Investigation into the Blessed Virgin (III)

Clerk, please call... Miss Frances Richer, from Pontmain, France … Eleven years and ten months old. She is nervous and shy. She does not like to speak in public, although she does manage to say, Oh! How beautiful the Blessed Virgin is! One can see all her teeth when she smiles, they are so white! Thank you for that, Little Miss Muffit. Frances Richer glances over to the door and the window with the eyes of a hunted deer. This girl has hardly just arrived, but she already wants to go away. And she will escape as a matter of fact, forever, dying in 1915, and canonical law court of 1919 will be held without her, without her being able to come to say under oath what pretty white the teeth the Blessed Virgin has. They are only a part of you, Mary, but I call them your sparkle. Clerk, the next one please. Sister Catherine Labouré, living at 140, Rue du Bac... A strong full-grown woman rather than a young girl, in a grey serge habit, a tight cloth bonnet on her head, pulled down over her forehead. During the night of the 18th of July, 1830, after a 4 or 5 year old child dressed in white called me to the chapel, I heard a noise like the rustling of a silk dress, and it was the Blessed Virgin. She sat down in an armchair. Then I reached her, in one leap, on the steps of the altar. I put my hands right on her knees. Lovely details! Rustling, the armchair, your leap towards Our Lady, without hesitating, and especially, Catherine, your innocent audacity: you pose your coarse, countrified hands on Mary’s knees, after working in the fields of Burgundy and serving the poor. Do you realize, my little sister, what you have just said? The others saw, but, in addition to seeing Mary, you touched her. This is a world record, young champion! Under the white veil, I perceived her hair in braids, covered with two inches of lace lightly pressing on her hair. And her face? Her face was most beautiful, I could not describe it I insist but she goes deaf and dumb. Ah! Why didn’t the Blessed Virgin choose to appear to Madame de Sévigné, instead of appearing to little, tongue-tied girls!