In this urn is the incorrupt heart of Saint Bernadette.
The interrogation became increasingly harsh as time passed and all of Bernadette's answers were calm, but firm and coherent. I couldn't catch her in a contradiction: "You said that her hair fell down her back - No, I said... Lord, you change everything." "I know who told you to say this, confess." .. I was so nervous that I wasn't able to put my pen in the inkwell. But when she undeterred reaffirmed her intention to return to the grotto, the commissioner yelled: "Then I'm going to call the guards, get ready to go to jail!"
Miss Estrade would later state: "Nothing has moved me as much in my life as Bernadette's attitude towards the commissioner."
A crowd protested in the street and pounded on Jacomet's door demanding the girl's freedom. Fortunately for him, his father showed up. It was not difficult for her to intimidate him and he got her promise not to let her return, nor to receive people.
Jacomet, the honest official, made an unforgivable mistake by allowing himself to be carried away by a professional deformation: seeing everyone he interrogated as criminals; he lacked the religious spirit that admits the possibility of the supernatural. After interrogation, Estrade judged that they were a girl's fantasies. Jacomet replied: "It is nothing more than an intrigue by hypocritical devotees."
He, the mayor and the head of the gendarmes ordered their respective agents to closely monitor the grotto and Bernadette. At night, she prayed the rosary with her family crying. Couldn't she come back?
SEVENTH APPEARANCE
(Tuesday, February 23): On Monday the 22nd, the Soubirous did not even let their daughter go to Mass, and her mother accompanied her to school. But in the afternoon Bernadette said: "I can't move my legs except to go to Massabielle" and she went; although not alone, as she wanted. The gendarmes had orders to watch her and they accompanied her, one on each side of her, not without exclaiming: "That in the 19th century! XIX we want to be made to believe in such superstitions! She spread the word and a large number of people gathered, including Aunts Basilia and Lucila. The grotto, the rosary, the lit candle..., but the apparition was missing. Bernadette returned full of sadness: "What have I done wrong?" Her aunts, her mother, insisted that she not return. The ridicule had been great. Her irreverent comments: "The Lady of the Grotto is afraid of the gendarmes." "The apparitions are over."
They did not realize that, if it were a hallucination or fraud, the apparition would not have been missing. Furthermore, the Virgin had asked her to go 15 days, but she had not said that She would appear every day. For Bernadette it was a purification, and perhaps a teaching, since she had been disobeying her parents.
However, Bernadette's disappointment had an unexpected effect: her parents withdrew their ban on her returning to the grotto. Perhaps they were impressed by the words of Rev. Pomian with whom Bernadette confessed again that afternoon: "No one has the right to prevent it."
Soon the word spreads. Tomorrow the psychic will go to the grotto, but even at night Manolita Estrade and other friends cannot go alone at that time. Her complacent brother refuses to accompany them; ¡What were they going to say in the circle! She approached the priest's house, he did not want to know anything about the apparitions, he would praise her refusal to go, and he would be justified before his sister and her friends. The priest's reaction was no less unexpected than that of the Soubirous couple: “Wow, wow. I would like a serious man like you to go see what is happening there.
The next day, Tuesday the 23rd, before 6 o'clock, a hundred people had already gathered in the grotto. Several of the gentlemen of Lourdes, all incredulous, all trying to justify their coming, together they check the grotto: some crack through which the light can penetrate...
A murmur announces Bernadette's arrival. The rosary began. Estrade, the tax collector, who had not ceased to make his sister and her friends laugh with his "silly and vulgar jokes" as he himself later defined them, is the best narrator of the scene. Suddenly, at the end of the first mystery, as if struck by lightning, he had a shiver of admiration. She was transformed: her eyes lit up, an angel’s smile appeared on her lips, an indefinable grace spread over her, ¡she seemed different! The men, subjugated, took off their hats and knelt like the women of the town. No one could see with whom, but Bernadette had a conversation, sometimes she trembled with joy, other times, when she begged, she moved the spectators to tears, at times she prayed and crossed herself: "If they do it in heaven, they won't do it any other way." manner". The best actress in the world would be incapable of repeating such a scene. The ecstasy lasted an hour, which seemed short to those who contemplated it. Almost at the end, Bernadette went on her knees to the wild rose bush, picked herself up and kissed the ground. Her appearance asked him for these acts of humility. That day she communicated to him one of her three personal secrets, which, along with her prayer for herself alone, she will never reveal; Due to some indications about her, it is suspected that they were about her religious vocation, and that she would die young.
When he finished, he gently came to his senses and disappeared into the crowd. The "intellectuals" of Lourdes, who had been present, withdrew confused, silent, then they could not suppress their emotion: "It is prodigious..., sublime..., divine..." Estrade confesses that feeling the presence of the Queen of Heaven and that she would have allowed him to be with Her, moved him to the point of delirium.
