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LOURDES
BY
THE VERY REV. MONSIGNOR
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
WITH EIGHT FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
ST. LOUIS MO.:
B. HERDER, PUBLISHER
17, S. BROADWAY
LONDON:
MANRESA PRESS
ROEHAMPTON, S.W.
1914
Nihil Obstat:
S. GEORGIUS KIERAN HYLAND, S.T.D.,
CENSOR DEPUTATUS
Imprimatur:
GULIELMUS F. BROWN,
VICARIUS GENERALIS,
SOUTHWARCENSI.
_15 Maii, 1914._
PREFACE.
Since writing the following pages six years ago, I have had the
privilege of meeting a famous French scientist--to whom we owe one of
the greatest discoveries of recent years--who has made a special study
of Lourdes and its phenomena, and of hearing him comment upon what takes
place there. He is, himself, at present, not a practising Catholic; and
this fact lends peculiar interest to his opinions. His conclusions, so
far as he has formulated them, are as follows:
(1) That no scientific hypothesis up to the present accounts
satisfactorily for the phenomena. Upon his saying this to me I breathed
the word "suggestion"; and his answer was to laugh in my face, and to
tell me, practically, that this is the most ludicrous hypothesis of all.
(2) That, so far as he can see, the one thing necessary for such cures
as he himself has witnessed or verified, is the atmosphere of prayer.
Where this rises to intensity the number of cures rises with it; where
this sinks, the cures sink too.
(3) That he is inclined to think that there is a transference of
vitalizing force either from the energetic faith of the sufferer, or
from that of the bystanders. He instanced an example in which his wife,
herself a qualified physician, took part. She held in her arms a child,
aged two and a half years, blind from birth, during the procession of
the Blessed Sacrament. As the monstrance came opposite, tears began to
stream from the child's eyes, hitherto closed. When it had passed, the
child's eyes were open and seeing. This Mme. ---- tested by dangling her
bracelet before the child, who immediately clutched at it, but, from the
fact that she had never learned to calculate distance, at first failed
to seize it. At the close of the procession Mme. ----, who herself
related to me the story, was conscious of an extraordinary exhaustion
for which there was no ordinary explanation. I give this suggestion as
the scientist gave it to me--the suggestion of some kind of
_transference_ of vitality; and make no comment upon it, beyond saying
that, superficially at any rate, it does not appear to me to conflict
with the various accounts of miracles given in the Gospel in which the
faith of the bystanders, as well as of sufferers, appeared to be as
integral an element in the miracle as the virtue which worked it.
Owing to the time that has elapsed since the following pages were
written for the _Ave Maria_--by the kindness of whose editor they are
reprinted now--it is impossible for me to verify the spelling of all the
names that occur in the course of the narrative. I made notes while at
Lourdes, and from those notes wrote my account; it is therefore
extremely probable that small errors of spelling may have crept in,
which I am now unable to correct.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON.
_Church of our Lady of Lourdes,
New York,
Lent, 1914_
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE BASILICA. FRONT VIEW _Frontispiece_
DR. BOISSARIE _to face p._ 16
BUREAU DES CONSTATATIONS " 26
THE GROTTO IN 1858 " 36
THE GROTTO IN 1914 " 46
THE BLESSING OF THE SICK " 56
THE BASILICA. SIDE VIEW " 66
BERNADETTE " 78
I.
The first sign of our approach to Lourdes was a vast wooden cross,
crowning a pointed hill. We had been travelling all day, through the
August sunlight, humming along the straight French roads beneath the
endless avenues; now across a rich plain, with the road banked on either
side to avert the spring torrents from the Pyrenees; now again mounting
and descending a sudden shoulder of hill. A few minutes ago we had
passed into Tarbes, the cathedral city of the diocese in which Lourdes
lies; and there, owing to a little accident, we had been obliged to
halt, while the wheels of the car were lifted, with incredible
ingenuity, from the deep gutter into which the chauffeur had, with the
best intentions, steered them. It was here, in the black eyes, the
dominant profiles, the bright colours, the absorbed childish interest of
the crowd, in their comments, their laughter, their seriousness, and
their accent, that the South showed itself almost unmixed. It was
market-day in Tarbes; and when once more we were on our way, we still
went slowly; passing, almost all the way into Lourdes itself, a
long-drawn procession--carts and foot passengers, oxen, horses, dogs,
and children--drawing nearer every minute toward that ring of solemn
blue hills that barred the view to Spain.
It is difficult to describe with what sensations I came to Lourdes. As a
Christian man, I did not dare to deny that miracles happened; as a
reasonably humble man, I did not dare to deny that they happened at
Lourdes; yet, I suppose, my attitude even up to now had been that of a
reverent agnostic--the attitude, in fact, of a majority of Christians on
this particular point--Christians, that is, who resemble the Apostle
Thomas in his less agreeable aspect. I had heard and read a good deal
about psychology, about the effect of mind on matter and of nerves on
tissue; I had reflected upon the infection of an ardent crowd; I had
read Zola's dishonest book;[1] and these things, coupled with the
extreme difficulty which the imagination finds in realizing what it has
never experienced--since, after all, miracles are confessedly
miraculous, and therefore unusual--the effect of all this was to render
my mental state a singularly detached one. I believed? Yes, I suppose
so; but it was a halting act of faith pure and simple; it was not yet
either sight or real conviction.
