or on the
floor. In the same way, not a complaint of the stomach resisted, all
disappeared with the first glass of water. There was Marie Souchet, who
vomited black blood, who had wasted to a skeleton, and who devoured her
food and recovered her flesh in two days' time! There was Marie Jarlaud,
who had burnt herself internally through drinking a glass of a metallic
solution used for cleansing and brightening kitchen utensils, and who
felt the tumour which had resulted from her injuries melt rapidly away.
Moreover, every tumour disappeared in this fashion, in the piscina,
without leaving the slightest trace behind. But that which caused yet
greater wonderment was the manner in which ulcers, cancers, all sorts of
horrible, visible sores were cicatrised as by a breath from on high. A
Jew, an actor, whose hand was devoured by an ulcer, merely had to dip it
in the water and he was cured. A very wealthy young foreigner, who had a
wen as large as a hen's egg, on his right wrist, _beheld_ it dissolve.
Rose Duval, who, as a result of a white tumour, had a hole in her left
elbow, large enough to accommodate a walnut, was able to watch and follow
the prompt action of the new flesh in filling up this cavity! The Widow
Fromond, with a lip half decoyed by a cancerous formation, merely had to
apply the miraculous water to it as a lotion, and not even a red mark
remained. Marie Moreau, who experienced fearful sufferings from a cancer
in the breast, fell asleep, after laying on it a linen cloth soaked in
some water of Lourdes, and when she awoke, two hours later, the pain had
disappeared, and her flesh was once more smooth and pink and fresh.

At last Sister Hyacinthe began to speak of the immediate and complete
cures of phthisis, and this was the triumph, the healing of that terrible
disease which ravages humanity, which unbelievers defied the Blessed
Virgin to cure, but which she did cure, it was said, by merely raising
her little finger. A hundred instances, more extraordinary one than the
other, pressed forward for citation.

Marguerite Coupel, who had suffered from phthisis for three years, and
the upper part of whose lungs is destroyed by tuberculosis, rises up and
goes off, radiant with health. Madame de la Riviere, who spits blood, who
is ever covered with a cold perspiration, whose nails have already
acquired a violet tinge, who is indeed on the point of drawing her last
breath, requires but a spoonful of the water to be admin