never he found himself in what he thought the right path. On
the first occasion when Bernadette visited him, he received this child
who had been brought up at Bartres and had not yet been seen at
Catechism, almost as sternly as the Commissary of Police had done; in
fact, he refused to believe her story, and with some irony told her to
entreat the Lady to begin by making the briars blossom beneath her feet,
which, by the way, the Lady never did. And if the Abbe ended by taking
the child under his protection like a good pastor who defends his flock,
it was simply through the advent of persecution and the talk of
imprisoning this puny child, whose clear eyes shone so frankly, and who
clung with such modest, gentle stubbornness to her original tale.
Besides, why should he have continued denying the miracle after merely
doubting it like a prudent priest who had no desire to see religion mixed
up in any suspicious affair? Holy Writ is full of prodigies, all dogma is
based on the mysterious; and that being so, there was nothing to prevent
him, a priest, from believing that the Virgin had really entrusted
Bernadette with a pious message for him, an injunction to build a church
whither the faithful would repair in procession. Thus it was that he
began loving and defending Bernadette for her charm's sake, whilst still
refraining from active interference, awaiting as he did the decision of
his Bishop.

This Bishop, Monseigneur Laurence, seemed to have shut himself up in his
episcopal residence at Tarbes, locking himself within it and preserving
absolute silence as though there were nothing occurring at Lourdes of a
nature to interest him. He had given strict instructions to his clergy,
and so far not a priest had appeared among the vast crowds of people who
spent their days before the Grotto. He waited, and even allowed the
Prefect to state in his administrative circulars that the civil and the
religious authorities were acting in concert. In reality, he cannot have
believed in the apparitions of the Grotto of Massabielle, which he
doubtless considered to be the mere hallucinations of a sick child. This
affair, which was revolutionising the region, was of sufficient
importance for him to have studied it day by day, and the manner in which
he disregarded it for so long a time shows how little inclined he was to
admit the truth of the alleged miracles, and how greatly he desired to
avoid compromising the Church in a matter which seem