“Only a few rather elderly women to go to Mass in the summer. Everyone else works every Sunday all summer long. And in winter, when they don’t know what else to do, they go to Mass only to scoff at religion. During Lent, they go to the butcher shop like dogs.”

“My children, haven’t you ever seen spoiled wheat?”

“No Madame,” declared Maximin, quick to speak Melanie as well as for himself.

Turning toward Maximin, the Lady replied:

“But you, my child, must have seen it once near Coin with your Papa. The owner of the field said to your Papa, “Come and see my spoiled wheat.” The two of you went. You took of two or three ears of wheat in your hands. You rubbed them together, and they crumbled to dust. Then you came back from Coin. When you were only a half-hour away from the Crops, your Papa gave you a bit of bread and said: “Here, my son, eat some bread, this years anyhow. I don’t know who will eating any next year if the wheat continues this way.”

“Its very true, Madame. Now I remember. Until I didn’t,” admitted Maximin.

The Beautiful Lady concluded, no longer in dialect but in French.

“Well, children, you will make this known to all my people.”

She began to walk and Maximin stepped aside to let her by. The Lady crossed the brook and climbed the little hillock. Without turning towards them, she repeated,

“Please, children, be sure to make this known to all my people.”

All had been said. The Lady climbed the narrow path that led out of the ravine. Reaching the top, she rose about five feet reached the spot where she had risen above the ground. The Lady looked toward heaven, then gazed down to the south-east.

Slowly she seemed to “melt away” within the light: first the head disappeared, then the shoulders, and rest of the body. Maximin saw a rose from the feet of the beautiful Lady and leaped up to seize it. His hand closed empty.

The bright light vanished. Melanie ventured a remark: “It was perhaps a great saint?”

“If only we had known, we would ask her to bring us with her,” said Maximin. The children did not know who had appeared to them on the mountain.