Two female testimonies are also priceless. During Eleonora Pérard's ecstasy (¿who would have thought that this naughty girl was going to be a Daughter of Charity next year?) she stuck a large pin, with a black head, into Bernadette's shoulder, who didn't even notice. Miss Estrade, for her part, noticed that the candle slipped a little from the clairvoyant's hand until it reached the ground, so that her index finger remained on the flame for a long time, it must have been charred. She did not dare touch the candle, and she was surprised that he did not complain. Later she was very interested in going to her house, where she verified that her hand was perfectly fine. There she also saw that the little boy whom she had fed so many times was Bernadette's brother; And from that day on, little 6-year-old Juan María ate every day inside his house.
It would be endless to recount all the visits and questions to the psychic, until exhausting her, all the comments, the discussions; how the skeptics were believing...
EIGHTH APPEARANCE
(Wednesday, February 24): Between 400 and 500 people attend. Before finishing the first mystery, Bernadette falls into ecstasy; She is quite moved: in a moment she cries and comes to herself, she gets up, cries, because someone, to see her better, has moved the branches of the wild rose away from her: "Who touched the bramble?" Then he goes several times to the bottom of the cave. His face saddens, and lights up repeatedly; crying, he turns to those around him and repeats the words of the Virgin:
—Penance, penance, penance!
The emotion overcomes her aunt Lucila who screams; with this the appearance ceases. Later she will tell her: "Auntie, you shouldn't have to come back to me."
NINTH APPEARANCE
(Thursday, February 25): Like the day before, about 400 people, most of them women, some from two in the morning to get a good place. It's raining. Before dawn Bernadette arrives. People demand that umbrellas be closed and hats removed. Without finishing the first mystery, Bernadette falls into ecstasy. It is going to be a memorable day: the day of the gift of the miraculous fountain. The Virgin tells him:
—Go drink at the fountain and wash in it.
She goes on her knees, among the people, to
the grotto; There she does not find water, she goes to the river, but the
Virgin tells her that she is at the bottom of the grotto. She finds only the
wet ground, so she digs, three times she takes water with her hand, but she has
to throw it away because she is so dirty; The fourth time she can drink it and
wash her face, which is all stained with mud. Then the Virgin sends him:
—Go eat that grass there.
It is a type of clover (dorina or chrysoplenia) that grows among wet rocks. Bernadette takes the leaves, chews them and ends up spitting them out, because they are very hard and bitter. After standing he returns to his place. Her aunt Bernarda wipes her face and slaps her; She is outraged. She kneels and after a few moments the vision of her disappears.
People, who have only seen Bernadette's way of proceeding, do not understand it. The incredulous and curious take her for crazy. Her own supporters and friends are devastated, they scold her, they cannot believe that the Lady orders her to do such nonsense. But isn't everything already a way of doing penance like yesterday she asked him?
Major penance the next day. She went, there were at least 500 people, she prayed, she kissed the ground, … and the Virgin did not appear. She came back crying.
However, the new fountain is attracting more and more attention, although it is still small. Already on Thursday, two people had the idea of filling some jars with water. Since Friday, more and more people are going to look for that water.
TENTH APPEARANCE
(Saturday, February 27): Cold wind night. At three there are already people in the cave. Some have gone out to one of their distant homes. All night long you can hear the sound of clogs in the streets of Lourdes. The six seats of people form a compact mass, not 6 per square meter, but 10 and 12, notes the director of the Higher School. At half past six Bernadette arrives, it is not easy to make way for her. She gets on her knees and goes into ecstasy. The Virgin tells him: —Go kiss the earth in penance for sinners.
On his knees he goes to the bottom of the grotto, kissing the ground very often. She drank from the fountain with her hand, and washed herself a little.
ELEVENTH APPEARANCE
The people expect something extraordinary—perhaps a great miracle, or a punishment—on Thursday the 4th, the last of the fifteen that Bernadette must go to the grotto. The authorities are worried. That day, because there is a market, a crowd will gather in Lourdes and Massabielle. What to do after her repeated failures to prevent the girl from going to the grotto? The imperial prosecutor, Dutour, has her interrogated by Rives, the investigating judge. A bailiff goes to look for her after Mass. He stops her. Her sister cries, that is the first step to jail; but she laughs. "Hold me tight, otherwise I'll run away." The judge is sitting at his table and orders Bernadette to do so, the commissioner Jacomet walks around, and the bailiff remains standing, who will be the narrator of the scene.
—You rascal, why do you go to the grotto and
upset so many people? Who tells you to do that? We're going to lock you in
jail.
-I'm ready. Lock me up, but make it strong and well closed; If not I will escape.
He wasn't amused.
—I won't stop going.
The sheriff is amazed at his calmness.
"She has to be inspired or she is a saint." At that moment the
situation was saved by the hospital superior, who arrived crying and saying:
—I beg the gentlemen to leave the girl to us.
No
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