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!”
The train had indeed just passed Lamothe, and was rolling with a dull
rumble across a sea of darkness--the endless plains of the Landes which
the night submerged. For ten minutes already not a sound ought to have
been heard in the carriage, one and all ought to have been sleeping or
suffering uncomplainingly. However, a mutiny broke out.
“Oh! Sister!” exclaimed Marie, whose eyes were sparkling, “allow us just
another short quarter of an hour! We have got to the most interesting
part.”
Ten, twenty voices took up the cry: “Oh yes, Sister, please do let us
have another short quarter of an hour!”
They all wished to hear the continuation, burning with as much curiosity
as though they had not known the story, so captivated were they by the
touches of compassionate human feeling which Pierre introduced into his
narrative. Their glances never left him, all their heads were stretched
towards him, fantastically illumined by the flickering light of the
lamps. And it was not only the sick who displayed this interest; the ten
women occupying the compartment at the far end of the carriage had also
become impassioned, and, happy at not missing a single word, turned their
poor ugly faces now beautified by naive faith.
“No, I cannot!” Sister Hyacinthe at first declared; “the rules are very
strict--you must be silent.”
However, she weakened, she herself feeling so interested in the tale that
she could detect her heart beating under her stomacher. Then Marie again
repeated her request in an entreating tone; whilst her father, M. de
Guersaint, who had listened like one hugely amused, declared that they
would all fall ill if the story were not continued. And thereupon, seeing
Madame de Jonquiere smile with an indulgent air, Sister Hyacinthe ended
by consenting.
“Well, then,” said she, “I will allow you another short quarter of an
hour; but only a short quarter of an hour, mind. That is understood, is
it not? For I should otherwise be in fault.”
Pierre had waited quietly without attempting to intervene. And he resumed
his narrative in the same penetrating voice as before, a voice in which
his own doubts were softened by pity for those who suffer and who hope.
The scene of the story was now transferred to Lourdes, to the Rue des
Petits Fosses, a narrow, tortuous, mournful street taking a downward
course between humble houses and roughly plastered dead walls. The
Soubirous family occupied a single room on the ground floor of one of
these sorry habitations, a room at the end of a dark passage, in which
seven persons were huddled together, the father, the mother, and five
children. You could scarcely see in the chamber; from the tiny, damp
inner courtyard of the house there came but a greenish light. And in that
room they slept, all of a heap; and there also they ate, when they had
bread. For some time past, the father, a miller by trade, could only with
difficulty obtain work as a journeyman. And it was from that dark hole,
that lowly wretchedness, that Bernadette, the elder girl, with Marie, her
sister, and Jeanne, a little friend of the neighbourhood, went out to
pick up dead wood, on the cold February Thursday already spoken of.
Then the beautiful tale was unfolded at length; how the three girls
followed the bank of the Gave from the other side of the castle, and how
they ended by finding themselves on the Ile du Chalet in front of the
rock of Massabielle, from which they were only separated by the narrow
stream diverted from the Gave, and used for working the mill of Savy. It
was a wild spot, whither the common herdsman often brought the pigs of
the neighbourhood, which, when showers suddenly came on, would take
shelter under this rock of Massabielle, at whose base there was a kind of
grotto of no great depth, blocked at the entrance by eglantine and
brambles. The girls found dead wood very scarce that day, but at last on
seeing on the other side of the stream quite a gleaning of branches
deposited there by the torrent, Marie and Jeanne crossed over through the
water; whilst Bernadette, more delicate than they were, a trifle
young-ladyfied, perhaps, remained on the bank lamenting, and not daring
to wet her feet. She was suffering slightly from humour in the head, and
her mother had expressly bidden her to wrap herself in her _capulet_,* a
large white _capulet_ which contrasted vividly with her old black woollen
dress. When she found that her companions would not help her, she
resignedly made up her mind to take off her _sabots_, and pull down her
stockings. It was then about noon, the three strokes of the Angelus rang
out from the parish church, rising into the broad calm winter sky, which
was somewhat veiled by fine fleecy clouds. And it was then that a great
agitation arose within her, resounding in her ears with such a
tempestuous roar that she fancied a hurricane had descended from the
mountains, and was passing over her. But she looked at the trees and was
stupefied, for not a leaf was stirring. Then she thought that she had
been mistaken, and was about to pick up her _sabots_, when again the
great gust swept through her; but, this time, the disturbance in her ears
reached her eyes, she no longer saw the trees, but was dazzled by a
whiteness, a kind of bright light which seemed to her to settle itself
against the rock, in a narrow, lofty slit above the Grotto, not unlike an
ogival window of a cathedral. In her fright she fell upon her knees. What
could it be, _mon Dieu_? Sometimes, during bad weather, when her asthma
oppressed her more than usual, she spent very bad nights, incessantly
dreaming dreams which were often painful, and whose stifling effect she
retained on awaking, even when she had ceased to remember anything.