The cross, then, was the first glimpse of Lourdes' presence; and ten
minutes later we were in the town itself.
Lourdes is not beautiful, though it must once have been. It was once a
little Franco-Spanish town, set in the lap of the hills, with a swift,
broad, shallow stream, the Gave, flowing beneath it. It is now
cosmopolitan, and therefore undistinguished. As we passed slowly through
the crowded streets--for the National Pilgrimage was but now
arriving--we saw endless rows of shops and booths sheltering beneath
tall white blank houses, as correct and as expressionless as a
brainless, well-bred man. Here and there we passed a great hotel. The
crowd about our wheels was almost as cosmopolitan as a Roman crowd. It
was largely French, as that is largely Italian; but the Spaniards were
there, vivid-faced men and women, severe Britons, solemn Teutons; and, I
have no doubt, Italians, Belgians, Flemish and Austrians as well. At
least I heard during my three days' stay all the languages that I could
recognize, and many that I could not. There were many motor-cars there
besides our own, carriages, carts, bell-clanging trams, and the litters
of the sick. Presently we dismounted in a side street, and set out to
walk to the Grotto, through the hot evening sunshine.
The first sign of sanctity that we saw, as we came out at the end of a
street, was the mass of churches built on the rising ground above the
river. Imagine first a great oval of open ground, perhaps two hundred by
three hundred yards in area, crowded now with groups as busy as ants,
partly embraced by two long white curving arms of masonry rising
steadily to their junction; at the point on this side where the ends
should meet if they were prolonged, stands a white stone image of Our
Lady upon a pedestal, crowned, and half surrounded from beneath by some
kind of metallic garland arching upward. At the farther end the two
curves of masonry of which I have spoken, rising all the way by steps,
meet upon a terrace. This terrace is, so to speak, the centre of gravity
of the whole.
For just above it stands the flattened dome of the Rosary Church, of
which the doors are beneath the terrace, placed upon broad flights of
steps. Immediately above the dome is the entrance to the crypt of the
basilica; and, above that again, reached by further flights of steps,
are the doors of the basilica; and, above it, the roof of the church
itself, with its soaring white spire high over all.
Let me be frank. These buildings are not really beautiful. They are
enormous, but they are not impressive; they are elaborate and fine and
white, but they are not graceful. I am not sure what is the matter with
them; but I think it is that they appear to be turned out of a machine.
They are too trim; they are like a well-dressed man who is not quite a
gentleman; they are like a wedding guest; they are _haute-bourgeoise_,
they are not the nobility. It is a terrible pity, but I suppose it could
not be helped, since they were allowed so little time to grow. There is
no sense of reflectiveness about them, no patient growth of character,
as in those glorious cathedrals, Amiens, Chartres, Beauvais, which I had
so lately seen. There is nothing in reserve; they say everything, they
suggest nothing. They have no imaginative vista.
We said not one word to one another. We threaded our way across the
ground, diagonally, seeing as we went the Bureau de Constatations (or
the office where the doctors sit), contrived near the left arm of the
terraced steps; and passed out under the archway, to find ourselves with
the churches on our left, and on our right the flowing Gave, confined on
this side by a terraced walk, with broad fields beyond the stream.
The first thing I noticed were the three roofs of the _piscines_, on the
left side of the road, built under the cliff on which the churches
stand. I shall have more to say of them presently, but now it is enough
to remark that they resemble three little chapels, joined in one, each
with its own doorway; an open paved space lies across the entrances,
where the doctors and the priests attend upon the sick. This open space
is fenced in all about, to keep out the crowd that perpetually seethes
there. We went a few steps farther, worked our way in among the people,
and fell on our knees.
Overhead, the cliff towered up, bare hanging rock beneath, grass and
soaring trees above; and at the foot of the cliff a tall, irregular
cave. There are two openings of this cave; the one, the larger, is like
a cage of railings, with the gleam of an altar in the gloom beyond, a
hundred burning candles, and sheaves and stacks of crutches clinging to
the broken roofs of rock; the other, and smaller, and that farther from
us, is an opening in the cliff, shaped somewhat like a _vesica_. The
grass still grows there, with ferns and the famous climbing shrub; and
within the entrance, framed in it, stands Mary, in white and blue, as
she stood fifty years ago, raised perhaps twenty feet above the ground.
Ah, that image!... I said, "As she stood there!" Yet it could not have
been so; for surely even simple Bernadette would not have fallen on her
knees. It is too white, it is too blue; it is, like the three churches,
placed magnificently, yet not impressive; fine and slender, yet not
graceful.
But we knelt there without unreality, with the river running swift
behind us; for we knelt where a holy child had once knelt before a
radiant vision, and with even more reason; for even if the one, as some
say, had been an hallucination, were those sick folk an hallucination?
Was Pierre de Rudder's mended leg an hallucination, or the healed wounds
of Marie Borel? Or were those hundreds upon hundreds of disused crutches
an illusion? Did subjectivity create all these? If so, what greater
miracle can be demanded?
