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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lourdes, by Robert Hugh Benson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lourdes
+
+Author: Robert Hugh Benson
+
+Release Date: July 1, 2006 [EBook #18729]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOURDES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geoff Horton, Karina Aleksandrova and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+               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.
+
+But will science ever account for it all? That I leave to God. All that
+I can say is that, if so, it is surely as wonderful as any miracle, that
+the Church should have hit upon a secret that the scientists have
+missed. But is there not a simpler way of accounting for it? For read
+and consider the human evidence as regards Bernadette--her age, her
+simplicity, her appearance of ecstasy. She said that she saw this Lady
+eighteen times; on one of these occasions, in the presence of
+bystanders. She was bidden, she said, to go to the water. She turned to
+go down to the Gave, but was recalled and bidden to dig in the earth of
+the Grotto. She did so, and a little muddy water appeared where no soul
+in the village knew that there was water. Hour by hour this water waxed
+in volume; to-day it pours out in an endless stream, is conducted
+through the _piscines_; and it is after washing in this water that
+bodies are healed in a fashion for which "science cannot account."
+Perhaps it cannot. Perhaps it is not intended. But there are things
+besides science, and one of them is religion. Is not the evidence
+tolerably strong? Or is it a series of coincidences that the child had
+an hallucination, devised some trick with the water, and that this water
+happens to be an occasion of healing people declared incurable by known
+means?
+
+What is the good of these miracles? If so many are cured, why are not
+all? Are the _miracules_ especially distinguished for piety? Is it
+to be expected that unbelievers will be convinced? Is it claimed that the
+evidence is irresistible? Let us go back to the Gospels. It used to be
+said by doubters that the "miraculous element" must have been added
+later by the piety of the disciples, because all the world knew now that
+"miracles" did not happen. That _a priori_ argument is surely
+silenced by Lourdes. "Miracles" in that sense undoubtedly do happen, if
+present-day evidence is worth anything whatever. What, then, is the
+Christian theory?
+
+It is this. Our Blessed Lord appears to have worked miracles of such a
+nature that their significance was not, historically speaking,
+absolutely evident to those who, for other reasons, did not "believe in
+Him." It is known how some asked for a "sign from heaven" and were
+refused it; how He Himself said that even if one rose from the dead,
+they would not believe; yet, further, how He begged them to believe Him
+even for His work's sake, if for nothing else. We know, finally, how,
+when confronted with one particular miracle, His enemies cried out that
+it must have been done by diabolical agency.
+
+Very good, then. It would seem that the miracles of Our Lord were of a
+nature that strongly disposed to belief those that witnessed them, and
+helped vastly in the confirmation of the faith of those who already
+believed; but that miracles, as such, cannot absolutely compel the
+belief of those who for moral reasons refuse it. If they could, faith
+would cease to be faith.
+
+Now, this seems precisely the state of affairs at Lourdes. Even
+unbelieving scientists are bound to admit that science at present cannot
+account for the facts, which is surely the modern equivalent for the
+Beelzebub theory. We have seen, too, how severely scientific persons
+such as Dr. Boissarie and Dr. Cox--if they will permit me to quote their
+names--knowing as well as anyone what medicine and surgery and hypnotism
+and suggestion can and cannot do, corroborate this evidence, and see in
+the facts a simple illustration of the truth of that Catholic Faith
+which they both hold and practise.
+
+Is not the parallel a fair one? What more, then, do the adversaries
+want? There is no arguing with people who say that, since there is
+nothing but Nature, no process can be other than natural. There is no
+sign, even from heaven, that could break down the intellectual prejudice
+of such people. If they saw Jesus Christ Himself in glory, they could
+always say that "at present science cannot account for the phenomenon of
+a luminous body apparently seated upon a throne, but no doubt it will do
+so in the course of time." If they saw a dead and corrupting man rise
+from the grave, they could always argue that he could not have been dead
+and corrupting, or he could not have risen from the grave. Nothing but
+the Last Judgment could convince such persons. Even when the trumpet
+sounds, I believe that some of them, when they have recovered from their
+first astonishment, will make remarks about aural phenomena.
+
+But for the rest of us, who believe in God and His Son and the Mother of
+God on quite other grounds--because our intellect is satisfied, our
+heart kindled, our will braced by the belief; and because without that
+belief all life falls into chaos, and human evidence is nullified, and
+all noble motive and emotion cease--for us, who have received the gift
+of faith, in however small a measure, Lourdes is enough. Christ and His
+Mother are with us. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for
+ever. Is not that, after all, the simplest theory?
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+After _dejeuner_ I set out again to find the Scottish priest, who hoped
+to be able to take me to a certain window in the Rosary Church, where
+only a few were admitted, from which we might view the procession and
+the Blessing of the Sick. But we were disappointed; and, after a certain
+amount of scheming, we managed to get a position at the back of the
+crowd on the top of the church steps. I was able to climb up a few
+inches above the others, and secured a very tolerable view of the whole
+scene.
+
+The crowd was beyond describing. Here about us was a vast concourse of
+men; and as far as the eye could reach down the huge oval, and far away
+beyond the crowned statue, and on either side back to the Bureau on the
+left, and on the slopes on the right, stretched an inconceivable
+pavement of heads. Above us, too, on every terrace and step, back to the
+doors of the great basilica, we knew very well, was one seething,
+singing mob. A great space was kept open on the level ground beneath
+us--I should say one hundred by two hundred yards in area--and the
+inside fringe of this was composed of the sick, in litters, in chairs,
+standing, sitting, lying and kneeling. It was at the farther end that
+the procession would enter.
+
+After perhaps half an hour's waiting, during which one incessant gust of
+singing rolled this way and that through the crowd, the leaders of the
+procession appeared far away--little white or black figures, small as
+dolls--and the singing became general. But as the endless files rolled
+out, the singing ceased, and a moment later a priest, standing solitary
+in the great space began to pray aloud in a voice like a silver trumpet.
+
+I have never heard such passion in my life. I began to watch presently,
+almost mechanically, the little group beneath the _ombrellino_, in white
+and gold, and the movements of the monstrance blessing the sick; but
+again and again my eyes wandered back to the little figure in the midst,
+and I cried out with the crowd, sentence after sentence, following that
+passionate voice:
+
+"_Seigneur, nous vous adorons!_"
+
+"_Seigneur,_" came the huge response, "_nous vous adorons!_"
+
+"_Seigneur, nous vous aimons!_" cried the priest.
+
+"_Seigneur, nous vous aimons!_" answered the people.
