h natural common-sense, and at
times was prompt in her _reparties_, with a kind of simple gaiety which
made one smile. It was only with infinite trouble that she was taught her
rosary, and when she knew it she seemed bent on carrying her knowledge no
further, but repeated it all day long, so that whenever you met her with
her lambs, she invariably had her chaplet between her fingers, diligently
telling each successive "Pater" and "Ave." For long, long hours she lived
like this on the grassy slopes of the hills, hidden away and haunted as
it were amidst the mysteries of the foliage, seeing nought of the world
save the crests of the distant mountains, which, for an instant, every
now and then, would soar aloft in the radiant light, as ethereal as the
peaks of dreamland.

Days followed days, and Bernadette roamed, dreaming her one narrow dream,
repeating the sole prayer she knew, which gave her amidst her solitude,
so fresh and naively infantile, no other companion and friend than the
Blessed Virgin. But what pleasant evenings she spent in the winter-time
in the room on the left, where a fire was kept burning! Her foster-mother
had a brother, a priest, who occasionally read some marvellous stories to
them--stories of saints, prodigious adventures of a kind to make one
tremble with mingled fear and joy, in which Paradise appeared upon earth,
whilst the heavens opened and a glimpse was caught of the splendour of
the angels. The books he brought with him were often full of
pictures--God the Father enthroned amidst His glory; Jesus, so gentle and
so handsome with His beaming face; the Blessed Virgin, who recurred again
and again, radiant with splendour, clad now in white, now in azure, now
in gold, and ever so amiable that Bernadette would see her again in her
dreams. But the book which was read more than all others was the Bible,
an old Bible which had been in the family for more than a hundred years,
and which time and usage had turned yellow. Each winter evening
Bernadette's foster-father, the only member of the household who had
learnt to read, would take a pin, pass it at random between the leaves of
the book, open the latter, and then start reading from the top of the
right-hand page, amidst the deep attention of both the women and the
children, who ended by knowing the book by heart, and could have
continued reciting it without a single mistake.

However, Bernadette, for her part, preferred the religious works in which