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The village priest was very fond of Bernadette and often spoke of her to the schoolmaster, saying that he could never look at her without thinking of the children of La Salette, since they must have been good, candid, and pious as she was, for the Blessed Virgin to have appeared to them.* On another occasion whilst the two men were walking one morning near the village, and saw Bernadette disappear with her little flock under some spreading trees in the distance, the Abbe repeatedly turned round to look for her, and again remarked "I cannot account for it, but every time I meet that child it seems to me as if I saw Melanie, the young shepherdess, little Maximin's companion."
The point of departure is Grenoble, reached in an hour or so from Chambéry, and in itself well worth turning aside from the Mont Cenis thoroughfare to visit. As far as Corps the way lies over the beaten track of the Salette pilgrims, of which the charms are recorded in many a devout description.
"It is not a little remarkable," says the editor of the American Christian Union, "that whilst the Bishop of Lucon was engaged in extolling the miracles of La Salette, the Cardinal Archbishop of Lyons, Dr. Bonald, 'Primate of all the Gauls, addressed a circular to all the priests in his diocese, in which he cautions them against apocryphal miracles!
The Virgin, it would seem, was gone; She had ceased to care for this spring of piety and these mountains. At the present day few persons climb to La Salette but the natives of Dauphiné, tourists wandering through the Alps, or invalids following the cure at the neighbouring mineral springs of La Mothe. Conversions and spiritual graces still abound there, but bodily healing there is next to none.
A temple of enormous dimensions has risen in her honour; the pilgrims number over 100,000 yearly, and the sale of the water from the Holy Well, said to have sprung from the Virgin's tears, realises more than £12,000. Since the success of La Salette, the Virgin has been making repeated appearances in France. Her last appearance was in a part of Alsace which is strictly Catholic.
Then, noticing Amedee and M. Violette who had just entered: "Ah! It is you, Violate! Good-day! Good-day, Amedee! You come at an unlucky time. It is shipping-day with us. I am in a great hurry Eh! Monsieur Combier, by your leave, Monsieur Combier! Do not forget the three dozen of the Apparition de la Salette in stucco for Grenoble, with twenty-five per cent. reduction upon the bill.
* It was on September 19, 1846, that the Virgin is said to have appeared in the ravine of La Sezia, adjacent to the valley of La Salette, between Corps and Eutraigues, in the department of the Isere. The visionaries were Melanie Mathieu, a girl of fourteen, and Maximin Giraud, a boy of twelve.
A prelate publicly denounced the imposture, and an Abbe Deleon, priest in the diocess of Grenoble, printed a work called 'La Salette a Valley of Lies. In this publication it was maintained, with proofs, that the hoax was gotten up by a Mademoiselle de Lamerliere, a sort of half-crazy nun, who impersonated the character of the Virgin.
But not so there is a special mystery in a cave that stimulates the imagination, and the final phase of this tendency is the apparition at Lourdes, and the consecration of the grotto. The vision at Le Salette has not retained its hold on the superstitious, because it was on an alp, but that of Lourdes being in a cave, roused religious enthusiasm to the highest pitch.
And this was the miracle of the enchanted fountain. There can be little doubt that Bernadette was acquainted with the story of the miracle of La Salette. Trans. Then the second week ran its course.
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