Lourdes by Robert Hugh Benson (hot novels to read TXT) 📕

came back to report; her case is reported at length in Dr. Boissarie's _¼uvre de Lourdes_, on pages 299-308.[5] Her name was Marie Cools, and she came from Anvers, suffering apparently from _mal de Pott_, and paralysis and anæsthesia of the legs. This state had lasted for about three years. The doctors consulted differed as to her case: two diagnosing it as mentioned above, two as hysteria. For ten months she had suffered, moreover, from constant feverishness; she was continually sick, and the work of digestion was painful and difficult. There was a marked lateral deviation of the spinal column, with atrophy of the leg muscles. At the second bath she began to improve, and the pains in the back ceased; at the fourth bath the paralysis vanished, her appetite came steadily back, and the sickness ceased. Now she came in to announce her continued good health.

There are a number of interesting facts as to this case; and the first is the witness of the infidel doctor who sent her to Lourdes, since it seemed to him that "religious suggestion," was the only hope left. He, by the way, had diagnosed her case as one of hysteria. "It had a result," he writes, "which I, though an unbeliever, can characterize only as marvellous. Marie Cools returned completely, absolutely cured. No trace of paralysis or anæsthesia. She is actually on her feet; and, two hospital servants having been stricken by typhoid, she is taking the place of one of them." Another interesting fact is that a positive storm raged at Anvers over her cure, and that Dr. Van de Vorst was at the ensuing election dismissed from the hospital, with at least a suspicion that the cause of his dismissal lay in his having advised the girl to go to Lourdes at all.

Dr. Boissarie makes an interesting comment or two on the case, allowing that it may perhaps have been hysteria, though this is not at all certain. "When we have to do with nervous maladies, we must always remember the rules of Benedict XIV.: 'The miracle cannot consist in the cessation of the crises, but in the cessation of the nervous state which produces them.'" It is this that has been accomplished in the case of Marie Cools. And again: "Either Marie Cools is not cured, or there is in her cure something other than suggestion, even religious. It is high time to leave that tale alone, and to cease to class under the title of religious suggestion two orders of facts completely distinct--superficial and momentary modifications, and constitutional modifications so profound that science cannot explain them. I repeat: to make of an hysterical patient one whose equilibrium is perfect ... is a thing more difficult than the cure of a wound."

So he wrote at the time of her apparent cure, hesitating still as to its permanence. And here, before my eyes and his, she stood again, healthy and well.

And so at last I went back to dinner. A very different scene followed. For a couple of hours we had been materialists, concerning ourselves not with what Mary had done by grace--at least not in that aspect--but with what nature showed to have been done, by whatever agency, in itself. Now once more we turned to Mary.

It was dark when we arrived at the square, but the whole place was alive with earthly lights. High up to our left hung the church, outlined in fire--tawdry, I dare say, with its fairy lights of electricity, yet speaking to three-quarters of this crowd in the highest language they knew. Light, after all, is the most heavenly thing we possess. Does it matter so very much if it is decked out and arranged in what to superior persons appears a finikin fashion?

The crowd itself had become a serpent of fire, writhing here below in endlessly intricate coils; up there along the steps and parapets, a long-drawn, slow-moving line; and from the whole incalculable number came gusts and roars of singing, for each carried a burning torch and sang with his group. The music was of all kinds. Now and again came the _Laudate Mariam_ from one company, following to some degree the general movement of the procession, and singing from little paper-books which each read by the light of his wind-blown lantern; now the _Gloria Patri_, as a band came past reciting the Rosary; but above all pealed the ballad of Bernadette, describing how the little child went one day by the banks of the Gave, how she heard the thunderous sound, and, turning, saw the Lady, with all the rest of the sweet story, each stanza ending with that


Ave, Ave, Ave Maria!


that I think will ring in my ears till I die.

It was an astounding sight to see that crowd and to hear that singing, and to watch each group as it came past--now girls, now boys, now stalwart young men, now old veteran pilgrims, now a bent old woman; each face illumined by the soft paper-shrouded candle, and each mouth singing to Mary. Hardly one in a thousand of those came to be cured of any sickness; perhaps not one in five hundred had any friend among the patients; yet here they were, drawn across miles of hot France, to give, not to get. Can France, then, be so rotten?

As I dropped off to sleep that night, the last sound of which I was conscious was, still that cannon-like chorus, coming from the direction of the square:


Ave, Ave, Ave Maria!
Ave, Ave, Ave Maria!


