Julie Jadot requires
four spoonfuls; but then she could no longer hold up her head, she was of
such a delicate constitution that disease had reduced her to nothing; and
yet, in a few days, she becomes quite fat. Anna Catry, who is in the most
advanced stage of the malady, with her left lung half destroyed by a
cavity, is plunged five times into the cold water, contrary to all the
dictates of prudence, and she is cured, her lung is healthy once more.
Another consumptive girl, condemned by fifteen doctors, has asked
nothing, has simply fallen on her knees in the Grotto, by chance as it
were, and is afterwards quite surprised at having been cured /au
passage/, through the lucky circumstance of having been there, no doubt,
at the hour when the Blessed Virgin, moved to pity, allows miracles to
fall from her invisible hands.
Miracles and yet more miracles! They rained down like the flowers of
dreams from a clear and balmy sky. Some of them were touching, some of
them were childish. An old woman, who, having her hand anchylosed, had
been incapable of moving it for thirty years, washes it in the water and
is at once able to make the sign of the Cross. Sister Sophie, who barked
like a dog, plunges into the piscina and emerges from it with a clear,
pure voice, chanting a canticle. Mustapha, a Turk, invokes the White Lady
and recovers the use of his right eye by applying a compress to it. An
officer of Turcos was protected at Sedan; a cuirassier of Reichsoffen
would have died, pierced in the heart by a bullet, if this bullet after
passing though his pocket-book had not stayed its flight on reaching a
little picture of Our Lady of Lourdes! And, as with the men and women, so
did the children, the poor, suffering little ones, find mercy; a
paralytic boy of five rose and walked after being held for five minutes
under the icy jet of the spring; another one, fifteen years of age, who,
lying in bed, could only raise an inarticulate cry, sprang out of the
piscina, shouting that he was cured; another one, but two years old, a
poor tiny fellow who had never been able to walk, remained for a quarter
of an hour in the cold water and then, invigorated and smiling, took his
first steps like a little man! And for all of them, the little ones as
well as the adults, the pain was acute whilst the miracle was being
accomplished; for the work of repair could not be effected without
causing an extraordinary shock to the whole human organism; the bones
grew again, new flesh was formed, and the disease, driven away, made its
escape in a final convulsion.
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