LOURDES


FORM THE THREE CITIES


By Émile Zola


Translated By Ernest A. Vizetelly




PREFACE


BEFORE perusing this work, it is as well that the reader should
understand M. Zola’s aim in writing it, and his views--as distinct from
those of his characters--upon Lourdes, its Grotto, and its cures. A short
time before the book appeared M. Zola was interviewed upon the subject by
his friend and biographer, Mr. Robert H. Sherard, to whom he spoke as
follows:


“‘Lourdes’ came to be written by mere accident. In 1891 I happened to be
travelling for my pleasure, with my wife, in the Basque country and by
the Pyrenees, and being in the neighbourhood of Lourdes, included it in
my tour. I spent fifteen days there, and was greatly struck by what I
saw, and it then occurred to me that there was material here for just the
sort of novel that I like to write--a novel in which great masses of men
can be shown in motion--_un grand mouvement de foule_--a novel the
subject of which stirred up my philosophical ideas.

“It was too late then to study the question, for I had visited Lourdes
late in September, and so had missed seeing the best pilgrimage, which
takes place in August, under the direction of the Peres de la
Misericorde, of the Rue de l’Assomption in Paris--the National
Pilgrimage, as it is called. These Fathers are very active, enterprising
men, and have made a great success of this annual national pilgrimage.
Under their direction thirty thousand pilgrims are transported to
Lourdes, including over a thousand sick persons.

“So in the following year I went in August, and saw a national
pilgrimage, and followed it during the three days which it lasts, in
addition to the two days given to travelling. After its departure, I
stayed on ten or twelve days, working up the subject in every detail. My
book is the story of such a national pilgrimage, and is, accordingly, the
story of five days. It is divided into five parts, each of which parts is
limited to one day.

“There are from ninety to one hundred characters in the story: sick
persons, pilgrims, priests, nuns, hospitallers, nurses, and peasants; and
the book shows Lourdes under every aspect. There are the piscinas, the
processions, the Grotto, the churches at night, the people in the
streets. It is, in one word, Lourdes in its entirety. In this canvas is
worked out a very delicate central intrigue, as in ‘Dr. Pascal,’ and
around this are many little stories or subsidiary plots. There is the
story of the sick person who gets well, of the sick person who is not
cured, and so on. The philosophical idea which pervades the whole book is
the idea of human suffering, the exhibition of the desperate and
despairing sufferers who, abandoned by science and by man, address
themselves to a higher Power in the hope of relief; as where parents have
a dearly loved daughter dying of consumption, who has been given up, and
for whom nothing remains but death. A sudden hope, however, breaks in
upon them: ‘supposing that after all there should be a Power greater than
that of man, higher than that of science.’ They will haste to try this
last chance of safety. It is the instinctive hankering after the lie
which creates human credulity.

“I will admit that I came across some instances of real cure. Many cases
of nervous disorders have undoubtedly been cured, and there have also
been other cures which may, perhaps be attributed to errors of diagnosis
on the part of doctors who attended the patients so cured. Often a
patient is described by his doctor as suffering from consumption. He goes
to Lourdes, and is cured. However, the probability is that the doctor
made a mistake. In my own case I was at one time suffering from a violent
pain in my chest, which presented all the symptoms of _angina pectoris_,
a mortal malady. It was nothing of the sort. Indigestion, doubtless, and,
as such, curable. Remember that most of the sick persons who go to
Lourdes come from the country, and that the country doctors are not
usually men of either great skill or great experience. But all doctors
mistake symptoms. Put three doctors together to discuss a case, and in
nine cases out of ten they will disagree in their diagnosis. Look at the
quantities of tumours, swellings, and sores, which cannot be properly
classified. These cures are based on the ignorance of the medical
profession. The sick pretend, believe, that they suffer from such and
such a desperate malady, whereas it is from some other malady that they
are suffering. And so the legend forms itself. And, of course, there must
be cures out of so large a number of cases. Nature often cures without
medical aid. Certainly, many of the workings of Nature are wonderful, but
they are not supernatural. The Lourdes miracles can neither be proved nor
denied. The miracle is based on human ignorance. And so the doctor who
lives at Lourdes, and who is commissioned to register the cures and to
tabulate the miracles, has a very careless time of it. A person comes,
and gets cured. He has but to get three doctors together to examine the
case. They will disagree as to what was the disease from which the
patient suffered, and the only explanation left which will be acceptable
to the public, with its hankering after the lie, is that a miracle has
been vouchsafed.

