. Inside the latter, a low and damp abode, there
were, on either side of the wooden stairway leading to the loft, but
two spacious rooms, flagged with stones, and each containing four or
five beds. The girls, who slept together, fell asleep at even, gazing
at the fine pictures affixed to the walls, whilst the big clock in its
pinewood case gravely struck the hours in the midst of the deep
silence.
Ah! those years at Bartres; in what sweet peacefulness did Bernadette
live them! Yet she grew up very thin, always in bad health, suffering
from a nervous asthma which stifled her in the least veering of the
wind; and on attaining her twelfth year she could neither read nor
write, nor speak otherwise than in dialect, having remained quite
infantile, behindhand in mind as in body. She was a very good little
girl, very gentle and well behaved, and but little different from other
children, except that instead of talking she preferred to listen.
Limited as was her intelligence, she often evinced much natural
common-sense, and at times was prompt in her /reparties/, with a kind
of simple gaiety which made one smile. It was only with infinite
trouble that she was taught her rosary, and when she knew it she seemed
bent on carrying her knowledge no further, but repeated it all day
long, so that whenever you met her with her lambs, she invariably had
her chaplet between her fingers, diligently telling each successive
“Pater” and “Ave.” For long, long hours she lived like this on the
grassy slopes of the hills, hidden away and haunted as it were amidst
the mysteries of the foliage, seeing nought of the world save the
crests of the distant mountains, which, for an instant, every now and
then, would soar aloft in the radiant light, as ethereal as the peaks
of dreamland.
Days followed days, and Bernadette roamed, dreaming her one narrow
dream, repeating the sole prayer she knew, which gave her amidst her
solitude, so fresh and naively infantile, no other companion and friend
than the Blessed Virgin. But what pleasant evenings she spent in the
winter-time in the room on the left, where a fire was kept burning! Her
foster-mother had a brother, a priest, who occasionally read some
marvellous stories to them—stories of saints, prodigious adventures of
a kind to make one tremble with mingled fear and joy, in which Paradise
appeared upon earth, whilst the heavens opened and a glimpse was caught
of the splendour of the angels. The books he brought with him were
often full of pictures—God the Father enthroned amidst His glory;
Jesus, so gentle and so handsome with His beaming face; the Blessed
Virgin, who recurred again and again, radiant with splendour, clad now
in white, now in azure, now in gold, and ever so amiable that
Bernadette would see her again in her dreams. But the book which was
read more than all others was the Bible, an old Bible which had been in
the family for more than a hundred years, and which time and usage had
turned yellow. Each winter evening Bernadette’s foster-father, the only
member of the household who had learnt to read, would take a pin, pass
it at random between the leaves of the book, open the latter, and then
start reading from the top of the right-hand page, amidst the deep
attention of both the women and the children, who ended by knowing the
book by heart, and could have continued reciting it without a single
mistake.
However, Bernadette, for her part, preferred the religious works in
which the Blessed Virgin constantly appeared with her engaging smile.
True, one reading of a different character amused her, that of the
marvellous story of the Four Brothers Aymon. On the yellow paper cover
of the little book, which had doubtless fallen from the bale of some
peddler who had lost his way in that remote region, there was a naive
cut showing the four doughty knights, Renaud and his brothers, all
mounted on Bayard, their famous battle charger, that princely present
made to them by the fairy Orlanda. And inside were narratives of bloody
fights, of the building and besieging of fortresses, of the terrible
swordthrusts exchanged by Roland and Renaud, who was at last about to
free the Holy Land, without mentioning the tales of Maugis the Magician
and his marvellous enchantments, and the Princess Clarisse, the King of
Aquitaine’s sister, who was more lovely than sunlight. Her imagination
fired by such stories as these, Bernadette often found it difficult to
get to sleep; and this was especially the case on the evenings when the
books were left aside, and some person of the company related a tale of
witchcraft. The girl was very superstitious, and after sundown could
never be prevailed upon to pass near a tower in the vicinity, which was
said to be haunted by the fiend. For that matter, all the folks of the
region were superstitious, devout, and simple-minded, the whole
countryside being peopled, so to say, with mysteries—trees which sang,
stones from which blood flowed, cross-roads where it was necessary to
say three “Paters” and three “Aves,” if you did not wish to meet the
seven-horned beast who carried maidens off to perdition. And what a
wealth of terrifying stories there was! Hundreds of stories, so that
there was no finishing on the evenings when somebody started them.
