Saint Bernadette - The Miracle

By Irving Wallace

Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

Copyright 2012 / The Estate of Irving Wallace

Copy-edited by: Christine Steendam

Cover design by: David Dodd

Cover images courtesy of:

Petrus Adamus

http://ravenarcana.deviantart.com/

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The author with his daughter, Amy, also a Crossroad Press author

Irving Wallace was born March 19, 1916 in Chicago, Illinois. He began writing for various magazines at age 15 and worked as a screenwriter for a number of Hollywood studiosColumbia, Fox, Warner Brothers, Universal, and MGM from 1950 to 1959, then he turned solely to writing books. His first major bestseller was The Chapman Report in 1960, a fictional account of a sexual research team's investigations of a wealthy Los Angeles suburb. Among other fictional works by Wallace are The Prize and The Word . His meticulously researched fiction often has the flavor of spicy journalism. A great deal of research went into his novels, which cover a wide variety of subjects, from the presentation of the Nobel Prize to political scenarios. With their recurring dramatic confrontations, his novels lend themselves well to screenplay adaptation, and most of them have been filmed, including The Chapman Report and The Prize . Wallace also compiled several nonfiction works with his family, including The People's Almanac and The Book of Lists , both of which have spawned sequels. Irving Wallace died June 29, 1990 in Los Angeles, California at the age of 74 from pancreatic cancer.

This book and the other digital editions in the Irving Wallace collection from Crossroad Press are published in cooperation with his heirs.

Crossroad Press Titles by Irving Wallace for your NOOK

The Almighty

The Celestial Bed

The Chapman Report

The Fabulous Showman: The Life and Times of P.T. Barnum

The Fan Club

The Golden Room

The Guest of Honor

The Man

The Miracle

The Pigeon Project

The Plot

The Prize

The R Document

The Second Lady

The Seven Minutes

The Seventh Secret

The Three Sirens

The Two

The Word

Crossroad Press Titles by Amy Wallace for your NOOK

Desire

The Prodigy

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For

Elijah

" They say miracles are past ."

SHAKESPEARE, c.1602

" The Age of Miracles past?

The Age of Miracles is forever here! "

THOMAS CARLYLE, 1841

" For those who believe in God,

no explanation is necessary;

for those who do not believe in God,

no explanation is possible. "

REV. JOHN LA FARGE, S.J.

The Third Secret

I t had been a dark night, gradually graying, the darkness before the dawn. It was six o'clock in the morning when the small, pretty peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, came down from the hill to the cave gouged out of rock, the grotto of Massabielle. There were already 150 people waiting for her, watching her, waiting for what would happen next.

Bernadette, wearing a white capulet, a patched secondhand dress, and wooden clogs, put a light to her candle, took the rosary from her pocket, and with a smile, bowed toward the vision that she expected to see.

Twelve days earlier, while standing near this spot, she had seen the apparition in the grotto, "a Lady dressed in white" as Bernadette would later recall, a mysterious young Lady wearing "a white dress, a white veil, a blue sash, and a yellow rose on each foot." There had been seven visits by Bernadette to the grotto in those twelve days, and the Lady had appeared before her on six of these occasions, the Lady who would eventually, after fifteen appearances, identify herself as the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Mary.

This dark Tuesday morning of February 23, 1858, was Bernadette's eighth visit to the grotto. At the grotto, with a smile, she awaited the return of the Lady who would soon identify herself as the Virgin.

Among the 150 persons present, there was at least one cynic, Jean-Baptiste Estrade, a tax official and an important man in the nearby market town of Lourdes.

Estrade had brought his sister, Emmanudlite, and several of her curious women Mends to witness the much discussed spectacle. On the way to the grotto he had joked about this superstitious nonsense. "Have you brought your opera glasses?" he had asked his companions. Now, joined with the spectators, he watched the peasant girl on her knees fingering her rosary. Afterward, he would record what he witnessed:

"Whilst she was passing the beads between her fingers she looked up toward the rock as though waiting for something. Suddenly, as in a flash of lightning, an expression of wonder illuminated her face and she seemed to be born into another life. A light shone in her eyes; wonderful smiles played upon her lips; an unutterable grace transfigured her whole being... Bernadette was no longer Bernadette; she was one of the privileged beings, the face all glorious with the glory of heaven....

"The ecstasy lasted for an hour; at the end of that time the seer went on her knees from the place where she was praying to just below the wild rose tree hanging from the rock. There, concentrating all her energies as for an act of worship, she kissed the earth and returned still upon her knees to the place which she had just left. A last glow of light lit up her face, then gradually, almost imperceptibly, the transfiguring glory of the ecstasy grew fainter and finally disappeared. The seer continued praying for a few moments longer but it was only the face of the little peasant child which I saw. At last Bernadette got up, went to her mother, and was lost in the crowd."

Climbing the hill toward home with her mother, Bernadette repeated a portion of the conversation that she had just had with the mysterious Lady. During the apparitions, the Lady had confided three secrets to her, and this morning she had revealed the third and last of them.

Shortly after, when the converted cynic, Estrade, had become Bernadette's friend, he had asked her what the Lady had said to her during the seventh Appearance, and he learned that three secrets had been entrusted to her but that they concerned nobody but herself. The seer added that she could not reveal these secrets to anyone, not even to her confessor. Inquisitive people have often tried by insinuations, by trickery, or by promises, to get these revelations of the Virgin out of the child. But all attempts failed and Bernadette carried her secrets with her to the grave.

On another occasion, a young lawyer from a nearby town, Charles Madon, dared to bring up the subject once more.

"And your secrets? What are they about?"

"They concern only me."

"If the Pope were to ask you for them, would you tell them to him?"