scare folks. And it was an advantage that the writer should be very well
known, so that his enormous editions might counterpoise those of
Lasserre.

"Now in all the realm of literature there was but one man who could
fulfil these imperative conditions: Émile Zola. In vain should we seek
another. He alone with his battering push, his enormous sale, his
blatant advertisement, could launch Lourdes once more.

"It mattered little that he would deny supernatural agency and endeavour
to explain inexplicable cures by the meanest hypotheses; it mattered
little that he mixed mortar of the medical muck of a Charcot to make his
wretched theory hold together; the great thing was that noisy debates
should arise about the book of which more than a hundred and fifty
thousand copies proclaimed the name of Lourdes throughout the world.

"And then the very disorder of his arguments, the poor resort to a
'breath that heals the people,' invented in contradiction to all the
data of positive science on which he prided himself, with the purpose of
making these extraordinary cures intelligible--cures which he had seen,
and of which he dared not deny the reality or the frequency--were
admirable means of persuading unprejudiced and candid inquirers of the
authenticity of the recoveries effected year after year at Lourdes.

"This avowed testimony to such amazing facts was enough to give a fresh
impetus to the masses. It must be remarked, too, that the book betrays
no hostility to the Virgin, of whom it speaks only in respectful terms
on the whole; so is it not very credible that the scandal to which this
work gave rise was profitable?