THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1895.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9711, 5 January 1895, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1895.

The attitude adopted towards each other by M. Zola and His Holiness the Pope, is singular and interesting. The famous author of "The Downfall" and "Lourdes," and many other works of the Realistic school, is now at Rome; his object being, of course, to obtain material for a book. As a means of advertising his forthcoming novel, and of placing in his notebook suggestions for a valuable chapter, Zola desires to have an interview with His Holiness Pius XIII. Buti the Pope is not willing to grant such an interview. He does not see why he should be exploited for the benefit of M Zola, and to add to the circulation of a book which he has good ground for thinking will be hostile to the Church. M. Zola, on his part, takes the matter philosophically, as becomes a practised may say, a hardened—journalist. He says:—"lf the Pope were a politician he would receive me, for it cannot be a matter of indifference to Leo XIII. whether he is mentioned with sympathy in a novel of which thousands of copies are issued in every language. In my no* el on Rome I want to show the Pope speaking and acting. If I am not received, nothing will be changed in my book. I shall write it whether or not; but if I were received, it is evident that my hands would be to a certain degree fettered. In my book I shall show the Pope casting a look at the Rome which no longer belongs to him."

It is evident that there is in this a very thinly-disguised threat. In'short, M. Zola holds out a kind of menace that if the Pope does not consent to receive him, and favour him with a chat on whatever subject he chooses to : start, he will " make it hot" for the Papacy. This is his meaning, and what everybody will understand, although M. Zola puts it that if the Pope does grant him an interview, his hands will to some extent be fettered. M. Zoal is a Rationalist, and so is abhorrent to the Pope. He must also be esteemed by all good Catholics as a coarse and licentious writer, and he must be held to be the author of much evil to all who read his novels. The Pope will naturally not be in- | clined to further the objects of! such a man. To accord him an interview would be to sanction the perusal of his works by all who look to His Holiness for guidance. He must also strongly object to him as the author of " Lourdes," which in some respects is a thorough exposure of the proceedings at a miraculous shrine which has received the sanction of the Church. We may briefly state the history of this shrine. In 1858, a girl of fourteen years of age, named Bernadette Soubirous, fancied that the Virgin appeared to her. During the succeeding six months, the apparition was seventeen times repeated. At the spot there arose a spring, which was said to have been unknown before, and this was found to be possessed of miraculous properties. Miracles were reported to have been accomplished, and crowds flocked to the place. The authorities wanted to check the popular enthusiasm, and barriers were erected around the spring. But there was a great outcry against the horrible tyranny of keeping the sick and maimed from a spring that would heal them. Mothers clamoured around the barriers day and night with sick children in their arms. When any of these died the blame was laid upon those who prevented access to the spring.. At length the barriers were removed by command of the Emperor Napoleon, who, we may well believe, simply laughed at the idea of these apparitions of the Virgin and the miraculous virtues of the spring. Perhaps the Empress Eugenie had most to do with the issue of the order to remove the barriers. The Bishop of the diocese appointed a commission of ecclesiastics and scientists to inquire into the alleged cures. The scientists, we may believe, were carefully selected. The investigations, it is said, lasted over three years, and the report was in favour of the apparitions of the Virgin and the miracles wrought by the water of the spring. Ever since, the pilgrimages to Lourdes have been vast events. The chief pilgrimage is in August, when trains come from all parts of France. M. Zola is before all things a journalist. He acted precisely as if he had been commissioned by a newspaper to investigate the whole proceedings in the most exact and dispassionate manner. He accompanied a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and interviewed' all the pilgrims he came in contact with. He does not deny the cures. He shows, for instance, that one girl, who had been rendered helpless by a fall, and who had lain in that condition, and in great pain for years, after a long vigil, after earnest prayers, in the midst of the intense excitement of the multitudes assembled, received .a mental impulse which re*:

Stored her at once to health and to the full use of her limbs. Bat for this mental impulse, and the full conviction that she would be cured, she would no doubt have lain in pain, in suffering, and in helplessness all her life. But the cure was quite a natural one after all, and had been predicted as possible by a clever Paris physician. Such cures have been numerous at Lourdes, cures brought about by the impulse of religious feeling on the nervous system. Probably no other cause would be adequate to the effect, There is much room for thought, and study in the copious records of Lourdes. According to the picture drawn by M. Zola, some of the ecclesiastics and officers connected with these pilgrimages are honest, zealous, and humane men, while the Sisters of Mercy who attend on the sick are for the most part, virtuous and religious women. But he also shows how the whole affair is mercilessly worked for profit, and that the Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, to whose care the grotto and its appurtenances have been confided by the Pope, are greedy, grasping, and selfish. His picture of Lourdes at the time of the pilgrimage is exceedingly graphic, and no one can read it without coming to the conclusion that it is minutely truthful. M. Zola has not a trace of that zeal against the Church of Rome which would be expected from an earnest Protestant. He describes everything connected with religion and religious feeling as something entirely outside of him, and as a matter merely of sympathy and observation,something that comes under his notice as a student of humanity. He deals with religious sentiment as a journalist and a philosopher.

We have no doubt that his book upon the working of the Roman Catholic Church from its centre will be of the same character. He will not declaim against it, but will say that it is necessary, as the world now goes. He appears in Rome, and before His Holiness, simply as the journalist, the supremo investigator, and he claims to have the utmost facilities afforded to him to pursue his researches. It is an awkward position for Leo XIII. He knows that nothing he can say will be able to divert M. Zola from writing • his book, and he knows, moreover, that he is powerless to alter the character of it by one iota. M. Zola's work will no doubt be a useful one in estimating the action of the Papacy on the world at the present day.