"Do you, then, make it yourself for my intention, M. l'Abbé, and that will do better than if I should make it myself," answered the child.
Poor Bernadette intended to serve God gratuitously, and to fulfil the mission with which she had been entrusted without leaving her honorable poverty. And yet she and the family were sometimes in want of bread.
At this time the salary of the prefect, Baron Massy, was raised to 25,000 francs. Jacomet also received a gratuity. The Minister of Public Worship, in a letter which was communicated to several functionaries, assured the prefect of his perfect satisfaction, and, while commending all that he had so far done, he urged him to take energetic measures, adding that, at all costs, the grotto and miracles of Lourdes must be put an end to.[44]
On this ground, as well as on all the others, it was necessary either to retreat or to advance.
But what could be done?
VIII.
The plan of the divine work was gradually being developed with its admirable and convincing logic. But at that time no one fully recognized the invisible hand of God directing all the events, manifest as it was, and M. Massy least of all. The midst of the mêlée is not the best position from which to judge the order of battle. The unfortunate prefect, who had set out upon the wrong track, saw in what occurred only a provoking series of unpleasant incidents and an inexplicable fatality. If we remove God from certain questions, we are very likely to find in them something inexplicable.
The progress of events, slow but irresistible, was overthrowing successively all the theses of unbelief, and forcing this miserable human philosophy to beat a retreat and to abandon one by one all its intrenchments.
First, the apparitions had occurred. Free thought had at the outset denied them out-and-out, accusing the seer of being only a tool, and of having lent herself to carry out a deception. This thesis had not stood before the examination of the child, whose veracity was evident.
Unbelief, dislodged from this first position, fell back on the theory of hallucination or catalepsy. "She thinks she sees something; but she does not. It is all a mistake."