OUR LADY OF LOURDES.
FROM THE FRENCH OF HENRI LASSERRE.
PART SIXTH.
I.
The enemies of "superstition" had lost a good deal of ground in their desperate struggle against the events which for the last ten or twelve weeks had scandalized their distressed philosophy. As it had become impossible to deny the existence of the fountain whose pure streams were flowing before the eyes of the amazed people, so it was becoming impossible to continue denying the reality of the cures which were being worked, continually and in many places, by the use of this mysterious water.
At first the incredulous had shrugged their shoulders at the report of these cures, taking the simple course of denying them out-and-out, and refusing to make any examination. Then some skilful persons had invented several false miracles, to enjoy an easy triumph in refuting them. But they had very soon been confounded by the multiplicity of these wonderful cures, of which a few have been mentioned. The facts were evident. They became so numerous and so striking that it was necessary, however painful it might be, either to acknowledge their miraculous nature or find some natural explanation for them.
The free-thinkers, then, understood that, unless they were willing either to surrender or to deny in the face of complete evidence, it was absolutely necessary to take up some new line of tactics.
The most intelligent of the clique, indeed, saw that things had already gone too far, and perceived the grave error which they had committed at the outset in denying prematurely and without examination facts which had afterward become patent and perfectly well established, such as the appearance of the fountain, and the cures of a great number of many who were notoriously incurable by natural means, and who were now to be seen going about the streets of the town in perfect health. What made the mistake worse and almost irreparable was that these unfortunate denials of the most well-attested events were authentically and officially recorded in all the newspapers of the department.