IV.
In the town of Nay, where young Henry Busquet had been miraculously cured a few months before, a certain widow, named Madeleine Rizan, was at the point of death. Her life had for twenty-four or twenty-five years been an unbroken series of pain and sorrow. Having been attacked by the cholera in 1832, her left side had remained almost entirely paralyzed. She was quite lame, and could only move a few steps inside her house, and that only by supporting herself against the walls or furniture. Two or three times a year, in warm weather, she was able to go to Mass at the parish church of Nay, not far from her dwelling. She was unable, without assistance, either to kneel or to rise. One of her hands was totally palsied. Her general health had suffered no less than her limbs from this terrible scourge. She frequently vomited blood, and her stomach was unable to bear solid food.
Beef-tea, soup, and coffee had, however, sufficed to keep up the flame of life, ever flickering and unable to warm her feeble body. She often suffered from icy chills. The poor woman was always cold. Even in the heats of July and August, she always wished to see fire in the grate, and to have her arm-chair wheeled close to the hearth.
For the last sixteen or eighteen months, her state had been much aggravated; the paralysis of the left side had become total. The same infirmity had begun to attack the right leg. Her paralyzed limbs were greatly swollen, as happens in the case of dropsy.
Madame Rizan left her chair to take to her bed. She could not move, such was her weakness, and they were obliged to turn her, from time to time, in her bed. She was almost an inert mass. Sensibility was gone as well as motion.
"Where are my legs?" she used to inquire, when any one came to move her. Her limbs were drawn together, and she lay continually on one side in the form of a Z.
Two physicians had successively attended her. Doctor Talamon had long since given her up as incurable, and, although he continued to visit her, it was only as a friend. He refused to prescribe any remedies, saying that drugs and medicines would prove fatal, or, at best, only enfeeble her system.
Doctor Subervielle, at the repeated instance of Madame Rizan, had prescribed some medicines, and, soon finding them utterly useless, had also given up all hope. Although her paralyzed limbs had become insensible, the sufferings which this unfortunate woman experienced from her stomach and head were terrible. Owing to her constantly cramped position, she was afflicted by two painful sores—one in the hollow of her chest, and the other on the back. On her side, in several places, her skin, chafed by the bed-clothes, exposed the flesh, naked and bleeding. Her death was at hand.
Madame Rizan had two children. Her daughter, Lubine, lived with and took care of her with the greatest devotion. Her son, Romain Rizan, had a situation in a business-house at Bordeaux.
When the last hope was gone, and Doctor Subervielle declared that she had only a few hours to live, they sent in haste for her son, Romain Rizan. He came, embraced his mother, and received her last blessing and farewell. Then, obliged to leave by a message peremptorily recalling him—torn by the cruel tyranny of business from his mother's death-bed—he left her with the bitter conviction that he should never see her more. The dying woman received extreme unction. Her agony went on amid excruciating sufferings.
"My God!" she often murmured, "I pray thee to end my torments. Grant me to be healed or to die."
She sent to ask the Sisters of the Cross, at Igon, where her own sister-in-law was superior, to make a novena to Our Lady for her cure or death. The sick woman also evinced a desire to drink some of the water of the grotto. One of her neighbors, Madame Nessans, who was going to Lourdes, promised to fetch some of the water when she returned. For some time past, she had been watched day and night. On Saturday, October 16, a violent crisis heralded the near approach of her last moment. She was continually spitting blood. A livid hue spread over her worn features; her eyes became glassy. She no longer spoke, except when forced by excessive pain.
"O my God! how I suffer! O Lord! would that I might die!"
"Her prayer will soon be granted," said Doctor Subervielle as he left her. "She will die to-night, or at least before the sun is fairly up. There is only a little oil left in the lamp!"
From time to time the door of her chamber opened. Friends, neighbors, and priests, the Abbé Dupont and the Abbé Sanareus, vicar of Nay, entered and softly inquired if she were still alive.
Her friend and consoler, the Abbé Dupont, could not restrain his tears as he left her. "Before morning she will be dead, and I shall see her again only in paradise," he said.
Night fell, and solitude gradually took possession of the house. Kneeling before a statue of the Blessed Virgin, Lubine prayed without any earthly hope. The silence was profound, and broken only by the difficult breathing of the invalid.
It was nearly midnight. "My daughter!" cried the dying woman.
Lubine arose and approached the bed.
"What do you wish, mother?" she asked, taking her hand. "My dear child," answered the dying mother, in a strange voice that seemed to come from a heavy dream, "go to our friend Madame Nessans, who was to have returned from Lourdes, this evening. Ask her for a glassful of the water from the grotto. This water will cure me. The Blessed Virgin wishes it."
"Dear mother," answered Lubine, "it is too late to go there. I cannot leave you alone. Besides, everybody is asleep at the house of Madame Nessans. But I will go early in the morning."
