The sister of a notary of Tarbes, Jeanne-Marie Massot-Bordenave, had become, after a long and serious illness, almost entirely crippled in her feet and hands. She walked only with extreme difficulty. Her hands, habitually swollen, discolored, and aching, were almost entirely useless. Her fingers, bent back and stiff, could not be straightened, and were completely paralyzed. Having gone to see her brother at Tarbes, she was returning home to Arras, in the canton of Aucun. She was alone in the inside of the diligence. A flask of wine which her brother had given her having become uncorked and overturned, she could not set it up or cork it, so entirely powerless had her fingers become.
Lourdes was upon the road. She stopped there and went to the grotto. Hardly had she plunged her hands into the miraculous water, when she perceived that they were instantly coming back to life. Her fingers had straightened, and suddenly recovered their flexibility and strength. Successful perhaps beyond her expectations, she plunged her feet in the miraculous water, and they were healed like her hands. She fell upon her knees. What did she say to the Blessed Virgin? How did she thank her? Such prayers, such bursts of gratitude may be imagined, but not expressed in words.
She then put on her shoes, and with a confident step returned to the town.
A young girl was walking in the same direction, coming back from the woods with an enormous bundle of fagots on her head. It was warm, and the poor little peasant was bathed in perspiration. Exhausted, she sat down upon a stone at the side of the road, laying her too heavy burden at her feet. At this moment Jeanne-Marie Massot passed before her, returning quickly and joyfully from the fountain of grace. A good thought occurred to her. She went up to the child.
"My child," said she to her, "our Lord has just granted me a great favor. He has cured me; he has taken away my burden. And in my turn, I would like to aid and relieve you."
So saying, Marie Massot took up with her hands restored to life the heavy fagots which lay on the ground, put them on her head, and thus returned to Lourdes, whence, less than an hour before, she had gone out weak and paralyzed. The first-fruits of her recovered strength had been nobly used; they had been consecrated to charity. "Freely have you received, freely give," said our Redeemer to his disciples.[136]
A woman already advanced in age, Marie Capdevielle, of the village of Livron, in the neighborhood of Lourdes, had also been cured of a severe deafness which had troubled her for a long time. "I seem," said she, "to be in another world when I hear the church-bells, which I have not heard before for three years."
These cures, and many others, continue to attest irrefutably the direct intervention of God. He showed his power in restoring health to the sick, and it was evident that, if he had permitted persecution, it was because it was necessary to the conduct of his designs. It rested with him to put a stop to it, and for that purpose to bend and use as it should please him the wills of the great ones of the earth.
V.
Polemics on the subject of the grotto had become exhausted. In France and abroad, public opinion had passed judgment, not indeed on the reality of the supernatural events, but on the violent oppression to which all liberty of belief and right of examination were being subjected to in a corner of the empire. The miserable sophisms of anti-christian fanaticism and of pseudo-philosophic intolerance had not held their ground before the cogent logic of the Catholic journals. The Débats, the Siècle, the Presse, and the common herd of irreligious sheets kept silence, probably sorry that they had undertaken this unfortunate contest, and made so much noise about these extraordinary facts. They had only succeeded in propagating and spreading everywhere the renown of a host of miracles. From Italy, Germany, and even more distant lands, people were writing to Lourdes for some of the sacred water.