Before setting out Mme. Guerrier had received absolution, and as much as possible disposed her soul for the reception of the great grace she implored. She was ready. Her husband, though a practical Christian, was still a little behindhand. Burdened as he had been with all the weight of temporal anxieties, he had not been quite so active in arranging for his spiritual needs. With an exceeding watchfulness he had attended to everything relating to the comfort of his charge, but the preparation of himself he had delayed, awaiting for this, the decisive moment and the latest hour.
At Lourdes this hour came.
Late in the evening he requested the Abbé Martignon to hear his confession. As he had all along intended, he desired on the morrow to receive Holy Communion with his wife.
And thus in the sacrament of penance, after the avowal of his faults, he had the consolation of pouring out his troubles and deep anxieties into the sympathizing heart of his confessor. The details of these confidences are the secret of God, but this we know well: that the confessor, who is God’s lieutenant for the time, and who, in the name of the Father of all, pronounces the words of pity and pardon, often experiences, more fully than other men, the sentiment of deepest compassion. And great was the compassion of the Abbé Martignon for the misfortune of this distressed husband, for the sufferings of the wife, and the mourning of their family. He put aside all consideration of himself to think only for them. Not that he forgot his own sufferings, or the bright hope with which he was looking forward to the morrow; on the contrary, he remembered this; but a thought of a higher order, which had already presented itself to his mind, recurred to him now, and he at once acted upon it.
“Let your wife have confidence,” he said to his penitent, “and do you have confidence as well. I saw her when she was praying this evening at the grotto. She is one of those who triumph over the heart of God and compel a miracle.” Then, telling him about his own novena, he added: “To-morrow, then, at eight o’clock I shall celebrate the Mass which is my last hope!... Well, say to Mme. Guerrier that not only will I say this Mass for her, but that, if I am to have a share in the sensible answer which I solicit, I give up this share to her. I make over to her intention all the previous prayers of this novena, and I substitute her intentions for mine, so that, if the answer is to be a cure, it shall not be mine but hers. Let her, before she goes to sleep to-night, and to-morrow on awaking, associate with her prayers the name of Mgr. Peyramale, and at eight o’clock come, both of you, to my Mass at the basilica. I have good hope that something will happen.”
In accepting with simplicity such an offer as this M. and Mme. Guerrier could not measure the heroism and the extent of the sacrifice which the Abbé Martignon was making in their favor. For this the knowledge of a long past was necessary—a past of which they knew nothing.
The sick lady did not fail to mingle in her prayers the name of Mgr. Peyramale, and towards eight o’clock in the morning she was taken to the basilica to be present at the last Mass of this novena, her feeling of assured confidence in her recovery being singularly strengthened by the noble act of self-denial made in her favor.
Since the previous day the crypt and upper church had been filled by the pilgrims from Marseilles. It would have been difficult to carry a sick person through the dense multitude, especially one to whom the least shock or movement caused suffering and fatigue. One of the first chapels on entering was therefore chosen in which to say the Mass. It happened to be the first on the left, dedicated to Ste. Germaine Cousin.
Mme. Guerrier heard the Mass seated on a chair, her feet, absolutely inert, being placed on a priedieu in front of her.
While reading the epistle the remembrance of Mgr. Peyramale suddenly presented itself with extraordinary clearness before the mind of the celebrant, when he came to the last lines, and saw these words, whose striking fitness impressed itself irresistibly upon him: