ourdes, what a spring-tide flowering of
consolation and hope they brought to the hearts of the wretched, upon
whom poverty and sickness were preying! Old Bourriette's restored
eyesight, little Bouhohort's resuscitation in the icy water, the deaf
recovering their hearing, the lame suddenly enabled to walk, and so many
other cases, Blaise Maumus, Bernade Soubies,* Auguste Bordes, Blaisette
Soupenne, Benoite Cazeaux, in turn cured of the most dreadful ailments,
became the subject of endless conversations, and fanned the illusions of
all those who suffered either in their hearts or their flesh. On
Thursday, March 4th, the last day of the fifteen visits solicited by the
Virgin, there were more than twenty thousand persons assembled before the
Grotto. Everybody, indeed, had come down from the mountains. And this
immense throng found at the Grotto the divine food that it hungered for,
a feast of the Marvellous, a sufficient meed of the Impossible to content
its belief in a superior Power, which deigned to bestow some attention
upon poor folks, and to intervene in the wretched affairs of this lower
world, in order to re-establish some measure of justice and kindness. It
was indeed the cry of heavenly charity bursting forth, the invisible
helping hand stretched out at last to dress the eternal sores of
humanity. Ah! that dream in which each successive generation sought
refuge, with what indestructible energy did it not arise among the
disinherited ones of this world as soon as it found a favourable spot,
prepared by circumstances! And for centuries, perhaps, circumstances had
never so combined to kindle the mystical fire of faith as they did at
Lourdes.

* I give this name as written by M. Zola; but in other works on
Lourdes I find it given as "Bernarde Loubie--a bed-ridden old
woman, cured of a paralytic affection by drinking the water of
the Grotto."--Trans.

A new religion was about to be founded, and persecutions at once began,
for religions only spring up amidst vexations and rebellions. And even as
it was long ago at Jerusalem, when the tidings of miracles spread, the
civil authorities--the Public Prosecutor, the Justice of the Peace, the
Mayor, and particularly the Prefect of Tarbes--were all roused and began
to bestir themselves. The Prefect was a sincere Catholic, a worshipper, a
man of perfect honour, but he also had the firm mind of a public
functionary, was a passionate defender of order, and a declare