nd du laus 4

Still in May 1664...

Benoîte goes to the valley known as “Vallon des Fours” to graze her sheep there.

The shepherdess has the habit of reciting her rosary while she keeps her animals.

In one of the grottos on the site... 

she suddenly sees 'a lady', holding her child in her hand, the one she would later call 'the beautiful lady': dressed in flaming gold leaf [bladgoud], she seemed to wear a sparkling crown, and her face was so luminous, that one could not determine her features with precision.

Naively, the young shepherdess strikes up a conversation with the lady: 'Beautiful Lady, what are you doing up there? Are you coming to buy plaster?'

But the lady doesn't answer.

So she offers to share her meager snack with her... 

but the visitor disappears without a word.

For more than three months... 

every day, the 'beautiful lady' will appear to Benoîte, in this same place, without speaking to her. 

'To familiarize Benoîte with her presence' some say, 'in a kind of maternal pedagogy to prepare the uneducated shepherdess for the various and very long graces that she was going to receive, and to prepare her for the mission that was going to be hers'.

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Benoîte first tells her visions to her mistress... 

who does not believe her.

But the noise spreads in the village, and in the surroundings.

So much so, that the judge of the Avançon valley, François Grimaud, decides to come and investigate. In August he goes there, and questions the seer. He emerges, positively impressed, from his interrogation.

at the grotto, today is La Chapelle ND des Fours

On August 28...

the Virgin asks Benoîte that the girls of Saint-Étienne-d'Avançon go on pilgrimage to this grotto.

The next day, at the instance of Judge Grimaud, the local priest organized a great parish pilgrimage where the whole village went on pilgrimage, and attended the apparition, alongside Benoîte.

During the apparition, the judge prompts Benoîte to ask the lady what her name is. 

The Virgin Mary announces to the seer that... 

Her name is 'Lady Mary, Mother of My Most Beloved Son.'

And that she would not see her for some time.

[wiki]