And there was more than that. For when later, at Argeles, I looked over
the day, I was able to formulate for the first time the extraordinary
impressions that Lourdes had given me. There was everything hostile to
my peace--an incalculable crowd, an oppressive heat, dust, noise,
weariness; there was the disappointment of the churches and the image;
there was the sour unfamiliarity of the place and the experience; and
yet I was neither troubled nor depressed nor irritated nor disappointed.
It appeared to me as if some great benign influence were abroad,
soothing and satisfying; lying like a great summer air over all, to
quiet and to stimulate. I cannot describe this further; I can only say
that it never really left me during those three days, I saw sights that
would have saddened me elsewhere--apparent injustices, certain
disappointments, dashed hopes that would almost have broken my heart;
and yet that great Power was over all, to reconcile, to quiet and to
reassure. To leave Lourdes at the end was like leaving home.
After a few minutes before the Grotto, we climbed the hill behind, made
an appointment for my Mass on the morrow; and, taking the car again,
moved slowly through the crowded streets, and swiftly along the country
roads, up to Argeles, nearly a dozen miles away.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The epithet is deliberate. He relates in his book, "Lourdes," the
story of an imaginary case of a girl, suffering from tuberculosis, who
goes to Lourdes as a pilgrim, and is, apparently, cured of her disease.
It breaks out, however, again during her return home; and the case would
appear therefore to be one of those in which, owing to fierce excitement
and the mere power of suggestion, there is a temporary amelioration, but
no permanent, or supernatural, cure. Will it be believed that the
details of this story, all of which are related with great
particularity, and observed by Zola himself, were taken from an actual
case that occurred during one of his visits--all the details except the
relapse? There was no relapse: the cure was complete and permanent. When
Dr. Boissarie later questioned the author as to the honesty of this
literary device, saying that he had understood him to have stated that
he had come to Lourdes for the purpose of an impartial investigation,
Zola answered that the characters in the book were his own, and that he
could make them do what he liked. It is on these principles that the
book is constructed. It must be added that Zola followed up the case,
and had communications with the _miraculee_ long after her cure had been
shown to be permanent, and before his book appeared.
II.
We were in Lourdes again next morning a little after six o'clock; and
already it might have been high noon, for the streets were one moving
mass of pilgrims. From every corner came gusts of singing; and here and
there through the crowd already moved the _brancardiers_--men of every
nation with shoulder-straps and cross--bearing the litters with their
piteous burdens.
I was to say Mass in the crypt; and when I arrived there at last, the
church was full from end to end. The interior was not so disappointing
as I had feared. It had a certain solid catacombic gloom beneath its low
curved roof, which, if it had not been for the colours and some of the
details, might very nearly have come from the hand of a good architect.
The arrangements for the pilgrims were as bad as possible; there was no
order, no marshalling; they moved crowd against crowd like herds of
bewildered sheep. Some were for Communion, some for Mass only, some for
confession; and they pushed patiently this way and that in every
direction. It was a struggle before I got my vestments; I produced a
letter from the Bishop of Rodez, with whom I had lunched a few days
before; I argued, I deprecated, I persuaded, I quoted. Everything once
more was against my peace of mind; yet I have seldom said Mass with more
consolations than in that tiny sanctuary of the high Altar.... An
ecclesiastic served, and an old priest knelt devoutly at a prie-Dieu.
When the time for Communion came, I turned about and saw but one sea of
faces stretching from the altar rail into as much of the darkness as I
could discern. For a quarter of an hour I gave Communion rapidly; then,
as soon as another priest could force his way through the crowd, I
continued Mass; he had not nearly finished giving Communion when I had
ended my thanksgiving. This, too, was the same everywhere--in the crypt,
in the basilica, in the Rosary Church, and above all in the Grotto. The
average number of Communions every day throughout the year in Lourdes
is, I am told, four thousand. In that year of Jubilee, however, Dr.
Boissarie informed me, in round numbers, one million Communions were
made, sixty thousand Masses were said, with two thousand Communions at
each midnight Mass.... Does Jesus Christ go out when Mary comes in? We
are told so by non-Catholics. Rather, it seems as if, like the Wise Men
of old, men still find the Child with Mary His Mother.
At the close of my Mass, the old priest rose from his place and began to
prepare the vessels and arrange the Missal. As soon as I took off the
vestments he put them on. I assented passively, supposing him to be the
next on the list; I even answered his _Kyrie_. But at the Collect a
frantic sacristan burst through the crowd; and from remarks made to the
devout old priest and myself, I learned that the next on the list was
still waiting in the sacristy, and that this old man was an adroit
though pious interloper who had determined not to take "No" for an
answer. He finished his Mass. I forbear from comment.
For a while afterward we stood on the terrace above the _piscines_; and,
indeed, after breakfast I returned here again alone, and remained during
all the morning. It was an extraordinary sight. From the terrace, the
cliff fell straight away down to the roofs of the three chapel-like
buildings, fifty or sixty feet beneath. Beyond that I could see the
paved space, sprinkled with a few moving figures; and, beyond the
barrier, the crowd stretching across the roadway and far on either side.
Behind them was the clean river and the green meadows, all delicious in
the early sunlight.
During that morning I must have seen many hundreds of the sick carried
into the baths; for there were almost two thousand sick in Lourdes on
that day. I could even watch their faces, white and drawn with pain, or
horribly scarred, as they lay directly beneath me, "waiting for some man
to put them into the water." I saw men and women of all nations and all
ranks attending upon them, carrying them tenderly, fanning their faces,
wiping their lips, giving them to drink of the Grotto water. A murmur of
thousands of footsteps came up from beneath (this National Pilgrimage of
France numbered between eighty and an hundred thousand persons); and
loud above the footsteps came the cries of the priests, as they stood in
a long row facing the people, with arms extended in the form of a cross.
Now and again came a far-off roar of singing from the Grotto to my left,
where Masses were said continuously by bishops and favoured priests; or
from my right, from the great oval space beneath the steps; and then, on
a sudden a great chorus of sound from beneath, as the _Gloria Patri_
burst out when the end of some decade was reached. All about us was the
wheeling earth, the Pyrenees behind, the meadows in front; and over us
heaven, with Mary looking down.
Once from beneath during that long morning I heard terrible shrieks, as
of a demoniac, that died into moans and ceased. And once I saw a little
procession go past from the Grotto, with the Blessed Sacrament in the
midst. There was no sensation, no singing. The Lord of all went simply
by on some errand of mercy, and men fell on their knees and crossed
themselves as He went.
After _dejeuner_ at the Hotel Moderne, where now it was decided that we
should stay until the Monday, we went down to the Bureau. At first there
were difficulties made, as the doctors were not come; and I occupied a
little while in watching the litters unloaded from the wagonettes that
brought them gently down to within a hundred yards of the Grotto. Once
indeed I was happy to be able to fit a _brancardier's_ straps into the
poles that supported a sick woman. It was all most terrible and most
beautiful. Figure after figure was passed along the seats--living
crucifixes of pain--and lowered tenderly to the ground, to lie there a
moment or two, with the body horribly flat and, as it seemed, almost
non-existent beneath the coverlet; and the white face with blazing eyes
of anguish, or passive and half dead, to show alone that a human
creature lay there. Then one by one each was lifted and swung gently
down to the gate of the _piscines_.
At about three o'clock, after an hour's waiting, I succeeded in getting
a certain card passed through the window, and immediately a message came
out from Dr. Cox that I was to be admitted. I passed through a barrier,
through a couple of rooms, and found myself in the Holy Place of
Science, as the Grotto is the Holy Place of Grace.
It is a little room in which perhaps twenty persons can stand with
comfort. Again and again I saw more than sixty there. Down one side runs
a table, at one end of which sits Dr. Cox; in the centre, facing the
room, is the presiding doctor's chair, where, as a rule, Dr. Boissarie
is to be found. Dr. Cox set me between him and the president, and I
began to observe.
At the farther end of the room is a long glazed case of photographs hung
against the wall. Here are photographs of many of the most famous
patients. The wounds of Marie Borel are shown there; Marie Borel herself
had been present in the Bureau that morning to report upon her excellent
health. (She was cured last year instantaneously, in the _piscine_, of a
number of running wounds, so deep that they penetrated the intestines.)
On the table lay some curious brass objects, which I learned later were
models of the bones of Pierre de Rudder's legs. (This man had for eight
years suffered from a broken leg and two running wounds--one at the
fracture, the other on the foot. These were gangrenous. The ends of the
broken bones were seen immediately before the cure, which took place
instantaneously at the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes at Oostacker.
Pierre lived rather over twenty years after his sudden and complete
restoration to health). For the rest, the room is simple enough. There
are a few chairs. Another door leads into a little compartment where the
sick can be examined privately; a third and a fourth lead into the open
air on either side. There are two windows, looking out respectively on
this side and that.
Now I spent a great deal of my time in the Bureau. (I was given
presently a "doctor's cross" to wear--consisting of a kind of cardboard
with a white upright and red cross-bar--so that I could pass in and out
as I wished). I may as well, then, sum up once and for all the
impressions I received from observing the methods of the doctors. There
were all kinds of doctors there continually--Catholics and
free-thinkers, old, young, middle-aged. The cases were discussed with
the utmost freedom. Any could ask questions of the _miracules_ or of the
other doctors. The certificates of the sick were read aloud. I may
observe, too, that if there was any doubt as to the certificates, if
there was any question of a merely nervous malady, any conceivable
possibility of a mistake, the case was dismissed abruptly. These
certificates, then, given by the doctor attending the sick person, dated
and signed, are of the utmost importance; for without them no cure is
registered. Yet, in spite of these demands, I saw again and again sixty
or seventy men, dead silent, staring, listening with all their ears,
while some poor uneducated man or woman, smiling radiantly, gave a
little history or answered the abrupt kindly questions of the presiding
doctor.
Again, and again, too, it seemed to me that all this had been enacted
before. There was once upon a time a man born blind who received his
sight, and round him there gathered keen-eyed doctors of another kind.
