A Book of the Pyrenees

by S. Baring-Gould

Soubirous, timid as poor peasants are, returned to the hotel and told M. Gentil his want of success. Soubirous went again to the convent and was again refused. Then the two men called at the palace on the bishop. He said, “I can do nothing. The superior is mistress in her house.”

Then Soubirous and his companion went again to the convent and entered the parlour, where they declared firmly that they would remain till the request was granted.

The superior in great agitation entreated them to depart and not provoke a scandal. “I am but a feeble woman,” she said, “and the bishop has forbidden me to allow you to see your sister.”

Throughout the day the two men remained at their post seated in the parlour. Emissaries ran to and fro between the convent and the bishop’s palace. The house was like a disturbed ant-heap. Sisters passed and repassed, peeped in and withdrew. Voices were heard in discussion in the passages. But the two men would not budge.

At last night drew on. It would never do to allow them to pass it in this holy prison. At last, pale and trembling, the superior entered, and said, “Monseigneur has consented.”

Soubirous was then conducted to the infirmary. The whole community of twenty nuns, and all the serving sisters, were there crowded about the bed. On it Soubirous caught a glimpse of the white face of his sister with her great burning eyes looking at him, and tears rolling down her cheeks. The dying girl in a feeble voice said, “The fathers will give you work. They have promised it.” That was all. The head sank back on the pillow, and more tears flowed. Soubirous was then hustled out of the room, and he never more saw Bernadette.

To-day this man is well-to-do. He has a shop and a house, and fears God and the Fathers of the Grotto. So ended this poor martyr to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.[H] The annual number of pilgrims who visit the grotto amounts to something over 600,000, and the affluence increases every year. Trainloads of sick people leave Paris in the month of August, when the principal pilgrimage takes place. But all the festivals of the Blessed Virgin, and that of the Apparition, inserted in the calendar with proper Mass, give occasion to solemnities of exceptional grandeur, the most imposing feature of which is the night processions so beautifully described by Zola. Hideous and vulgar are basilica and chapel of the Rosary that have been erected over and by the cave. The situation is exceptionally beautiful, and would lend itself to a stately and well-proportioned church and pile of buildings; but it has been used as an occasion for the display of architectural ineptitude. Grotto and church are crowded with ex votos memorials of cures wrought there, cures that are reputed miraculous.

[H] Bonnefon, Lourdes et ses tenanciers. Paris, 1906. The value of this book is in the second part, that contains the hitherto unpublished documents from the Paris and Departmental archives relative to the course of development of the Lourdes story.

But who is to decide where the natural ends and the miraculous begins? In the present condition of science we cannot draw the line between the natural and the supernatural. None can plant his walking-stick at a certain point and say that he has reached “ubi defuit orbis,” and no man can declare the exact point “ubi defuit scientia.” We know that the Maladetta is in Spain, and that the Vingemale is in France, because the mountain chain has been surveyed, and the line of demarcation drawn between Spain and France. Such a tree, such a rock, such a hamlet, we know for certain is in one or other of these countries. But there is no such boundary in Nature. Where does the vegetable realm end and the animal kingdom begin? Psychology and physiology overlap and interpenetrate one another. The body acts on the mind, and the mind on the body. Those who come to Lourdes come in a condition of nervous exaltation, in a fever of faith and hope; not only so, but they come in crowds, and the magnetic, electric influence exercised by great masses of men and women on one another, is prodigious, when all are actuated by the same impulse.

That cures have been wrought at Lourdes I do not doubt. Similar and as many, and as genuine cures were wrought of old in pagan temples, which were also crowded with ex votos.