+
+"_Sauvez-nous, Jesus; nous perissons!_"
+
+"_Sauvez-nous, Jesus; nous perissons!_"
+
+"_Jesus, Fils de Marie, ayez pitie de nous!_"
+
+"_Jesus, Fils de Marie, ayez pitie de nous!_"
+
+Then with a surge rose up the plainsong melody.
+
+"_Parce, Domine!_" sang the people. "_Parce populo tuo! Ne in aeternum
+irascaris nobis._"
+
+Again:
+
+"_Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto._"
+
+"_Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper, et in saecula saeculorum.
+Amen._"
+
+Then again the single voice and the multitudinous answer:
+
+"_Vous etes la Resurrection et la Vie!_"
+
+And then an adjuration to her whom He gave to be our Mother.
+
+"_Mere du Sauveur, priez pour nous!_"
+
+"_Salut des Infirmes, priez pour nous!_"
+
+Then once more the singing; then the cry, more touching than all:
+
+"_Seigneur, guerissez nos malades!_"
+
+"_Seigneur, guerissez nos malades!_"
+
+Then the kindling shout that brought the blood to ten thousand faces:
+
+"_Hosanna! Hosanna au Fils de David!_" (I shook to hear it).
+
+"_Hosanna!_" cried the priest, rising from his knees with arms flung
+wide.
+
+"_Hosanna!_" roared the people, swift as an echo.
+
+"_Hosanna! Hosanna!_" crashed out again and again, like great
+artillery.
+
+Yet there was no movement among those piteous prostrate lines. The
+Bishop, the _ombrellino_ over him, passed on slowly round the circle;
+and the people cried to Him whom he bore, as they cried two thousand
+years ago on the road to the city of David. Surely He will be pitiful
+upon this day--the Jubilee Year of His Mother's graciousness, the octave
+of her assumption to sit with Him on His throne!
+
+"_Mere du Sauveur, priez pour nous!_"
+
+"_Jesus, vous etes mon Seigneur et mon Dieu!_"
+
+Yet there was no movement.
+
+If ever "suggestion" could work a miracle, it must work it now. "We
+expect the miracles during the procession to-morrow and on Sunday," a
+priest had said to me on the previous day. And there I stood, one of a
+hundred thousand, confident in expectation, thrilled by that voice,
+nothing doubting or fearing; there were the sick beneath me, answering
+weakly and wildly to the crying of the priest; and yet there was no
+movement, no sudden leap of a sick man from his bed as Jesus went by, no
+vibrating scream of joy--"_Je suis gueri! Je suis gueri!_"--no
+tumultuous rush to the place, and the roar of the _Magnificat_, as we
+had been led to expect.
+
+The end was coming near now. The monstrance had reached the image once
+again, and was advancing down the middle. The voice of the priest grew
+more passionate still, as he tossed his arms and cried for mercy
+
+"_Jesus, ayez pitie de nous!--ayez pitie[Transcriber's Note: original
+had "pitie"] de nous!_"
+
+And the people, frantic with ardour and desire, answered him in a voice
+of thunder:
+
+"_Ayez pitie de nous!--ayez pitie de nous!_"
+
+And now up the steps came the grave group to where Jesus would at least
+bless His own, though He would not heal them; and the priest in the
+midst, with one last cry, gave glory to Him who must be served through
+whatever misery:
+
+"_Hosanna! Hosanna au Fils de David!_"
+
+Surely that must touch the Sacred Heart! Will not His Mother say one
+word?
+
+"_Hosanna! Hosanna au Fils de David!_"
+
+"_Hosanna!_" cried the priest.
+
+"_Hosanna!_" cried the people.
+
+"_Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!..._"
+
+One articulate roar of disappointed praise, and then--_Tantum ergo
+Sacramentum!_ rose in its solemnity.
+
+When Benediction was over, I went back to the Bureau; but there was
+little to be seen there. No, there were no miracles to-day, I was
+told--or hardly one. Perhaps one in the morning. It was not known.
+
+Several Bishops were there again, listening to the talk of the doctors,
+and the description of certain cases on previous days. Pere Salvator,
+the Capuchin, was there again; as also the tall bearded Assumptionist
+Father of whom I have spoken. But there was not a great deal of interest
+or excitement. I had the pleasure of talking a while with the Bishop of
+Tarbes, who introduced me again to the Capuchin, and retold his story.
+
+But I was a little unhappy. The miracle was that I was not more so. I
+had expected so much: I had seen nothing.
+
+I talked to Dr. Cox also before leaving.
+
+"No," he told me, "there is hardly one miracle to-day. We are doubtful,
+too, about that leg that was seven centimetres too short."
+
+"And is it true that Mademoiselle Bardou is not cured?" (A doctor had
+been giving us certain evidence a few minutes before).
+
+"I am afraid so. It was probably a case of intense subjective
+excitement. But it may be an amelioration. We do not know yet. The real
+work of investigating comes afterwards."
+
+How arbitrary it all seemed, I thought, as I walked home to dinner. That
+morning, on my way from the Bureau, I had seen a great company of white
+banners moving together; and, on inquiry, had found that these were the
+_miracules_ chiefly of previous years--about three hundred and fifty in
+number.[6] They formed a considerably large procession. I had looked at
+their faces: there were many more women than men (as there were upon
+Calvary). But as I watched them I could not conceive upon what principle
+the Supernatural had suddenly descended on this and not on that. "Two
+men in one bed.... Two women grinding at the mill.... One is taken and
+the other left." Here were persons of all ages--from six to eighty, I
+should guess--of all characters, ranks, experiences; of both sexes. Some
+were religious, some grocers, some of the nobility, a retired soldier or
+two, and so on. They were not distinguished for holiness, it seemed. I
+had heard heartbreaking little stories of the ten lepers over again--one
+grateful, nine selfish. One or two of the girls, I heard, had had their
+heads turned by flattery and congratulation; they had begun to give
+themselves airs.
+
+And, now again, here was this day, this almost obvious occasion. It was
+the Jubilee Year; everything was about on a double scale. And nothing
+had happened! Further, five of the sick had actually died at Lourdes
+during their first night there. To come so far and to die!
+
+On what principle, then, did God act? Then I suddenly understood, not
+God's principles, but my own; and I went home both ashamed and
+comforted.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] The official numbers of those at the afternoon procession were 341.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+I said a midnight Mass that night in the same chapel of the Rosary
+Church as on the previous morning. Again the crush was terrific. On the
+steps of the church I saw a friar hearing a confession; and on entering
+I found High Mass proceeding in the body of the church itself, with a
+congregation so large and so worn-out that many were sleeping in
+constrained attitudes among the seats. In fact, I was informed, since
+the sleeping accommodation of Lourdes could not possibly provide for so
+large a pilgrimage, there were many hundreds, at least, who slept where
+they could--on the steps of churches, under trees and rocks, and by the
+banks of the river.