Flames would surround her, the sun would flash before her face. Had she
dreamt in that fashion during the previous night? Was this the
continuation of some forgotten dream? However, little by little a form
became outlined, she believed that she could distinguish a figure which
the vivid light rendered intensely white. In her fear lest it should be
the devil, for her mind was haunted by tales of witchcraft, she began to
tell her beads. And when the light had slowly faded away, and she had
crossed the canal and joined Marie and Jeanne, she was surprised to find
that neither of them had seen anything whilst they were picking up the
wood in front of the Grotto. On their way back to Lourdes the three girls
talked together. So she, Bernadette, had seen something then? What was
it? At first, feeling uneasy, and somewhat ashamed, she would not answer;
but at last she said that she had seen something white.
* This is a kind of hood, more generally known among the Bearnese
peasantry as a _sarot_. Whilst forming a coif it also completely
covers the back and shoulders.--Trans.
From this the rumours started and grew. The Soubirouses, on being made
acquainted with the circumstance, evinced much displeasure at such
childish nonsense, and told their daughter that she was not to return to
the rock of Massabielle. All the children of the neighbourhood, however,
were already repeating the tale, and when Sunday came the parents had to
give way, and allow Bernadette to betake herself to the Grotto with a
bottle of holy water to ascertain if it were really the devil whom one
had to deal with. She then again beheld the light, the figure became more
clearly defined, and smiled upon her, evincing no fear whatever of the
holy water. And, on the ensuing Thursday, she once more returned to the
spot accompanied by several persons, and then for the first time the
radiant lady assumed sufficient corporality to speak, and say to her: “Do
me the kindness to come here for fifteen days.”
Thus, little by little, the lady had assumed a precise appearance. The
something clad in white had become indeed a lady more beautiful than a
queen, of a kind such as is only seen in pictures. At first, in presence
of the questions with which all the neighbours plied her from morning
till evening, Bernadette had hesitated, disturbed, perhaps, by scruples
of conscience. But then, as though prompted by the very interrogatories
to which she was subjected, she seemed to perceive the figure which she
had beheld, more plainly, so that it definitely assumed life, with lines
and hues from which the child, in her after-descriptions, never departed.
The lady’s eyes were blue and very mild, her mouth was rosy and smiling,
the oval of her face expressed both the grace of youth and of maternity.
Below the veil covering her head and falling to her heels, only a glimpse
was caught of her admirable fair hair, which was slightly curled. Her
robe, which was of dazzling whiteness, must have been of some material
unknown on earth, some material woven of the sun’s rays. Her sash, of the
same hue as the heavens, was fastened loosely about her, its long ends
streaming downwards, with the light airiness of morning. Her chaplet,
wound about her right arm, had beads of a milky whiteness, whilst the
links and the cross were of gold. And on her bare feet, on her adorable
feet of virgin snow, flowered two golden roses, the mystic roses of this
divine mother’s immaculate flesh.
Where was it that Bernadette had seen this Blessed Virgin, of such
traditionally simple composition, unadorned by a single jewel, having but
the primitive grace imagined by the painters of a people in its
childhood? In which illustrated book belonging to her foster-mother’s
brother, the good priest, who read such attractive stories, had she
beheld this Virgin? Or in what picture, or what statuette, or what
stained-glass window of the painted and gilded church where she had spent
so many evenings whilst growing up? And whence, above all things, had
come those golden roses poised on the Virgin’s feet, that piously
imagined florescence of woman’s flesh--from what romance of chivalry,
from what story told after catechism by the Abbe Ader, from what
unconscious dream indulged in under the shady foliage of Bartres, whilst
ever and ever repeating that haunting Angelic Salutation?
