"
But the narratives were not yet finished. Sister Hyacinthe and Madame de
Jonquiere were now enumerating all the miracles with which they were
acquainted, the long, long series of miracles which for more than thirty
years had been flowering at Lourdes, like the uninterrupted budding of
the roses on the Mystical Rose-tree. They could be counted by thousands,
they put forth fresh shoots every year with prodigious verdancy of sap,
becoming brighter and brighter each successive season. And the sufferers
who listened to these marvellous stories with increasing feverishness
were like little children who, after hearing one fine fairy tale, ask for
another, and another, and yet another. Oh! that they might have more and
more of those stories in which evil reality was flouted, in which unjust
nature was cuffed and slapped, in which the Divinity intervened as the
supreme healer, He who laughs at science and distributes happiness
according to His own good pleasure.
First of all there were the deaf and the dumb who suddenly heard and
spoke; such as Aurelie Bruneau, who was incurably deaf, with the drums of
both ears broken, and yet was suddenly enraptured by the celestial music
of a harmonium; such also as Louise Pourchet, who on her side had been
dumb for five-and-twenty years, and yet, whilst praying in the Grotto,
suddenly exclaimed, "Hail, Mary, full of grace!" And there were others and
yet others who were completely cured by merely letting a few drops of
water fall into their ears or upon their tongues.
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