They tried to pose him with questions. It was unheard of, they cried,
that a man born blind should receive his sight; at least it could not
have been as he said. Yet there stood the man in the midst, seeing them
as they saw him, and giving his witness. "This," he said, "was the way
it was done. Such and such is the name of the Man who cured me. And look
for yourselves! I was blind; now I see."
After I had looked and made notes and asked questions of Dr. Cox, Dr.
Boissarie came in. I was made known to him; and presently he took me
aside, with a Scottish priest (who all through my stay showed me great
kindness), and began to ask me questions. It seemed that, since there
was no physical _miracule_ present just now, a spiritual _miracule_
would do as well; for he asked me a hundred questions as to my
conversion and its causes, and what part prayer played in it; and the
doctors crowded round and listened to my halting French.
"It was the need of a divine Leader--an authority--then, that brought
you in?"
"Yes, it was that; it was the position of St. Peter in the Scriptures
and in history; it was the supernatural unity of the Church. It is
impossible to say exactly which argument predominated."
"It was, in fact, the grace of God," smiled the Doctor.
Dr. Boissarie, as also Dr. Cox, was extremely good to me. He is an
oldish man, with a keen, clever, wrinkled face; he is of middle-size,
and walks very slowly and deliberately; he is a fervent Catholic. He is
very sharp and businesslike, but there is an air of wonderful goodness
and kindness about him; he takes one by the arm in a very pleasant
manner; I have seen dilatory, rambling patients called to their senses
in an instant, yet never frightened.
Dr. Cox, who has been at Lourdes for fourteen years, is a typical
Englishman, ruddy, with a white moustache. His part is mostly
secretarial, it seems; though he too asks questions now and again. It
was he who gave me the "doctor's cross," and who later obtained for me
an even more exceptional favour, of which I shall speak in the proper
place. I heard a tale that he himself had been cured of some illness at
Lourdes, but I cannot vouch for it as true. I did not like to ask him
outright.
Presently from outside came the sound of organized singing, and the room
began to empty. The afternoon procession was coming. I ran to the window
that looks toward the Grotto; and there, sitting by an Assumptionist
Father--one of that Order who once had, officially, charge of the
Grotto, and now unofficially assists at it--I saw the procession go
past.
I have no idea of its numbers. I saw only beyond the single line of
heads outside the window, an interminable double stream of men go past,
each bearing a burning taper and singing as he came. There were persons
of every kind in that stream--groups of boys and young men, with their
priest beating time in the midst; middle-aged men and old men. I saw
again and again that kind of face which a foolish Briton is accustomed
to regard as absurd--a military, musketeer profile, immense moustaches
and imperial, and hair _en brosse_. Yet indeed there was nothing absurd.
It was terribly moving, and a lump rose in my throat, as I watched such
a sanguine bristling face as one of these, all alight with passion and
adoration. Such a man might be a grocer, or a local mayor, or a duke; it
was all one; he was a child of Mary; and he loved her with all his
heart, and Gabriel's salute was on his lips. Then the priests began to
come; long lines of them in black; then white cottas; then gleams of
purple; then a pectoral cross or two; and last the great canopy swaying
with all its bells and tassels.
III.
Now, it is at the close of the afternoon procession that the sick more
usually are healed. I crossed the Bureau to the other window that looks
on to what I will call the square, and began to watch for the
reappearance of the procession on that side. In front of me was a dense
crowd of heads, growing more dense every step up to the barriers that
enclose the open space in the midst. It was beyond those barriers, as I
knew, that the sick were laid ready for the passing by of Jesus of
Nazareth. On the right rose the wide sweep of steps and terraces leading
up to the basilica, and every line of stone was crowned with heads. Even
on the cliffs beyond, I could see figures coming and going and watching.
In all, about eighty thousand persons were present.
Presently the singing grew loud again; the procession had turned the
corner and entered the square; and I could see the canopy moving quickly
down the middle toward the Rosary Church, for its work was done. The
Blessed Sacrament was now to be carried round the lines of the sick,
beneath an _ombrellino_.
I shall describe all this later, and more in detail; it is enough just
now to say that the Blessed Sacrament went round, that It was carried at
last to the steps of the Rosary Church, and that, after the singing of
the _Tantum Ergo_ by that enormous crowd, Benediction was given. Then
the Bureau began to fill, and I turned round for the scientific aspect
of the affair.
The first thing that I saw was a little girl, seeming eight or nine
years old, who walked in and stood at the other side of the table, to be
examined. Her name was Marguerite Vandenabeele--so I read on the
certificate--and she had suffered since birth from infantile paralysis,
with such a result that she was unable to put her heels to the ground.