Pierre’s voice had acquired a yet more feeling tone, for if he did not
say all these things to the simple-minded folks who were listening to
him, still the human explanation of all these prodigies which the feeling
of doubt in the depths of his being strove to supply, imparted to his
narrative a quiver of sympathetic, fraternal love. He loved Bernadette
the better for the great charm of her hallucination--that lady of such
gracious access, such perfect amiability, such politeness in appearing
and disappearing so appropriately. At first the great light would show
itself, then the vision took form, came and went, leant forward, moved
about, floating imperceptibly, with ethereal lightness; and when it
vanished the glow lingered for yet another moment, and then disappeared
like a star fading away. No lady in this world could have such a white
and rosy face, with a beauty so akin to that of the Virgins on the
picture-cards given to children at their first communions. And it was
strange that the eglantine of the Grotto did not even hurt her adorable
bare feet blooming with golden flowers.
Pierre, however, at once proceeded to recount the other apparitions. The
fourth and fifth occurred on the Friday and the Saturday; but the Lady,
who shone so brightly and who had not yet told her name, contented
herself on these occasions with smiling and saluting without pronouncing
a word. On the Sunday, however, she wept, and said to Bernadette, “Pray
for sinners.” On the Monday, to the child’s great grief, she did not
appear, wishing, no doubt, to try her. But on the Tuesday she confided to
her a secret which concerned her (the girl) alone, a secret which she was
never to divulge*; and then she at last told her what mission it was that
she entrusted to her: “Go and tell the priests,” she said, “that they
must build a chapel here.” On the Wednesday she frequently murmured the
word “Penitence! penitence! penitence!” which the child repeated,
afterwards kissing the earth. On the Thursday the Lady said to her: “Go,
and drink, and wash at the spring, and eat of the grass that is beside
it,” words which the Visionary ended by understanding, when in the depths
of the Grotto a source suddenly sprang up beneath her fingers. And this
was the miracle of the enchanted fountain.
* In a like way, it will be remembered, the apparition at La
Salette confided a secret to Melanie and Maximin (see _ante_,
note). There can be little doubt that Bernadette was acquainted
with the story of the miracle of La Salette.--Trans.
Then the second week ran its course. The lady did not appear on the
Friday, but was punctual on the five following days, repeating her
commands and gazing with a smile at the humble girl whom she had chosen
to do her bidding, and who, on her side, duly told her beads at each
apparition, kissed the earth, and repaired on her knees to the source,
there to drink and wash. At last, on Thursday, March 4, the last day of
these mystical assignations, the Lady requested more pressingly than
before that a chapel might be erected in order that the nations might
come thither in procession from all parts of the earth. So far, however,
in reply to all Bernadette’s appeals, she had refused to say who she was;
and it was only three weeks later, on Thursday, March 25, that, joining
her hands together, and raising her eyes to Heaven, she said: “I am the
Immaculate Conception.” On two other occasions, at somewhat long
intervals, April 7 and July 16, she again appeared: the first time to
perform the miracle of the lighted taper, that taper above which the
child, plunged in ecstasy, for a long time unconsciously left her hand,
without burning it; and the second time to bid Bernadette farewell, to
favour her with a last smile, and a last inclination of the head full of
charming politeness. This made eighteen apparitions all told; and never
again did the Lady show herself.
