From Cauterets, from Barèges, from Luz, from St. Sauveur, strangers hastened to Lourdes. The city was filled with rattling coaches, drawn, according to the custom of the country, by four powerful horses, whose harness and trappings are of many colors and adorned with strings of little bells. The greater proportion of the pilgrims paid no attention to the barriers. They braved the law and went into the grotto, some out of motives of faith, and others led by mere curiosity. Bernadette received innumerable visits. Everybody wished to see and could see the persons who had been miraculously cured. In the salons at the baths, the events which we have recounted formed the universal topic of conversation. Little by little, public opinion began to be formed, no longer the opinion of an insignificant nook at the foot of the Pyrenees, and extending only from Bayonne to Toulouse or Foix, but the opinion of France and Europe, now represented among the mountains by visitors of all classes, of every intellectual shade, and from every place.
The violent measures of Baron Massy, which vexed curiosity as much as piety, were highly censured by all. Some said that they were illegal, others that they were misplaced, but all agreed that they were utterly inadequate to suppressing the prodigious movement of which the grotto and the miraculous spring were the centre.
The evidences of this total inefficiency drew upon the prefect severe criticism from those who shared his horror of the supernatural, and who at the start would have loudly applauded his policy. Men in general, and free-thinkers in particular, judge the acts of government rather by their results than by philosophic principles.
Success is the most certain means of winning their approval; failure, a twofold misfortune, since universal blame is added to the humiliation of defeat. M. Massy was subject to this double mishap.
There were circumstances, however, which put the zeal of the police and even the official courage of M. Jacomet to a rude test. Illustrious personages violated the enclosure.
What was to be done in such embarrassing cases?
Once they suddenly halted a stranger, of strongly marked and powerful features, who passed the stakes with the manifest intention of going to the Massabielle rocks.
"You can't pass here, sir."
"You will soon see whether I can or cannot pass," answered the stranger, without for a moment arresting his progress towards the place of the apparition.
"Your name? I will enter a complaint against you."