+
+I was served at my Mass by a Scottish priest, immediately afterwards I
+served his at the same altar. While vesting, I noticed a priest at the
+high altar of this little chapel reading out acts of prayer, to which
+the congregation responded; and learned that two persons who had been
+received into the Church on that day were to make their First Communion.
+As midnight struck, simultaneously from the seven altars came seven
+voices:
+
+"_In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen._"
+
+Once more, on returning home and going to bed a little after one o'clock
+in the morning, the last sound that I heard was of the "_Gloria Patri_"
+being sung by other pilgrims also returning to their lodging.
+
+After coffee, a few hours later, I went down again to the square. It was
+Sunday, and a Pontifical High Mass was being sung on the steps of the
+Rosary Church. As usual, the crowd filled the square, and I could hardly
+penetrate for a while beyond the fringe; but it was a new experience to
+hear that vast congregation in the open air responding with one giant
+voice to the plain-song of the Mass. It was astonishing what expression
+showed itself in the singing. The _Sanctus_ was one of the most
+impressive peals of worship and adoration that I have ever heard. At the
+close of the Mass, all the bishops present near the altar--I counted six
+or seven--turned and gave the blessing simultaneously. On the two great
+curves that led up to the basilica were grouped the white banners of the
+_miracules_.
+
+Soon after arriving at the Bureau a very strange and quiet little
+incident happened. A woman with a yellowish face, to which the colour
+was slowly returning, came in and sat down to give her evidence. She
+declared to us that during the procession yesterday she had been cured
+of a tumour on the liver. She had suddenly experienced an overwhelming
+sense of relief, and had walked home completely restored to health. On
+being asked why she did not present herself at the Bureau, she answered
+that she did not think of it: she had just gone home. I have not yet
+heard whether this was a true cure or not; all I can say at present is I
+was as much impressed by her simple and natural bearing, her entire
+self-possession, and the absence of excitement, as by anything I saw at
+Lourdes. I cannot conceive such a woman suffering from an illusion.
+
+A few minutes later Dr. Cox called to me, and writing on a card, handed
+it to me, telling me it would admit me to the _piscines_ for a bath. I
+had asked for this previously; but had been told it was not certain,
+owing to the crush of patients, whether it could be granted. I set out
+immediately to the _piscines_.
+
+There are, as I have said, three compartments in the building called the
+_piscines_. That on the left is for women; in the middle, for children
+and for those who do not undergo complete immersion; on the right, for
+men. It was into this last, then, that I went, when I had forced my way
+through the crowd, and passed the open court where the priests prayed.
+It was a little paved place like a chapel, with a curtain hung
+immediately before the door. When I had passed this, I saw at the
+farther end, three or four yards away, was a deepish trough, wide and
+long enough to hold one person. Steps went down on either side of it,
+for the attendants. Immediately above the bath, on the wall, was a
+statue of Our Lady; and beneath it a placard of prayers, large enough to
+be read at a little distance.
+
+There were about half a dozen people in the place--two or three priests
+and three or four patients. One of the priests, I was relieved to see,
+was the Scotsman whose Mass I had served the previous midnight. He was
+in his soutane, with his sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He gave me my
+directions, and while I made ready I watched the patients. There was one
+lame man, just beside me, beginning to dress; two tiny boys, and a young
+man who touched me more than I can say. He was standing by the head of
+the bath, holding a basin in one hand and a little image of our Lady in
+the other, and was splashing water ingeniously with his fingers into his
+eyes; these were horribly inflamed, and I could see that he was blind. I
+cannot describe the passion with which he did this, seeming to stare all
+the while towards the image he held, and whispering out prayers in a
+quick undertone--hoping, no doubt, that his first sight would be the
+image of his Mother. Then I looked at the boys. One of them had horribly
+prolonged and thin legs; I could not see what was wrong with the other,
+except that he looked ill and worn out. Close beside me, on the wet,
+muddy paving, lay an indescribable bandage that had been unrolled from
+the lame man's leg.
+
+When my turn came, I went wrapped in a soaking apron, down a step or so
+into the water; and then, with a priest holding either hand, lay down at
+full length so that my head only emerged. That water had better not be
+described. It is enough to say that people suffering from most of the
+diseases known to man had bathed in it without ceasing for at least five
+or six hours. Yet I can say, with entire sincerity, that I did not have
+even the faintest physical repulsion, though commonly I hate dirt at
+least as much as sin. It is said, too, that never in the history of
+Lourdes has there been one case of disease traceable to infection from
+the baths. The water was cold, but not unpleasantly. I lay there, I
+suppose, about one minute, while the two priests and myself repeated off
+the placard the prayers inscribed there. These were, for the most part,
+petitions to Mary to pray. "_O Marie,_" they ended, "_concue sans peche,
+priez pour nous qui avons recours a vous!_"
+
+As I dressed again after the bath, I had one more sight of the young
+man. He was being led out by a kindly attendant, but his face was all
+distorted with crying, and from his blind eyes ran down a stream of
+terrible tears. It is unnecessary to say that I said a "Hail Mary" for
+his soul at least.
+
+As soon as I was ready, I went out and sat down for a while among the
+recently bathed, and began to remind myself why _I_ had bathed.
+Certainly I was not suffering from anything except a negligible ailment
+or two. Neither did I do it out of curiosity, because I could have seen
+without difficulty all the details without descending into that
+appalling trough. I suppose it was just an act of devotion. Here was
+water with a history behind it; water that was as undoubtedly used by
+Almighty God for giving benefits to man as was the clay laid upon blind
+eyes long ago near Siloe, or the water of Bethesda itself. And it is a
+natural instinct to come as close as possible to things used by the
+heavenly powers. I was extraordinarily glad I had bathed, and I have
+been equally glad ever since. I am afraid it is of no use as evidence to
+say that until I came to Lourdes I was tired out, body and mind; and
+that since my return I have been unusually robust. Yet that is a fact,
+and I leave it there.