Whilst Pierre went on with his beautiful, marvellous story, so soothing
to the wretched, he evoked for himself a vision of that pitiable, lovable
Bernadette, whose sufferings had flowered so wonderfully. As a doctor had
roughly expressed it, this girl of fourteen, at a critical period of her
life, already ravaged, too, by asthma, was, after all, simply an
exceptional victim of hysteria, afflicted with a degenerate heredity and
lapsing into infancy. If there were no violent crises in her case, if
there were no stiffening of the muscles during her attacks, if she
retained a precise recollection of her dreams, the reason was that her
case was peculiar to herself, and she added, so to say, a new and very
curious form to all the forms of hysteria known at the time. Miracles
only begin when things cannot be explained; and science, so far, knows
and can explain so little, so infinitely do the phenomena of disease vary
according to the nature of the patient! But how many shepherdesses there
had been before Bernadette who had seen the Virgin in a similar way,
amidst all the same childish nonsense! Was it not always the same story,
the Lady clad in light, the secret confided, the spring bursting forth,
the mission which had to be fulfilled, the miracles whose enchantments
would convert the masses? And was not the personal appearance of the
Virgin always in accordance with a poor child’s dreams--akin to some
coloured figure in a missal, an ideal compounded of traditional beauty,
gentleness, and politeness. And the same dreams showed themselves in the
naivete of the means which were to be employed and of the object which
was to be attained--the deliverance of nations, the building of churches,
the processional pilgrimages of the faithful! Then, too, all the words
which fell from Heaven resembled one another, calls for penitence,
promises of help; and in this respect, in Bernadette’s case the only new
feature was that most extraordinary declaration: “I am the Immaculate
Conception,” which burst forth--very usefully--as the recognition by the
Blessed Virgin herself of the dogma promulgated by the Court of Rome but
three years previously! It was not the Immaculate Virgin who appeared:
no, it was the Immaculate Conception, the abstraction itself, the thing,
the dogma, so that one might well ask oneself if really the Virgin had
spoken in such a fashion. As for the other words, it was possible that
Bernadette had heard them somewhere and stored them up in some
unconscious nook of her memory. But these--“I am the Immaculate
Conception”--whence had they come as though expressly to fortify a
dogma--still bitterly discussed--with such prodigious support as the
direct testimony of the Mother conceived without sin? At this thought,
Pierre, who was convinced of Bernadette’s absolute good faith, who
refused to believe that she had been the instrument of a fraud, began to
waver, deeply agitated, feeling his belief in truth totter within him.
The apparitions, however, had caused intense emotion at Lourdes; crowds
flocked to the spot, miracles began, and those inevitable persecutions
broke out which ensure the triumph of new religions. Abbe Peyramale, the
parish priest of Lourdes, an extremely honest man, with an upright,
vigorous mind, was able in all truth to declare that he did not know this
child, that she had not yet been seen at catechism. Where was the
pressure, then, where the lesson learnt by heart? There was nothing but
those years of childhood spent at Bartres, the first teachings of Abbe
Ader, conversations possibly, religious ceremonies in honour of the
recently proclaimed dogma, or simply the gift of one of those
commemorative medals which had been scattered in profusion. Never did
Abbe Ader reappear upon the scene, he who had predicted the mission of
the future Visionary. He was destined to remain apart from Bernadette and
her future career, he who, the first, had seen her little soul blossom in
his pious hands. And yet all the unknown forces that had sprung from that
sequestered village, from that nook of greenery where superstition and
poverty of intelligence prevailed, were still making themselves felt,
disturbing the brains of men, disseminating the contagion of the
mysterious. It was remembered that a shepherd of Argeles, speaking of the
rock of Massabielle, had prophesied that great things would take place
there. Other children, moreover, now fell in ecstasy with their eyes
dilated and their limbs quivering with convulsions, but these only saw
the devil. A whirlwind of madness seemed to be passing over the region.
An old lady of Lourdes declared that Bernadette was simply a witch and
that she had herself seen the toad’s foot in her eye. But for the others,
for the thousands of pilgrims who hastened to the spot, she was a saint,
and they kissed her garments. Sobs burst forth and frenzy seemed to seize
upon the souls of the beholders, when she fell upon her knees before the
Grotto, a lighted taper in her right hand, whilst with the left she told
the beads of her rosary. She became very pale and quite beautiful,
transfigured, so to say. Her features gently ascended in her face,
lengthened into an expression of extraordinary beatitude, whilst her eyes
filled with light, and her lips parted as though she were speaking words
which could not be heard. And it was quite certain that she had no will
of her own left her, penetrated as she was by a dream, possessed by it to
such a point in the confined, exclusive sphere in which she lived, that
she continued dreaming it even when awake, and thus accepted it as the
only indisputable reality, prepared to testify to it even at the cost of
her blood, repeating it over and over again, obstinately, stubbornly
clinging to it, and never varying in the details she gave. She did not
lie, for she did not know, could not and would not desire anything apart
from it.
