On her right arm she carried a rosary of white beads on a golden chain, shining like the roses on her feet."
In the beginning, as at Paris and La Salette, Our Lady first made friends with Bernadette and inspired confidence in her Identity. These parts of the talks of "The Lady" have never been made known. There was no way of Bernadette's knowing who "The Lady" was.

At first the girls and their families thought she must be a departed soul in need of prayers. No one saw "The Lady," however, save Bernadette and no one heard any of the conversations, although both Bernadette and The Lady spoke "out loud." "If you had stretched out your hand," Bernadette said to Jeanne Vedere, a friend at one of the apparitions, "you would have touched her. We were talking together, just as I am talking to you now. She was talking to me quite loudly, and I was talking out loud to her." Jeanne heard only a few unintelligible sounds.
From the opposite shore, 'Toinette and Jean Abadie watched Bernadette praying, having no idea that she was saying her rosary with a beautiful "Lady" from Heaven. 'Toinette said, "Look at Bernadette down there saying her prayers!"
"What a prig!" expostulated Jean. "She must be mad to be praying there. It's quite enough to have to say so many prayers in church. Let's leave her. She's good for nothing but saying her prayers."
Going back towards the grotto after looking for firewood, the two girls saw Bernadette still lost in prayer. They called to her three times but she seemed transfixed and did not reply.
They threw stones at her, one of which hit her on the shoulder without affecting her in the least. 'Toinette feared that Bernadette might be dead, but Jean reassured her that if Bernadette were dead, "she would have fallen down." While they were thus conjecturing, Bernadette suddenly came out of her ecstasy and was herself once again. She looked at 'Toinette and Jean across the narrow stream beside the grotto.
"What are you doing there?" demanded 'Toinette.
"Nothing," answered Bernadette.
"What a donkey you are to be praying there!" came the rejoinder.
"It's a good thing to pray anywhere," Bernadette countered.
Bernadette then waded into the stream, chiding her companions for "fibbing" to her that the water was cold—the other two girls had wrapped their feet in their skirts to warm them after fording the water. She said she found the water as warm as that which was heated at home for washing!
This brought forth an exclamation of wonder from Jean. Then Bernadette confided a question: "Did you see anything?" No, Jean and 'Toinette had seen nothing. What had Bernadette seen?
In that case, Bernadette hadn't seen anything either!
On the way home, however, Bernadette confided to her friends a secret, that she had seen "a Lady dressed in white with a blue waist-belt and a yellow rose on each foot."
The girls did not believe her, and at home discarded the condition on which they had been confided the "secret" and spoke of it. Thus the story of Lourdes became known. At first Mrs. Soubirous used the same remedy to dispel the "vision" as Mrs. das Dores of Fatima—"a good beating"!

Later seeing Bernadette's constancy, she was impressed and admonished her to pray about it. Mr. Soubirous shared his wife's skepticism, and if he did not administer physical punishment, was less sympathetic in other ways. At first, permission to return to the grotto was refused adamantly by the parents. In response to entreaty both by the children and neighbors, however, they relented.
Bernadette then led her friends with about twenty other children out to the grotto to await the next apparition. When "the Lady" appeared this time, Bernadette threw Holy Water into the grotto and the Lady smiled. The more Holy Water Bernadette threw in her direction the more the Lady smiled. This was reassuring to the crowd which had gathered, as well as to the children and their parents. Becoming frightened by a falling stone, the children tried to lift Bernadette up and carry her from the spot, but were unable to move her.

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