+
+As I sat there a procession went past to the Grotto, and I walked to
+the railings to look at it. I do not know at all what it was all about,
+but it was as impressive as all things are in Lourdes. The _miracules_
+came first with their banners--file after file of them--then a number of
+prelates, then _brancardiers_ with their shoulder-harness, then nuns,
+then more _brancardiers_. I think perhaps they may have been taking a
+recent _miracule_ to give thanks; for when I arrived presently at the
+Bureau again, I heard that, after all, several appeared to have been
+cured at the procession on the previous day.
+
+I was sitting in the hall of the hotel a few minutes later when I heard
+the roar of the _Magnificat_ from the street, and ran out to see what
+was forward. As I came to the door, the heart of the procession went by.
+A group of _brancardiers_ formed an irregular square, holding cords to
+keep back the crowd; and in the middle walked a group of three, followed
+by an empty litter. The three were a white-haired man on this side, a
+stalwart _brancardier_ on the other, and between them a girl with a
+radiant face, singing with all her heart. She had been carried down from
+her lodging that morning to the _piscines_; she was returning on her own
+feet, by the power of Him who said to the lame man, "Take up thy bed and
+go into thy house." I followed them a little way, then I went back to
+the hotel.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+In the afternoon we went down to meet a priest who had promised a place
+to one of our party in the window of which I have spoken before. But the
+crowd was so great that we could not find him, so presently we dispersed
+as best we could. Two other priests and myself went completely round the
+outside of the churches, in order, if possible, to join in the
+procession, since to cross the square was a simple impossibility. In the
+terrible crush near the Bureau, I became separated from the others, and
+fought my way back, and into the Bureau, as the best place open to me
+now for seeing the Blessing of the Sick.
+
+It was now at last that I had my supreme wish. Within a minute or two of
+my coming to look through the window, the Blessed Sacrament entered the
+reserved space among the countless litters. The crowd between me and the
+open space was simply one pack of heads; but I could observe the
+movements of what was going forward by the white top of the _ombrellino_
+as it passed slowly down the farther side of the square.
+
+The crowd was very still, answering as before the passionate voice in
+the midst; but watching, watching, as I watched. Beside me sat Dr. Cox,
+and our Rosaries were in our hands. The white spot moved on and on, and
+all else was motionless. I knew that beyond it lay the sick. "Lord, if
+it be possible--if it be possible! Nevertheless, not my will but Thine
+be done." It had reached now the end of the first line.
+
+"_Seigneur, guerissez nos malades!_" cried the priest.
+
+"_Seigneur, guerissez nos malades!_" answered the people.
+
+"_Vous etes mon Seigneur et mon Dieu!_"
+
+And then on a sudden it came.
+
+Overhead lay the quiet summer air, charged with the Supernatural as a
+cloud with thunder--electric, vibrating with power. Here beneath lay
+souls thirsting for its touch of fire--patient, desirous, infinitely
+pathetic; and in the midst that Power, incarnate for us men and our
+salvation. Then it descended, swift and mighty.
+
+I saw a sudden swirl in the crowd of heads beneath the church steps, and
+then a great shaking ran through the crowd; but there for a few instants
+it boiled like a pot. A sudden cry had broken out, and it ran through
+the whole space; waxing in volume as it ran, till the heads beneath my
+window shook with it also; hands clapped, voices shouted: "_Un miracle!
+Un miracle!_"
+
+I was on my feet, staring and crying out. Then quietly the shaking
+ceased, and the shouting died to a murmur; and the _ombrellino_ moved
+on; and again the voice of the priest thrilled thin and clear, with a
+touch of triumphant thankfulness: "_Vous etes la Resurrection et la
+Vie!_" And again, with entreaty once more--since there still were two
+thousand sick untouched by that Power, and time pressed--that infinitely
+moving plea: "_Seigneur, celui qui vous aime est malade!_" And:
+"_Seigneur, faites que je marche! Seigneur, faites que j'entende!_"
+
+And then again the finger of God flashed down, and again and again; and
+each time a sick and broken body sprang from its bed of pain and stood
+upright; and the crowd smiled and roared and sobbed. Five times I saw
+that swirl and rush; the last when the _Te Deum_ pealed out from the
+church steps as Jesus in His Sacrament came home again. And there were
+two that I did not see. There were seven in all that afternoon.
+
+Now, is it of any use to comment on all this? I am not sure; and yet,
+for my own satisfaction if for no one else's, I wish to set down some of
+the thoughts that came to me both then and after I had sat at the window
+and seen God's loving-kindness with my own eyes.
+
+The first overwhelming impression that remained with me is this--that I
+had been present, in my own body, in the twentieth century, and seen
+Jesus pass along by the sick folk, as He passed two thousand years
+before. That, in a word, is the supreme fact of Lourdes. More than once
+as I sat there that afternoon I contrasted the manner in which I was
+spending it with that in which the average believing Christian spends
+Sunday afternoon. As a child, I used to walk with my father, and he used
+to read and talk on religious subjects; on our return we used to have a
+short Bible-class in his study. As an Anglican clergyman, I used to
+teach in Sunday schools or preach to children. As a Catholic priest, I
+used occasionally to attend at catechism. At all these times the
+miraculous seemed singularly far away; we looked at it across twenty
+centuries; it was something from which lessons might be drawn, upon
+which the imagination might feed, but it was a state of affairs as
+remote as the life of prehistoric man; one assented to it, and that was
+all. And here at Lourdes it was a present, vivid event. I sat at an
+ordinary glass window, in a soutane made by an English tailor, with
+another Englishman beside me, and saw the miraculous happen. Time and
+space disappeared; the centuries shrank and vanished; and behold we saw
+that which "prophets and kings have desired to see and have not seen!"
+
+Of course "scientific" arguments, of the sort which I have related, can
+be brought forward in an attempt to explain Lourdes; but they are the
+same arguments that can be, and are, brought forward against the
+miracles of Jesus Christ Himself. I say nothing to those here; I leave
+that to scientists such as Dr. Boissarie; but what I cannot understand
+is that professing Christians are able to bring _a priori_ arguments
+against the fact that Our Lord is the same yesterday, to-day, and for
+ever--the same in Galilee and in France. "These signs shall follow them
+that believe," He said Himself; and the history of the Catholic Church
+is an exact fulfilment of the words. It was so, St. Augustine tells us,
+at the tombs of the martyrs; five hundred miracles were reported at
+Canterbury within a few years of St. Thomas' martyrdom. And now here is
+Lourdes, as it has been for fifty years, in this little corner of poor
+France!
+
+I have been asked since my return: "Why cannot miracles be done in
+England?" My answer is, firstly, that they are done in England, in
+Liverpool, and at Holywell, for example; secondly, I answer by another
+question as to why Jesus Christ was not born in Rome; and if He had been
+born in Rome, why not in Nineveh and Jerusalem? Thirdly, I answer that
+perhaps more would be done in England, if there were more faith there.