Forgetful of the flight of time, Pierre was now sketching a charming
picture of old Lourdes, that pious little town, slumbering at the foot of
the Pyrenees. The castle, perched on a rock at the point of intersection
of the seven valleys of Lavedan, had formerly been the key of the
mountain districts. But, in Bernadette’s time, it had become a mere
dismantled, ruined pile, at the entrance of a road leading nowhere.
Modern life found its march stayed by a formidable rampart of lofty,
snow-capped peaks, and only the trans-Pyrenean railway--had it been
constructed--could have established an active circulation of social life
in that sequestered nook where human existence stagnated like dead water.
Forgotten, therefore, Lourdes remained slumbering, happy and sluggish
amidst its old-time peacefulness, with its narrow, pebble-paved streets
and its bleak houses with dressings of marble. The old roofs were still
all massed on the eastern side of the castle; the Rue de la Grotte, then
called the Rue du Bois, was but a deserted and often impassable road; no
houses stretched down to the Gave as now, and the scum-laden waters
rolled through a perfect solitude of pollard willows and tall grass. On
week-days but few people passed across the Place du Marcadal, such as
housewives hastening on errands, and petty cits airing their leisure
hours; and you had to wait till Sundays or fair days to find the
inhabitants rigged out in their best clothes and assembled on the Champ
Commun, in company with the crowd of graziers who had come down from the
distant tablelands with their cattle. During the season when people
resort to the Pyrenean-waters, the passage of the visitors to Cauterets
and Bagneres also brought some animation; _diligences_ passed through the
town twice a day, but they came from Pau by a wretched road, and had to
ford the Lapaca, which often overflowed its banks. Then climbing the
steep ascent of the Rue Basse, they skirted the terrace of the church,
which was shaded by large elms. And what soft peacefulness prevailed in
and around that old semi-Spanish church, full of ancient carvings,
columns, screens, and statues, peopled with visionary patches of gilding
and painted flesh, which time had mellowed and which you faintly
discerned as by the light of mystical lamps! The whole population came
there to worship, to fill their eyes with the dream of the mysterious.
There were no unbelievers, the inhabitants of Lourdes were a people of
primitive faith; each corporation marched behind the banner of its saint,
brotherhoods of all kinds united the entire town, on festival mornings,
in one large Christian family. And, as with some exquisite flower that
has grown in the soil of its choice, great purity of life reigned there.
There was not even a resort of debauchery for young men to wreck their
lives, and the girls, one and all, grew up with the perfume and beauty of
innocence, under the eyes of the Blessed Virgin, Tower of Ivory and Seat
of Wisdom.
And how well one could understand that Bernadette, born in that holy
soil, should flower in it, like one of nature’s roses budding in the
wayside bushes! She was indeed the very florescence of that region of
ancient belief and rectitude; she would certainly not have sprouted
elsewhere; she could only appear and develop there, amidst that belated
race, amidst the slumberous peacefulness of a childlike people, under the
moral discipline of religion. And what intense love at once burst forth
all around her! What blind confidence was displayed in her mission, what
immense consolation and hope came to human hearts on the very morrow of
the first miracles! A long cry of relief had greeted the cure of old
Bourriette recovering his sight, and of little Justin Bouhohorts coming
to life again in the icy water of the spring. At last, then, the Blessed
Virgin was intervening in favour of those who despaired, forcing that
unkind mother, Nature, to be just and charitable. This was divine
omnipotence returning to reign on earth, sweeping the laws of the world
aside in order to work the happiness of the suffering and the poor. The
miracles multiplied, blazed forth, from day to day more and more
extraordinary, like unimpeachable proof of Bernadette’s veracity. And she
was, indeed, the rose of the divine garden, whose deeds shed perfume, the
rose who beholds all the other flowers of grace and salvation spring into
being around her.