“I interviewed a number of people at Lourdes, and could not find one who
would declare that he had witnessed a miracle. All the cases which I
describe in my book are real cases, in which I have only changed the
names of the persons concerned. In none of these instances was I able to
discover any real proof for or against the miraculous nature of the cure.
Thus, in the case of Clementine Trouve, who figures in my story as
Sophie--the patient who, after suffering for a long time from a horrid
open sore on her foot, was suddenly cured, according to current report,
by bathing her foot in the piscina, where the bandages fell off, and her
foot was entirely restored to a healthy condition--I investigated that
case thoroughly. I was told that there were three or four ladies living
in Lourdes who could guarantee the facts as stated by little Clementine.
I looked up those ladies. The first said No, she could not vouch for
anything. She had seen nothing. I had better consult somebody else. The
next answered in the same way, and nowhere was I able to find any
corroboration of the girl’s story. Yet the little girl did not look like
a liar, and I believe that she was fully convinced of the miraculous
nature of her cure. It is the facts themselves which lie.

“Lourdes, the Grotto, the cures, the miracles, are, indeed, the creation
of that need of the Lie, that necessity for credulity, which is a
characteristic of human nature. At first, when little Bernadette came
with her strange story of what she had witnessed, everybody was against
her. The Prefect of the Department, the Bishop, the clergy, objected to
her story. But Lourdes grew up in spite of all opposition, just as the
Christian religion did, because suffering humanity in its despair must
cling to something, must have some hope; and, on the other hand, because
humanity thirsts after illusions. In a word, it is the story of the
foundation of all religions.”


To the foregoing account of “Lourdes” as supplied by its author, it may
be added that the present translation, first made from early proofs of
the French original whilst the latter was being completed, has for the
purposes of this new American edition been carefully and extensively
revised by Mr. E. A. Vizetelly,--M. Zola’s representative for all
English-speaking countries. “Lourdes” forms the first volume of the
“Trilogy of the Three Cities,” the second being “Rome,” and the third
“Paris.”





LOURDES




THE FIRST DAY




I. PILGRIMS AND PATIENTS

THE pilgrims and patients, closely packed on the hard seats of a
third-class carriage, were just finishing the “Ave maris Stella,” which
they had begun to chant on leaving the terminus of the Orleans line, when
Marie, slightly raised on her couch of misery and restless with feverish
impatience, caught sight of the Paris fortifications through the window
of the moving train.

“Ah, the fortifications!” she exclaimed, in a tone which was joyous
despite her suffering. “Here we are, out of Paris; we are off at last!”

Her delight drew a smile from her father, M. de Guersaint, who sat in
front of her, whilst Abbe Pierre Froment, who was looking at her with
fraternal affection, was so carried away by his compassionate anxiety as
to say aloud: “And now we are in for it till to-morrow morning. We shall
only reach Lourdes at three-forty. We have more than two-and-twenty
hours’ journey before us.”

It was half-past five, the sun had risen, radiant in the pure sky of a
delightful morning. It was a Friday, the 19th of August. On the horizon,
however, some small, heavy clouds already presaged a terrible day of
stormy heat. And the oblique sunrays were enfilading the compartments of
the railway carriage, filling them with dancing, golden dust.

“Yes, two-and-twenty hours,” murmured Marie, relapsing into a state of
anguish. “_Mon Dieu_! what a long time we must still wait!”