First came the wehrwolf adventures, the tales of the unhappy men whom
the demon forced to enter into the bodies of dogs, the great white dogs
of the mountains. If you fire a gun at the dog and a single shot should
strike him, the man will be delivered; but if the shot should fall on
the dog’s shadow, the man will immediately die. Then came the endless
procession of sorcerers and sorceresses. In one of these tales
Bernadette evinced a passionate interest; it was the story of a clerk
of the tribunal of Lourdes who, wishing to see the devil, was conducted
by a witch into an untilled field at midnight on Good Friday. The devil
arrived clad in magnificent scarlet garments, and at once proposed to
the clerk that he should buy his soul, an offer which the clerk
pretended to accept. It so happened that the devil was carrying under
his arm a register in which different persons of the town, who had
already sold themselves, had signed their names. However, the clerk,
who was a cunning fellow, pulled out of his pocket a pretended bottle
of ink, which in reality contained holy water, and with this he
sprinkled the devil, who raised frightful shrieks, whilst the clerk
took to flight, carrying the register off with him. Then began a wild,
mad race, which might last throughout the night, over the mountains,
through the valleys, across the forests and the torrents. “Give me back
my register!” shouted the fiend. “No, you sha’n’t have it!” replied the
clerk. And again and again it began afresh: “Give me back my
register!”—“No, you sha’n’t have it’!” And at last, finding himself out
of breath, near the point of succumbing, the clerk, who had his plan,
threw himself into the cemetery, which was consecrated ground, and was
there able to deride the devil at his ease, waving the register which
he had purloined so as to save the souls of all the unhappy people who
had signed their names in it. On the evening when this story was told,
Bernadette, before surrendering herself to sleep, would mentally repeat
her rosary, delighted with the thought that hell should have been
baffled, though she trembled at the idea that it would surely return to
prowl around her, as soon as the lamp should have been put out.
Throughout one winter, the long evenings were spent in the church. Abbe
Ader, the village priest, had authorised it, and many families came, in
order to economise oil and candles. Moreover, they felt less cold when
gathered together in this fashion. The Bible was read, and prayers were
repeated, whilst the children ended by falling asleep. Bernadette alone
struggled on to the finish, so pleased she was at being there, in that
narrow nave whose slender nervures were coloured blue and red. At the
farther end was the altar, also painted and gilded, with its twisted
columns and its screens on which appeared the Virgin and Ste. Anne, and
the beheading of St. John the Baptist—the whole of a gaudy and somewhat
barbaric splendour. And as sleepiness grew upon her, the child must
have often seen a mystical vision as it were of those crudely coloured
designs rising before her—have seen the blood flowing from St. John’s
severed head, have seen the aureolas shining, the Virgin ever returning
and gazing at her with her blue, living eyes, and looking as though she
were on the point of opening her vermilion lips in order to speak to
her. For some months Bernadette spent her evenings in this wise, half
asleep in front of that sumptuous, vaguely defined altar, in the
incipiency of a divine dream which she carried away with her, and
finished in bed, slumbering peacefully under the watchful care of her
guardian angel.
