Her chaplet,
wound about her right arm, had beads of a milky whiteness, whilst the
links and the cross were of gold. And on her bare feet, on her adorable
feet of virgin snow, flowered two golden roses, the mystic roses of this
divine mother's immaculate flesh.
Where was it that Bernadette had seen this Blessed Virgin, of such
traditionally simple composition, unadorned by a single jewel, having but
the primitive grace imagined by the painters of a people in its
childhood? In which illustrated book belonging to her foster-mother's
brother, the good priest, who read such attractive stories, had she
beheld this Virgin? Or in what picture, or what statuette, or what
stained-glass window of the painted and gilded church where she had spent
so many evenings whilst growing up? And whence, above all things, had
come those golden roses poised on the Virgin's feet, that piously
imagined florescence of woman's flesh--from what romance of chivalry,
from what story told after catechism by the Abbe Ader, from what
unconscious dream indulged in under the shady foliage of Bartres, whilst
ever and ever repeating that haunting Angelic Salutation?
Pierre's voice had acquired a yet more feeling tone, for if he did not
say all these things to the simple-minded folks who were listening to
him, still the human explanation of all these prodigies which the feeling
of doubt in the depths of his being strove to supply, imparted to his
narrative a quiver of sympathetic, fraternal love.
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