PART NINTH.
I.
By reason of the events which we have narrated, M. Massy no longer felt at home in this part of the earth. The emperor did not fail to send him to the first prefecture which became vacant in the empire. By a remarkable coincidence, this prefecture proved to be that of Grenoble. Baron Massy left Our Lady of Lourdes only to meet Our Lady of La Salette.
Jacomet also left the department, and was appointed chief of police elsewhere. Re-established upon his chosen ground, he contributed with great sagacity to the detection of some dangerous criminals who had baffled the efforts of his predecessor and the active search of the police. The crime was a great robbery committed upon a railroad company, and amounting to several hundred thousand francs. This was the point of departure in his fortunes as a police agent, his true vocation. His remarkable ability, appreciated by his superiors, raised him to a higher place.
The procureur impérial, M. Dutour, was also speedily called to other functions. M. Lacadé still remained mayor, and his shadow will yet appear once or twice in the latter pages of our story.
II.
Although he had instituted the tribunal of examination towards the end of July, still, before permitting it to begin its work, Mgr. Laurence desired a more peaceful state of the public mind. "To wait," he thought, "will not compromise God's work, since he holds all time in his hands." The issue proved that he was right. For after the stormy discussions of the French press and the violent proceedings of Baron Massy, the grotto finally became free, and there was no longer fear of the scandal of seeing police agents arresting the episcopal commission on its way to the Massabielle rocks in order to fulfil its duty, and examine the traces of God's finger at the very place of the apparition.
On the 17th of November, the commission went to Lourdes. They examined the seer. "Bernadette," says the procès-verbal of the secretary, "presented herself before us with great modesty, and, nevertheless, with remarkable confidence. She appeared calm and unembarrassed in the midst of the numerous assembly, in presence of distinguished ecclesiastics, whom she had never seen, but of whose mission she had been made aware."
She described the apparitions, the words of the Blessed Virgin, the order given by Mary to build a chapel in her honor, the sudden breaking out of the fountain, the name, "Immaculate Conception," which the vision had given to itself. She set forth all that was personal to herself in this supernatural drama with the grave certainty of a witness fully convinced, and the humble candor of a child. She answered every question, and left no obscurity in the mind of those who interrogated her, no longer in the name of man, as Jacomet had done, but in the name of the Catholic Church. Our readers are already aware of the substance of her testimony. We have, in former pages, narrated events in the order of their date. The commission visited the Massabielle rocks. It beheld the great volume of the miraculous fountain. It established, by the testimony of the neighboring inhabitants, that no spring existed there before the time when it broke forth in the presence of the multitudes under the hand of the ecstatic seer.
At Lourdes and in other places they made studious inquiry into the miraculous cures worked by the water of the grotto.
In this delicate task there were two parts, entirely distinct. Human testimony determined the facts themselves; but their natural or supernatural character depended, for the most part, on the verdict of medical science. The method followed by the tribunal was inspired by this twofold thought.