The Song of Bernadette

THE theme and the origin of this story of Marie Bernarde, the girl saint whose mystical experiences gave to the city of Lourdes its fame as a place of healing, are told by the author in his preface; ‘ I have dared to sing the song of Bernadette, although I am not a Catholic but a Jew, and I drew courage for this undertaking from a vow of mine. Even in the days when I wrote my earliest verses I vowed that I would evermore and everywhere in all I wrote magnify the divine mystery and holiness of man.’ The story of Bernadette Soubirous, who became the nun Marie Bernarde, is so strange and beautiful in itself that one is a little sorry that it is here presented as a novel, even though we are assured that the events ‘took place in the world of reality.’ The author, however, unlike Zola and some Catholic biographers, presents his heroine without committing himself, though it is evident that he loves her. His attitude reminded me oddly of that of the most charming of mystics, Ernest Hello, in the Physionomies de saints, who loves his saints so well that he does not want to romanticize them. Bernadette is not a remarkable child in any way except the two qualities which Hello names as those of ‘thaumaturgists’ in general—simplicity and force. We believe in Bernadette, whatever we may think ot her miracles. And what an astonishing story hers is! The little Pyrenean town of Lourdes, so remote and provincial, became the greatest shrine in Christendom because a fifteen-year-old girl sawin a grotto there a beautiful lady whom no one else ever saw. There is nothing quite comparable except the life of Saint Joan; and Bernadette presents even greater mystery because her psychical experience was so brief and she showed no other signs of genius. R. M. G.