ensuing election dismissed from the hospital, with at least a suspicion
that the cause of his dismissal lay in his having advised the girl to go
to Lourdes at all.

Dr. Boissarie makes an interesting comment or two on the case, allowing
that it may perhaps have been hysteria, though this is not at all
certain. "When we have to do with nervous maladies, we must always
remember the rules of Benedict XIV.: 'The miracle cannot consist in the
cessation of the crises, but in the cessation of the nervous state which
produces them.'" It is this that has been accomplished in the case of
Marie Cools. And again: "Either Marie Cools is not cured, or there is in
her cure something other than suggestion, even religious. It is high time
to leave that tale alone, and to cease to class under the title of
religious suggestion two orders of facts completely distinct--superficial
and momentary modifications, and constitutional modifications so profound
that science cannot explain them. I repeat: to make of an hysterical
patient one whose equilibrium is perfect ... is a thing more difficult
than the cure of a wound."

So he wrote at the time of her apparent cure, hesitating still as to its
permanence. And here, before my eyes and his, she stood again, healthy
and well.

And so at last I went back to dinner. A very different scene followed.
For a couple of hours we had been materialists, concerning ourselves not
with what Mary had done by grace--at least not in that aspect--but with
what nature showed to have been done, by whatever agency, in itself. Now
once more we turned to Mary.

It was dark when we arrived at the square, but the whole place was alive