Thanks to Our good Lord, this apparition dispelled the clouds from my soul and my peace was restored. My poor mother worried more and more, as she saw the crowds who came flocking from all parts. “These poor people,” she said, “come here, taken in by your trickery, you can be sure of that, and I really don’t know what I can do to undeceive them.”
A poor man who boasted of making fun of us, of insulting us, and even going so far as to beat us, asked my mother one day: “Well ma’am, what have you got to say about your daughter’s visions?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, “It seems to me that she’s nothing but a fake, who is leading half the world astray.”
“Don’t say that out loud, or somebody’s likely to kill her. I think there are people around here, who’d only be too glad to do so.”
“Oh, I don’t care, just so long as they force her to confess the truth. As for me, I always tell the truth, whether against my children, or anybody else, or even against myself.”
And, truly, this was so. My mother always told the truth, even against herself. We, her children, are indebted to her for this good example. One day, she resolved to make a fresh attempt to compel me to retract all that I had said, as she put it. She made up her mind to take me back the very next day to the parish priest’s house. Once there, I was to confess that I had lied, to ask his pardon, and to perform whatever penance His Reverence thought fit or desired to impose on me. This time the attack was so strong, that I did not know what to do. On the way, as I passed my uncle’s house, I ran inside to tell Jacinta, who was still in bed, what was taking place. Then I hurried out and followed my mother. In my account about Jacinta, I have already told Your Excellency about the part played by her and her brother in this trial which the Lord had sent us, and how they prayed as they waited for me at the well, and so on. As we walked along, my mother preached me a fine sermon. At a certain point, I said to her, trembling: “But mother, how can I say that I did not see, when I did see?” My mother was silent. As we drew near the priest’s house, she declared: “Just you listen to me! What I want is that you should tell the truth. If you saw, say so! But if you didn’t see, admit you lied.”
Without another word, we climbed the stairs, and the good priest received us in his study with the greatest and even I might almost say, with affection. He questioned me seriously, but most courteously, and resorted to various stratagems to see if I would contradict myself, or be inconsistent in my statements. Finally he dismissed us, shrugging his shoulders, as if to imply: “I don’t know what to make of all this!”