Then climbing the
steep ascent of the Rue Basse, they skirted the terrace of the church,
which was shaded by large elms. And what soft peacefulness prevailed in
and around that old semi-Spanish church, full of ancient carvings,
columns, screens, and statues, peopled with visionary patches of gilding
and painted flesh, which time had mellowed and which you faintly
discerned as by the light of mystical lamps! The whole population came
there to worship, to fill their eyes with the dream of the mysterious.
There were no unbelievers, the inhabitants of Lourdes were a people of
primitive faith; each corporation marched behind the banner of its saint,
brotherhoods of all kinds united the entire town, on festival mornings,
in one large Christian family. And, as with some exquisite flower that
has grown in the soil of its choice, great purity of life reigned there.
There was not even a resort of debauchery for young men to wreck their
lives, and the girls, one and all, grew up with the perfume and beauty of
innocence, under the eyes of the Blessed Virgin, Tower of Ivory and Seat
of Wisdom.
And how well one could understand that Bernadette, born in that holy
soil, should flower in it, like one of nature's roses budding in the
wayside bushes! She was indeed the very florescence of that region of
ancient belief and rectitude; she would certainly not have sprouted
elsewhere; she could only appear and develop there, amidst that belated
race, amidst the slumberous peacefulness of a childlike people, under the
moral discipline of religion.
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