The Miracle

by Irving Wallace

  "Well, I don't know if she was a deliberate phony. She may have believed she saw all those apparitions. She may have been hallucinating."

  "Whatever, what difference?" Liz sang out. She pointed from the open driver's window. "It's a beautiful day out there, and getting more beautiful. Look at that scenery."

  They had been driving through a wide river valley, the ripe green hillsides dotted with chalets. A bit of Switzerland in France, Amanda thought, especially with those snow-capped mountain peaks, like irregular sentinels rising in the distance. She had noticed that they had passed through a village named Argeles-Gazost, and now they were entering another village called Pierrefitte-Nestalas.

  Liz was speaking again, as she maneuvered the BMW through the town. "I interviewed Father Ruland in Lourdes this morning, and he's the one who told me that Bernadette did not believe her grotto could cure, or at least she had no interest in its curative powers. When she felt ill, she traveled to the spa in Cauterets to take the thermal baths and hoped to be healed. So it is probably a true story, coming as it did from Ruland. But still, when you're writing an expose you want to be superpositive. I made a telephone call to Cauterets and arranged to interview Father Cayoux, the parish priest there." She paused. "Yes, I'm trying to do what you also want to do. Expose this Bernadette for what I suspect she was. A sicky or a liar, one or the other. People have wanted to believe her for so long that nobody's really looked carefully at the facts. Everybody takes her story—well, on faith. I want to do a big number out of here, a big blast, and if ever, this is the week to do it. But when you go worldwide like that, you'd better have the goods. And I hope to find it, some of it or all of it, in Cauterets." She gave Amanda another grin. "We have the same purpose. Only different motives. So it's going to be a fun day. Can't wait to get there. Oops, we must be in the home stretch, because we're climbing."

  A sharp turn out of the village had brought them up a steep road, a winding mountain road, along a precipitous cliff, and past a few miniature waterfalls. Liz was driving at a slower speed. They crossed a high bridge over a gorge through which a river—the map told them it was the Gave de Cauterets—rushed. The valley before them was widening now and they could make out the village of Cauterets, resembling a French resort town, nestled beyond.

  Soon they were in the town, and passing two thermal-bath buildings identified on their more detailed map as Thermes de Car and Neothermes.

  "There they are," said Liz, "the places Bernadette considered more useful for her health than the grotto."

  Next, they found themselves in the Place Georges Clemenceau, the main square. Over the rooftops and beyond they sighted the spire of the church, Notre-Dame de Cauterets, their destination.

  Liz indicated the spire. "That's where we're headed."

  "In the footsteps of Bernadette," Amanda said almost gayly, filled with optimism at finding what she wanted to know.

  They reached a narrow one-way street. Rue de la Raillere, that wound up to the church. At the top, they realized that the tiny square in front of the church also served as a parking lot. They emerged from either side of the BMW, both stretching as they studied the church. The church was encircled by a wrought-iron fence built into dirty-white stone blocks.

  Liz was reading her watch. "On time," she said, "actually five or ten minutes early for my appointment with the parish priest. Might as well go in and find him."

  They walked in step across the square, which they saw was the Place Jean Moulin, noted the statue of a French soldier and the plaque listing the names of the town's dead in World Wars I and II, and continued on up a steep flight of steps and into the church entrance.

  Indoors, there was a handful of worshippers, and Mass was coming to an end. They held back, and Amanda surveyed the interior. The altar area ahead, past the pews, was surprisingly bright and modern, circular marble steps leading to a beige-carpeted platform and a cheerful blond-painted square altar.

  The Mass had ended, the parishioners and tourists leaving, when Amanda saw Liz step out to intercept a downy-cheeked youngster, with the look of a choir boy, who had come up the aisle.

  "We have an appointment with Father Cayoux," Liz said in French. "Is he around?"

  "I believe he is in the presbytery, madame."

  "Would you be kind enough to tell him that Miss Finch is here from Lourdes to see him?"

  "Gladly, madame."

  As the boy hurried off, Liz, followed by Amanda, began to inspect the decorations along the inner walls of the church. Beside a doorway near the altar area, Liz halted to examine a curious old Vierge—a four-teen-inch-high statue of the Virgin Mary—blue and peeling, set under a glass bell on a wooden ledge.

  Amanda pointed to the plaque beneath it. "Look at that."

