hand, smiled, and, bowing as if bidding farewell, disappeared. Returned to herself, Bernadette thought of rejoining her companions, who, having seen nothing, were at a loss to understand her conduct. She entered the water, which she found, to her surprise, of a gentle warmth. On reaching home, she imparted the secret to her sister, and then to her mother, who did not credit it. However, the child being tormented by an earnest desire to behold the apparition again, her parents granted permission for her return to the grotto with several companions; the same manifestation took place and the same ecstacy. On Thursday, February 18th, she again repaired to the grotto; the apparition was visible for the third time, and the Lady requested Bernadette to come there daily for a fortnight. Bernadette promised. "And I," replied the Lady, "promise to render you happy not in this world, but the next." On the succeeding days, the young girl went to the grotto, accompanied by her parents and an ever increasing crowd. None of them saw or heard anything. The transfiguration of the countenance of Bernadette announced the presence of a supernatural being, who urged the child to pray for sinners. On the sixth day of the fortnight, the august Lady revealed to Bernadette three secrets, forbidding her to communicate them to any one. She taught her a prayer, and charged her with a message. "You will go," said she, "and tell the priest that a chapel must be built here, and that the people must come here in procession." Bernadette communicated this order to the curé, but he hesitated to believe the child, and told her to ask the Lady for a sign which might confirm her words, for example, to make the wild rose which winter has divested of its leaves, break forth into blossom, then the month of February. The Blessed Virgin did not judge proper to grant the miracle, but she tried Bernadette's obedience, by commanding her to kiss the ground on several occasions, and to climb the rock on her knees, praying meantime for sinners. One day she enjoined upon her to go and drink at the fountain of the grotto, to wash therein, and to eat of a certain herb which grew in that place. Bernadette saw no fountain, and no one had ever heard of one in the grotto, yet on a sign from the Lady, the docile child dug the earth with her fingers, and discovered a muddy water which, notwithstanding her repugnance, she used as commanded. At the end of several days, the little thread of muddy water had become a limpid and abundant spring, and what was still more marvelous, it wrought innumerable prodigies. On February 26th, by the use of this water, a man who had gone blind twenty years previous, by the explosion of a mine, recovered his sight, and on the last day of the fortnight, a child dying, or as was supposed, dead, regained life and health in the waters of this fountain.