name was Lucie Druon, and she was an inmate of an orphan asylum. She was
quite young and could not even kneel down. Her limbs were bent like
hoops. Her right leg, the shorter of the two, had ended by becoming
twisted round the left one; and when any of the other girls carried her
about you saw her feet hanging down quite limp, like dead ones. Please
notice that she did not even go to Lourdes. She simply performed a
novena; but she fasted during the nine days, and her desire to be cured
was so great that she spent her nights in prayer. At last, on the ninth
day, whilst she was drinking a little Lourdes water, she felt a violent
commotion in her legs. She picked herself up, fell down, picked herself
up again and walked. All her little companions, who were astonished,
almost frightened at the sight, began to cry out 'Lucie can walk! Lucie
can walk!' It was quite true. In a few seconds her legs had become
straight and strong and healthy. She crossed the courtyard and was able
to climb up the steps of the chapel, where the whole sisterhood,
transported with gratitude, chanted the /Magnificat/. Ah! the dear child,
how happy, how happy she must have been!"

As Madame Vincent finished, two tears fell from her cheeks on to the pale
face of her little girl, whom she kissed distractedly.

The general interest was still increasing, becoming quite impassioned.
The rapturous joy born of these beautiful stories, in which Heaven
invariably triumphed over human reality, transported these childlike
souls to such a point that those who were suffering the most grievously
sat up in their turn, and recovered the power of speech. And with the
narratives of one and all was blended a thought of the sufferer's own
ailment, a belief that he or she would also be cured, since a malady of
the same description had vanished like an evil dream beneath the breath
of the Divinity.