  Bending to the plaque, Amanda translated aloud in English. "In the year of our Lord 1858, between the seventeenth and eighteenth apparition, the little Lourdaise, the humble prophet of Massabielle, Bernadette Soubirous, came to Cauterets for her health, said her rosary before the statue of this Vierge."

  "Well, that confirms it all right, what Father Ruland told me," said Liz with pleasure.

  The downy-cheeked boy had reappeared. "Father Cayoux is in the presbytery. He will receive you. I will show the way." But he did not move, instead pointed his finger to the statue of the Virgin Mary on the ledge. "You are interested in Saint Bernadette's visit?"

  "Very much so," said Amanda.

  "Here, I will let you see the room dedicated to her."

  The boy hurried up some carpeted steps through a doorway, and Amanda and Liz followed him.

  "Chapelle Sainte Bernadette," the boy explained.

  It was a narrow, starkly modern room, with patterned carpeting, maroon-covered armless bench chairs, a few small sculptured holy figures on the plain light-brown walls.

  "Very nice, but very nothing," Liz said to Amanda. She put her hand on the boy's shoulder. "Take me to your leader." When the boy looked puzzled, she added, "Let's see Father Cayoux."

  A few minutes later, they entered the presbytery and found the priest on his feet, at a table that served as his desk. He was pouring hot tea into three Limoges cups.

  Liz went to him, extending her hand and addressing him in French. "I'm Liz Finch from the American syndicate in Paris. And, Father Cayoux, this is my friend who has accompanied me, Amanda Clayton, also an American visiting Lourdes. Her husband is ill."

  Having welcomed them both. Father Cayoux waved them to two of the three straight-backed chairs near his table. As he passed out the cups of tea, and a plate of cookies, Amanda took him in. Father Cayoux was quite fat in his black clerical robe, rotund and short. A fringe of

  black hair detracted from his partial baldness, and he had a carbuncle of a face dominated by protruding yellow teeth. Amanda guessed that the frown he wore was perpetual. Although friendly enough. Father Cayoux gave her the impression of someone who might be irritable and fussy. Setting the plate of cookies on the table, he selected one, and balancing his own cup of tea, he settled with an exhalation in the chair beside Amanda, with Liz next to her.

  "So," he said to Amanda, now speaking in English, "you are in Lourdes to see your husband cured. How do you like Lourdes?"

  Amanda was at a loss. "I—I haven't had time to find out. Well, it is rather unusual."

  Father Cayoux snorted. "It is awful. I dislike it. I rarely go there."

  He had an abrupt manner, and seeing Liz beaming at him, he addressed her. "On the telephone, Miss Finch, you said that Father Ruland had told you that the petite Bernadette had gone not to her grotto but came to our thermal baths hoping for her cure. You wondered if the story was true. That you could speak of this interested me, that you could wonder even for a moment whether our well-known Ruland was being truthful."

  "As a newspaperwoman, I had to be—"

  "No, no, I understand," said Father Cayoux. "And every abbe cannot be trusted, to be sure, and you would have a right to wonder about a salesman like Ruland. When yo
u questioned that story of his, I decided to see you. As to Bernadette and her visit here, you will recall I said come here and see for yourself. Now you have seen?"

  Liz bobbed her head. "We have seen the Vierge, Father, and the inscription below."

  Father Cayoux tasted his tea, then blew on it, and spoke. "In Bernadette's time our Cauterets was a fashionable spa, with the best of healing springs. You have seen the thermal baths?"

  "Yes," said Amanda.

  "They are less of an attraction today, but in Bernadette's time they made our town a resori of importance. In contrast, Lourdes was a minor impoverished village. But that petite peasant girl changed it all, made the world turn upside down. She made Lourdes an international center, and reduced us to a half-forgotten way station. Actually, her own role in this was innocent, perhaps -- perhaps. Her promoters saw the opportunity and took advantage." He blew on his tea once more, sipped, nibbled his cookie thoughtfully. "No, Bernadette did not believc in the curative value of her grotto. She was always ill from the start, touched by a cholera epidemic that had taken others, a pitiful child with secondhand clothes, underfed and weakened by chronic asthma. She

  could not imagme, I suppose, that she could be healed by her own creation, the holy grotto, so in a period between her last two visions, after sufferimg a serious and lingering cold, she came here to Cauterets for treatments, to bathe in the water, to pray. In fact later that year, when the apparitions had finally ended, she came here a second time still hoping to be healed." He snorted, placed his empty cup on the table. 'The inventor did not believe in her invention."

