So in the field below the red tiled roofs of her village of Puy-St.-Bonnet, Clotilde Perchaud erected to the Virgin a rude altar of field stones, which she trimmed with green boughs, and here she passed all her spare time, praying and seeing visions in the sky, while upon the horizon mighty guns boomed, and at night the flashes could plainly be seen.
Soon this altar became a rendezvous for the neighbors, and even for those of the more remote villages from which the young men had gone forth to fight for France, and to this young girl were brought pictures of the absent soldiers at the front in the trenches and written prayers for their safety. That she possessed some strange power was admitted by even the most skeptical, for her responses to those who had loved ones missing led to their being found in distant camps as prisoners, or wounded in hospitals in distant parts of the country. In some instances, it is reported, this strange girl was able to give the names in full of those long missing, and information so detailed and circumstantial as to be marvelous. These matters were brought to the attention of the priests, and were in turn reported by them to the heads of the church, finally reaching the ears of the Bishop of Angers, who had her brought to his palace. Here she confronted unabashed a conclave of priests. The Bishop is said to have dressed himself in the ordinary black cassock of a priest, in order to test the young girl's power of divination; an ordinary priest wearing the Bishop's robes, and being seated on the throne; but to the amazement of all in the room, the girl turned from him, and kneeling before the real Bishop, asked his blessing upon her and her mission.
To him she announced, then, that a white robed angel had appeared to her above her altar in the fields, and to the strains of heavenly music charged that she had, as a pure and blameless maid, been selected to deliver their beloved France from the hands of the invader.
She presented to the Bishop the book in which she had written the words spoken to her on many occasions by the "shining angel in white." This book, says the account from which this is taken, "is partly illegible and almost entirely illiterate; rudely illustrated in a sort of futurist style." Its contents are said to be most perplexing and wonderful.
"Savants and students of religion who have examined the book assert that it shows a knowledge of the primal principles of theology, which indicates that the author has the clearest insight into the fundamentals of Roman Catholicism, but is apparently not gifted with the power to translate those ideas into fluent French. Throughout the work are passages in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, yet she apparently had less than the usual schooling of a French child."
The Bishop of Angers was so impressed with her attitude and her evident earnestness that he sent her under escort by nuns, to the Archbishop-Cardinal Amette at Paris. To him she demanded that she be at once taken to the heights of Montmartre, so that she might see the sun rise there over Paris. In this she was humored, and standing with the nuns and priests before the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre, at sunrise, as the first beam shone upon the great gilded cross on the tower, she recited in a loud voice the vow which she had taken to deliver France from the invader.
Since this, it is said no one has been allowed to talk to Clotilde, and she is said to be at the convent in the Avenue Victor Hugo. Here she is under observation of the nuns, who each send reports of her prayers and prophecies to the Cardinal. A correspondent who was permitted to see her from a distance in the convent garden, where she walked, followed at a distance of several paces by the nuns, describes her as a rather tall girl, clad in somber baggy black robes, very light of step and walking with her head thrown back and her eyes directed heavenward. Her carriage reminded him of "Genee, Pavlowa, or some other dancer," and he speaks of her as having "a wealth of filmy hair, which because of its fineness, seemed to float about her like a cloud, and only partly covered by a religious headgear," and he could see, too, "her hands, which are lily white and tiny, and tender, as those of the most pampered lady, despite the fact that the girl has done chores which in peace times would belong to men even on the French farms where the women are accustomed to labor long and hard."
A strange story; but then these are strange times, and who shall say that this is unworthy of credence?