Her garments were of an unknown fabric, woven in the mysterious looms which serve to robe the lily of the valley; for they were white as the stainless mountain snows, and yet more splendid than the raiment of Solomon in all his glory. The vesture, long and trailing in chaste folds, revealed her virginal feet, which lightly pressed the broad branch of eglantine, and on each of which blossomed the golden mystical rose.
From her waist a sky-blue cincture, loosely tied, hung, in long bands, to the instep of her foot. Behind, and enveloping in its fulness her arms and shoulders, a white veil descended from her head to the hem of her robes. No ring, no necklace, no diadem or gem; none of those ornaments were there that human vanity loves to parade. A chaplet, whose drops of milky white slid on a golden cord, hung from her hands, fervently clasped together. The beads glided through her fingers. Yet the lips of this Queen of Virgins remained motionless. Instead of reciting the rosary, she was, perhaps, listening to the eternal echo in her own heart of that first Ave! and the deep murmur of invocation ever rising from this earth of ours. Each bead was undoubtedly a shower of heavenly graces that fell upon souls like the liquid diamonds into the chalice of the flower.
She kept silence; but later, her own words and the miraculous facts which we shall have to record, were to attest that she was truly the Immaculate Virgin, the sinless and stainless among women, Mary, the Mother of God.
This wonderful apparition looked upon Bernadette, who, as we have seen, shrinking and speechless, had fallen upon her knees.
X.
The child, in her first movement of fear, had instinctively seized her rosary; and, holding it in her hands, endeavored to make the sign of the cross. But she trembled so violently as to render this impossible. "Fear not," said Jesus to his disciples, when he came walking on the waves of the sea of Tiberias. The look and smile of the Blessed Virgin appeared to say the same thing to this frightened little shepherdess.
With a sweet, grave gesture, which seemed like a benediction to earth and heaven, she, as if to encourage the child, made the sign of the cross. And the hand of Bernadette, raised, as it were, by her hand who is called the Help of Christians, repeated the sacred sign.
"Fear not, it is I," Jesus said to his disciples.
The child felt no more fear. Astonished, charmed, scarcely trusting her senses, and wiping her eyes, whose glance was riveted by the heavenly vision, no longer knowing what to think, she humbly recited her rosary: "I believe in God"—"Hail, Mary! full of grace!"
When she had finished saying the last "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," the bright Virgin suddenly disappeared, reëntering that eternal paradise, the dwelling of the Holy Trinity, whence she had come.