Then her father helped her to lie down again in the narrow box, a kind of
wooden gutter, in which she had been living for seven years past. Making
an exception in her favour, the railway officials had consented to take
as luggage the two pairs of wheels which could be removed from the box,
or fitted to it whenever it became necessary to transport her from place
to place. Packed between the sides of this movable coffin, she occupied
the room of three passengers on the carriage seat; and for a moment she
lay there with eyes closed. Although she was three-and-twenty; her ashen,
emaciated face was still delicately infantile, charming despite
everything, in the midst of her marvellous fair hair, the hair of a
queen, which illness had respected. Clad with the utmost simplicity in a
gown of thin woollen stuff, she wore, hanging from her neck, the card
bearing her name and number, which entitled her to _hospitalisation_, or
free treatment. She herself had insisted on making the journey in this
humble fashion, not wishing to be a source of expense to her relatives,
who little by little had fallen into very straitened circumstances. And
thus it was that she found herself in a third-class carriage of the
“white train,” the train which carried the greatest sufferers, the most
woeful of the fourteen trains going to Lourdes that day, the one in
which, in addition to five hundred healthy pilgrims, nearly three hundred
unfortunate wretches, weak to the point of exhaustion, racked by
suffering, were heaped together, and borne at express speed from one to
the other end of France.

Sorry that he had saddened her, Pierre continued to gaze at her with the
air of a compassionate elder brother. He had just completed his thirtieth
year, and was pale and slight, with a broad forehead. After busying
himself with all the arrangements for the journey, he had been desirous
of accompanying her, and, having obtained admission among the
Hospitallers of Our Lady of Salvation as an auxiliary member, wore on his
cassock the red, orange-tipped cross of a bearer. M. de Guersaint on his
side had simply pinned the little scarlet cross of the pilgrimage on his
grey cloth jacket. The idea of travelling appeared to delight him;
although he was over fifty he still looked young, and, with his eyes ever
wandering over the landscape, he seemed unable to keep his head still--a
bird-like head it was, with an expression of good nature and
absent-mindedness.

However, in spite of the violent shaking of the train, which constantly
drew sighs from Marie, Sister Hyacinthe had risen to her feet in the
adjoining compartment. She noticed that the sun’s rays were streaming in
the girl’s face.

“Pull down the blind, Monsieur l’Abbe,” she said to Pierre. “Come, come,
we must install ourselves properly, and set our little household in
order.”

Clad in the black robe of a Sister of the Assumption, enlivened by a
white coif, a white wimple, and a large white apron, Sister Hyacinthe
smiled, the picture of courageous activity. Her youth bloomed upon her
small, fresh lips, and in the depths of her beautiful blue eyes, whose
expression was ever gentle. She was not pretty, perhaps, still she was
charming, slender, and tall, the bib of her apron covering her flat chest
like that of a young man; one of good heart, displaying a snowy
complexion, and overflowing with health, gaiety, and innocence.

“But this sun is already roasting us,” said she; “pray pull down your
blind as well, madame.”

Seated in the corner, near the Sister, was Madame de Jonquiere, who had
kept her little bag on her lap. She slowly pulled down the blind. Dark,
and well built, she was still nice-looking, although she had a daughter,
Raymonde, who was four-and-twenty, and whom for motives of propriety she
had placed in the charge of two lady-hospitallers, Madame Desagneaux and
Madame Volmar, in a first-class carriage. For her part, directress as she
was of a ward of the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours at Lourdes, she did
not quit her patients; and outside, swinging against the door of her
compartment, was the regulation placard bearing under her own name those
of the two Sisters of the Assumption who accompanied her. The widow of a
ruined man, she lived with her daughter on the scanty income of four or
five thousand francs a year, at the rear of a courtyard in the Rue
Vanneau. But her charity was inexhaustible, and she gave all her time to
the work of the Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation, an institution
whose red cross she wore on her gown of carmelite poplin, and whose aims
she furthered with the most active zeal. Of a somewhat proud disposition,
fond of being flattered and loved, she took great delight in this annual
journey, from which both her heart and her passion derived contentment.

“You are right, Sister,” she said, “we will organise matters. I really
don’t know why I am encumbering myself with this bag.”

And thereupon she placed it under the seat, near her.

“Wait a moment,” resumed Sister Hyacinthe; “you have the water-can
between your legs--it is in your way.”

“No, no, it isn’t, I assure you. Let it be. It must always be somewhere.”