That morning in the _piscine_ she had found herself able to walk
properly though her heels were tender from disuse. We looked at her--the
doctors who had begun again to fill the room, and myself, with three or
four more amateurs. There she stood, very quiet and unexcited, with a
slightly flushed face. Some elder person in charge of her gave in the
certificate and answered the questions. Then she went away.[2]
Now, I must premise that the cures that took place while I was at
Lourdes that August cannot yet be regarded as finally established, since
not sufficient time has elapsed for their test and verification.[3]
Occasionally there is a relapse soon after the apparent cure, in the
case of certain diseases that may be more or less affected by a nervous
condition; occasionally claimants are found not to be cured at all. For
scientific certainty, therefore, it is better to rely upon cures that
have taken place a year, or at least some months previously, in which
the restored health is preserved. There are, of course a large number of
such cases; I shall come to them presently.[4]
The next patient to enter the room was one Mlle. Bardou. I learned later
from her lips that she was a secularized Carmelite nun, expelled from
her convent by the French Government. There was the further pathos in
her case in the fact that her cure, when I left Lourdes, was believed to
be at least doubtful. But now she took her seat, with a radiantly happy
face, to hand in her certificate and answer the questions. She had
suffered from renal tuberculosis; her certificate proved that. She was
here herself, without pain or discomfort, to prove that she no longer
suffered. Relief had come during the procession. A question or two was
put to her; an arrangement was made for her return after examination;
and she went out.
The room was rapidly filling now; there were forty or fifty persons
present. There was a sudden stir; those who sat rose up; and there came
into the room three bishops in purple--from St. Paul in Brazil, the
Bishop of Beauvais, and the famous orator, Monseigneur Touchet, of
Orleans--all of whom had taken part in the procession. These sat down,
and the examination went on.
The next to enter was Juliette Gosset, aged twenty-five, from Paris. She
had a darkish plain face, and was of middle size. She answered the
questions quietly enough, though there was evident a suppressed
excitement beneath. She had been cured during the procession, she said;
she had stood up and walked. And her illness? She showed a certificate,
dated in the previous March, asserting that she suffered gravely from
tuberculosis, especially in the right lung; she added herself that hip
disease had developed since that time, that one leg had become seven
centimetres shorter than the other, and that she had been for some
months unable to sit or kneel. Yet here she walked and sat without the
smallest apparent discomfort. When she had finished her tale, a doctor
pointed out that the certificate said nothing of any hip disease. She
assented, explaining again the reason; but added that the hospital where
she lodged in Lourdes would corroborate what she said. Then she
disappeared into the little private room to be examined.
There followed a nun, pale and black-eyed, who made gestures as she
stood by Dr. Boissarie and told her story. She spoke very rapidly. I
learned that she had been suffering from a severe internal malady, and
that she had been cured instantaneously in the _piscine_. She handed in
her certificate, and then she, too, vanished.
After a few minutes there returned the doctor who had examined Juliette
Gosset. Now, I think it should impress the incredulous that this case
was pronounced unsatisfactory, and will not, probably, appear upon the
registers. It was perfectly true that the girl had had tuberculosis, and
that now nothing was to be detected except the very faintest symptom--so
faint as to be negligible--in the right lung. It appeared to be true
also that she had had hip disease, since there were upon her body
certain marks of treatment by burning; and that her legs were now of an
exactly equal length. But, firstly, the certificate was five months old,
secondly, it made no mention of hip disease; thirdly, seven centimetres
was almost too large a measure to be believed. The case then was
referred back for further investigation; and there it stood when I left
Lourdes. The doctors shook their heads considerably over the seven
centimetres.
There followed next one of the most curious instances of all. It was an
old _miraculee_ who came back to report; her case is reported at length
in Dr. Boissarie's _OEuvre de Lourdes_, on pages 299-308.[5] Her name
was Marie Cools, and she came from Anvers, suffering apparently from
_mal de Pott_, and paralysis and anaesthesia of the legs. This state had
lasted for about three years. The doctors consulted differed as to her
case: two diagnosing it as mentioned above, two as hysteria. For ten
months she had suffered, moreover, from constant feverishness; she was
continually sick, and the work of digestion was painful and difficult.
There was a marked lateral deviation of the spinal column, with atrophy
of the leg muscles. At the second bath she began to improve, and the
pains in the back ceased; at the fourth bath the paralysis vanished, her
appetite came steadily back, and the sickness ceased. Now she came in to
announce her continued good health.
There are a number of interesting facts as to this case; and the first
is the witness of the infidel doctor who sent her to Lourdes, since it
seemed to him that "religious suggestion," was the only hope left. He,
by the way, had diagnosed her case as one of hysteria. "It had a
result," he writes, "which I, though an unbeliever, can characterize
only as marvellous. Marie Cools returned completely, absolutely cured.
No trace of paralysis or anaesthesia. She is actually on her feet; and,
two hospital servants having been stricken by typhoid, she is taking the
place of one of them." Another interesting fact is that a positive storm
raged at Anvers over her cure, and that Dr. Van de Vorst was at the
ensuing election dismissed from the hospital, with at least a suspicion
that the cause of his dismissal lay in his having advised the girl to go
to Lourdes at all.
Dr. Boissarie makes an interesting comment or two on the case, allowing
that it may perhaps have been hysteria, though this is not at all
certain. "When we have to do with nervous maladies, we must always
remember the rules of Benedict XIV.: 'The miracle cannot consist in the
cessation of the crises, but in the cessation of the nervous state which
produces them.'" It is this that has been accomplished in the case of
Marie Cools. And again: "Either Marie Cools is not cured, or there is in
her cure something other than suggestion, even religious. It is high time
to leave that tale alone, and to cease to class under the title of
religious suggestion two orders of facts completely distinct--superficial
and momentary modifications, and constitutional modifications so profound
that science cannot explain them. I repeat: to make of an hysterical
patient one whose equilibrium is perfect ... is a thing more difficult
than the cure of a wound."
