THE night had ended the agitations of so many minds so differently influenced, some believing in the reality of the Apparition, others remaining in a state of doubt, while a certain number persisted in denying the fact.
Bernadette, having arrived before the Rocks of Massabielle, had just knelt down.
An innumerable crowd had preceded her to the Grotto and pressed around her. Although there were there a good number of sceptics, of such as denied the truth of the Apparition, and of others who came merely from motives of curiosity, a religious silence suddenly prevailed as soon as the child had been perceived. A shudder had passed through the crowd like a shock of electricity. All, by a unanimous instinct, the incredulous as well as believers, had uncovered their heads. Several had kneeled down at the same time as the daughter of the miller.
At that moment the divine Apparition manifested Herself to Bernadette, who was suddenly transported into her marvelous ecstasy. As was always the case, the radiant Virgin stood in the oval excavation of the rock, and her feet rested on the wild rose.
Bernadette contemplated her with an inexpressible sentiment of love, a sentiment sweet and deep, which overflowed her soul with delight, without at all disturbing her mind or causing her to forget she was still upon earth.
The Mother of God loved this innocent child. She wished, by a still closer intimacy, to press her yet more to her bosom; She wished to strengthen still more the bond which united Her to the humble shepherd-girl, in order that the latter, amid all the agitations of this world, might feel, so to say, every moment, that the Queen of Heaven held her invisibly by the hand.
“My child,” she said, “I wish to impart to you, always for you alone, and concerning you alone, a last secret, which, as with the other two, you will never reveal to any one in the world.”
We have explained further back the profound reasons which formed, out of these intimate confidences, the future safeguard of Bernadette, amidst the moral dangers to which the extraordinary favors, of which she was the object, must inevitably expose her. By this triple secret, the Virgin clothed her messenger, as it were, with armor of three-fold strength against the dangers and temptations of life.
Bernadette, in the exceeding joy of her heart, listened, in the meanwhile, to the ineffable music of that voice so sweet, so maternal, so tender, which, eighteen hundred years ago, had charmed the filial ears of the Infant-God.
“And now,” rejoined the Virgin, after a short silence, go and drink from, and wash yourself in the Fountain, and eat of the herb which is growing at its side.”
Bernadette, at this word “Fountain,” gazed around her. There was, and never had been, any Spring in that spot. The child, without losing sight of the Virgin, betook herself quite naturally towards the Gave, whose tumultuous waters were rushing a few paces from there, across pebbles and broken rocks.
A word and a gesture from the Apparition arrested her in her course.
“Do not go there,” said the Virgin; “I have not spoken of drink from the Gave; go to the Fountain, it is here." And stretching out her hand―that delicate yet powerful hand―to which nature submits, She showed with her finger to the child, on the right side of the Grotto, the same parched corner towards which, but the morning before, She had made her ascend on her knees.
Although she saw nothing in the place pointed out to her which appeared to have any connection with the words of the divine Being, Bernadette obeyed and the command of the heavenly Vision. The vaulted roof of the Grotto sloped downwards on this side, and the little girl scrambled on her knees the short distance she had to traverse.
On reaching the end, she did not perceive before her the least appearance of a fountain. On the face of the rock there sprung here and there some tufts of that herb belonging to the Saxifrage family, which is called la Dorine.
Whether it was owing to a new sign from the Apparition, or to an inward impulse of her soul, Bernadette, with that simple faith so pleasing to the heart of God, stooped down, and, scratching the ground with her tiny hands, began to scoop out the earth.
The innumerable spectators of this scene, as they neither heard nor saw the Apparition, did not know what to think of this singular operation on the part of the child. Many already began to smile and to believe in some derangement of the poor shepherd girl’s brain. How little is needed to shake our faith.
All at once the bottom of this little cavity dug by the child became damp. Arriving from unknown depths, across rocks of marble and the bowels of the earth, a mysterious water began to spring up, drop by drop from beneath the hands of Bernadette, and to fill the hollow, about the size of a goblet, which she had just completed.
This water, newly come, mixing itself with the earth broken by Bernadette’s hands, formed at the first nothing but mud. Three times did Bernadette essay to raise this muddy liquid to her lips; but three times was her feeling of disgust so strong that she rejected it, feeling she had not the power of swallowing it. However she wished, before everything else, to obey the radiant Apparition who towered over this strange scene; and the fourth time, making a grand effort, she surmounted her repugnance. She drank, she washed herself, and she ate a morsel of the wild plant which grew at the foot of the rock.
At that moment the water of the Spring over-leaped the brim of the little reservoir hollowed by the child, and proceeded to flow in a slender stream, more slender, perhaps, than a straw, towards the crowd which was pressing on the front of the Grotto.
This stream was so extremely small that for a long time―until the close, in fact, of that day―the parched earth sucked it up entirely on its passage, and you could only guess its progressive course by the damp line, like a ribbon, which was traced on the ground, and which, increasing in length by degrees, advanced at an extremely slow rate towards the Gave.
When Bernadette had accomplished, as we have related above, all the mandates she had received, the Virgin gazed at her with an expression of satisfaction, and a moment afterwards, She disappeared from her sight.
The multitude was greatly excited by this prodigy. As soon as Bernadette emerged from her state of ecstasy, all rushed towards the Grotto. Every one wished to see with his own eyes the little hollow from which the water had gushed from beneath the hand of the child. Every one wished to dip his handkerchief in it and raise a drop of it to his lips. So this infant spring, in consequence of the gradual enlargement of its reservoir by the crumbling in of the earth, assumed, in a short time, the appearance of a puddle of water or of a liquid mass of wet mud. The Spring, however, seemed to increase in volume as water was drawn from it, and the orifice through which it gushed from the depths below became visibly larger.
“It was some water which must have accidentally dripped from the rock during the rainy season, and which, and that, too, accidentally, must have a formed a little pool, under the ground which the child has also accidentally discovered,” said the savants of Lourdes.
And the philosophers remained perfectly satisfied with this explanation.
The next day, the Spring, urged by an unknown power from the mysterious depths, and perceptibly increasing in volume, gushed from the ground more abundantly.
The stream proceeding from it was already about the thickness of your finger. It was, however, still muddy, owing to its struggles in forcing it passage through the earth. It was only at the expiration of a few days that, after having augmented to a certain degree from hour to hour, it ceased to increase, and became perfectly limpid. From that time it gushed from the earth in a jet of considerable magnitude, having almost reached the size of a child’s arm.
We must not, however anticipate events, but continue to follow them, day by day, as we have done hitherto. We will now resume our narrative.
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