FOOTNOTES:

[2] _La Voix de Lourdes_, a semi-official paper, gives the following account of her, in its issue of the 23rd: "... Marguerite Vandenabeele, 10 ans, de Nieurlet, hameau de Hedezeele, (Nord), est arrivée avec un des trains de Paris, portant un certificat du Docteur Dantois, daté de St. Momeleu (Nord) le 25 mai, 1908, la déclarant atteinte _d'atrophie de la jambe gauche_ avec _pied-bot équin_. Elle ne marchait que très difficilement et très péniblement. A la sortie de la piscine, vendredi soir, elle a pu marcher facilement. Amenée au Bureau Médical, on l'a débarrassée de l'appareil dans lequel était enfermé son pied. Depuis, elle marche bien, et parait guérie."

[3] This was written in the autumn of the year 1908, in which this visit of mine took place.

[4] Since 1888 the registered cures are estimated as follows: '88, 57; '89, 44; '90, 80; '91, 53; '92, 99; '93, 91; '94, 127; '95, 163; '96, 145; '97, 163; '98, 243; '99, 174; 1900, 160; '01, 171; '02, 164; '03, 161; '04, 140; '05, 157; '06, 148; '07, 109.

[5] My notes are rather illegible at this point, but I make no doubt that this was Marie Cools.



IV.


I awoke to that singing again, in my room above the door of the hotel; and went down presently to say my Mass in the Rosary Church, where, by the kindness of the Scottish priest of whom I have spoken, an altar had been reserved for me. The Rosary Church is tolerably fine within. It has an immense flattened dome, beyond which stands the high altar; and round about are fifteen chapels dedicated to the Fifteen Mysteries, which are painted above their respective altars.

But I was to say Mass in a little temporary chapel to the left of the entrance, formed, I suppose, out of what usually serves as some kind of a sacristy. The place was hardly forty feet long; its high altar, at which I both vested and said Mass, was at the farther end; but each side, too, was occupied by three priests, celebrating simultaneously upon altar-stones laid on long, continuous boards that ran the length of the chapel. The whole of the rest of the space was crammed to overflowing; indeed it had been scarcely possible to get entrance to the chapel at all, so vast was the crowd in the great church outside.

After breakfast I went down to the Bureau once more, and found business already begun. The first case, which was proceeding as I entered, was that of a woman (whose name I could not catch) who had been cured of consumption in the previous year, and who now came back to report a state of continued good health. Her brother-in-law came with her, and she remarked with pleasure that the whole family was now returning to the practice of religion. During this investigation I noticed also Juliette Gosset seated at the table, apparently in robust health.

There followed Natalie Audivin, a young woman who declared that she had been cured in the previous year, and that she supposed her case had been entered in the books; but at the moment, at any rate, her name could not be found, and for the present the case was dismissed.

I now saw a Capuchin priest in the room--a small, rosy, bearded man--and supposed that he was present merely as a spectator; but a minute or two later Dr. Boissarie caught sight of him, and presently was showing him off to me, much to his smiling embarrassment. He had caught consumption of the intestines, it seemed, some years before, from attending upon two of his dying brethren, and had come to Lourdes almost at his last gasp in the year 1900 A. D. Here he stood, smiling and rosy.

There followed Mademoiselle Madeleine Laure, cured of severe internal troubles (I did not catch the details) in the previous year.

Presently the Bishop of Dalmatia came in, and sat in his chair opposite me, while we heard the account of Miss Noemie Nightingale, of Upper Norwood, cured in the previous June of deafness, rising, in the case of one ear at least, from a perforation of the drum. She was present at the _piscines_, when on a sudden she had felt excruciating pains in the ears. The next she knew was that she heard the _Magnificat_ being sung in honour of her cure.

Mademoiselle Marie Bardou came in about this time, and passed through to the inner room to be examined; while we received from a doctor a report of the lame child whom we had seen on the previous day. All was as had been said. She could now put her heels to the ground and walk. It seemed she had been conscious of a sensation of hammering in her feet at the moment of the cure, followed by a feeling of relief.

And so they went on. Next came Mademoiselle Eugénie Meunier, cured two months before of fistula. She had given her certificate into the care of her _curé_, who could not at this moment be found--naturally enough, as she had made no appointment with him!--but she was allowed to tell her story, and to show a copy of her parish magazine in which her story was given. She had had in her body one wound of ten centimetres in size. After bathing one evening she had experienced relief; by the next morning the wound, which had flowed for six months, was completely closed, and had remained so. Her strength and appetite had returned. This cure had taken place in her own lodging, since her state was such that she was forbidden to go to the Grotto.

The next case was that of a woman with paralysis, who was entered provisionally as one of the "ameliorations." She was now able to walk, but the use of her hand was not yet fully restored. She was sent back to the _piscines_, and ordered to report again later.

The next was a boy of about twelve years old, Hilaire Ferraud, cured of a terrible disease of the bone three years before. Until that