V.
Long before the occurrences at Lourdes, at an epoch when Bernadette was not yet in the world, in 1843, during the month of April, an honorable family of Tartas in the Landes was in a state of great anxiety. The year before, Mlle. Adèle de Chariton had been married to M. Moreau de Sazenay, and now approached the term of her pregnancy. The crisis of a first maternity is always alarming. The medical men, summoned in haste on the preliminary symptoms, declared that the birth would be very difficult, and did not conceal their fear of some danger. No one is ignorant of the cruel anxiety of such a juncture. The most poignant anguish is not for the poor wife who is prostrated upon her bed of pain, and entirely absorbed in her physical sufferings. It is the husband whose heart is now the prey of indescribable tortures. They are of the age of vivid impressions; they have entered upon a new life, and begun to taste the joys of a union which God seems to have blessed; they have passed a few months full of anticipations of the future. The young couple have set them down, so to speak, side by side in a fairy pleasure-boat. The river of life has carried them softly on amid banks of flowers. Suddenly, without warning, the shadow of death rises before them. The heart of the husband, expanded with hope for the child so soon to be born, is crushed by terror for his wife, who may be about to perish. He hears her accents of pain. How will the crisis end? Is it to be in joy or bereavement? What is about to issue from that chamber? Will it be life or death? What must we send for—a cradle or a coffin? Or—horrible contrast—will both be necessary? Or, worse still, shall two coffins be necessary? Human science is silent, and hesitates to pronounce.
This anguish is frightful, but especially for those who do not seek from God their strength and consolation. But M. Moreau was a Christian. He knew that the thread of our existence is in the hands of a supreme Master, to whom we can always appeal from the doctors of science. When man has passed sentence, the King of heaven, as well as other sovereigns, holds the right of pardon.
"The Blessed Virgin will, perhaps, vouchsafe to hear me," thought the afflicted husband. He addressed himself with confidence to the Mother of Christ.
The danger which had appeared so threatening disappeared as a cloud upon the horizon. A little girl had just been born.
Assuredly there was nothing extraordinary about this deliverance. However alarming the danger might have appeared to M. Moreau himself, the physicians had never given up hope. The favorable issue of the crisis may have been something purely natural.
The heart of the husband and father, however, felt itself penetrated with gratitude to the Blessed Virgin. His was not one of those rebellious souls which demands freedom from all doubt in order to escape acknowledging a favor.
"What name are you going to give to your little girl?" he was asked.
"She shall be called Marie."
"Marie? Why, that is the commonest name in the whole country. The children of the laboring people, the servants, are all named Marie. Besides, Marie Moreau is out of all euphony. The two m's and two r's would be intolerable!" A thousand reasons of equal validity were urged against him. There was a general protest.
M. Moreau was very accessible, and easily moved by others; but in this instance he resisted all counsel and entreaty; he braved all discontent, and his tenacity was really extraordinary. He did not allow himself to forget that, in his distress, he had invoked this sacred name, or that it belonged to the Queen of heaven.
"She shall be called Marie, and I wish her to take the Blessed Virgin for a patroness. And I tell you the truth, this name will some day bring her a blessing."
Everybody was astonished at this apparent obstinacy, but it remained unshaken as that of Zachary when he gave his son the name John. Vainly did they apply every means of attack; there was no getting by this inflexible will. The first-born of the family, therefore, took the name of Marie. The father, moreover, desired that she should be vowed for three years to dress in white, the color of the Blessed Virgin. This, too, was done.
More than sixteen years had now passed since this episode. A second daughter had been born, she was called Marthe. Mlle. Marie Moreau was being educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Bordeaux. About the commencement of January, 1858, she was attacked by a disease of the eyes, which shortly obliged her to give up her studies. She supposed at first that it was only a cold which would pass off as it had come; but her hopes were deceived, and her complaint assumed a most alarming character. The physician in attendance judged it necessary to consult a distinguished oculist of Bordeaux, M. Bermont. It was not a cold; it was amaurosis.
"Her case is a very serious one," said M. Bermont; "one of the eyes is entirely gone, and the other in a very dangerous condition."