So he wrote at the time of her apparent cure, hesitating still as to its
permanence. And here, before my eyes and his, she stood again, healthy
and well.
And so at last I went back to dinner. A very different scene followed.
For a couple of hours we had been materialists, concerning ourselves not
with what Mary had done by grace--at least not in that aspect--but with
what nature showed to have been done, by whatever agency, in itself. Now
once more we turned to Mary.
It was dark when we arrived at the square, but the whole place was alive
with earthly lights. High up to our left hung the church, outlined in
fire--tawdry, I dare say, with its fairy lights of electricity, yet
speaking to three-quarters of this crowd in the highest language they
knew. Light, after all, is the most heavenly thing we possess. Does it
matter so very much if it is decked out and arranged in what to superior
persons appears a finikin fashion?
The crowd itself had become a serpent of fire, writhing here below in
endlessly intricate coils; up there along the steps and parapets, a
long-drawn, slow-moving line; and from the whole incalculable number
came gusts and roars of singing, for each carried a burning torch and
sang with his group. The music was of all kinds. Now and again came the
_Laudate Mariam_ from one company, following to some degree the general
movement of the procession, and singing from little paper-books which
each read by the light of his wind-blown lantern; now the _Gloria
Patri_, as a band came past reciting the Rosary; but above all pealed
the ballad of Bernadette, describing how the little child went one day
by the banks of the Gave, how she heard the thunderous sound, and,
turning, saw the Lady, with all the rest of the sweet story, each stanza
ending with that
Ave, Ave, Ave Maria!
that I think will ring in my ears till I die.
It was an astounding sight to see that crowd and to hear that singing,
and to watch each group as it came past--now girls, now boys, now
stalwart young men, now old veteran pilgrims, now a bent old woman; each
face illumined by the soft paper-shrouded candle, and each mouth singing
to Mary. Hardly one in a thousand of those came to be cured of any
sickness; perhaps not one in five hundred had any friend among the
patients; yet here they were, drawn across miles of hot France, to give,
not to get. Can France, then, be so rotten?
As I dropped off to sleep that night, the last sound of which I was
conscious was, still that cannon-like chorus, coming from the direction
of the square:
Ave, Ave, Ave Maria!
Ave, Ave, Ave Maria!
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _La Voix de Lourdes_, a semi-official paper, gives the following
account of her, in its issue of the 23rd: "... Marguerite Vandenabeele,
10 ans, de Nieurlet, hameau de Hedezeele, (Nord), est arrivee avec un
des trains de Paris, portant un certificat du Docteur Dantois, date de
St. Momeleu (Nord) le 25 mai, 1908, la declarant atteinte _d'atrophie de
la jambe gauche_ avec _pied-bot equin_. Elle ne marchait que tres
difficilement et tres peniblement. A la sortie de la piscine, vendredi
soir, elle a pu marcher facilement. Amenee au Bureau Medical, on l'a
debarrassee de l'appareil dans lequel etait enferme son pied. Depuis,
elle marche bien, et parait guerie."
[3] This was written in the autumn of the year 1908, in which this visit
of mine took place.
[4] Since 1888 the registered cures are estimated as follows: '88, 57;
'89, 44; '90, 80; '91, 53; '92, 99; '93, 91; '94, 127; '95, 163; '96,
145; '97, 163; '98, 243; '99, 174; 1900, 160; '01, 171; '02, 164; '03,
161; '04, 140; '05, 157; '06, 148; '07, 109.
[5] My notes are rather illegible at this point, but I make no doubt
that this was Marie Cools.
IV.
I awoke to that singing again, in my room above the door of the hotel;
and went down presently to say my Mass in the Rosary Church, where, by
the kindness of the Scottish priest of whom I have spoken, an altar had
been reserved for me. The Rosary Church is tolerably fine within. It has
an immense flattened dome, beyond which stands the high altar; and round
about are fifteen chapels dedicated to the Fifteen Mysteries, which are
painted above their respective altars.
But I was to say Mass in a little temporary chapel to the left of the
entrance, formed, I suppose, out of what usually serves as some kind of
a sacristy. The place was hardly forty feet long; its high altar, at
which I both vested and said Mass, was at the farther end; but each
side, too, was occupied by three priests, celebrating simultaneously
upon altar-stones laid on long, continuous boards that ran the length of
the chapel. The whole of the rest of the space was crammed to
overflowing; indeed it had been scarcely possible to get entrance to the
chapel at all, so vast was the crowd in the great church outside.
After breakfast I went down to the Bureau once more, and found business
already begun. The first case, which was proceeding as I entered, was
that of a woman (whose name I could not catch) who had been cured of
consumption in the previous year, and who now came back to report a
state of continued good health. Her brother-in-law came with her, and
she remarked with pleasure that the whole family was now returning to
the practice of religion. During this investigation I noticed also
Juliette Gosset seated at the table, apparently in robust health.
There followed Natalie Audivin, a young woman who declared that she had
been cured in the previous year, and that she supposed her case had been
entered in the books; but at the moment, at any rate, her name could not
be found, and for the present the case was dismissed.