"Let us wait, then." The invalid relapsed into silence. The long night finally passed.
The joyous bells at last announced the day. The morning Angelus as it rose carried up to the Virgin Mother the prayers of earth, and celebrated the eternal memory of her all-powerful maternity. Lubine hastened to Madame Nessans's, and soon returned with a bottle of water from the grotto.
"Here, mother! Drink! and may the Blessed Virgin come to your help!" Madame Rizan raised the glass to her lips, and swallowed a few mouthfuls.
"O my daughter! my daughter! It is life that I am drinking! Here is life in this water! Bathe my face with it! Bathe my arms! Bathe my whole body with it!"
Trembling and almost beside herself, Lubine moistened a piece of linen with the miraculous water, and bathed her mother's face.
"I feel that I am cured!" she cried in a voice now clear and strong. "I feel that I am cured!"
Lubine meanwhile bathed with the wet linen the paralyzed and swollen limbs of the invalid. Trembling with mingled joy and terror, she saw the enormous swelling disappear under the rapid movement of her hand, and the stretched and shining skin reassume its natural appearance.
Suddenly, completely, and without transition, health and life revived beneath her touch.
"It seems to me as if burning pimples were breaking out all over me." It was, doubtless, the principle of disease leaving for ever under the influence of a superhuman will. All this was over in a moment. In a couple of minutes the body of Madame Rizan, apparently in her agony, bathed by her daughter, recovered the fulness of strength.
"I am cured! perfectly cured!" cried the happy woman. "Oh! how good the Blessed Virgin is! Oh! how powerful she is!"
After the first burst of gratitude toward heaven, the material appetites of earth made themselves keenly felt.
"Lubine, dear Lubine, I am hungry. I must have something to eat!"
"Will you have some coffee, some wine, or some milk?" stammered her daughter, confused by the suddenness and astounding character of the miracle.
"I want to have meat and bread, my daughter. I have not tasted any for twenty-four years." There happened to be some cold meat and some wine near at hand; Madame Rizan partook of both. "And now," said she, "I want to get up."
"It is impossible, mother," said Lubine, hesitating to believe her eyes, and fancying, perhaps, that cures which come directly from God are subject, like other cures, to the degrees and dangers of convalescence. She feared to see the miracle vanish as suddenly as it had come.
Madame Rizan insisted and demanded her clothes. They had been for many months carefully folded and packed in the wardrobe never to be worn again. Lubine left the room to find them. Soon she re-entered. But as she crossed the threshold, she uttered a loud cry, and dropped the garment which she was bringing. Her mother had sprung out of bed, during her absence, and there she was, before the mantelpiece, where she kept a statue of the Blessed Virgin, with clasped hands returning thanks to her all-powerful deliverer.
Lubine, as frightened as if she had beheld one risen from the dead, was unable to help her mother to dress. The latter, however, put on her clothes in an instant without any assistance, and again knelt down before the sacred image.
It was about seven o'clock in the morning, and the people were going to the early Mass. Lubine's cry was heard in the street by the groups who were passing under the windows.
"Poor girl!" they said, "her mother is dead at last. It was impossible for her to survive the night." Several entered the house to console and support Lubine in this unspeakable affliction, among others two sisters of the Holy Cross.
"Ah! poor child, your good mother is dead! But you will certainly see her again in heaven!" They approached the young girl, whom they beheld leaning against the half-opened door, her face wearing a stupefied look. She could scarcely answer them.
"My mother is risen from the dead!" she answered, in a voice choked by strong emotion.
"She is raving," thought the sisters, as they passed by and entered the room, followed by some persons who had come up-stairs with them.
Lubine had spoken the truth. Madame Rizan had left her bed. There she was, dressed and prostrated before the image of Mary. She arose, and said: "I am cured! Let us all kneel down, and thank the Blessed Virgin."
The news of this extraordinary event spread like lightning through the city. All that day and the day after the house was full of people. The crowd, agitated and yet recollected, pressed to visit the room into which a ray of the all-powerful goodness of God had penetrated.
Everybody wished to see Madame Rizan, to touch the body restored to life, to convince his own eyes, and grave upon his memory the details of this supernatural drama.
Doctor Subervielle acknowledged, without hesitation, the supernatural and divine character of this cure.
At Bordeaux, meanwhile, Romain Rizan awaited in despair and anguish the fatal missive announcing his mother's death. It was a great shock to him when, one morning, the postman brought him a letter addressed in the well-known hand of Abbé Dupont.
"I have lost my poor mother!" he said to a friend who had just come to visit him. He burst into tears, and dared not break the seal.
"Take courage in your misfortune. Have faith!" said his friend.
Finally, he opened the letter. The first words which met his eyes were:
"Deo gratias! Alleluia!