The parents were immediately notified. Her mother hastened to Bordeaux, and brought back her daughter, in order that she might have at home that care, treatment, and perfect attention which the oculist had prescribed in order to save the eye which yet remained, and which was so gravely affected that it could perceive objects only as through a mist.
The medicines, baths, and all the prescriptions of science proved useless. Spring and autumn passed without any change for the better. Indeed, the deplorable condition of the invalid was daily aggravated. Total blindness was approaching. M. and Madame Moreau decided to take their child to Paris, in order to consult the great medical lights.
While engaged in hasty preparations for their journey, fearing lest it might be too slow to escape the danger which threatened their child, the postman brought them the weekly number of the Messager Catholique. It was about the first of November, and this number of the Messager Catholique happened to be precisely the one which contained the letter of Abbé Dupont, and the story of the miraculous cure of Madame Rizan, of Nay, by means of water from the grotto.
M. Moreau opened it mechanically, and his glance fell upon that divine history. He turned pale as he read, hope began to awaken in the heart of the desolate father, and that soul, or rather that heart, was touched by a gleam of light.
"There," said he—"there is the door at which we must knock. It is evident," he added, with a simplicity whose actual words we delight to repeat, "that, if the Blessed Virgin has really appeared at Lourdes, she must be interested in working miraculous cures to prove the truth of her apparitions. And this is especially true at first before the event is not generally believed.... Let us be in a hurry, then, since in this case the first come are to be the first served. My dearest wife and daughter, we must address ourselves at once to Our Lady of Lourdes." Sixteen years had not worn out the faith of M. Moreau.
A novena was resolved upon, in which all the neighboring friends of the young girl were to be asked to join. By a providential circumstance, a priest of the city had in his possession a bottle of the water, so that the novena could be commenced at once.
The parents, in case of a cure, bound themselves to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and to devote their daughter for a year to the colors of white and blue, the colors of the Blessed Virgin, which she had already worn for three years during her infancy.
The novena commenced on Sunday evening, the 8th of November.
Must it be acknowledged? The invalid had but little faith. Her mother dared not hope. Her father alone had that tranquil faith which the kind powers of heaven never resist.
All said the prayers together in M. Moreau's room, before an image of the Blessed Virgin. The mother and her two daughters rose one after another to retire, but the father remained on his knees.
He thought he was alone, and his voice broke forth with a fervor which recalled his family, who have given us the account, and who never can forget that solemn moment without a tremor.
"Blessed Virgin!" said the father—"most blessed Virgin Mary! you must cure my child. Yes, indeed, you are bound to do it. It is an obligation which you cannot refuse to acknowledge. Remember, O Mary! how, in spite of everybody and against everybody, I chose you for her patron. Remember what struggles I had to give her your sacred name. Can you, Holy Virgin, forget all this? Can you forget how I defended your glory and power against the vain reasons with which they surrounded me? Can you forget that I publicly placed this child under your protection, telling everybody and repeating that your name would some day bring a blessing upon her? Can you be unmindful of all this? Are you not bound in honor—now that I am in misfortune, now when I pray you for our child and yours—to come to our help and heal her malady? Are you going to allow her to become blind, after the faith I have shown in you? No! no! impossible! You will cure her."
Such were the sentiments which escaped in loud tones from the unhappy father, as he appealed to the Blessed Virgin, and, as it were, presenting a claim against her, demanded payment.
It was ten o'clock at night.
The young girl, before retiring, dipped a linen bandage in the water of Lourdes, and, placing it upon her eyes, tied it behind her head.
Her soul was agitated. Without having her father's faith, she said to herself that, after all, the Blessed Virgin was perfectly able to cure her, and that, perhaps, at the end of the novena she might recover her sight. Then doubt returned, and it seemed as if a miracle ought not to be worked for her. With all these thoughts revolving in her mind, she could hardly lie still, and it was very late before she fell asleep.
When morning came, as soon as she awoke, her first movement of hope and uneasy curiosity was to remove the bandage which covered her eyes. She uttered a loud cry.
The room about her was filled with the light of the rising day. She saw clearly, exactly, and distinctly. The diseased eye had recovered its health, and the eye which before was blind had been restored to sight.
