Now I spent a great deal of my time in the Bureau. (I was given
presently a "doctor's cross" to wear--consisting of a kind of cardboard
with a white upright and red cross-bar--so that I could pass in and out
as I wished). I may as well, then, sum up once and for all the
impressions I received from observing the methods of the doctors. There
were all kinds of doctors there continually--Catholics and
free-thinkers, old, young, middle-aged. The cases were discussed with
the utmost freedom. Any could ask questions of the _miraculés_ or of the
other doctors. The certificates of the sick were read aloud. I may
observe, too, that if there was any doubt as to the certificates, if
there was any question of a merely nervous malady, any conceivable
possibility of a mistake, the case was dismissed abruptly. These
certificates, then, given by the doctor attending the sick person, dated
and signed, are of the utmost importance; for without them no cure is
registered. Yet, in spite of these demands, I saw again and again sixty
or seventy men, dead silent, staring, listening with all their ears,
while some poor uneducated man or woman, smiling radiantly, gave a
little history or answered the abrupt kindly questions of the presiding
doctor.
Again, and again, too, it seemed to me that all this had been enacted
before. There was once upon a time a man born blind who received his
sight, and round him there gathered keen-eyed doctors of another kind.
They tried to pose him with questions. It was unheard of, they cried,
that a man born blind should receive his sight; at least it could not
have been as he said. Yet there stood the man in the midst, seeing them
as they saw him, and giving his witness. "This," he said, "was the way
it was done. Such and such is the name of the Man who cured me. And look
for yourselves! I was blind; now I see."
After I had looked and made notes and asked questions of Dr. Cox, Dr.
Boissarie came in. I was made known to him; and presently he took me
aside, with a Scottish priest (who all through my stay showed me great
kindness), and began to ask me questions. It seemed that, since there
was no physical _miraculé_ present just now, a spiritual _miraculé_
would do as well; for he asked me a hundred questions as to my
conversion and its causes, and what part prayer played in it; and the
doctors crowded round and listened to my halting French.
"It was the need of a divine Leader--an authority--then, that brought
you in?"
"Yes, it was that; it was the position of St. Peter in the Scriptures
and in history; it was the supernatural unity of the Church. It is
impossible to say exactly which argument predominated."
"It was, in fact, the grace of God," smiled the Doctor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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