The correspondent of the Paris Ultramontane paper L'Univers wrote from the Lourdes in 1876: "I have just been witness of a marvel, of which I hasten to send you an account. Several other miracles have taken place within the last couple of days, but I have said nothing about them, as they did not come under my own observation. However, I can assure you of the accuracy of the following statement:—Madeleine Lansereau, aged 33 years, broke one of her legs about 19 years ago, and became lame, her left leg being fearfully twisted. She came to Lourdes with the pilgrimage from Picardy, and was radically cured at the moment the Papal Nuncio sent to crown the Holy Virgin was saying the paternoster in the mass he was celebrating in the grotto. She told the crowd that, having walked into the little pool, a lively internal emotion took possession of her, and she cried out, 'I am cured! I am cured!' Her companions wept with joy and admiration at the miracle. When they asked her what she had done for that great grace, her simple reply was, 'I have prayed to St. Radogonde and St. Joseph, but especially to the Holy Virgin, and now I am cured.' While she was speaking, the Bishop of Poictiers came and said, 'Madeleine, thank the Holy Virgin fervently.'"
The Rev. Canon Tandy, D.D., writing from St. Paul's Convent, Birmingham, in 1871, to a reverend brother, informs him, in pious phraseology, that two nuns had been suddenly cured of serious disorders of long standing by drinking a bottle of water from Lourdes. In acknowledgment of the favours shown by our Lady of Lourdes, the Te Deum was recited.
A deaf and dumb girl from Blois was made whole at Lourdes a few years ago by the Virgin Mary.
Not long since the Bishop of Laval wrote a pastoral letter on the subject of the miraculous appearance of the Virgin to four children in a village in Mayence, and was so convinced of the reality of the fact that he decided to erect a chapel in honour of Mary on the ground upon which she had condescended to appear.
Recently there might be seen emerging from a church at Dieppe, on a Saturday morning, a religious procession, headed by a person carrying a silver processional cross, and accompanied by choristers singing penitential psalms, proceeding to the eastern pier of the harbour to perform a curious Roman Catholic ceremony. Taking up a position beside the rolling water, the priests prayed for the success of the fishing, then said a paternoster, while the people knelt; then a priest, dipping a brush in holy water (which was carried in a swinging silver vase), sprinkled three times the salt water of the ocean with the holy fluid, making the sign of the cross with the brush at the words, Seo sibera nos a malo. Then came a collect of repose for the souls of the dead whose bodies had not been recovered from the depths of the sea; and, all being over, the priests, with the choristers, people, and cross-bearers, returned, chanting their psalms to the church, where the high mass of the festival of St. Luke was celebrated.
This ceremony at Dieppe reminds one of the well-known annual ceremony in Russia, of blessing the Neva in presence of the Czar and other members of the Imperial Family; but, as the performance has been described by numerous writers, we shall not further refer to it.
The Marquis of Segur, a zealous Catholic, relates that, in 1866, when the Pope was seriously ill, Mdlle. Leautard, a lady of Marseilles, resolved to offer up her life in place of his Holiness, and sought his permission to do so. The Pope, after long silence, placed his hand on her head, and said, "Go, my daughter, and do what the Spirit of God has suggested to you." Next day, on receiving the consecrated wafer, the lady fervently expressed her desire to die, and was immediately seized with a sharp pain, which carried her off three days afterwards. The Pope, on hearing of her death, exclaimed, "So soon accepted!" The Marquis believes this sacrifice accounted for the Pope's prolonged life.
A Hohenzollern legend was brought to mind in Germany through a serious illness of the Emperor, who, however, fortunately recovered, and continues to adorn his exalted position. The legend runs thus:—
Many years ago there was a Hohenzollern Princess (a widow with two children), who fell in love with a foreign Prince—rich, handsome, and brave. She sent him a proposition of marriage; but the Prince declined her suit, explaining that "four eyes" stood between him and acceptance. He referred to his parents, whose consent he could not obtain. But the Princess understood him to refer to the four eyes of her two children—to his unwillingness, in fact, to become a stepfather. So she suffocated the infant obstacles, and wrote to her lover that the way was clear. He was stricken with horror at the cruel deed, and died cursing her bloodthirsty rashness. The Princess, in her turn, became overwhelmed with remorse. After lingering a day or two in indescribable anguish, she too died, and was buried under the old castle at Berlin; but not to rest quietly in her unhappy grave. At rare intervals she appears at midnight, clad in white, gliding, ghost like, about the castle; and the apparition always forebodes the death of some member of the Hohenzollern family. The white lady has been seen, we are assured, three times within about a year—once just before the death of Prince Albrecht; again, to announce the end of Prince Adalbert; and the last time while Queen Elizabeth lay on her deathbed.
We have shown that the great Napoleon Bonaparte was superstitious in the highest degree; and so was his mother before him. Both believed in fate or destiny. She was surrounded by luxury and pomp; but her solicitude about her son, and the belief that his glory could not last, rendered her miserable. The divorce of Josephine, the retreat from Russia, the exile to Elba, the final overthrow at Waterloo, and the banishment to St. Helena, were heavy blows; but she was prepared for them. While the sun of the Emperor's fortunes blazed in the zenith, she shivered under the shadow of her fear; and her fear proved prophetic. She witnessed the downfall of every one of her children; but she bore her adversity with dignity and resignation, and died in her eighty-seventh year.