Then they both set their house in order as they expressed it, so that for
a day and a night they might live with their patients as comfortably as
possible. The worry was that they had not been able to take Marie into
their compartment, as she wished to have Pierre and her father near her;
however neighbourly intercourse was easy enough over the low partition.
Moreover the whole carriage, with its five compartments of ten seats
each, formed but one moving chamber, a common room as it were which the
eye took in at a glance from end to end. Between its wooden walls, bare
and yellow, under its white-painted panelled roof, it showed like a
hospital ward, with all the disorder and promiscuous jumbling together of
an improvised ambulance. Basins, brooms, and sponges lay about,
half-hidden by the seats. Then, as the train only carried such luggage as
the pilgrims could take with them, there were valises, deal boxes, bonnet
boxes, and bags, a wretched pile of poor worn-out things mended with bits
of string, heaped up a little bit everywhere; and overhead the litter
began again, what with articles of clothing, parcels, and baskets hanging
from brass pegs and swinging to and fro without a pause.

Amidst all this frippery the more afflicted patients, stretched on their
narrow mattresses, which took up the room of several passengers, were
shaken, carried along by the rumbling gyrations of the wheels; whilst
those who were able to remain seated, leaned against the partitions,
their faces pale, their heads resting upon pillows. According to the
regulations there should have been one lady-hospitaller to each
compartment. However, at the other end of the carriage there was but a
second Sister of the Assumption, Sister Claire des Anges. Some of the
pilgrims who were in good health were already getting up, eating and
drinking. One compartment was entirely occupied by women, ten pilgrims
closely pressed together, young ones and old ones, all sadly, pitifully
ugly. And as nobody dared to open the windows on account of the
consumptives in the carriage, the heat was soon felt and an unbearable
odour arose, set free as it were by the jolting of the train as it went
its way at express speed.

They had said their chaplets at Juvisy; and six o’clock was striking, and
they were rushing like a hurricane past the station of Bretigny, when
Sister Hyacinthe stood up. It was she who directed the pious exercises,
which most of the pilgrims followed from small, blue-covered books.

“The Angelus, my children,” said she with a pleasant smile, a maternal
air which her great youth rendered very charming and sweet.

Then the “Aves” again followed one another, and were drawing to an end
when Pierre and Marie began to feel interested in two women who occupied
the other corner seats of their compartment. One of them, she who sat at
Marie’s feet, was a blonde of slender build and _bourgeoise_ appearance,
some thirty and odd years of age, and faded before she had grown old. She
shrank back, scarcely occupying any room, wearing a dark dress, and
showing colourless hair, and a long grief-stricken face which expressed
unlimited self-abandonment, infinite sadness. The woman in front of her,
she who sat on the same seat as Pierre, was of the same age, but belonged
to the working classes. She wore a black cap and displayed a face ravaged
by wretchedness and anxiety, whilst on her lap she held a little girl of
seven, who was so pale, so wasted by illness, that she scarcely seemed
four. With her nose contracted, her eyelids lowered and showing blue in
her waxen face, the child was unable to speak, unable to give utterance
to more than a low plaint, a gentle moan, which rent the heart of her
mother, leaning over her, each time that she heard it.

“Would she eat a few grapes?” timidly asked the lady, who had hitherto
preserved silence. “I have some in my basket.”

“Thank you, madame,” replied the woman, “she only takes milk, and
sometimes not even that willingly. I took care to bring a bottleful with
me.”

Then, giving way to the desire which possesses the wretched to confide
their woes to others, she began to relate her story. Her name was
Vincent, and her husband, a gilder by trade, had been carried off by
consumption. Left alone with her little Rose, who was the passion of her
heart, she had worked by day and night at her calling as a dressmaker in
order to bring the child up. But disease had come, and for fourteen
months now she had had her in her arms like that, growing more and more
woeful and wasted until reduced almost to nothingness. She, the mother,
who never went to mass, entered a church, impelled by despair to pray for
her daughter’s cure; and there she had heard a voice which had told her
to take the little one to Lourdes, where the Blessed Virgin would have
pity on her. Acquainted with nobody, not knowing even how the pilgrimages
were organised, she had had but one idea--to work, save up the money
necessary for the journey, take a ticket, and start off with the thirty
sous remaining to her, destitute of all supplies save a bottle of milk
for the child, not having even thought of purchasing a crust of bread for
herself.

“What is the poor little thing suffering from?” resumed the lady.

