MGR F. Trochu published in 1954 Ste Bernadette Soubiraus, now translated and ‘adapted’ by Fr J. Joyce, s.j. (Longmans; 25s.): omission of notes and references has reduced the book from 585 pages to 400 and it will doubtless be the definitive ‘life’ of St Bernadette in English. Yet I feel that a History of Lourdes is still required. Lest I seem over-critical, and at the risk of being over-personal, may I say that already at school I was spell-bound by ‘Lourdes’—in spite of books. Lasserre’s book was clearly a ‘literary’ work by an enthusiast, not an historian: two persons sent me Zola’s Lourdes, no less clearly rationalist, though I could not then know of its deliberate mendacity. I went to make a novena at Lourdes and sought for every trace of Bernadette and Abbé Peyramale. I returned, and remained, ever more beholden to our Lady of Lourdes, but not till, long afterwards, I read Fr Cros’s three big volumes, did I feel that my ‘devotion’ had historically irreproachable foundations. A ‘history’ must not seek, or be afraid, to ‘shock’.

Instinctively I turned to page 40 in the translation: Bernadette on her way to collect wood passed an old woman who was ‘doing some washing’. I knew that Bernadette had said des boyaux. I turned to Trochu: the translation was quite faithful; but the French relegates the boyaux to a coy footnote. ‘La Pigouno’ ‘did not hide’ that what she was washing was—would ‘offal’ offend the delicate ears of England, or even America? Again, when the children returned after the first Apparition, Toinette says (page 46) that she will go to sell the bones they had collected, so ‘the mother hurriedly began to tidy Toinette’s unruly curls’ (recoiffers les boucles folks de T.).