Jeanne was in the garden as usual, seated, as we should say in Scotland, at “her seam,” not quite thirteen, a child in all the innocence of infancy, yet full of dreams, confused no doubt and vague, with those impulses and wonderings—­impatient of trouble, yearning to give help—­which tremble on the chaos of a young soul like the first lightening of dawn upon the earth.  It was summer, and afternoon, the time of dreams.  It would be easy in the employment of legitimate fancy to heighten the picturesqueness of that quiet scene—­the little girl with her favourite bells, the birds picking up the crumbs of brown bread at her feet.  She was thinking of nothing, most likely, in a vague suspense of musing, the wonder of youth, the awakening of thought, as yet come to little definite in her child’s heart—­looking up from her work to note some passing change of the sky, a something in the air which was new to her.  All at once between her and the church there shone a light on the right hand, unlike anything she had ever seen before; and out of it came a voice equally unknown and wonderful.  What did the voice say?  Only the simplest words, words fit for a child, no maxim or mandate above her faculties—­“Jeanne, sois bonne et sage enfant; va souvent a l’eglise.” Jeanne, be good!  What more could an archangel, what less could the peasant mother within doors, say?  The little girl was frightened, but soon composed herself.  The voice could be nothing but sacred and blessed which spoke thus.  It would not appear that she mentioned it to anyone.  It is such a secret as a child, in that wavering between the real and unreal, the world not realised of childhood, would keep, in mingled shyness and awe, uncertain, rapt in the atmosphere of vision, within her own heart.

It is curious how often this wonderful scene has been repeated in France, never connected with so high a mission, but yet embracing the same circumstances, the same situation, the same semi-angelic nature of the woman-child.  The little Bernadette of Lourdes is almost of our own day; she, too is one who puts the scorner to silence.  What her visions and her voices were, who can say?  The last historian of them is not a man credulous of good or moved towards the ideal; yet he is silent, except in a wondering impression of the sacred and the true, before the little Bearnaise in her sabots; and, notwithstanding the many sordid results that have followed and all that sad machinery of expected miracle through which even, repulsive as it must always be, a something breaks forth from time to time which no man can define and account for except in ways more incredible than miracle—­so is the rest of the world.  Why has this logical, sceptical, doubting country, so able to quench with an epigram, or blow away with a breath of ridicule the finest vision—­become the special sphere and birthplace of these spotless infant-saints?  This is one of the wonders which nobody attempts to account for.  Yet Bernadette is as Jeanne, though there are more than four hundred years between.