The Cathedral | Page 5

sternest lesson in
humility ever given to man, as well as the most vehement reproof
hurled at the American abominations of our day--God reduced to
lowering Himself once more to our level, to speaking our language, to
using our own devices that He may make Himself heard and obeyed;
God no longer even trying to make us understand His purpose through
Himself, or to uplift us to that height.
"In point of fact, the way in which the Lord set to work to promulgate
the mercies peculiar to Lourdes is astounding. To make them known
He is no longer content to spread the report of its miracles by word of
mouth; no, and it might be supposed that in His eyes Lourdes is harder
to magnify than La Salette--He adopted strong measures from the first.
He raised up a man whose book, translated into every language, carried
the news of the vision to the most distant lands, and certified the truth
of the cures effected at Lourdes.

"To the end that this work should stir up the masses, it was necessary
that the writer destined to the task should be a clever organizer, and at
the same time a man devoid of individuality of style and of any novel
ideas. In a word, what was needed was a man devoid of talent; and that
is quite intelligible, since from the point of view of appreciating art the
Catholic public is still a hundred feet beneath the profane public. And
our Lord did the thing well; he selected Henri Lasserre.
"Consequently the mine exploded as required, rending souls and
bringing crowds out on to the road to Lourdes.
"Years went by. The fame of the sanctuary is an established fact.
Indisputable cures are effected by supernatural means and certified by
clinical authorities, whose good faith and scientific skill are above
suspicion. Lourdes has its fill; and yet, little by little, in the long run,
though pilgrims do not cease to flow thither, the commotion about the
Grotto is diminishing. It is dying out, if not in the religious world, at
any rate in the wider world of the careless or the doubting, who must be
convinced. And our Lord thinks it desirable to revive attention to the
benefits dispensed by His Mother.
"Lasserre was not such an instrument as could renew the half-exhausted
vogue enjoyed by Lourdes. The public was soaked in his book; it had
swallowed it in every vehicle and in every form; the end was achieved;
this budding-knife of miracles was a tool that might now be laid aside.
"What was now wanted was a book entirely unlike his; a book that
would influence the vaster public, whom his homely prosiness would
never reach. Lourdes must make its way through denser and less
malleable strata, to a public of higher class, and harder to please. It was
requisite, therefore, that this new book should be written by a man of
talent, whose style nevertheless should not be so transcendental as to
scare folks. And it was an advantage that the writer should be very well
known, so that his enormous editions might counterpoise those of
Lasserre.
"Now in all the realm of literature there was but one man who could
fulfil these imperative conditions: Émile Zola. In vain should we seek

another. He alone with his battering push, his enormous sale, his blatant
advertisement, could launch Lourdes once more.
"It mattered little that he would deny supernatural agency and
endeavour to explain inexplicable cures by the meanest hypotheses; it
mattered little that he mixed mortar of the medical muck of a Charcot
to make his wretched theory hold together; the great thing was that
noisy debates should arise about the book of which more than a
hundred and fifty thousand copies proclaimed the name of Lourdes
throughout the world.
"And then the very disorder of his arguments, the poor resort to a
'breath that heals the people,' invented in contradiction to all the data of
positive science on which he prided himself, with the purpose of
making these extraordinary cures intelligible--cures which he had seen,
and of which he dared not deny the reality or the frequency--were
admirable means of persuading unprejudiced and candid inquirers of
the authenticity of the recoveries effected year after year at Lourdes.
"This avowed testimony to such amazing facts was enough to give a
fresh impetus to the masses. It must be remarked, too, that the book
betrays no hostility to the Virgin, of whom it speaks only in respectful
terms on the whole; so is it not very credible that the scandal to which
this work gave rise was profitable?
"To sum up: it may be asserted that Lasserre and Zola were both useful
instruments; one devoid of talent, and for that very reason