encies; he had
been told he could not travel twenty miles, and he had travelled over
eight hundred kilometres, after four years' isolation. He had stayed a
few months in Lourdes, bathing in the _piscines_, and the obsession had
left him. His statements were verified; he was congratulated and
dismissed.

There followed Emma Mourat to report; and then Madame Simonet, cured
eight years ago of a cystic tumour in the abdomen. She had been sitting
in one of the churches, I think, when there was a sudden discharge of
matter, and a sense of relief. On the morrow, after another bath, the
sense of discomfort had finally disappeared. During Madame Simonet's
examination, as the crowd was great, several persons were dismissed till
a later hour.

There followed another old patient to report. She had been cured two
years before of myelitis and an enormous tumour that, after twenty-two
years of suffering, had been declared "incurable" in her certificate.
The cure had taken place during the procession, in the course of which
she suddenly felt herself, she said, impelled to rise from her litter.
Her appetite had returned and she had enjoyed admirable health ever
since. Her name was looked up, and the details verified.

There followed Madame Francois and some doctor's evidence. Nine years
ago she had been cured of fistula in the arm. She had been operated upon
five times; finally, as her arm measured a circumference of seventy-two
centimetres, amputation had been declared necessary. She had refused,
and had come to Lourdes. Her cure occupied three days, at the end of
which her arm had resumed its normal size of twenty-five centimetres.
She showed her arm, with faint scars visible upon it; it was again
measured and found normal.

It was an amazing morning. Here I had sat for nearly three hours, seeing
with my own eyes persons of all ages and both sexes, suffering from
every variety of disease, present themselves before sixty or seventy
doctors, saying that they had been cured miraculously by the Mother of
God. Various periods had elapsed since their cures--a day, two or three
months, one year, eight years, nine years. These persons had been
operated upon, treated, subjected to agonizing remedies; one or two had
been declared actually incurable; and then, either in an instant, or
during the lapse of two or three days, or two or three months, had been
restored to health by prayer and the application of a little water in
no way remarkabl