Inside the latter, a low and damp abode, there were, on either
side of the wooden stairway leading to the loft, but two spacious rooms,
flagged with stones, and each containing four or five beds. The girls,
who slept together, fell asleep at even, gazing at the fine pictures
affixed to the walls, whilst the big clock in its pinewood case gravely
struck the hours in the midst of the deep silence.
Ah! those years at Bartres; in what sweet peacefulness did Bernadette
live them! Yet she grew up very thin, always in bad health, suffering
from a nervous asthma which stifled her in the least veering of the wind;
and on attaining her twelfth year she could neither read nor write, nor
speak otherwise than in dialect, having remained quite infantile,
behindhand in mind as in body. She was a very good little girl, very
gentle and well behaved, and but little different from other children,
except that instead of talking she preferred to listen. Limited as was
her intelligence, she often evinced much natural common-sense, and at
times was prompt in her /reparties/, with a kind of simple gaiety which
made one smile. It was only with infinite trouble that she was taught her
rosary, and when she knew it she seemed bent on carrying her knowledge no
further, but repeated it all day long, so that whenever you met her with
her lambs, she invariably had her chaplet between her fingers, diligently
telling each successive "Pater" and "Ave." For long, long hours she lived
like this on the grassy slopes of the hills, hidden away and haunted as
it were amidst the mysteries of the foliage, seeing nought of the world
save the crests of the distant mountains, which, for an instant, every
now and then, would soar aloft in the radiant light, as ethereal as the
peaks of dreamland.
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