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He gave a slight shudder and hastened his steps, saying: "It is not finished, my dear child; follow me. We are now going to look at the other great iniquity." He referred to Abbe Peyramale and his church. They crossed the Place du Porche and turned into the Rue Saint Pierre; a few minutes would suffice them.
Abbe Peyramale, the parish priest of Lourdes, and Monseigneur Laurence, Bishop of Tarbes, like the rest of the clergy, refrained from all intervention, waiting the course of events with the greatest prudence; whilst the civil authorities, the Prefect, the Public Prosecutor, the Mayor, and the Commissary of Police, indulged in excessive anti-religious zeal."
Abbe Peyramale had already accepted the plans of his architect plans which, he had insisted, should be on a grand scale and had also treated with a contractor of Chartres, who engaged to complete the church in three or four years if the promised supplies of funds should be regularly forthcoming.
He was at last rid of the only man who had been an obstacle to his designs, whose legitimate authority he had feared. He would no longer be forced to share anything with anybody now that both the founders of Our Lady of Lourdes had been suppressed Bernadette placed in a convent, and Abbe Peyramale lowered into the ground.
It was then proposed by some to consult Peyramale, the curé, who was known to discredit the stories of Bernadette, and it was thought might disabuse her mind of its illusions or detect her imposture, as the case might be; but Peyramale would not make any efforts in that direction. However, Bernadette, of her own accord, came to him one day, saying she wished to speak to him.
However, it was said that Father Sempe was trying to bring influence to bear on the contractor. And, all at once, the work was stopped. From that moment the death agony began. Wounded in the heart, the Abbe Peyramale, the broad-shouldered mountaineer with the leonine face, staggered and fell like an oak struck down by a thunderbolt. He took to his bed, and never left it alive.
On the day when Abbe Peyramale rose from his bed, saved, a first time, from death, he found himself despoiled. To second him in his heavy task, Monseigneur Laurence, the Bishop, had already given him as assistant a former episcopal secretary, Father Sempe, whom he had appointed warden of the Missionaries of Geraison, a community founded by himself.
He beheld Lourdes, contaminated by Mammon, turned into a spot of abomination and perdition, transformed into a huge bazaar, where everything was sold, masses and souls alike! He beheld also Abbe Peyramale, dead and slumbering under the ruins of his church, among the nettles which ingratitude had sown there.
Abbe Peyramale had already accepted the plans of his architect plans which, he had insisted, should be on a grand scale and had also treated with a contractor of Chartres, who engaged to complete the church in three or four years if the promised supplies of funds should be regularly forthcoming.
He was at last rid of the only man who had been an obstacle to his designs, whose legitimate authority he had feared. He would no longer be forced to share anything with anybody now that both the founders of Our Lady of Lourdes had been suppressed Bernadette placed in a convent, and Abbe Peyramale lowered into the ground.
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