Whilst listening, she trembled with her customary
little quiver of desire and anxiety. And when the priest exclaimed, "Ah!
if you had only seen that pomp!" she answered: "Me! I was much better
here in my little corner in the infirmary." They had robbed her of her
glory; her work shone forth resplendently amidst a continuous hosanna,
and she only tasted joy in forgetfulness, in the gloom of the cloister,
where the opulent farmers of the Grotto forgot her. It was never the
re-echoing solemnities that prompted her mysterious journeys; the little
bird of her soul only winged its lonesome flight to Lourdes on days of
solitude, in the peaceful hours when no one could there disturb its
devotions. It was before the wild primitive Grotto that she returned to
kneel, amongst the bushy eglantine, as in the days when the Gave was not
walled in by a monumental quay. And it was the old town that she visited
at twilight, when the cool, perfumed breezes came down from the
mountains, the old painted and gilded semi-Spanish church where she had
made her first communion, the old Asylum so full of suffering where
during eight years she had grown accustomed to solitude--all that poor,
innocent old town, whose every paving-stone awoke old affections in her
memory's depths.
And did Bernadette ever extend the pilgrimage of her dreams as far as
Bartres? Probably, at times when she sat in her invalid-chair and let
some pious book slip from her tired hands, and closed her eyes, Bartres
did appear to her, lighting up the darkness of her view.
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