IX.
At the very moment when Mgr. Laurence, in the name of religion, ordered an inquiry into the unwonted events which the civil authority had condemned and persecuted and wished to reject à priori, without condescending even to examine; on the very same day on which the bishop's letter was mailed for the minister, M. Filhol, the illustrious professor of the faculty of Toulouse, delivered the final verdict of science on the water from the grotto of Lourdes. The conscientious and perfectly thorough labor of the great chemist reduced to nothing the official analysis of M. Latour de Trie, the expert of the prefecture, about which Baron Massy had made such a noise. M. Filhol testifies as follows:
"I, the undersigned, Professor of Chemistry to the Scientific Faculty of Toulouse, Professor of Pharmacy and Toxicology to the School of Medicine of the same city, and Knight of the Legion of Honor, certify that I have analyzed the water from a spring in the neighborhood of Lourdes. From this analysis it appears that the water of the grotto of Lourdes is of such composition that it may be considered good for drinking purposes, and of a character similar to that which is generally met with among those mountains whose soil is rich in calcareous matter.
"The extraordinary effects which are said to have been produced by the use of this water cannot, at least in the present state of science, be explained by the nature of the salts whose existence in it is detected by analysis.[102]
"This water contains no active substance capable of giving it marked therapeutic qualities. It can be drunk without inconvenience.
"Toulouse, August 7, 1858.
"(Signed) Filhol."[103]
Thus, all the pseudo-scientific scaffolding, on which the free-thinkers and wise counsellors of the prefect had painfully built their theory of the extraordinary cures, on the examination of this celebrated chemist toppled and fell. According to true science, the water of the grotto was by no means mineral water, and had no healing property. Nevertheless, it did heal. Nothing was now left for those who had so rashly put forward imaginary explanations, but the confusion of their attempt and the impossibility of withdrawing their public acknowledgment that cures had been effected. Falsehood and error were taken in their own net.
KING CORMAC'S CHOICE.[104]
A LEGEND OF THE BOYNE.
Beside the banks of Boyne, where late
The dire Dutch trumpets blared and rang,
'Mid wounded kernes the harper sate,
And thus the river's legend sang:
Who shall forbid a king to lie
Where lie he will, when life is o'er?
King Cormac laid him down to die;
But first he raised his hand, and swore:
"At Brugh ye shall not lay my bones:
Those pagan kings I scorn to join
Beside the trembling Druid stones,
And on the north bank of the Boyne.
"A grassy grave of poor degree
Upon its southern bank be mine
At Rossnaree, where of things to be
I saw in vision the pledge and sign.
"Thou happier Faith, that from the East
Slow travellest, set my people free!
I sleep, thy Prophet and thy Priest,
By southern Boyne, at Rossnaree."
He died: anon from hill and wood
Down flocked the black-robed Druid race,
And round the darkened palace stood,
And cursed the dead king to his face.
Uptowering round his bed, with lips
Denouncing doom, and cheeks death-pale,
As when at noontide strange eclipse
Invests gray cliffs and shadowed vale;
And proved with cymball'd anthems dread
The gods he spurned had bade him die:
Then spake the pagan chiefs, and said,
"Where lie our kings, this king must lie."
In royal robes the corse they dressed,
And spread the bier with boughs of yew;
And chose twelve men, their first and best,
To bear him through the Boyne to Brugh.
But on his bier the great dead king
Forgot not so his kingly oath;
And from sea-marge to mountain spring,
Boyne heard their coming, and was wroth.
He frowned far off, 'mid gorse and fern,
As those ill-omened steps made way;
He muttered 'neath the flying hern;
He foamed by cairn and cromlech gray;
And rose, and drowned with one black wave
Those twelve on-wading; and with glee
Bore down King Cormac to his grave
By southern Boyne, at Rossnaree!
Close by that grave, three centuries past,
Columba reared his saintly cell;
And Boyne's rough voice was changed at last
To music by the Christian bell.
So Christ's true Faith made Erin free,
And blessed her women and her men;
And that which was again shall be,
And that which died shall rise again.
He ceased: the wondering clansmen roared
Accordance to the quivering strings,
And praised King Cormac, Erin's Lord,
And Prophet of the King of kings.
Aubrey de Vere.