nd carry off a stolen bottle of
water. Still, the fear of rioting increased, for it was rumoured that
whole villages intended to come down from the hills in order to deliver
God, as they naively expressed it. It was a _levee en masse_ of the
humble, a rush of those who hungered for the miraculous, so irresistible
in its impetuosity that mere common sense, mere considerations of public
order were to be swept away like chaff. And it was Monseigneur Laurence,
in his episcopal residence at Tarbes, who was first forced to surrender.
All his prudence, all his doubts were outflanked by the popular outburst.
For five long months he had been able to remain aloof, preventing his
clergy from following the faithful to the Grotto, and defending the
Church against the tornado of superstition which had been let loose. But
what was the use of struggling any longer? He felt the wretchedness of
the suffering people committed to his care to be so great that he
resigned himself to granting them the idolatrous religion for which he
realised them to be eager. Some prudence remaining to him, however, he
contented himself in the first instance with drawing up an _ordonnance_,
appointing a commission of inquiry, which was to investigate the
question; this implied the acceptance of the miracles after a period of
longer or shorter duration. If Monseigneur Laurence was the man of
healthy culture and cool reason that he is pictured to have been, how
great must have been his anguish on the morning when he signed that
_ordonnance_! He must have knelt in his oratory, and have begged the
Sovereign Master of the world to dictate his conduct to him. He did not
believe in the apparitions; he had a loftier, more intellectual idea of
the manifestations of the Divinity. Only would he not be showing true
pity and mercy in silencing the scruples of his reason, the noble
prejudices of his faith, in presence of the necessity of granting that
bread of falsehood which poor humanity requires in order to be happy?
Doubtless, he begged the pardon of Heaven for allowing it to be mixed up
in what he regarded as childish pastime, for exposing it to ridicule in
connection with an affair in which there was only sickliness and
dementia. But his flock suffered so much, hungered so ravenously for the
marvellous, for fairy stories with which to lull the pains of life. And
thus, in tears, the Bishop at last sacrificed his respect for the dignity
of Providence to his sensitive pa