And it was Monseigneur Laurence, in his episcopal residence at Tarbes, who was first forced to surrender.
All his prudence, all his doubts were outflanked by the popular outburst.
For five long months he had been able to remain aloof, preventing his clergy from following the faithful to the Grotto, and defending the Church against the tornado of superstition which had been let loose.

But what was the use of struggling any longer?
He felt the wretchedness of the suffering people committed to his care to be so great that he resigned himself to granting them the idolatrous religion for which he realised them to be eager.

Some prudence remaining to him, however, he contented himself in the first instance with drawing up an _ordonnance_, appointing a commission of inquiry, which was to investigate the question; this implied the acceptance of the miracles after a period of longer or shorter duration.

If Monseigneur Laurence was the man of healthy culture and cool reason that he is pictured to have been, how great must have been his anguish on the morning when he signed that _ordonnance_! He must have knelt in his oratory, and have begged the Sovereign Master of the world to dictate his conduct to him.

He did not believe in the apparitions; he had a loftier, more intellectual idea of the manifestations of the Divinity.