"Marthe! Marthe!" she cried, "I see perfectly. I am cured!"
Little Marthe, who slept in the same room, sprang out of bed and ran to her sister. She saw her eyes, stripped of their bloody veil, black and brilliant, and sparkling with life and strength. The little girl's heart at once turned toward her father and mother, who had not yet shared in this joy.
"Papa! mamma!" she cried.
Marie beckoned her not to call them yet.
"Wait! wait!" said she, "until I have tried if I can read. Give me a book."
The child took one from the table. "There!" said she.
Marie opened the book, and read with perfect ease as freely as any one ever has read. The cure was complete, radical, absolute, and the Blessed Virgin had not left her work half-done.
The father and mother hastened to the room.
"Papa, mamma, I can see—I can read—I am cured!"
How can we describe the scene which followed? Our readers can understand it, each for himself, by entering into his own imagination. The door of the house had not yet been opened. The windows were closed, and their transparent panes admitted only the early light of morning. Who, then, could have entered to join this family in the happiness of this sudden blessing? And yet these Christians felt instinctively that they were not alone, and that a powerful being was invisibly in the midst of them. The father and mother, and little Marthe, fell on their knees; Marie, who had not yet arisen, clasped her hands; and from these four breasts, oppressed with gratitude and emotion, went forth, as a prayer of thanks, the holy name of the Mother of God: "O holy Virgin Mary! Our Lady of Lourdes!"
What their other words were, we know not; but what their sentiments must have been, any one can imagine by placing himself before this miraculous event, which, like a flash from the power of God, had turned the affliction of a family into joy and happiness.
Is it necessary to add that, shortly afterward, Mlle. Marie Moreau went with her parents to thank Our Lady of Lourdes in the place of her apparition? She left her colored dresses upon the altar, and went away happy and proud of wearing the colors of the Queen of virgins.
M. Moreau, whose faith had formerly been so strong, was wholly stupefied. "I thought," said he, "that such favors were only granted to the saints; how is it, then, that they descend upon miserable sinners like us?"
These facts were witnessed by the entire population of Tartas, who shared in the affliction of one of their most respected families. Everybody in the city saw and can testify that the malady, which had been considered desperate, was completely healed at the beginning of the novena. The superior of the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Bordeaux, the one hundred and fifty pupils who were school-mates of Mlle. Marie Moreau, the physicians of that institution, have established her serious condition before the events which we have related, and her total cure immediately afterward. She returned to Bordeaux, where she remained two years to complete her studies.
The oculist Bermont could not recover from his surprise at an event so entirely beyond his science. We have read his declaration certifying to the state of the invalid, and acknowledging the inability of medical treatment to produce such a cure, "which," he observes, "has persisted and still holds. As to the instantaneousness with which this cure has been wrought," he adds, "it is a fact which incomparably surpasses the power of medical science. In testimony of which I attach my signature. Bermont."
This declaration, dated February 8th, 1859, is preserved at the bishop's residence at Tarbes, together with a great number of letters and testimonials from citizens of Tartas, among others that of the mayor of that city, M. Desbord.
Mlle. Marie continued to wear the colors of the Blessed Virgin up to the day of her marriage, which took place after she had finished her studies and left the Sacred Heart. On that day she went to Lourdes and laid aside her maiden attire to put on her bridal robes. She wished to give this dress of blue and white to another young girl, also beloved by the Blessed Virgin, Bernadette.
This was the only present which Bernadette ever accepted. She wore for several years, indeed until it was worn out, this dress which recalled the loving power of the divine apparition at the grotto.
Eleven years have since elapsed. The favor accorded by the Blessed Virgin has not been withdrawn. Mlle. Moreau has always had most excellent and perfect sight; never any relapse, never the slightest indisposition.
Excepting by suicide, ingratitude, or abuse of grace, that which God has restored can never die. Resurgens jam non moritur.
Mlle. Marie Moreau is now called Madame d'Izaru de Villefort, and is the mother of three delightful children, who have the finest eyes in the world. Although they are boys, each bears in his baptismal name first the name of Mary.