I now saw a Capuchin priest in the room--a small, rosy, bearded man--and
supposed that he was present merely as a spectator; but a minute or two
later Dr. Boissarie caught sight of him, and presently was showing him
off to me, much to his smiling embarrassment. He had caught consumption
of the intestines, it seemed, some years before, from attending upon two
of his dying brethren, and had come to Lourdes almost at his last gasp
in the year 1900 A. D. Here he stood, smiling and rosy.
There followed Mademoiselle Madeleine Laure, cured of severe internal
troubles (I did not catch the details) in the previous year.
Presently the Bishop of Dalmatia came in, and sat in his chair opposite
me, while we heard the account of Miss Noemie Nightingale, of Upper
Norwood, cured in the previous June of deafness, rising, in the case of
one ear at least, from a perforation of the drum. She was present at the
_piscines_, when on a sudden she had felt excruciating pains in the
ears. The next she knew was that she heard the _Magnificat_ being sung
in honour of her cure.
Mademoiselle Marie Bardou came in about this time, and passed through to
the inner room to be examined; while we received from a doctor a report
of the lame child whom we had seen on the previous day. All was as had
been said. She could now put her heels to the ground and walk. It seemed
she had been conscious of a sensation of hammering in her feet at the
moment of the cure, followed by a feeling of relief.
And so they went on. Next came Mademoiselle Eugenie Meunier, cured two
months before of fistula. She had given her certificate into the care of
her _cure_, who could not at this moment be found--naturally enough, as
she had made no appointment with him!--but she was allowed to tell her
story, and to show a copy of her parish magazine in which her story was
given. She had had in her body one wound of ten centimetres in size.
After bathing one evening she had experienced relief; by the next
morning the wound, which had flowed for six months, was completely
closed, and had remained so. Her strength and appetite had returned.
This cure had taken place in her own lodging, since her state was such
that she was forbidden to go to the Grotto.
The next case was that of a woman with paralysis, who was entered
provisionally as one of the "ameliorations." She was now able to walk,
but the use of her hand was not yet fully restored. She was sent back to
the _piscines_, and ordered to report again later.
The next was a boy of about twelve years old, Hilaire Ferraud, cured of
a terrible disease of the bone three years before. Until that time he
was unable to walk without support. He had been cured in the _piscines_.
He had been well ever since. He followed the trade of a carpenter. And
now he hopped solemnly, first on one leg and then on the other, to the
door and back, to show his complete recovery. Further, he had had
running wounds on one leg, now healed. His statements were verified.
The next was an oldish man, who came accompanied by his tall,
black-bearded son, to report on his continued good health since his
recovery, eight years previously, from neurasthenia and insanity. He had
had the illusion of being persecuted, with suicidal tendencies; he had
been told he could not travel twenty miles, and he had travelled over
eight hundred kilometres, after four years' isolation. He had stayed a
few months in Lourdes, bathing in the _piscines_, and the obsession had
left him. His statements were verified; he was congratulated and
dismissed.
There followed Emma Mourat to report; and then Madame Simonet, cured
eight years ago of a cystic tumour in the abdomen. She had been sitting
in one of the churches, I think, when there was a sudden discharge of
matter, and a sense of relief. On the morrow, after another bath, the
sense of discomfort had finally disappeared. During Madame Simonet's
examination, as the crowd was great, several persons were dismissed till
a later hour.
There followed another old patient to report. She had been cured two
years before of myelitis and an enormous tumour that, after twenty-two
years of suffering, had been declared "incurable" in her certificate.
The cure had taken place during the procession, in the course of which
she suddenly felt herself, she said, impelled to rise from her litter.
Her appetite had returned and she had enjoyed admirable health ever
since. Her name was looked up, and the details verified.
There followed Madame Francois and some doctor's evidence. Nine years
ago she had been cured of fistula in the arm. She had been operated upon
five times; finally, as her arm measured a circumference of seventy-two
centimetres, amputation had been declared necessary. She had refused,
and had come to Lourdes. Her cure occupied three days, at the end of
which her arm had resumed its normal size of twenty-five centimetres.
She showed her arm, with faint scars visible upon it; it was again
measured and found normal.
It was an amazing morning. Here I had sat for nearly three hours, seeing
with my own eyes persons of all ages and both sexes, suffering from
every variety of disease, present themselves before sixty or seventy
doctors, saying that they had been cured miraculously by the Mother of
God. Various periods had elapsed since their cures--a day, two or three
months, one year, eight years, nine years. These persons had been
operated upon, treated, subjected to agonizing remedies; one or two had
been declared actually incurable; and then, either in an instant, or
during the lapse of two or three days, or two or three months, had been
restored to health by prayer and the application of a little water in
no way remarkable for physical qualities.
What do the doctors say to this? Some confess frankly that it is
miraculous in the literal sense of the term, and join with the patients
in praising Mary and her Divine Son. Some say nothing; some are content
to say that science at its present stage cannot account for it all, but
that in a few years, no doubt ... and the rest of it. I did not hear any
say that: "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils";
but that is accounted for by the fact that those who might wish to say
it do not believe in Beelzebub.