“Oh, it must be consumption of the bowels, madame! But the doctors have
names they give it. At first she only had slight pains in the stomach.
Then her stomach began to swell and she suffered, oh, so dreadfully! it
made one cry to see her. Her stomach has gone down now, only she’s worn
out; she has got so thin that she has no legs left her, and she’s wasting
away with continual sweating.”

Then, as Rose, raising her eyelids, began to moan, her mother leant over
her, distracted and turning pale. “What is the matter, my jewel, my
treasure?” she asked. “Are you thirsty?”

But the little girl was already closing her dim eyes of a hazy sky-blue
hue, and did not even answer, but relapsed into her torpor, quite white
in the white frock she wore--a last coquetry on the part of her mother,
who had gone to this useless expense in the hope that the Virgin would be
more compassionate and gentle to a little sufferer who was well dressed,
so immaculately white.

There was an interval of silence, and then Madame Vincent inquired: “And
you, madame, it’s for yourself no doubt that you are going to Lourdes?
One can see very well that you are ill.”

But the lady, with a frightened look, shrank woefully into her corner,
murmuring: “No, no, I am not ill. Would to God that I were! I should
suffer less.”

Her name was Madame Maze, and her heart was full of an incurable grief.
After a love marriage to a big, gay fellow with ripe, red lips, she had
found herself deserted at the end of a twelvemonth’s honeymoon. Ever
travelling, following the profession of a jeweller’s bagman, her husband,
who earned a deal of money, would disappear for six months at a stretch,
deceive her from one frontier to the other of France, at times even
carrying creatures about with him. And she worshipped him; she suffered
so frightfully from it all that she had sought a remedy in religion, and
had at last made up her mind to repair to Lourdes, in order to pray the
Virgin to restore her husband to her and make him amend his ways.

Although Madame Vincent did not understand the other’s words, she
realised that she was a prey to great mental affliction, and they
continued looking at one another, the mother, whom the sight of her dying
daughter was killing, and the abandoned wife, whom her passion cast into
throes of death-like agony.

However, Pierre, who, like Marie, had been listening to the conversation,
now intervened. He was astonished that the dressmaker had not sought free
treatment for her little patient. The Association of Our Lady of
Salvation had been founded by the Augustine Fathers of the Assumption
after the Franco-German war, with the object of contributing to the
salvation of France and the defence of the Church by prayer in common and
the practice of charity; and it was this association which had promoted
the great pilgrimage movement, in particular initiating and unremittingly
extending the national pilgrimage which every year, towards the close of
August, set out for Lourdes. An elaborate organisation had been gradually
perfected, donations of considerable amounts were collected in all parts
of the world, sufferers were enrolled in every parish, and agreements
were signed with the railway companies, to say nothing of the active help
of the Little Sisters of the Assumption and the establishment of the
Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation, a widespread brotherhood of the
benevolent, in which one beheld men and women, mostly belonging to
society, who, under the orders of the pilgrimage managers, nursed the
sick, helped to transport them, and watched over the observance of good
discipline. A written request was needed for the sufferers to obtain
hospitalisation, which dispensed them from making the smallest payment in
respect either of their journey or their sojourn; they were fetched from
their homes and conveyed back thither; and they simply had to provide a
few provisions for the road. By far the greater number were recommended
by priests or benevolent persons, who superintended the inquiries
concerning them and obtained the needful papers, such as doctors’
certificates and certificates of birth. And, these matters being settled,
the sick ones had nothing further to trouble about, they became but so
much suffering flesh, food for miracles, in the hands of the hospitallers
of either sex.

“But you need only have applied to your parish priest, madame,” Pierre
explained. “This poor child is deserving of all sympathy. She would have
been immediately admitted.”

“I did not know it, monsieur l’Abbe.”

“Then how did you manage?”

“Why, Monsieur l’Abbe, I went to take a ticket at a place which one of my
neighbours, who reads the newspapers, told me about.”

She was referring to the tickets, at greatly reduced rates, which were
issued to the pilgrims possessed of means. And Marie, listening to her,
felt great pity for her, and also some shame; for she who was not
entirely destitute of resources had succeeded in obtaining
_hospitalisation_, thanks to Pierre, whereas that mother and her sorry
child, after exhausting their scanty savings, remained without a copper.

