Occasionally, unfortunate victims of blindness or palsy from a distance, who had been abandoned by the physicians and whose ills God alone knew how to cure, would come to the mayor and entreat him with clasped hands to give their lives one last chance at the miraculous spring. The mayor was inflexible, showing in his execution of the prefect's orders that energy of detail by which feeble natures so often deceive themselves. He refused in the name of the superior authority the desired permission.
The greater number then went along the right bank of the Gave to a point opposite the grotto. Here on certain days an immense throng collected, beyond the reach of the prefectoral power; for the land belonged to private parties, who believed that the benediction of Heaven would fall upon the footprints of the pilgrims, and gladly permitted them to kneel upon their land, and to pray with eyes turned toward the place of the apparition and the miraculous fountain.
About this time, Bernadette fell sick, affected by her asthma and also fatigued by the number of visitors who wished to see and speak with her. In hopes of quieting souls by removing every cause of agitation, the bishop availed himself of this circumstance to advise Bernadette's parents to send her to the baths of Cauterets, which are not far from Lourdes.
It would serve to withdraw her from those conversations and inquiries which served to increase popular emotion. The Soubirous, alarmed at her state, and observing the bad effect of these continual visits, confided Bernadette to one of her aunts who was about to go to Cauterets, and who undertook the care and expenses of her little niece. The cost of such a visit is considerably less at that time of the year than any other, as the baths are almost deserted. The rich and privileged come later in the season. Here, as an invalid seeking repose and quiet, Bernadette used the waters for two or three weeks.
IV.
As the month of June draws to a close, the fashionable watering season begins in the Pyrenees. Bernadette returned to her home at Lourdes. And now, tourists, bathers, travellers, and scientific men from a thousand different parts of Europe began to arrive at the various thermal stations. The rugged mountains, so wild and lonely during the rest of the year, were peopled with a throng of visitors belonging for the most part to the higher social class of the great cities.
By the close of July, the Pyrenees became suburbs of Paris, London, Rome, and Berlin.
Frenchmen and foreigners met in the dining-halls, jostled one another in the salons, rambled among the mountain-paths, or rode in every direction, along the streams, over the ridges, or through the flowery and shaded valleys.
Ministers worn out by labor, deputies and senators fatigued by too much listening or speaking, bankers, politicians, merchants, ecclesiastics, magistrates, writers, and people of the world, all came to provide for their health, not only at the famous springs, but in the pure and bracing mountain air, which gives energy to the pulse and fills the mind with vigor and activity.
This motley society represented all beliefs and disbeliefs, all the philosophic systems, and all the opinions under the sun. It was a microcosm. It was an abridged edition of Europe—that Europe which Providence thus wished to place in presence of his supernatural works. Nevertheless, as of old in Bethlehem he showed himself to the shepherds before his manifestation to the Magian kings; so at Lourdes he first called the humble and the poor to behold his wonders, and only after them the princes of wealth, intelligence, and art.