BELGIUM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 137, 17 December 1875, Page 13

BELGIUM.

You have already hoard (says a correspondent of "the* Bombay • Catholic Examiner ') that a fierce controversy has been carried on in Belgium about Louisa Lateau, the young eestatica of JBois d'Haine. A friend of mine took it into his head to go and see this young peasant girl, and here is what he tells me about her. It is not at all easy to get to visit Louisa Lateau ; admission to her residence is allowed only on Friday afternoons, when the ecstasy has be CT un. Two o'clock was the hour I was appointed to be there. The house stands on a lonely spot, at some distance from the presI bytery. What first strikes one, is the extreme cleanliness that prevails. There was a particularly large assemblage on the day : there were twenty persons, Belgians, Germans, Italians, and French. The Cure knocked at the door ; Louisa's sister came and. opened it immediately. We enter first into an apartment decorated with pioTis prints. Over the chimney-piece was a Christ's head ; to the left, a picture of the Pope, seated on his throne and clothed in his Pontifical robes. In the recess and above the chest of drawers, St. Joseph with the infant Jesus, in lithograph and in statuette. These are probably presents. The Lateau family, proud though poor, have never allowed money to be given them, though it is quite likely that they have received, without feeling insulted, the gift of a little image of St. Joseph or of the likeness of Pope Pius IX. We found Louisa Lateau in the inner room ; she was seated on a wooden chair. Close to her was her mother in a blue apron. At the further end of the room was a small iron bedstead. This was quite enough to till the chamber. Louisa. Lateau was all in black, in the modest dress of a peasant, with bonnet and -tpron. Her figure is round, full, eoloiu-ed. It would bo impossible to discover on her countenance, with all its signs of good health, the slightest indication of moi-bid predisposition. She is twenty-five years and a half old, and she just looks tha,t. The eestatica, keeps to her seat, reposing rather than being seated on it, absolutely motionless. The body slightly inclines forwards, with the eyes wide open and mildly raised, as though she contemplated some heavenly vision. During more than an hour that this visit lasted I never took my eyes off hers, and I can certify that she never once winked. The hands raised and half stretched out remained idle ; I thought, however, that I perceived a slight upward movement ; they are the hard hands of a peasant girl, hands that have done much work ; the extremity of the index is covered with numberless needle pricks. Formerly the ecstasies used to begin in the morning, now they berrin only in the afternoon, towards two o'clock and almost always after the flowing of the stigmata has ceased. But on this occasion Louisa was bleeding on the back of the right hand. This side was quite facing me, and I could see it distinctly. The centre was marked with a sort of circular blister, but it seemed as though the blood came from a small wound close to. A thin red stream ran slowly along the hand. Every two or three minutes the mother leaned down and wiped it with a linon cloth that lay on Louisa's knees. The left hand had ceased to run, but it was covered in the centre with a clot of dried blood. Louisa Lateau was entirely insensible to all that was going on around her. From time to time a reliquary containing a piece of the true cross was placed between her hands ; there Avas a tremor all over the body, a smile lightened up her countenance, her hands close together tremblingly and presa the precious relic. Some minutes after they substitute a pious picture ; the hands remain idle and motionless. The Cure takes it away, blesses it, making the sign of the Cross over it, and puts it back between her hands which start and press it ti-emblingly. Towards three o'clock Louisa fell from her seat, or rather rolled at full lengtli on to the ground. I never saw anything like to that fall, so noiseless, as though it were a body without weight. A shadow passes before you and there lies the eestatica at full length on the ground without your knowing how, hermetically wi-apt up in her dress, not a fold of which is crruuplod and which covers her to the very heels. There she lies motionless ; then she heaves a deep sigh and her arms stretch out in a cross. Many of thr bystanders would have liked to steep their handkerchief in the blood of the wounds; there Avas a Bishop beside us Avho asked leave for this from the mother; she refused him in a peevish tone. It was half -past three Avhen we left. The ecstaey lasted longor ; ordinarily it goes on for an hour, after Avhich Louisa gets up, seats herself, and resumes her needle. Outside there are luuvkcrs selling photographs of the house, but not of Louisa ; the young- eestatica has never allowed her likeness to be taken. Does not this simple recital prove the presence of a divine intervention in these supernatural pnenomena ? It seems to me, that it Avould be impious to deny it.