And it was also in that old church, so humble yet so impregnated with
ardent faith, that Bernadette began to learn her catechism. She would
soon be fourteen now, and must think of her first communion. Her
foster-mother, who had the reputation of being avaricious, did not send
her to school, but employed her in or about the house from morning till
evening. M. Barbet, the schoolmaster, never saw her at his classes,
though one day, when he gave the catechism lesson, in the place of Abbe
Ader who was indisposed, he remarked her on account of her piety and
modesty. The village priest was very fond of Bernadette and often spoke
of her to the schoolmaster, saying that he could never look at her
without thinking of the children of La Salette, since they must have
been good, candid, and pious as she was, for the Blessed Virgin to have
appeared to them.* On another occasion whilst the two men were walking
one morning near the village, and saw Bernadette disappear with her
little flock under some spreading trees in the distance, the Abbe
repeatedly turned round to look for her, and again remarked “I cannot
account for it, but every time I meet that child it seems to me as if I
saw Melanie, the young shepherdess, little Maximin’s companion.” He was
certainly beset by this singular idea, which became, so to say, a
prediction. Moreover, had he not one day after catechism, or one
evening, when the villagers were gathered in the church, related that
marvellous story which was already twelve years old, that story of the
Lady in the dazzling robes who walked upon the grass without even
making it bend, the Blessed Virgin who showed herself to Melanie and
Maximin on the banks of a stream in the mountains, and confided to them
a great secret and announced the anger of her Son? Ever since that day
a source had sprung up from the tears which she had shed, a source
which cured all ailments, whilst the secret, inscribed on parchment
fastened with three seals, slumbered at Rome! And Bernadette, no doubt,
with her dreamy, silent air, had listened passionately to that
wonderful tale and carried it off with her into the desert of foliage
where she spent her days, so that she might live it over again as she
walked along behind her lambs with her rosary, slipping bead by bead
between her slender fingers.
* It was on September 19, 1846, that the Virgin is said to have
appeared in the ravine of La Sezia, adjacent to the valley of La
Salette, between Corps and Eutraigues, in the department of the Isere.
The visionaries were Melanie Mathieu, a girl of fourteen, and Maximin
Giraud, a boy of twelve. The local clergy speedily endorsed the story
of the miracle, and thousands of people still go every year in
pilgrimage to a church overlooking the valley, and bathe and drink at a
so-called miraculous source. Two priests of Grenoble, however, Abbe
Deleon and Abbe Cartellier, accused a Mlle. de Lamerliere of having
concocted the miracle, and when she took proceedings against them for
libel she lost her case.—Trans.
Thus her childhood ran its course at Bartres. That which delighted one
in this Bernadette, so poor-blooded, so slight of build, was her
ecstatic eyes, beautiful visionary eyes, from which dreams soared aloft
like birds winging their flight in a pure limpid sky. Her mouth was
large, with lips somewhat thick, expressive of kindliness; her
square-shaped head had a straight brow, and was covered with thick
black hair, whilst her face would have seemed rather common but for its
charming expression of gentle obstinacy. Those who did not gaze into
her eyes, however, gave her no thought. To them she was but an ordinary
child, a poor thing of the roads, a girl of reluctant growth, timidly
humble in her ways. Assuredly it was in her glance that Abbe Ader had
with agitation detected the stifling ailment which filled her puny,
girlish form with suffering—that ailment born of the greeny solitude in
which she had grown up, the gentleness of her bleating lambs, the
Angelic Salutation which she had carried with her, hither and thither,
under the sky, repeating and repeating it to the point of
hallucination, the prodigious stories, too, which she had heard folks
tell at her foster-mother’s, the long evenings spent before the living
altar-screens in the church, and all the atmosphere of primitive faith
which she had breathed in that far-away rural region, hemmed in by
mountains.
At last, on one seventh of January, Bernadette had just reached her
fourteenth birthday, when her parents, finding that she learnt nothing
at Bartres, resolved to bring her back to Lourdes for good, in order
that she might diligently study her catechism, and in this wise
seriously prepare herself for her first communion. And so it happened
that she had already been at Lourdes some fifteen or twenty days, when
on February 11, a Thursday, cold and somewhat cloudy—
But Pierre could carry his narrative no further, for Sister Hyacinthe
had risen to her feet and was vigorously clapping her hands. “My
children,” she exclaimed, “it is past nine o’clock. Silence! silence!”