Pierre had reached this point of his story, and was again enumerating the
miracles, on the point of recounting the prodigious triumph of the
Grotto, when Sister Hyacinthe, awaking with a start from the ecstasy into
which the narrative had plunged her, hastily rose to her feet. “Really,
really,” said she, “there is no sense in it. It will soon be eleven
o’clock.”
This was true. They had left Morceux behind them, and would now soon be
at Mont de Marsan. So Sister Hyacinthe clapped her hands once more, and
added: “Silence, my children, silence!”
This time they did not dare to rebel, for they felt she was in the right;
they were unreasonable. But how greatly they regretted not hearing the
continuation, how vexed they were that the story should cease when only
half told! The ten women in the farther compartment even let a murmur of
disappointment escape them; whilst the sick, their faces still
outstretched, their dilated eyes gazing upon the light of hope, seemed to
be yet listening. Those miracles which ever and ever returned to their
minds and filled them with unlimited, haunting, supernatural joy.
“And don’t let me hear anyone breathe, even,” added Sister Hyacinthe
gaily, “or otherwise I shall impose penance on you.”
Madame de Jonquiere laughed good-naturedly. “You must obey, my children,”
she said; “be good and get to sleep, so that you may have strength to
pray at the Grotto to-morrow with all your hearts.”
Then silence fell, nobody spoke any further; and the only sounds were
those of the rumbling of the wheels and the jolting of the train as it
was carried along at full speed through the black night.
Pierre, however, was unable to sleep. Beside him, M. de Guersaint was
already snoring lightly, looking very happy despite the hardness of his
seat. For a time the young priest saw Marie’s eyes wide open, still full
of all the radiance of the marvels that he had related. For a long while
she kept them ardently fixed upon his own, but at last closed them, and
then he knew not whether she was sleeping, or with eyelids simply closed
was living the everlasting miracle over again. Some of the sufferers were
dreaming aloud, giving vent to bursts of laughter which unconscious moans
interrupted. Perhaps they beheld the Archangels opening their flesh to
wrest their diseases from them. Others, restless with insomnia, turned
over and over, stifling their sobs and gazing fixedly into the darkness.
And, with a shudder born of all the mystery he had evoked, Pierre,
distracted, no longer master of himself in that delirious sphere of
fraternal suffering, ended by hating his very mind, and, drawn into close
communion with all those humble folks, sought to believe like them. What
could be the use of that physiological inquiry into Bernadette’s case, so
full of gaps and intricacies? Why should he not accept her as a messenger
from the spheres beyond, as one of the elect chosen for the divine
mystery? Doctors were but ignorant men with rough and brutal hands, and
it would be so delightful to fall asleep in childlike faith, in the
enchanted gardens of the impossible. And for a moment indeed he
surrendered himself, experiencing a delightful feeling of comfort, no
longer seeking to explain anything, but accepting the Visionary with her
sumptuous _cortege_ of miracles, and relying on God to think and
determine for him. Then he looked out through the window, which they did
not dare to open on account of the consumptive patients, and beheld the
immeasurable night which enwrapped the country across which the train was
fleeing. The storm must have burst forth there; the sky was now of an
admirable nocturnal purity, as though cleansed by the masses of fallen
water. Large stars shone out in the dark velvet, alone illumining, with
their mysterious gleams, the silent, refreshed fields, which incessantly
displayed only the black solitude of slumber. And across the Landes,
through the valleys, between the hills, that carriage of wretchedness and
suffering rolled on and on, over-heated, pestilential, rueful, and
wailing, amidst the serenity of the august night, so lovely and so mild.
They had passed Riscle at one in the morning. Between the jolting, the
painful, the hallucinatory silence still continued. At two o’clock, as
they reached Vic-de-Bigorre, low moans were heard; the bad state of the
line, with the unbearable spreading tendency of the train’s motion, was
sorely shaking the patients. It was only at Tarbes, at half-past two,
that silence was at length broken, and that morning prayers were said,
though black night still reigned around them. There came first the
“Pater,” and then the “Ave,” the “Credo,” and the supplication to God to
grant them the happiness of a glorious day.
