From Francis La Néele to Mr. Isidore Guérin on August 26, 1897
Dear Dad,
I am very late with you, but you know how busy we have been since receiving your letter. I was twice in Lisieux to see Bonne Maman, who had worrying palpitations so that I only took my tickets for Lourdes the day before departure on returning from Lisieux, Madame Fournet having returned to her normal state. I took advantage of my time in Lisieux to go to the Carmel, I saw or rather heard Marie, who was very happy to see her big brother again. I told her to ask the Mother Prioress to allow me to examine Thérèse, in order to find out if our trip to Lourdes was possible. Immediately introduced, what a favor! I kissed our little saint on the forehead for you and mom and the whole family. I asked permission for the form to the Mother Prioress and without waiting for the answer, which the rule perhaps forbade, I took what was due to you. What a celestial figure! What an angel with a radiant smile! It was moved to tears that I spoke to him, holding his diaphanous hands all burning with fever. After examining her, I made her sit down on her pillows. Am I going to go see the Good Lord soon, she said to me. – Not yet, my dear little sister, the good Lord wants you to wait a few more weeks for your crown to be more beautiful in heaven. - Oh! no, I'm not thinking about it, it's to save souls that I still want to suffer. – Yes, that's true, but by saving souls, you will climb higher in the sky, closer to God.
The answer was a smile that lit up his face as if the sky opened before his eyes and flooded him with its divine light. “You will think of us up there. - Oh! yes, and I will ask the good Lord to send you one of his little cherubim. Yes it is agreed. I will ask that he look like you. “Not to me, but to his little mother, who is much better than me. – That he looks like both of them. In how many days will I go to heaven? – In your illness, my little sister, it is very difficult to say. In a few weeks, a month, maybe more, barring an accident, unless you're in a hurry to go see God. “As he wishes, I will wait; besides, I don't want to give you any trouble, neither you nor my uncle, I'll be waiting for you both to come back. You will pray for me in Lourdes. You will tell my uncle and my aunt how much I love them, kiss them for me as well as Léonie and Jeanne. From the top of the sky, I will always be with you.
I stayed with her for a good half hour with Celine and Mother Prioress. I kissed her again as I left and she walked me to the door with her smile that I will never forget.
The right lung is absolutely lost, filled with softening tubercles. The left is caught in its lower third. She is very thin but her face still does her credit. She suffers a great deal from intercostal neuralgia, which is what gave me the joy of seeing her. I went back the following Wednesday, hoping to enter again, but Marie and the little prioress did not dare to ask Mother Marie de Gonzague for permission to enter for me a second time. I gave her a prescription to ease her pain because she was in a lot of pain that day and I asked Céline to give her some advice.
After my first visit I stayed in the parlor with Marie for more than half an hour and without a tertian. Are we lucky guys, huh! Francis, there is no third party, Marie told me through the railing and the curtain.
When I started my letter, I wanted to talk to you about Lourdes. It will be for a next letter because it is agreed with Jeanne that we will write to you often now that you are alone. Let me just tell you that we have made a trip to heaven, we have now come back down to earth but with minds and hearts filled with faith, enthusiasm and hope. These four days lived in the life of the Gospel, flooded with the supernatural, saturated with miracles, full of acts of faith, cries of love, the resounding acclamations of the 40,000 pilgrims, will leave an indelible trace in our lives.
Jeanne and I sum it all up in one cry: How beautiful! How beautiful! How beautiful!!
Mom and Dad absolutely have to go there next year and....... you will go because it's too beautiful, it's a show unique in the world and which only existed in the glorious days of the Gospel.
Jeanne was not tired: no migraine, no more pain, no more tampons. On the way back she was ready to start again and so was I.
I spent two nights in front of the Blessed Sacrament and during that time attended 576 masses each night. Never had I heard so many, neither so soon nor so late. After her bath, Jeanne had suffered a little all day from her neuritis. My night of adoration from Monday to Tuesday completed her healing and introduced me to the Saint of the South, the Franciscan Father Marie-Antoine. He embraced me calling me his dear brother in Saint Francis, gave me his special blessing and the general absolution of the third order and told me that our wish would be granted, that we must bring my woman so that he would bless her in particular and give her the blessing of Saint Francis written in his own hand so that she could wear it in her bodice. It's an infallible recipe for having children, he told me, only you'll have to call them François or Françoise (our little Isidore will have many names).
He is a saint who has worked miracles and who lives in the harshest austerities, a Récollet Father from Lourdes told me. He is in veneration throughout the south. He can't take a step without having half a dozen women clinging to his homespun dress, which is made only of bits and pieces. I attended his mass twice, very moved and transported. We asked him the next day to pray that we would become saints and have children who would be saints. Oh! yes, dear little child, he said to Jeanne, taking her under the chin, oh! yes it will be very easy for him.
We are delighted with the Assumption Fathers. Miss Jonquoy (?) was very kind to us and procured a cross of service for Jeanne and Léonie, she introduced me to Fr. Picard, superior, and to Fr. Arthur. I got to know a number of fathers, true apostles, and with Abbé Fourier from Montpellier, with Professor Teunesson from St Louis in Paris, etc. etc
I came back almost speechless from shouting and acclaiming Our Lady of Lourdes, when emotion was not strangling my voice. In two and a half hours, I saw 50 patients get up cured, which in living memory had never been seen in Lourdes.
More place ! But with a full heart I will continue in my next letter. I embrace you very affectionately.
Your devoted son
Dr La Neele
