107. A sufficient outline of these scandals is given in the article on La Salette in The Catholic Encyclopedia, which also mentions the chief literature. It was said that "the beautiful lady" seen by the children was a young woman named Lamerliere; suits for slan- der were brought; and A. D. White is able to say (Warfare, etc., II, pp. 21-22, note) that the shrine "preserves its healing powers in spite of the fact that the miracle which gave rise to them has twice been pronounced fraudulent by the French courts." The whole matter is involved in inextricable confusion. A sympathetic ac- count of La Salette may be read in J. S. Northcote, Celebrated Sanc- tuaries of the Madonna, 1868, pp. 178 ff. Gustave Droz's first novel, Autour d'une Source, 1869, seems to have drawn part of its inspiration from the story of La Salette; it is extravagantly praised by A. D. White (Warfare, II, p. 44) as "one of the most exquisitely wrought works of modern fiction"; and not quite accurately de- scribed as "showing perfectly the recent evolution of miraculous powers at a fashionable spring in France." It does show how easily such things may be even innocently invented. On the question whether the visions of Bernadette may not have been the result of ecclesiastical arrangement, see J. de Bonnefon, Lourdes et ses Tenanciers, Paris, without date, and, on the other side, G. Bertrin, Lourdes, un document apocryphe, in the Revue practique d'Apolo- getique, April 15, 1908, pp. 125-133.
108. See Marillier, as cited, and cf. H. Thurston's remarks in Hastings's ERE, vol. VIII, p. 149.
109. J. K. Huysmans, in his La Cathedrale, suggests that two rules seem to govern the appearances of Mary. First, she mani- fests herself only to the poor and humble. Secondly, she accom- modates herself to their intelligence and shows herself under the poor images which these lowly people love. " She accepts the white and blue robes, the crowns and garlands of roses, the jewels and chaplets, the appointments of the first communion, the ugliest of attire. The peasants who have seen her, in a word, have had no
ROMAN CATHOLIC MIRACLES 279
other examples by which to describe her (except under the appear- ance of a 'fine lady') but the traits of an altar Virgin of the village, of a Madonna of the Saint-Sulpice quarter, of a Queen of the street- corner."
no. We are quoting A. T. Myers and F. W. H. Myers, Pro- ceedings of the Society of Psychical Research, vol. IX, 1894, p. 177.
in. Legenden-Studien, p. 126.
112. Lourdes, 1891, p. 31, as cited by Myers, as cited, p. 178.
113. Myers, as cited, pp. 178, 179.
114. In the contrast which he draws between La Salette and Lourdes, in his La Cathedrale, J. K. Huysmans does not neglect this one. "And God who imposed La Salette, without having re- course to the methods of worldly publicity, has changed His tac- tics and, with Lourdes, puffing comes into play. This is very con- founding— Jesus resigning Himself to employ the miserable artifices of human commerce, accepting the repulsive stratagems of which we make use in pushing a product or a business!"
115. Lourdes (the first of the triad on "the cities," Lourdes, Rome, Paris) was published in 1894; E. T. same year, by Vizetelly, and often since. Cf. a critical article on it in The Edinburgh Re- view, 1903, No. 103. The secret of Lourdes, says Zola, is that it offers to suffering humanity "the delicious bread of hope, for which humanity ever hungers with a hunger that nothing will ever ap- pease"; it proposes to meet "humanity's insatiable yearning for happiness." Since its publication Catholic writers on Lourdes have, as is natural, concerned themselves very much with Zola's book; G. Bertrin's work (Hisloire critique des evenements de Lourdes) which reached its 37th edition in 1913, and which Herbert Thurston pronounces "undoubtedly the best general work on Lourdes" (Hastings's ERE, vol. VIII, p. 150), would not be unfairly described as a formal reply to Zola.
116. Edward Berdoe, "A Medical View of the Miracles at Lourdes," in The Nineteenth Century, October, 1895, pp. 614 ff. Doctor Berdoe was a liberal-minded Catholic in faith; see Herbert Thurston's remarks in The Month for November, 1895, and his cita- tion of Doctor Berdoe's own representations in The Spectator, July, 1895. {Cf. Public Opinion, November 28, 1895, p. 108.)
117. Lourdes, 1914, p. 29.
118. The details are given by Benson, p. 32.
119. A curious fact emerges from Bertrin's tables in his appen- dix (E. T., p. 292); more physicians visit Lourdes every year to look on at the cures than there are cures made for them to observe. For the fourteen years from 1890 to 1903, inclusive, 2,530 physicians
280 NOTES TO LECTURE III
visited the Medical Office there, an average of 180 yearly. During these fourteen years 2,130 cures were registered at that office, an average of 152 yearly.