"Rejoice, my dear friend. Your mother is cured—completely cured. The Blessed Virgin has restored her miraculously to health." The Abbé Dupont then went on to relate the divine manner in which Madame Rizan had found at the end of her agony life instead of death.
We may easily fancy the joy of the son and of his friend. The latter was employed in a printing-house at Bordeaux, where was published the Messager Catholique. "Give me that letter," said he to Romain. "The works of God ought to be made known, and Our Lady of Lourdes glorified."
Partly by force, and partly by entreaty, he obtained the letter. It was published a few days afterward in the Messager Catholique.
The happy son hastened to Nay at the earliest moment. As he arrived in the diligence, a woman was waiting to greet him. She ran swiftly to meet him, and, when he descended from the coach, threw herself into his arms, weeping with tenderness and joy. It was his mother.
A few years afterward, the author, while searching out the details of his history, went in person to verify the report of the episcopal commission. He visited Madame Rizan, whose perfect health and green old age excited his admiration. Although in her seventy-first year, she has none of the infirmities which that age usually brings. Of her illness and terrible sufferings there remains not a trace; and all who had formerly known her, and whose testimony we gathered, were yet stupefied at her extraordinary cure.[155] We wished to see Doctor Subervielle. He had been dead some years.
"But," we asked a clergyman of Nay, who acted as our guide, "the invalid was attended by another physician, Doctor Talamon, was she not?"
"He is a very distinguished man," replied our companion. "He was in the habit of visiting Madame Rizan, not professionally, but as a friend and neighbor. But after her miraculous cure he ceased his visits, and did not make his appearance for eight or ten months."
"Perhaps," we rejoined, "he wished to avoid being questioned on the subject, and being obliged to explain this extraordinary phenomenon, which would certainly have been out of accord with his principles of medical philosophy?"
"I do not know how that may have been."
"No matter; I want to see him."
We knocked at his door.
Doctor Talamon is a tall and handsome old man, with an expressive and intelligent countenance. A remarkable forehead, a crown of white locks, a glance which betokens positive adherence to opinions, a mouth varied in expression, and on which a sceptical smile often plays—these are the features which strike one who approaches him.
We stated the object of our visit.
"It is a long time," he answered, "since all that happened, and, at the distance of ten or twelve years, my memory supplies but a dim recollection of the matter about which you inquire; besides, I was not an eye-witness of it. I did not see Madame Rizan for several months, and, consequently, do not know by what conditions or agents, or with what degree of speed or slowness, her recovery was effected."
"But, doctor, did you not have curiosity enough to investigate such an extraordinary event, of which rumor must have instantly informed you, especially in this place?"
"The fact is," he answered, "I am an old physician. I know that the laws of nature are never reversed, and, to tell you the truth, I do not believe the least bit in miracles."
"Ah! doctor, you sin against the faith," cried the abbé who had accompanied me.
"And I, doctor, do not accuse you of sinning against faith, but I accuse you of sinning against the very principles of the science which you profess."
"How, pray, and in what?"
"Medicine is not a speculative, but an empirical science. Experience is its law. The observation of facts is its first and fundamental principle. If you had been told that Madame Rizan had cured herself by washing with a decoction from some plant recently discovered on yonder mountain, you would not have failed to ascertain the cure and to examine the plant, and put the discovery on record. It might have been as important as that of quinine in the last century. You would have done the same if the cure had been produced by some new sulphurous or alkaline substance. But, now, everybody is talking about a fountain of miraculous water, and you have never yet been to see it. Forgetting that you are a physician, that is to say, a humble observer of facts, you have refused to notice this, as did the scientific academies which rejected steam and proscribed quinine on some quack principles of their own. In medicine, when fact contradicts a principle, it means that the principle is wrong. Experience is the supreme judge. And here, doctor, allow me to say that, if you had not had some vague consciousness that what I am telling you is true, you would have rushed to find out the truth, and would have given yourself the pleasure of showing up the imposture of a miracle which was setting the whole neighborhood wild with excitement. But this would have exposed you to the danger of being forced to surrender; and you have acted like those party-slaves who will not listen to the arguments of their opponents. You have listened to your philosophical prejudices, and you have been false to the first law of medicine, which is to face the study of facts—no matter of what nature—in order to derive instruction from them. I speak freely, doctor, because I am aware of your great merits, and that your keen intellect is capable of hearing the truth. Many physicians have refused to certify to facts of this nature, for fear of having to brave the resentment of the faculty and the raillery of friends of their profession. With regard to yourself, doctor, although your philosophy may have deceived you, human respect has had nothing at all to do with your keeping aloof."
"Certainly not," he replied, "but, perhaps, if I had placed myself at the point of view which you have indicated, I might have done better by examining the matter."