IV.
As the month of June draws to a close, the fashionable watering season begins in the Pyrenees. Bernadette returned to her home at Lourdes. And now, tourists, bathers, travellers, and scientific men from a thousand different parts of Europe began to arrive at the various thermal stations. The rugged mountains, so wild and lonely during the rest of the year, were peopled with a throng of visitors belonging for the most part to the higher social class of the great cities.
By the close of July, the Pyrenees became suburbs of Paris, London, Rome, and Berlin.
Frenchmen and foreigners met in the dining-halls, jostled one another in the salons, rambled among the mountain-paths, or rode in every direction, along the streams, over the ridges, or through the flowery and shaded valleys.
Ministers worn out by labor, deputies and senators fatigued by too much listening or speaking, bankers, politicians, merchants, ecclesiastics, magistrates, writers, and people of the world, all came to provide for their health, not only at the famous springs, but in the pure and bracing mountain air, which gives energy to the pulse and fills the mind with vigor and activity.
This motley society represented all beliefs and disbeliefs, all the philosophic systems, and all the opinions under the sun. It was a microcosm. It was an abridged edition of Europe—that Europe which Providence thus wished to place in presence of his supernatural works. Nevertheless, as of old in Bethlehem he showed himself to the shepherds before his manifestation to the Magian kings; so at Lourdes he first called the humble and the poor to behold his wonders, and only after them the princes of wealth, intelligence, and art.
From Cauterets, from Barèges, from Luz, from St. Sauveur, strangers hastened to Lourdes. The city was filled with rattling coaches, drawn, according to the custom of the country, by four powerful horses, whose harness and trappings are of many colors and adorned with strings of little bells. The greater proportion of the pilgrims paid no attention to the barriers. They braved the law and went into the grotto, some out of motives of faith, and others led by mere curiosity. Bernadette received innumerable visits. Everybody wished to see and could see the persons who had been miraculously cured. In the salons at the baths, the events which we have recounted formed the universal topic of conversation. Little by little, public opinion began to be formed, no longer the opinion of an insignificant nook at the foot of the Pyrenees, and extending only from Bayonne to Toulouse or Foix, but the opinion of France and Europe, now represented among the mountains by visitors of all classes, of every intellectual shade, and from every place.
The violent measures of Baron Massy, which vexed curiosity as much as piety, were highly censured by all. Some said that they were illegal, others that they were misplaced, but all agreed that they were utterly inadequate to suppressing the prodigious movement of which the grotto and the miraculous spring were the centre.
The evidences of this total inefficiency drew upon the prefect severe criticism from those who shared his horror of the supernatural, and who at the start would have loudly applauded his policy. Men in general, and free-thinkers in particular, judge the acts of government rather by their results than by philosophic principles.
Success is the most certain means of winning their approval; failure, a twofold misfortune, since universal blame is added to the humiliation of defeat. M. Massy was subject to this double mishap.
There were circumstances, however, which put the zeal of the police and even the official courage of M. Jacomet to a rude test. Illustrious personages violated the enclosure.
What was to be done in such embarrassing cases?
Once they suddenly halted a stranger, of strongly marked and powerful features, who passed the stakes with the manifest intention of going to the Massabielle rocks.
"You can't pass here, sir."
"You will soon see whether I can or cannot pass," answered the stranger, without for a moment arresting his progress towards the place of the apparition.
"Your name? I will enter a complaint against you."
"My name is Louis Veuillot," replied the stranger.
While the process was being drawn up against the celebrated writer, a lady crossed the limits a short distance behind him, and went to kneel before the planks that shut up the grotto. Through the cracks of the palisade she watched the bubbling miraculous spring and prayed. What was she asking of God? Was her prayer directed towards the past or the future? Was it for herself or others, whose destiny had been confided to her? Did she ask the blessing of Heaven for one person or for a family? Never mind!
This lady did not escape the watchful eyes of him who represented at once the prefectoral policy, the magistracy, and the police.
Argus quitted M. Veuillot, and rushed towards the kneeling figure.
"Madame," said he, "it is not permitted to pray here. You are caught in open violation of the law; you will have to answer for it before the police court. Your name?"
"Certainly," replied the lady; "I am Madame l'Amirale Bruat, governess to his highness the Prince Imperial."
The terrible Jacomet had, above all things, a respect for the social hierarchy and the powers that be. He did not pursue the procès-verbal. Such scenes were often renewed. Certain of the procès-verbaux frightened the agents, and may possibly have frightened the prefect himself.
A deplorable state of things: his orders were violated with impunity by the powerful, and cruelly maintained at the expense of the weak. He had two sets of weights and measures.