+It is surely a little unreasonable to ask that, in a country which
+three hundred and fifty years ago deliberately repudiated Christ's
+Revelation of Himself, banished the Blessed Sacrament and tore down
+Mary's shrines, Christ and His Mother should cooperate supernaturally in
+marvels that are rather the rewards of the faithful. "It is not meet to
+take the children's bread and to cast it to the dogs"--these are the
+words of our Lord Himself. If London is not yet tolerant enough to allow
+an Eucharistic Procession in her streets, she is scarcely justified in
+demanding that our Eucharistic Lord should manifest His power. "He could
+do no mighty work there," says the Evangelist, of Capharnaum, "because
+of their unbelief."
+
+This, then, is the supreme fact of Lourdes: that Jesus Christ in His
+Sacrament passes along that open square, with the sick laid in beds on
+either side; and that at His word the lame walk and lepers are cleansed
+and deaf hear--that they are seen leaping and dancing for joy.
+
+Even now, writing within ten days of my return, all seems like a dream;
+and yet I know that I saw it. For over thirty years I had been
+accustomed to repeat the silly formula that "the age of miracles is
+past"; that they were necessary for the establishment of Christianity,
+but that they are no longer necessary now, except on extremely rare
+occasions perhaps; and in my heart I knew my foolishness. Why, for those
+thirty years Lourdes had been in existence! And if I spoke of it at all,
+I spoke only of hysteria and auto-suggestion and French imaginativeness,
+and the rest of the nonsense. It is impossible for a Christian who has
+been at Lourdes to speak like that again.
+
+And as for the unreality, that does not trouble me. I have no doubt that
+those who saw the bandages torn from the leper's limbs and the sound
+flesh shown beneath, or the once blind man, his eyes now dripping with
+water of Siloe, looking on Him who had made him whole, or heard the
+marvellous talk of "men like trees walking," and the rest--I have no
+doubt that ten days later they sat themselves with unseeing eyes, and
+wondered whether it was indeed they who had witnessed those things.
+Human nature, like a Leyden jar, cannot hold beyond a fixed quantity;
+and this human nature, with experience, instincts, education, common
+talk, public opinion, and all the rest of it, echoing round it; the
+assumption that miracles _do not happen_; that laws are laws; in other
+words, that Deism is the best that can be hoped--well, it is little
+wonder that the visible contradiction of all this conventionalism finds
+but little room in the soul.
+
+Then there is another point that I should like to make in the presence
+of "Evangelical" Christians who shake their heads over Mary's part in
+the matter. It is this--that for every miracle that takes place in the
+_piscines_, I should guess that a dozen take place while That which we
+believe to be Jesus Christ goes by. Catholics, naturally, need no such
+reassurance; they know well enough from interior experience that when
+Mary comes forward Jesus does not retire! But for those who think as
+some Christians do, it is necessary to point out the facts. And again. I
+have before me as I write the little card of ejaculations that are used
+in the procession. There are twenty-four in all. Of these, twenty-one
+are addressed to Jesus Christ; in two more we ask the "Mother of the
+Saviour" and the "Health of the Sick" to pray for us; in the last we ask
+her to "show herself a Mother." If people will talk of "proportion" in a
+matter in which there is no such thing--since there can be no
+comparison, without grave irreverence, between the Creator and a
+creature--I would ask, Is there "disproportion" here?
+
+In fact, Lourdes, as a whole, is an excellent little compendium of
+Catholic theology and Gospel-truth. There was once a marriage feast, and
+the Mother of Jesus was there with her Son. There was no wine. She told
+her Son what He already knew; He seemed to deprecate her words; but He
+obeyed them, and the water became wine.
+
+There is at Lourdes not a marriage feast, but something very like a
+deathbed. The Mother of Jesus is there with her Son. It is she again who
+takes the initiative. "Here is water," she seems to say; "dig,
+Bernadette, and you will find it." But it is no more than water. Then
+she turns to her Son. "They have water," she says, "but no more." And
+then He comes forth in His power. "Draw out now from all the sick beds
+of the world and bear them to the Governor of the Feast. Use the
+commonest things in the world--physical pain and common water. Bring
+them together, and wait until I pass by." Then Jesus of Nazareth passes
+by; and the sick leap from their beds, and the blind see, and the lepers
+are cleansed, and devils are cast out.
+
+Oh, yes! the parallel halts; but is it not near enough?
+
+_Seigneur, guerissez nos malades!_
+
+_Salut des Infirmes, priez pour nous!_
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+The moment Benediction was given, the room began rapidly to fill; but I
+still watched the singing crowd outside. Among others I noticed a woman,
+placid and happy--such a woman as you would see a hundred times a day in
+London streets, with jet ornaments in her hat, middle-aged, almost
+startlingly commonplace. No, nothing dramatic happened to her; that was
+the point. But there she was, taking it all for granted, joining in the
+_Magnificat_ with a roving eye, pleased as she would have been pleased
+at a circus; interrupting herself to talk to her neighbour; and all the
+while gripping in a capable hand, on which shone a wedding ring, the
+bars of the Bureau window behind which I sat, that she might make the
+best of both worlds--Grace without and Science within. She, as I, had
+seen what God had done; now she proposed to see what the doctors would
+make of it all; and have, besides, a good view of the _miracules_ when
+they appeared.
+
+I suppose it was her astonishing ordinariness that impressed me. It was
+surprising to see such a one during such a scene; it was as incongruous
+as a man riding a bicycle on the judgment Day. Yet she, too, served to
+make it all real. She was like the real tree in the foreground of a
+panorama. She served the same purpose as the _Voix de Lourdes_, a
+briskly written French newspaper that gives the lists of the miracles.
+
+When I turned round at last, the room was full. Among the people present
+I remember an Hungarian canon, and the Brazilian Bishop with six others.
+Dr. Deschamps, late of Lille, now of Paris, was in the chair; and I sat
+next him.
+
+The first patient to enter was Euphrasie Bosc, a dark girl of
+twenty-seven. She rolled a little in her walk as she came in; then she
+sat down and described the "white swellings" on her knee, with other
+details; she told how she had been impelled to rise during the
+procession just now. She was made to walk round the room to show her
+state, and was then sent off, and told to return at another time.
+
+Next came Emma Sansen, a pale girl of twenty-five. She had suffered from
+endo-pericarditis for five years, as her certificate showed; she had
+been confined to her room for two years. She told her story quickly and
+went out.
