"_Seigneur, guerissez nos malades!_" cried the priest.

"_Seigneur, guerissez nos malades!_" answered the people.

"_Vous etes mon Seigneur et mon Dieu!_"

And then on a sudden it came.

Overhead lay the quiet summer air, charged with the Supernatural as a
cloud with thunder--electric, vibrating with power. Here beneath lay
souls thirsting for its touch of fire--patient, desirous, infinitely
pathetic; and in the midst that Power, incarnate for us men and our
salvation. Then it descended, swift and mighty.

I saw a sudden swirl in the crowd of heads beneath the church steps, and
then a great shaking ran through the crowd; but there for a few instants
it boiled like a pot. A sudden cry had broken out, and it ran through
the whole space; waxing in volume as it ran, till the heads beneath my
window shook with it also; hands clapped, voices shouted: "_Un miracle!
Un miracle!_"

I was on my feet, staring and crying out. Then quietly the shaking
ceased, and the shouting died to a murmur; and the _ombrellino_ moved
on; and again the voice of the priest thrilled thin and clear, with a
touch of triumphant thankfulness: "_Vous etes la Resurrection et la
Vie!_" And again, with entreaty once more--since there still were two
thousand sick untouched by that Power, and time pressed--that infinitely
moving plea: "_Seigneur, celui qui vous aime est malade!_" And:
"_Seigneur, faites que je marche! Seigneur, faites que j'entende!_"

And then again the finger of God flashed down, and again and again; and
each time a sick and broken body sprang from its bed of pain and stood
upright; and the crowd smiled and roared and sobbed. Five times I saw
that swirl and rush; the last when the _Te Deum_ pealed out from the
church steps as Jesus in His Sacrament came home again. And there were
two that I did not see. There were seven in all that afternoon.

Now, is it of any use to comment on all this? I am not sure; and yet,
for my own satisfaction if for no one else's, I wish to set down some of
the thoughts that came to me both then and after I had sat at the window
and seen God's loving-kindness with my own eyes.

The first overwhelming impression that remained with me is this--that I
had been present, in my own body, in the twentieth century, and seen
Jesus pass along by the sick folk, as He passed two thousand years
before. That, in a word, is the supreme fact of Lourdes. More than once
as I sat there that afternoon I contrasted the ma