do not want a country chapel to commemorate the great events which have taken place here. Go, give us a temple of marble as large and as high as these rocks can sustain—as magnificent as your soul can conceive! Go, and do not check your genius till you have given us a chef-d’œuvre; and understand that, if you were Michael Angelo himself, it would all be unworthy of her who has appeared in this spot.”
“But, monsieur le curé,” observed everybody, “it will cost millions to carry out your ideas!”
“She who has made this barren rock send forth its living stream—she will know how to make faithful hearts generous,” answered the priest. “Go, do what I tell you. Why are you afraid, O ye of little faith?”
The temple rose in the proportions designed by the man of God.
The good pastor, as he watched the progress of the various works, often used to say:
“When will it be granted me to assist, with my priests and people, at the first procession which goes to inaugurate in these hallowed precincts the public worship of the Catholic Church? It seems to me that then I could sing my Nunc dimittis, and die of joy.” His eyes filled with tears at the thought. Never was there a deeper or warmer desire than this innocent wish of a heart given wholly to God.
Sometimes, at hours when the crowd was thin at the Massabielle Rocks, a little girl used to come and kneel before the place of the apparition, and drink of the miraculous spring. She was a poor child, and meanly clad—nothing marked out from the common people about. And if the pilgrims were all strangers to the place, no one suspected that it was Bernadette. This privileged soul had withdrawn into silence and concealment.
She went daily to the sisters’ school, where she was the simplest, and strove to be the most unnoticed. The numerous visitors whom she was called upon to receive never disturbed her peace of mind, which ever retained the memory of its glimpse at heaven and the incomparable Virgin. Bernadette kept all these things in her heart. People came from all quarters, miracles were being worked, the temple was rising. Bernadette and the holy pastor of Lourdes awaited, as their crowning joy, the day which was to bring to their eyes the sight of priests of the true God leading their people, with cross advanced and flying banners, to the spot of the apparitions.
III.
In spite of the bishop’s decree, the church in fact had not yet taken possession, by any public ceremony, of this spot, consecrated for ever. It was not till the 4th of April, 1864, that this was done, by the inauguration and blessing of the superb statue of the Blessed Virgin, which was placed with all the pomp customary on such occasions in the rustic niche, bordered with wild flowers, where the Mother of God had appeared to the child of man.[39]