height, so much so that one speedily reached a point where it was necessary to bend double to get further. Bernadette, after having raised her eyes to the niche, put her hand to her hood to arrange it, and lifted her gown a little so as not to soil it. Then she stooped to the earth, and when she raised her head and turned her face towards the apparition, I saw that her face was all smudged with dirty water."
Bernadette herself related:—
"The lady told me to drink of the fountain and to wash in it. Not seeing any spring, I was going to the Gave, but she signed to me to enter the cave. I entered and saw only a little dirty water. I put my hand to it, but could collect none, so I scratched, and the water came, but it was muddy. Thrice I rejected it. Only on the fourth attempt could I swallow any."
The Jesuit father Cros says with regard to this exhibition: "Mademoiselle Lacrampe se retira si défavorablement imimpressionée, qu'il a fallu des années et des miracles pour la convaincre." M. Estrade, receiver of indirect taxes, says with respect to this affair: "Je commerçais à être dérouté, et ne savais que penser de tout ceci."
Thus was the miraculous spring discovered, the water of which, or what is supposed to come from it, is sent throughout the world, a case of thirty bottles carriage paid to the station 7 fr. 45 c. One bottle, "franco à domicile," in France 1 fr. 80 c.
Now it is absolutely certain that the water was there before Bernadette Soubirous scratched till she reached it. The Abbé Richard, a geologist, says that it was there and it was known to be there by many individuals in Lourdes. On 25 March Bernadette made her seventeenth visit to the grotto. The curé Peyramale had been at her repeatedly