  "What do you mean by 'her invention"?" Amanda quickly asked. "Are you being literal, Father?"

  "I'm not sure," Father Cayoux mused. "I'm not quite sure," he repeated, staring into space. "I am a devout priest, a Marianist, perhaps closer to my faith than some of those ringmasters and publicity seekers who wear the cloth in Lourdes. I believe in God, His Son, His Holy Mother, and all the rites of our church, beyond question. I am less certain about miracles. They exist, have happened, I would imagine, but I have yet to see one in my time, and I wonder if Bernadette saw one or any m her time. You see—" His voice drifted off, and he was silent, lost in thought.

  Amanda was excited, and a glance told her that Liz was, also. During Father Cayoux's recital, Amanda had perceived what was responsible for his crustiness and skepticism. He resented Lourdes, the big show, the brassy big time, the success, that overshadowed his parish and caused his good works to be overlooked. He was jealous of Lourdes, and he was angry with its high-riding hierarchy. All because of a httle girl's fancies. His own obscurity, the changed character of his parish, was due to a -- possibly—unbelievable little scamp, and the machinations of a cabal of church promoters.

  There might be much here, Amanda thought, indeed everything that she and Liz wished for, if Father Cayoux could be persuaded to continue. Perhaps, what he had been saying, had been about to say, had firightened him, made him think that he had better cease and desist. But no, Amanda told herself, this was a man who did not frighten easily.

  She determined to encourage him to go on. She broke the silence. "You were saying. Father? This is all so fascinating. You were wondering about Bernadette and her visions."

  Father Cayoux's head bobbed up and down. "I was thinking about it, the miracles," he said. His eyes focused on his visitors, and he addressed them directly. "You see, visions and miracles come cheaply to the villages of these Pyrenees valleys, as they do to so many young visionaries in Portugal and in remote parts of Italy."

  "Do you mean that others like Bernadette had entertained similar visions?" asked Amanda.

  Since Father Cayoux was apparently incapable of laughing, he met the question with a familiar snort. "Others like Bernadette? Countless others like Bernadette before she came along and in the years since. I have heard that between the years 1928 and 1975 there were at least eighty-three persons, in Italy alone, who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. You have heard about the incident at La Salette near Grenoble?"

  "I think I read about it in passing," said Liz.

  "I haven't," Amanda told the priest.

  "La Salette was one of your typical rustic villages," began Father Cayoux with relish. "On September 19, 1846, two children of the village, shepherd children, Melanie Calvet, fifteen, and a boy of eleven, Maximin Girand, saw the Virgin Mary and heard prophetic secrets from Her. The boy was manhandled by the police, but refused to reveal the secrets. Both of the youngsters were interrogated for fifteen consecutive hours, but would not reveal the secrets. Instead, four years later, they sent the secrets that the Blessed Virgin had given them to Pope Pius IX, who did not reveal them. The authenticity of the vision seen by the pair was hotly debated. Melanie was abnormal in some ways, ignorant, and even Catholic apologists admitted that she was lazy and careless. Maximin was worse, a known liar, but clever and vulgar. Both were characterized as repulsive young people. Nevertheless, the Ul-tramontanes, the conservative church-over-state Catholics, bought their stories completely. After forcing the children out of sight—the girl was placed in a convent in England, the boy with the Jesuits—the good Fathers promoted the La Salette miracle, put it over, and the pilgrimages began and the community prospered. Sound familiar?"

  "Incredible," said Amanda.

  "La Salette was before Lourdes. The miracle at Fdtima in Portugal came after. Three shepherd children, Lucia dos Santos, ten, Francisco, nine, and his sister, Jacinta Marto, seven, on May 13, 1917, saw the Virgin Mary in a bush and once a month for six months thereafter. As usual, they heard secrets, and there was skepticism among the clergy and the children were even put on trial. But the children and their visions prevailed and Fdtima became a miracle shrine second only to Lourdes."

  'The Fdtima youngsters must have known about Bernadette," said Liz, "as Bernadette probably knew about La Salette."