+
+There followed Sister Marguerite Emilie, an Assumptionist, aged
+thirty-nine, a brisk, brown-faced, tall woman, in her religious habit.
+Her malady had been _mal de Pott_, a severe spinal affliction,
+accompanied by abscesses and other horrors. She, too, appeared in the
+best of health.
+
+We began then to hear a doctor give news of a certain Irish Religious,
+cured that morning in the _piscines_; but we were interrupted by the
+entry of Emile Lansman, a solid artisan of twenty-five who came in
+walking cheerfully, carrying a crutch and a stick which he no longer
+needed. Paralysis of the right leg and traumatism of the spine had been
+his, up to that day. Now he carried his crutch.
+
+He was followed by another man whose name I did not catch, and on whose
+case I wrote so rapidly that I am scarcely able to read all my notes.
+His story, in brief, was as follows. He had had some while ago a severe
+accident, which involved a kind of appalling disembowelment. For the
+last year or two he had had gastric troubles of all kinds, including
+complete loss of appetite. His certificate showed too, that he suffered
+from partial paralysis (he himself showed us how little he had been able
+to open his fingers), and anaesthesia of the right arm. (I looked over
+Dr. Deschamps' shoulder and read on the paper the words _lesion
+incurable_). It was certified further that he was incapable of manual
+work. Then he described to us how yesterday in the _piscine_, upon
+coming out of the bath, he had been aware of a curious sensation of
+warmth in the stomach; he had then found that, for the first time for
+many months, he wished for food; he was given it, and he enjoyed it. He
+moved his fingers in a normal manner, raised his arm and let it fall.
+
+Then for the first time in the Bureau I heard a sharp controversy. One
+doctor suddenly broke out, saying that there was no actual proof that it
+was not all "hysterical simulation." Another answered him; an appeal was
+made to the certificate. Then the first doctor delivered a little
+speech, in excellent taste, though casting doubt upon the case; and the
+matter was then set aside for investigation with the rest. I heard Dr.
+Boissarie afterwards thank him for his admirable little discourse.
+
+Finally, though it was getting late, Honorie Gras, aged thirty-five,
+came in to give her evidence. She had suffered till to-day from
+"purulent arthritis" and "white swellings" on the left knee. To-day she
+walked. Her certificate confirmed her, and she was dismissed.
+
+It was all very matter-of-fact. There is no reason to fear that Lourdes
+is all hymn-singing and adjurations. It is a pleasure to think that, on
+the right of the Rosary Church, and within a hundred yards of the
+Grotto, there is this little room, filled with keen-eyed doctors from
+every school of faith and science, who have only to present their cards
+and be made free of all that Lourdes has to show. They are keen-brained
+as well as keen-eyed. I heard one of them say quietly that if the Mother
+of God, as it appeared, cured incurable cases, it was hard to deny to
+her the power of curing curable cases also. It does not prove, that is
+to say, that a cure is not miraculous, if it might have been cured by
+human aid. And it is interesting and suggestive to remember that of such
+cases one hears little or nothing. For every startling miracle that is
+verified in the Bureau, I wonder how many persons go home quietly, freed
+from some maddening little illness by the mercy of Mary--some illness
+that is worthless as a "case" in scientific eyes, yet none the less as
+real as is its cure?
+
+Of course one element that tends to keep from the grasp of the
+imagination all the miracles of the place is all this scientific
+phraseology. In the simple story of the Gospel, it seems almost
+supernaturally natural that a man should have "lain with an infirmity
+for forty years," and should, at the word of Jesus Christ, have taken up
+his bed and walked; or that, as in the "Acts," another's "feet and
+ankle-bones should receive strength" by the power of the Holy Name. But
+when we come to tuberculosis and _mal de Pott_ and _lesion incurable_
+and "hysterical simulation," in some manner we seem to find ourselves in
+rather a breathless and stuffy room, where the white flower of the
+supernatural appears strangely languid to the eye of the imagination.
+
+That, however, is all as it should be. We are bound to have these
+things. Perhaps the most startling miracle of all is that the Bureau and
+the Grotto stand side by side, and that neither stifles the other. Is it
+possible that here at last Science and Religion will come to terms, and
+each confess with wonder the capacities of the other, and, with awe,
+that divine power that makes them what they are, and has "set them their
+bounds which they shall not pass?" It would be remarkable if France, of
+all countries, should be the scene of that reconciliation between these
+estranged sisters.
+
+That night, after dinner, I went out once more to see the procession
+with torches; and this time my friend and I each took a candle, that we
+might join in that act of worship. First, however, I went down to the
+_robinets_--the taps which flow between the Grotto and the
+_piscines_--and, after a heartcrushing struggle, succeeded in filling my
+bottle with the holy water. It was astonishing how selfish one felt
+while still in the battle, and how magnanimous when one had gained the
+victory. I filled also the bottle of a voluble French priest, who
+despairingly extended it toward me as he still fought in the turmoil.
+"_Eh, bien!_" cried a stalwart Frenchwoman at my side, who had filled
+her bottle and could not extricate herself. "If you will not permit me
+to depart, I remain!" The argument was irresistible; the crowd laughed
+childishly and let her out.
+
+Now, I regret to say that once more the churches were outlined in fairy
+electric lamps, that the metallic garlands round our Mother's statue
+blazed with them; that, even worse, the old castle on the hill and the
+far away Calvary were also illuminated; and, worst of all, that the
+procession concluded with fireworks--rockets and bombs. Miracles in the
+afternoon; fireworks in the evening!
+
+Yet the more I think of it, the less am I displeased. When one reflects
+that more than half of the enormous crowd came, probably, from tiny
+villages in France--where a rocket is as rare as an angelic visitation;
+and, on the carnal side, as beautiful in their eyes--it seems a very
+narrow-minded thing to object. It is true that you and I connect
+fireworks with Mafeking night or Queen Victoria's Jubilee; and that they
+seem therefore incongruous when used to celebrate a visitation of God.
+But it is not so with these people. For them it is a natural and
+beautiful way of telling the glory of Him who is the Dayspring from on
+high, who is the Light to lighten the Gentiles, whose Mother is the
+_Stella Matutina_, whose people once walked in darkness and now have
+seen a great Light. It is their answer--the reflection in the depths of
+their sea--to the myriad lights of that heaven which shines over
+Lourdes. Therefore let us leave the fireworks in peace.