“O God, vouchsafe me sufficient strength that I may avoid all that is
evil, do all that is good, and suffer uncomplainingly every pain.”
And now there was to be no further stoppage until they reached Lourdes.
Barely three more quarters of an hour, and Lourdes, with all its vast
hopes, would blaze forth in the midst of that night, so long and cruel.
Their painful awakening was enfevered by the thought; a final agitation
arose amidst the morning discomfort, as the abominable sufferings began
afresh.
Sister Hyacinthe, however, was especially anxious about the strange man,
whose sweat-covered face she had been continually wiping. He had so far
managed to keep alive, she watching him without a pause, never having
once closed her eyes, but unremittingly listening to his faint breathing
with the stubborn desire to take him to the holy Grotto before he died.
All at once, however, she felt frightened; and addressing Madame de
Jonquiere, she hastily exclaimed, “Pray pass me the vinegar bottle at
once--I can no longer hear him breathe.”
For an instant, indeed, the man’s faint breathing had ceased. His eyes
were still closed, his lips parted; he could not have been paler, he had
an ashen hue, and was cold. And the carriage was rolling along with its
ceaseless rattle of coupling-irons; the speed of the train seemed even to
have increased.
“I will rub his temples,” resumed Sister Hyacinthe. “Help me, do!”
But, at a more violent jolt of the train, the man suddenly fell from the
seat, face downward.
“Ah! _mon Dieu_, help me, pick him up!”
They picked him up, and found him dead. And they had to seat him in his
corner again, with his back resting against the woodwork. He remained
there erect, his torso stiffened, and his head wagging slightly at each
successive jolt. Thus the train continued carrying him along, with the
same thundering noise of wheels, while the engine, well pleased, no
doubt, to be reaching its destination, began whistling shrilly, giving
vent to quite a flourish of delirious joy as it sped through the calm
night.
And then came the last and seemingly endless half-hour of the journey, in
company with that wretched corpse. Two big tears had rolled down Sister
Hyacinthe’s cheeks, and with her hands joined she had begun to pray. The
whole carriage shuddered with terror at sight of that terrible companion
who was being taken, too late alas! to the Blessed Virgin.
Hope, however, proved stronger than sorrow or pain, and although all the
sufferings there assembled awoke and grew again, irritated by
overwhelming weariness, a song of joy nevertheless proclaimed the
sufferers’ triumphal entry into the Land of Miracles. Amidst the tears
which their pains drew from them, the exasperated and howling sick began
to chant the “Ave maris Stella” with a growing clamour in which
lamentation finally turned into cries of hope.
Marie had again taken Pierre’s hand between her little feverish fingers.
“Oh, _mon Dieu!_” said she, “to think that poor man is dead, and I feared
so much that it was I who would die before arriving. And we are
there--there at last!”
The priest was trembling with intense emotion. “It means that you are to
be cured, Marie,” he replied, “and that I myself shall be cured if you
pray for me--”
The engine was now whistling in a yet louder key in the depths of the
bluish darkness. They were nearing their destination. The lights of
Lourdes already shone out on the horizon. Then the whole train again sang
a canticle--the rhymed story of Bernadette, that endless ballad of six
times ten couplets, in which the Angelic Salutation ever returns as a
refrain, all besetting and distracting, opening to the human mind the
portals of the heaven of ecstasy:--
“It was the hour for ev’ning pray’r;
Soft bells chimed on the chilly air.
Ave, ave, ave Maria!
“The maid stood on the torrent’s bank,
A breeze arose, then swiftly sank.
Ave, ave, ave Maria!
“And she beheld, e’en as it fell,
The Virgin on Massabielle.
Ave, ave, ave Maria!
“All white appeared the Lady chaste,
A zone of Heaven round her waist.
Ave, ave, ave Maria!
“Two golden roses, pure and sweet,
Bloomed brightly on her naked feet.
Ave, ave, ave Maria!
“Upon her arm, so white and round,
Her chaplet’s milky pearls were wound.
Ave, ave, ave Maria!
“The maiden prayed till, from her eyes,
The vision sped to Paradise.
Ave, ave, ave Maria!”