  "Very likely," agreed Father Cayoux. "In Bernadette's case, however, she must have drawn her scenario, if such it was, from Betharram."

  "Betharram?" said Amanda blankly.

  "It is a town on the Gave de Pau, not far from Lourdes. It is a place where miracles supposedly occurred for many centuries. The Virgin Mary in white materialized there a number of times. The most dramatic apparition took place when a little girl fell into the river, and was certain to drown. The Virgin Mary appeared on the bank, held out a sturdy branch for the sinking girl to grasp, and she was pulled ashore and saved. Betharram had its own wonder worker in Michael Garacoits, who became Father Superior at the local seminary and was a splendid teacher. He also had the abihty to levitate. He died in 1863, and was canonized as a saint in 1947. Anyway, it was from Betharram that Bernadette may have fashioned her own Lourdes scenario."

  Amanda was intrigued. "How?" she wanted to know.

  "Bernadette was attracted by Betharram and used to visit the church there often. The Betharram church acknowledged that Bernadette was there praying for a number of days, four or five, before she had seen her first apparition. The very rosary Bernadette used at the grotto was the one she had purchased in Betharram. Michael Garacoits was still alive during and after Bernadette's apparitions. She was sent to see him and he believed her story from the start. When someone told him, 'This Lourdes may overshadow your Betharram,' Garacoits was alleged to have replied, 'What does it matter, if Our Lady is honored?' He visited the grotto many times before his death." Father Cayoux paused. "Well, the obvious point is that Bernadette could easily have picked up the Virgin Mary apparition idea at Betharram and imported it to Lourdes."

  Liz leaned forward. "We appreciate your forthrightness. Father. Many priests might not be as reahstic and candid. Clearly, you are a man of faith yet one who holds the Bernadette story suspect."

  "I'm afraid that is my feeling," said Father Cayoux.

  "Bernadette's frequent visits to Betharram certainly give reason for holding Bernadette suspect," said Liz. "I wonder if you have any other evidence that might indict Bernadette?"
>
  Father Cayoux backed off" slightly. "That might indict hef? No, I have no proven evidence against her or her honesty. Just suspicions, just circumstantial evidence that makes her story questionable."

  "Any of this you wish to speak about?" pressed Liz.

  "There is too much, far too much," said Father Cayoux. "For one thing, Bernadette's parents. Francois and Louise Soubirous are portrayed, in those pretty color booklets they sell you in Lourdes, as impoverished, stmggling, but industrious parents, perhaps too generous and charitable. Nonsense. They were both terrible drunks. I do not mean to visit the sins of the parents on the children, but just to show

  you what an unstable background Bernadette had. Nor did she have a decent home or a decent meal in all the years before she saw the apparitions. Her father was not fit to make a living. Bernadette was famished most of the time. The food she ate was mostly commeal porridge, watered-down vegetable soup, commeal and wheat bread sometimes mixed with rye. She often threw up her food. She might have suffered from ergotic poisoning as well."

  "Which can make people hallucinate," interjected Amanda.

  "It can," said Father Cayoux. "But even without such poisoning, her stomach was empty and her head was light. All the family starved. Bernadette's brother was seen scraping candle wax from the church floor for food. Bernadette, unlearned, constantly hungry, constantly ill with asthma, and without dependable love was certainly a candidate for -- as you suggested, Mrs. Clayton—hallucinations."

  "Yet," said Liz, "Bernadette was so exact in what she saw and what she heard. And this made a favorable impression on most believers."

  Father Cayoux nodded. "Well, let's examine how our heroine might have come to what she saw and heard. The Virgin Mary that Bernadette saw was very young, too young, skeptics thought, for a Mother of Christ. As one English skeptic, Edith Saunders, explained—" Father Cayoux reached for a folder on his desk, and located a sheet of paper inside. He began to read from it. " 'Bernadette looked into the grotto and saw hard reahty. She was despised and rejected and had no way of making herself admirable. Life had cast her disarmed into its competitive arena. She was fourteen years old, but so small and young-looking that she appeared to be only eleven. . . . The ideal of a little girl is naturally a little girl, and the apparition had the form of a girl of dazzling charm and beauty. She appeared to be about ten years old, and in being even smaller than Bernadette she consolingly proved that one could be very small and yet be perfection itself.' "