However, a more violent jolt of the carriage drew a cry of pain from the
girl. “Oh, father,” she said, “pray raise me a little! I can’t stay on my
back any longer.”

When M. de Guersaint had helped her into a sitting posture, she gave a
deep sigh of relief. They were now at Etampes, after a run of an hour and
a half from Paris, and what with the increased warmth of the sun, the
dust, and the noise, weariness was becoming apparent already. Madame de
Jonquiere had got up to speak a few words of kindly encouragement to
Marie over the partition; and Sister Hyacinthe moreover again rose, and
gaily clapped her hands that she might be heard and obeyed from one to
the other end of the carriage.

“Come, come!” said she, “we mustn’t think of our little troubles. Let us
pray and sing, and the Blessed Virgin will be with us.”

She herself then began the rosary according to the rite of Our Lady of
Lourdes, and all the patients and pilgrims followed her. This was the
first chaplet--the five joyful mysteries, the Annunciation, the
Visitation, the Nativity, the Purification, and Jesus found in the
Temple. Then they all began to chant the canticle: “Let us contemplate
the heavenly Archangel!” Their voices were lost amid the loud rumbling of
the wheels; you heard but the muffled surging of that human wave,
stifling within the closed carriage which rolled on and on without a
pause.

Although M. de Guersaint was a worshipper, he could never follow a hymn
to the end. He got up, sat down again, and finished by resting his elbow
on the partition and conversing in an undertone with a patient who sat
against this same partition in the next compartment. The patient in
question was a thick-set man of fifty, with a good-natured face and a
large head, completely bald. His name was Sabathier, and for fifteen
years he had been stricken with ataxia. He only suffered pain by fits and
starts, but he had quite lost the use of his legs, which his wife, who
accompanied him, moved for him as though they had been dead legs,
whenever they became too heavy, weighty like bars of lead.

“Yes, monsieur,” he said, “such as you see me, I was formerly fifth-class
professor at the Lycee Charlemagne. At first I thought that it was mere
sciatica, but afterwards I was seized with sharp, lightning-like pains,
red-hot sword thrusts, you know, in the muscles. For nearly ten years the
disease kept on mastering me more and more. I consulted all the doctors,
tried every imaginable mineral spring, and now I suffer less, but I can
no longer move from my seat. And then, after long living without a
thought of religion, I was led back to God by the idea that I was too
wretched, and that Our Lady of Lourdes could not do otherwise than take
pity on me.”

Feeling interested, Pierre in his turn had leant over the partition and
was listening.

“Is it not so, Monsieur l’Abbe?” continued M. Sabathier. “Is not
suffering the best awakener of souls? This is the seventh year that I am
going to Lourdes without despairing of cure. This year the Blessed Virgin
will cure me, I feel sure of it. Yes, I expect to be able to walk about
again; I now live solely in that hope.”

M. Sabathier paused, he wished his wife to push his legs a little more to
the left; and Pierre looked at him, astonished to find such obstinate
faith in a man of intellect, in one of those university professors who,
as a rule, are such Voltairians. How could the belief in miracles have
germinated and taken root in this man’s brain? As he himself said, great
suffering alone explained this need of illusion, this blossoming of
eternal and consolatory hope.

“And my wife and I,” resumed the ex-professor, “are dressed, you see, as
poor folks, for I wished to go as a mere pauper this year, and applied
for _hospitalisation_ in a spirit of humility in order that the Blessed
Virgin might include me among the wretched, her children--only, as I did
not wish to take the place of a real pauper, I gave fifty francs to the
Hospitalite, and this, as you are aware, gives one the right to have a
patient of one’s own in the pilgrimage. I even know my patient. He was
introduced to me at the railway station. He is suffering from
tuberculosis, it appears, and seemed to me very low, very low.”

A fresh interval of silence ensued. “Well,” said M. Sabathier at last,
“may the Blessed Virgin save him also, she who can do everything. I shall
be so happy; she will have loaded me with favours.”

