OUR LADY OF LOURDES.
BY HENRI LASSERRE.
BOOK EIGHTH.
I.
The appointment by the Bishop of a commission of examination, and the analysis of M. Filhol, deprived Baron Massy, M. Rouland, and M. Jacomet of all pretext for continuing violent measures, or for maintaining about the grotto strict prohibitions, barriers, and guards.
In justification of the restrictions previously made, it had been said: "Considering that it is very desirable, in the interest of religion, to put an end to the deplorable scenes now presented at the grotto of Massabielle." Now the Bishop, by declaring the matter to be of sufficient importance for his intervention, and by taking in hand the examination of those things which affected the interests of religion, had deprived the civil power of this motive which it had made so prominent.
In justification of the prohibition to go and drink at the spring which had gushed out under the hand of Bernadette, it had been urged "that the care of the local public health devolves upon the mayor," and that this water "is suspected on good grounds to contain mineral ingredients, making it prudent, before permitting its use, to wait for a scientific analysis to determine the applications which may be made of it in medicine." Now, M. Filhol, by his decision that the water had no mineral properties, and that it could be drunk without inconvenience, had annihilated in the name of science and of medicine this plea of "the public health."
If, then, these considerations had been real reasons for the civil power, and not merely specious pretexts; if it had really been acting in the "interests of religion and the public health," instead of being under the sway of evil passions and intolerance; or if, in a word, it had been sincere instead of being hypocritical, it would now have had nothing to do but to remove its prohibitions and barriers; it would have only had to leave the people perfectly free to drink of this fountain, the perfect harmlessness of which had been attested by science, and to recognize their right to kneel at the foot of these mysterious rocks, where for the future the church was to be on the watch.