Strange contradiction of human nature! A moment before I had trusted my faith, which promised me a cure; now, I could not believe my senses, which assured me that the cure had been worked.
No! I did not believe my senses. In spite of the startling effect which had been wrought upon me, I committed the fault of which Moses was guilty, and struck the rock twice. I continued to bathe my eyes and forehead, not daring to open them, not daring to verify my cure. At the end of ten minutes, however, the strength which I felt in my eyes, and the absence of all heaviness, left no chance for doubt. "I am cured!"
So saying, I snatched up a book. "No," said I, "that is not the book for me to be reading at this moment." Then I took from the mantelpiece the Account of the Apparitions at Lourdes. I read a hundred and four pages without stopping or feeling the least fatigue. Twenty minutes before, I could not have read three lines. Indeed, if I stopped at the hundred-and-fourth page, it was only because it was thirty-five minutes past five o'clock, and at this hour in October it is almost dark in Paris. When I laid aside my book, the gas was being lighted in the shops of the street in which I lived.
That evening, I made my confession to the Abbé Ferrand, and acquainted him with the great gift which I had received from the Blessed Virgin. Although in no degree prepared, he wished me to go to communion the next day, to thank God for such an extraordinary favor, and to strengthen the good resolutions which it had caused to spring up in my soul.
M. and Mme. de —— were, as one may imagine, greatly moved by this event, in which Providence had assigned them so direct a part. What did they think of it? What reflections were suggested to their minds? What took place in the depth of their hearts? That secret belongs only to them and to God. What little I have been able to make out, I am not at liberty to publish.
Be this as it may, I know my friend's nature. I left him to his own thoughts, without urging him to the conclusion. I knew, and still know, that God has his own time and his own ways. His action was so manifest throughout the whole affair that I did not wish to interfere, although my friends have never been ignorant of my desire to see them enter the only church which contains God in his fulness.
I regret not being able to consider these two beings—so dear to me—as receiving from the reaction of the miracle of which I had been the object the first shocks which truth gives to those whom it seeks to conquer.
Seven years have now passed since my miraculous cure. My sight is excellent. Neither reading nor hard work, even when kept up late at night, wearies my eyes. God grant me never to use them save in the cause of right.