Then the three men, isolating themselves from the others, went on
conversing together, at first on medical subjects, and at last diverging
into a discussion on romanesque architecture, _a propos_ of a steeple
which they had perceived on a hillside, and which every pilgrim had
saluted with a sign of the cross. Swayed once more by the habits of
cultivated intellect, the young priest and his two companions forgot
themselves together in the midst of their fellow-passengers, all those
poor, suffering, simple-minded folk, whom wretchedness stupefied. Another
hour went by, two more canticles had just been sung, and the stations of
Toury and Les Aubrais had been left behind, when, at Beaugency, they at
last ceased their chat, on hearing Sister Hyacinthe clap her hands and
intonate in her fresh, sonorous voice:

“_Parce, Domine, parce populo tuo_.”

And then the chant went on; all voices became mingled in that
ever-surging wave of prayer which stilled pain, excited hope, and little
by little penetrated the entire being, harassed by the haunting thought
of the grace and cure which one and all were going to seek so far away.

However, as Pierre sat down again, he saw that Marie was very pale, and
had her eyes closed. By the painful contraction of her features he could
tell that she was not asleep. “Are you in great suffering?” he asked.

“Yes, yes, I suffer dreadfully. I shall never last to the end. It is this
incessant jolting.”

She moaned, raised her eyelids, and, half-fainting, remained in a sitting
posture, her eyes turned on the other sufferers. In the adjoining
compartment, La Grivotte, hitherto stretched out, scarce breathing, like
a corpse, had just raised herself up in front of M. Sabathier. She was a
tall, slip-shod, singular-looking creature of over thirty, with a round,
ravaged face, which her frizzy hair and flaming eyes rendered almost
pretty. She had reached the third stage of phthisis.

“Eh, mademoiselle,” she said, addressing herself in a hoarse, indistinct
voice to Marie, “how nice it would be if we could only doze off a little.
But it can’t be managed; all these wheels keep on whirling round and
round in one’s head.”

Then, although it fatigued her to speak, she obstinately went on talking,
volunteering particulars about herself. She was a mattress-maker, and
with one of her aunts had long gone from yard to yard at Bercy to comb
and sew up mattresses. And, indeed, it was to the pestilential wool which
she had combed in her youth that she ascribed her malady. For five years
she had been making the round of the hospitals of Paris, and she spoke
familiarly of all the great doctors. It was the Sisters of Charity, at
the Lariboisiere hospital, who, finding that she had a passion for
religious ceremonies, had completed her conversion, and convinced her
that the Virgin awaited her at Lourdes to cure her.

“I certainly need it,” said she. “The doctors say that I have one lung
done for, and that the other one is scarcely any better. There are great
big holes you know. At first I only felt bad between the shoulders and
spat up some froth. But then I got thin, and became a dreadful sight. And
now I’m always in a sweat, and cough till I think I’m going to bring my
heart up. And I can no longer spit. And I haven’t the strength to stand,
you see. I can’t eat.”

A stifling sensation made her pause, and she became livid.

“All the same I prefer being in my skin instead of in that of the Brother
in the compartment behind you. He has the same complaint as I have, but
he is in a worse state that I am.”

She was mistaken. In the farther compartment, beyond Marie, there was
indeed a young missionary, Brother Isidore, who was lying on a mattress
and could not be seen, since he was unable to raise even a finger. But he
was not suffering from phthisis. He was dying of inflammation of the
liver, contracted in Senegal. Very long and lank, he had a yellow face,
with skin as dry and lifeless as parchment. The abscess which had formed
in his liver had ended by breaking out externally, and amidst the
continuous shivering of fever, vomiting, and delirium, suppuration was
exhausting him. His eyes alone were still alive, eyes full of
unextinguishable love, whose flame lighted up his expiring face, a
peasant face such as painters have given to the crucified Christ, common,
but rendered sublime at moments by its expression of faith and passion.
He was a Breton, the last puny child of an over-numerous family, and had
left his little share of land to his elder brothers. One of his sisters,
Marthe, older than himself by a couple of years, accompanied him. She had
been in service in Paris, an insignificant maid-of-all-work, but withal
so devoted to her brother that she had left her situation to follow him,
subsisting scantily on her petty savings.

