'As they might go to a menagerie': St. Bernadette Soubirous at fifteen

LOURDES, HAUTES-PYRÉNÉES, this year, 1859 AD — Saint Bernadette Soubirous is fifteen and cannot read or write. She lives in the town’s disused gaol with her mother, Louise Soubirous, and her younger brothers and sisters. Lourdes calls the place le cachot (the lock-up). Her father, François Soubirous, is a journeyman miller who lost the mill at Boly. André Sajous, a relation of her mother’s who owns the building, charges them no rent. The Imperial Attorney, Dufour, called the place a sordid, dark hovel where no one could live.

Last year, between February and July, Our Lady appeared to St. Bernadette eighteen times at the grotto of Massabielle. The Church has not yet ruled on it. Bishop Bertrand-Sévère Laurence of Tarbes appointed a commission of inquiry at the end of July; it questioned her in public here in November and asked her to swear to her account, and she swore. It has not reported.

What has happened since is the traffic. Lourdes sits at the mouth of the gorge that leads to the water-cures, and the carriages for Cauterets, Saint-Sauveur and Barèges stop here, four horses to each and bells on the harness. The season opened as June ended. When a carriage halts, its passengers walk down the rue des Petits-Fossés to this door; if she is out they go on to the hospice, where the Sisters of Charity of Nevers keep her school and point her out to whoever asks.

Visitors are received in the family’s one room. In a corner is a small shrine: flowers, medals, holy pictures, a statue of the Virgin above them. The rest is a pallet-bed, a few unsteady chairs and a poor table. St. Bernadette comes in from class with a basket: her knitting, a crust of black bread, a spelling-book with the corners gone. She answered questions here between class and the next caller.

You were at the Sisters’ class this morning, and the bell has rung several times since. When do you eat?

She gets home from her lessons with just enough time to eat before the next caller arrives, and while she is in class the bell goes on ringing. The Sisters find her hard to teach; she says she is the most backward child in the school.

Between morning and night, how many times are you asked to begin the account again?

Ten or twenty times a day. She never raises the subject; she speaks of it when asked. At certain moments, worn out and short of breath, she goes through it with no expression, like a lesson learned by heart. Not everyone who comes wants to be convinced. To those, she has said: “I have been asked to tell you about it, not to make you believe it.”

One evening last year a stranger laid an open purse of gold on that table. What happened to it?

“I do not wish for anything, Sir. Take it back again,” St. Bernadette told him, and pushed it across the table. When he turned to her parents, François and Louise Soubirous said: “We do not wish to have anything, nor Bernadette either.” He took it back and left. She gives the same reason to everyone who tries: “I want to remain poor.” She will not sell medals or pictures either: “I’m not a merchant.”

Before the grotto her parents went out each day for whatever work was offered and earned the day’s bread. Now strangers are in the house from morning to night, they cannot get on with their work, and they often go hungry. Estrade writes that they take as much trouble to protect themselves against charity as other people take against theft.

At the door this morning a woman held out her rosary for you to touch, and another knelt there wanting your blessing. What do you tell her?

“But, my dear lady, you see I have no stole; please wait until I have received the bishop’s authorisation.”

She blesses no rosaries. The Bishop of Soissons, whose name Estrade does not give, stopped here on his way to the waters and held out a rosary on a gold chain. St. Bernadette refused it: “Oh! it’s much too good for me. I thank you, Monseigneur, but I cannot accept it.” The bishop then asked for her rosary in exchange, and she gave it to him.

You have had trouble breathing since you were small. The women who call here pity you for it. What do you say?

The asthma took hold in her first years, and the coughing leaves her close to suffocation. To a lady of Lourdes who pitied her in her fever, she said: “Don’t be sorry for me. I can’t take a very cheerful view of life with this fever on me, but I certainly prefer it to my interviews with visitors.” The same woman reminded her that receiving callers was a duty laid on her by the Virgin. She answered: “Oh, I willingly fulfil that duty, but there are some people who come to see me and hear me, just as they might go to a menagerie to see and hear certain curious animals.”

At the house of M. Estrade, the receiver of contributions, where you call most days, Father Vignes, the missioner from Garaison, told you: “Since the Lady has promised to make you happy in the other world you need not take any trouble, but can rest confidently on her promise.” Do you take it that way?

“Oh, monsieur le curé, you are going on too fast. I shall be happy, yes, but only if I am careful to do what I ought to do and to walk along the straight path.”