chair of suffering, imprisoned between four cold
walls, with no other desire than a longing one for a speedy death, since
she had been denied a share of the poor common happiness of this world.

Bernadette's ailments increased each year. It was, in fact, the
commencement of her passion, the passion of this new child-Messiah, who
had come to bring relief to the unhappy, to announce to mankind the
religion of divine justice and equality in the face of miracles which
flouted the laws of impassible nature. If she now rose it was only to
drag herself from chair to chair for a few days at a time, and then she
would have a relapse and be again forced to take to her bed. Her
sufferings became terrible. Her hereditary nervousness, her asthma,
aggravated by cloister life, had probably turned into phthisis. She
coughed frightfully, each fit rending her burning chest and leaving her
half dead. To complete her misery, caries of the right knee-cap
supervened, a gnawing disease, the shooting pains of which caused her to
cry aloud. Her poor body, to which dressings were continually being
applied, became one great sore, which was irritated by the warmth of her
bed, by her prolonged sojourn between sheets whose friction ended by
breaking her skin. One and all pitied her; those who beheld her martyrdom
said that it was impossible to suffer more, or with greater fortitude.
She tried some of the Lourdes water, but it brought her no relief. Lord,
Almighty King, why cure others and not cure her? To save her soul? Then
dost Thou not save the souls of the others? What an inexplicable
selection! How absurd that in the eternal evolution of worlds it should
be necessary for this poor being to be tortured! She sobbed, and again
and again said in order to keep up her courage: "Heaven is at the end,
but how long the end is in coming!" There was ever the idea that
suffering is the test, that it is necessary to suffer upon earth if one
would triumph elsewhere, that suffering is indispensable, enviable, and
blessed. But is this not blasphemous, O Lord? Hast Thou not created youth
and joy? Is it Thy wish that Thy creatures should enjoy neither the sun,
nor the smiling Nature which Thou hast created, nor the human affections
with which Thou hast endowed their flesh? She dreaded the feeling of
revolt which maddened her at times, and wished also to strengthen herself
against the disease which made her groan, and she crucified herself in
thought, extending he