+
+It was a very moving thing to walk in that procession, with a candle in
+one hand and a little paper book in the other, and help to sing the
+story of Bernadette, with the unforgettable _Aves_ at the end of each
+verse, and the _Laudate Mariam_, and the Nicene Creed. _Credo in ...
+unam sanctam Catholicam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam._ My heart leaped at
+that. For where else but in the Catholic Church do such things happen as
+these that I had seen? Imagine, if you please, miracles in Manchester!
+Certainly they might happen there, if there were sufficient Catholics
+gathered in His Name; but put for Manchester, Exeter Hall or St. Paul's
+Cathedral! The thought is blindingly absurd. No; the Christianity of
+Jesus Christ lives only in the Catholic Church.
+
+There alone in the whole round world do you find that combination of
+lofty doctrine, magnificent moral teaching, the frank recognition of the
+Cross; sacramentalism logically carried out, yet gripping the heart as
+no amateur mysticism can do; and miracles. "Mercy and Truth have met
+together." "These signs shall follow them that believe.... Faith can
+remove mountains.... All things are possible to him that believes....
+Whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in My Name.... Where two or three
+are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them."
+There alone, where souls are built upon Peter, do these things really
+happen.
+
+I have been asked lately whether I am "happy" in the Catholic Church.
+Happy! What can one say to a question like that? Does one ask a man who
+wakes up from a foolish dream to sunshine in his room, and to life and
+reality, whether he is happy? Of course many non-Catholics are happy. I
+was happy myself as an Anglican; but as a Catholic one does not use the
+word; one does not think about it. The whole of life is different; that
+is all that can be said. Faith is faith, not hope; God is Light, not
+twilight; eternity, heaven, hell, purgatory, sin and its
+consequences--these things are facts, not guesses and conjectures and
+suspicions desperately clung to. "How hard it is to be a Christian!"
+moans the persevering non-Catholic. "How impossible it is to be anything
+else!" cries the Catholic.
+
+We went round, then, singing. The procession was so huge that it seemed
+to have no head and no tail. It involved itself a hundred times over; it
+swirled in the square, it humped itself over the Rosary Church; it
+elongated itself half a mile away up beyond our Mother's garlanded
+statue; it eddied round the Grotto. It was one immense pool and river of
+lights and song. Each group sang by itself till it was overpowered by
+another; men and women and children strolled along patiently singing and
+walking, knowing nothing of where they went, nothing of what they would
+be singing five minutes hence. It depended on the voice-power of their
+neighbours.
+
+For myself, I found myself in a dozen groups, before, at last, after an
+hour or so, I fell out of the procession and went home. Now I walked
+cheek by jowl with a retired officer; now with an artisan; once there
+came swiftly up behind a company of "Noelites"--those vast organizations
+of boys and girls in France--singing the _Laudate Mariam_ to my _Ave
+Maria_; now in the middle of a group of shop-girls who exchanged remarks
+with one another whenever they could fetch breath. I think it was all
+the most joyous and the most spontaneous (as it was certainly the
+largest) human function in which I have ever taken part. I have no idea
+whether there were any organizers of it all--at least I saw none. Once
+or twice a solitary priest in the midst, walking backward and waving
+his arms, attempted to reconcile conflicting melodies; once a very old
+priest; with a voice like the tuba stop on the organ, turned a
+humorously furious face over his shoulder to quell some mistake--from
+his mouth, the while issuing this amazingly pungent volume of sound. But
+I think these were the only attempts at organization that I saw.
+
+And so at last I dropped out and went home, hoarse but very well
+content. I had walked for more than an hour--from the statue, over the
+lower church and down again, up the long avenue, and back again to the
+statue. The fireworks were over, the illuminations died, and the day was
+done; yet still the crowds went round and the voice of conflicting
+melody went up without cessation. As I went home the sound was still in
+my ears. As I dropped off to sleep, I still heard it.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+Next morning I awoke with a heavy heart, for we were to leave in the
+motor at half-past eight, I had still a few errands to do, and had made
+no arrangements for saying Mass; so I went out quickly, a little after
+seven, and up to the Rosary Church to get some pious objects blessed. It
+was useless: I could not find the priest of whom I had been told, whose
+business it is perpetually to bless such things. I went to the basilica,
+then round by the hill-path down to the Grotto, where I became wedged
+suddenly and inextricably into a silent crowd.
+
+For a while I did not understand what they were doing beyond hearing
+Mass; for I knew that, of course, a Mass was proceeding just round the
+corner in the cave. But presently I perceived that these were intending
+communicants. So I made what preparation I could, standing there; and
+thanked God and His Mother for this unexpected opportunity of saying
+good-bye in the best way--for I was as sad as a school-boy going the
+rounds of the house on Black Monday--and after a quarter of an hour or
+so I was kneeling at the grill, beneath the very image of Mary. After
+making my thanksgiving, still standing on the other side, I blessed the
+objects myself--strictly against all rules, I imagine--and came home to
+breakfast; and before nine we were on our way.
+
+We were all silent as we progressed slowly and carefully through the
+crowded streets, seeing once more the patient _brancardiers_ and the
+pitiful litters on their way to the _piscines_. I could not have
+believed that I could have become so much attached to a place in three
+summer days. As I have said before, everything was against it. There was
+no leisure, no room to move, no silence, no sense of familiarity. All
+was hot and noisy and crowded and dusty and unknown. Yet I felt that it
+was such a home of the soul as I never visited before--of course it is a
+home, for it is the Mother that makes the home.
+
+We saw no more of the Grotto nor the churches nor the square nor the
+statue. Our road led out in such a direction that, after leaving the
+hotel, we had only commonplace streets, white houses, shops, hotels and
+crowds; and soon we had passed from the very outskirts of the town, and
+were beginning with quickening speed to move out along one of those
+endless straight roads that are the glory of France's locomotion.
+
+Yet I turned round in my seat, sick at heart, and pulled the blind that
+hung over the rear window of the car. No, Lourdes was gone! There was
+the ring of the eternal hills, blue against the blue summer sky, with
+their shades of green beneath sloping to the valleys, and the rounded
+bastions that hold them up. The Gave was gone, the churches gone, the
+Grotto--all was gone. Lourdes might be a dream of the night.
+
+No, Lourdes was not gone. For there, high on a hill, above where the
+holy city lay, stood the cross we had seen first upon our entrance,
+telling us that if health is a gift of God, it is not the greatest; that
+the Physician of souls, who healed the sick, and without whom not one
+sparrow falls to the ground, and not one pang is suffered, Himself had
+not where to lay His head, and died in pain upon the Tree.
+
+And even as I looked we wheeled a corner, and the cross was gone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How is it possible to end such a story without bathos? I think it is not
+possible, yet I must end it. An old French priest said one day at
+Lourdes, to one of those with whom I travelled, that he feared that in
+these times the pilgrims did not pray so much as they once did, and that
+this was a bad sign. He spoke also of France as a whole, and its fall.
+My friend said to him that, in her opinion, if these pilgrims could but
+be led as an army to Paris--an army, that is, with no weapons except
+their Rosaries--the country could be retaken in a day.
+
+Now, I do not know whether the pilgrims once prayed more than they do
+now; I only know that I never saw any one pray so much; and I cannot
+help agreeing with my friend that, if this power could be organized, we
+should hear little more of the apostasy of France. Even as it is, I
+cannot understand the superior attitude that Christian Englishmen take
+up with regard to France. It is true that in many districts religion is
+on a downward course, that the churches are neglected, and that even
+infidelity is becoming a fashion;[7] but I wonder very much whether, on
+the whole, taking Lourdes into account, the average piety of France, is
+not on a very much higher level than the piety of England. The
+government, as all the world now knows, is not in the least
+representative of the country; but, sad to relate, the Frenchman is apt
+to extend his respect for the law into an assumption of its morality.
+When a law is passed, there is an end of it.
+
+Yet, judging by the intensity of faith and love and resignation that is
+evident at Lourdes, and indeed by the numbers of those present, it
+would seem as if Mary, driven from the towns with her Divine Son, has
+chosen Lourdes--the very farthest point from Paris--as her earthly home,
+and draws her children after her, standing there with her back to the
+wall. I do not think this is fanciful. That which is beyond time and
+space must communicate with us in those terms; and we can only speak of
+these things in the same terms. Huysmans expresses the same thing in
+other words. Even if Bernadette were deceived, he says, at any rate
+these pilgrims are not; even if Mary did not come in 1858 to the banks
+of the Gave, she has certainly come there since, drawn by the thousands
+of souls that have gone to seek her there.
+
+This, then, is the last thing I can say about Lourdes. It is quite
+useless as evidence--indeed it would be almost impertinent to dare to
+offer further evidence at all--yet I may as well hand it in as my
+contribution. It is this, _that Lourdes is soaked, saturated and kindled
+by the all but sensible presence of the Mother of God_. I am quite aware
+of all that can be said about subjectivity and auto-suggestion, and the
+rest; but there comes a point in all arguments when nothing is worth
+anything except an assertion of a personal conviction. Such, then, is
+mine.
+
+First, it was borne in upon me what a mutilated Christianity that is
+which practically takes no account of Mary. This fragmentary, lopsided
+faith was that in which I myself had been brought up, and which to-day
+still is the faith of the majority of my fellow-countrymen. The Mother
+of God--the Second Eve, the Immaculate Maiden Mother, who, as if to
+balance Eve at the Tree of Death, stood by the Tree of Life--in popular
+non-Catholic theology is banished, with the rest of those who have
+passed away, to a position of complete insignificance. This arrangement,
+I had become accustomed to believe, was that of Primitive Christianity
+and of the Christianity of all sensible men: Romanism had added to the
+simple Gospel, and had treated the Mother of God with an honour which
+she would have been the first to deprecate.
+
+Well, I think that at Lourdes the startling contrast between facts and
+human inventions was, in this respect, first made vivid to my
+imagination. I understood how puzzling it must be for "old Catholics,"
+to whom Mary is as real and active as her Divine Son, to understand the
+sincerity of those to whom she is no more than a phantom, and who yet
+profess and call themselves Christians. Why, at Lourdes Mary is seen to
+stand, to all but outward eyes, in exactly that position in which at
+Nazareth, at Cana, in the Acts of the Apostles, in the Catacombs, and
+in the whole history of Christendom, true lovers of her Son have always
+seen her--a Mother of God and man, tender, authoritative, silent, and
+effective!
+
+Yet, strangely enough, it is not at all the ordinary and conventional
+character of a merely tender mother that reveals itself at Lourdes--one
+who is simply desirous of relieving pain and giving what is asked. There
+comes upon one instead the sense of a tremendous personage--_Regina
+Coeli_ as well as _Consolatrix Afflictorum_--one who says "No" as well
+as "Yes," and with the same serenity; yet with the "No" gives strength
+to receive it. I have heard it said that the greatest miracle of all at
+Lourdes is the peace and resignation, even the happiness, of those who,
+after expectation has been wrought to the highest, go disappointed away,
+as sick as they came. Certainly that is an amazing fact. The tears of
+the young man in the _piscine_ were the only tears of sorrow I saw at
+Lourdes.
+
+Mary, then, has appeared to me in a new light since I have visited
+Lourdes. I shall in future not only hate to offend her, but fear it
+also. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of that Mother who
+allows the broken sufferer to crawl across France to her feet--and then
+to crawl back again. She is one of the Maries of Chartres, that reveals
+herself here, dark, mighty, dominant, and all but inexorable; not the
+Mary of an ecclesiastical shop, who dwells amid tinsel and tuberoses.
+She is _Sedes Sapientiae_, _Turris Eburnea_, _Virgo Paritura_, strong and
+tall and glorious, pierced by seven swords, yet serene as she looks to
+her Son.
+
+Yet, at the same time, the tenderness of her great heart shows itself at
+Lourdes almost beyond bearing. She is so great and so loving! It affects
+those to whom one speaks--the quiet doctors, even those who, through
+some confusion of mind or some sin, find it hard to believe; the strong
+_brancardiers_, who carry their quivering burdens with such infinite
+care; the very sick themselves, coming back from the _piscines_ in
+agony, yet with the faces of those who come down from the altar after
+Holy Communion. The whole place is alive with Mary and the love of
+God--from the inadequate statue at the Grotto to the brazen garlands in
+the square, even as far as the illuminated castle and the rockets that
+burst and bang against the steady stars. If I were sick of some deadly
+disease, and it were revealed to me that I must die, yet none the less I
+should go to Lourdes; for if I should not be healed by Mary, I could at
+least learn how to suffer as a Christian ought. God has chosen this
+place--He only knows why, as He, too, alone chooses which man shall
+suffer and which be glad--He has chosen this place to show His power;
+and therefore has sent His Mother there, that we may look through her to
+Him.
+
+Is this, then, all subjectivity and romantic dreaming? Well, but there
+are the miracles!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] It must be remembered that this was written six years ago, and is no
+longer true.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lourdes, by Robert Hugh Benson
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