There were among the faithful some perverse and troublesome persons, who by impertinent remarks interfered with the profound conclusions of the scientific coterie.
"How," they said, "is it that this mineral spring, so extraordinarily powerful that it works instantaneous cures, was found by Bernadette when in a state of ecstasy, and came after her accounts of certain celestial visions, and apparently in support of them? How did it happen that the fountain sprang out precisely at the moment when Bernadette believed herself to hear a heavenly voice telling her to drink and bathe? And how is it that this fountain, which appeared suddenly under the eyes of all the people in such very unusual circumstances, yields not ordinary water, but a water which, as you yourselves acknowledge, has already cured so many sick persons whose cases had been abandoned as hopeless, and who have used it without medical advice, and merely in the spirit of religious faith?"
These objections, repeated under many different forms, provoked the free-thinkers, philosophers, and _savants_ exceedingly. They tried to evade them by answers which were really so poor and miserable that they ought, one would think, to have hardly presented a good appearance even in their authors' eyes; but then, to find any others was no doubt very difficult.
"Why not?" said they. "Coffee was discovered by a goat. A shepherd found by chance the waters of Luchon. It was also by accident that the ruins of Pompeii were brought to light by the pickaxe of a laborer. Why should we be so much surprised that this little girl, while amusing herself by digging in the ground during her hallucination, should have come upon a spring, and that the water of this spring should be mineral and alkaline? That she imagined at the moment that the Blessed Virgin was before her, and that she heard a voice directing her to the fountain, is merely a coincidence, entirely accidental, but of which superstition tries to make a miracle. On this occasion, as on the others, chance has done everything, and has been the real discoverer."
The faithful were not, however, moved by this sort of argument. They had the bad taste to think that to explain everything by accidental coincidence was to do violence to reason under the pretext of defending it. This irritated the free-thinkers, who, though acknowledging at last the reality of the cures, deplored more than ever the religious and supernatural character which the common people insisted upon giving to these strange events; and, as was natural under the circumstances, they were inclined to resort to force to stop the popular movement. "If these waters are mineral," they began to say, "they belong to the state or to the municipality; people should not use them except by the advice of a doctor; and an establishment for baths should be built at the spot, not a chapel."