“I was lying on the platform,” resumed La Grivotte, “when he was put in
the carriage. There were four men carrying him--”

But she was unable to speak any further, for just then an attack of
coughing shook her and threw her back upon the seat. She was suffocating,
and the red flush on her cheek-bones turned blue. Sister Hyacinthe,
however, immediately raised her head and wiped her lips with a linen
cloth, which became spotted with blood. At the same time Madame de
Jonquiere gave her attention to a patient in front of her, who had just
fainted. She was called Madame Vetu, and was the wife of a petty
clockmaker of the Mouffetard district, who had not been able to shut up
his shop in order to accompany her to Lourdes. And to make sure that she
would be cared for she had sought and obtained _hospitalisation_. The
fear of death was bringing her back to religion, although she had not set
foot in church since her first communion. She knew that she was lost,
that a cancer in the chest was eating into her; and she already had the
haggard, orange-hued mark of the cancerous patient. Since the beginning
of the journey she had not spoken a word, but, suffering terribly, had
remained with her lips tightly closed. Then all at once, she had swooned
away after an attack of vomiting.

“It is unbearable!” murmured Madame de Jonquiere, who herself felt faint;
“we must let in a little fresh air.”

Sister Hyacinthe was just then laying La Grivotte to rest on her pillows,
“Certainly,” said she, “we will open the window for a few moments. But
not on this side, for I am afraid we might have a fresh fit of coughing.
Open the window on your side, madame.”

The heat was still increasing, and the occupants of the carriage were
stifling in that heavy evil-smelling atmosphere. The pure air which came
in when the window was opened brought relief however. For a moment there
were other duties to be attended to, a clearance and cleansing. The
Sister emptied the basins out of the window, whilst the lady-hospitaller
wiped the shaking floor with a sponge. Next, things had to be set in
order; and then came a fresh anxiety, for the fourth patient, a slender
girl whose face was entirely covered by a black fichu, and who had not
yet moved, was saying that she felt hungry.

With quiet devotion Madame de Jonquiere immediately tendered her
services. “Don’t you trouble, Sister,” she said, “I will cut her bread
into little bits for her.”

Marie, with the need she felt of diverting her mind from her own
sufferings, had already begun to take an interest in that motionless
sufferer whose countenance was so thickly veiled, for she not unnaturally
suspected that it was a case of some distressing facial sore. She had
merely been told that the patient was a servant, which was true, but it
happened that the poor creature, a native of Picardy, named Elise
Rouquet, had been obliged to leave her situation, and seek a home with a
sister who ill-treated her, for no hospital would take her in. Extremely
devout, she had for many months been possessed by an ardent desire to go
to Lourdes.

While Marie, with dread in her heart, waited for the fichu to be moved
aside, Madame de Jonquiere, having cut some bread into small pieces,
inquired maternally: “Are they small enough? Can you put them into your
mouth?”

Thereupon a hoarse voice growled confused words under the black fichu:
“Yes, yes, madame.” And at last the veil fell and Marie shuddered with
horror.

It was a case of lupus which had preyed upon the unhappy woman’s nose and
mouth. Ulceration had spread, and was hourly spreading--in short, all the
hideous peculiarities of this terrible disease were in full process of
development, almost obliterating the traces of what once were pleasing
womanly lineaments.

“Oh, look, Pierre!” Marie murmured, trembling. The priest in his turn
shuddered as he beheld Elise Rouquet cautiously slipping the tiny pieces
of bread into her poor shapeless mouth. Everyone in the carriage had
turned pale at sight of the awful apparition. And the same thought
ascended from all those hope-inflated souls. Ah! Blessed Virgin, Powerful
Virgin, what a miracle indeed if such an ill were cured!

“We must not think of ourselves, my children, if we wish to get well,”
 resumed Sister Hyacinthe, who still retained her encouraging smile.

And then she made them say the second chaplet, the five sorrowful
mysteries: Jesus in the Garden of Olives, Jesus scourged, Jesus crowned
with thorns, Jesus carrying the cross, and Jesus crucified. Afterwards
came the canticle: “In thy help, Virgin, do I put my trust.”

They had just passed through Blois; for three long hours they had been
rolling onward; and Marie, who had averted her eyes from Elise Rouquet,
now turned them upon a man who occupied a corner seat in the compartment
on her left, that in which Brother Isidore was lying. She had noticed
this man several times already. Poorly clad in an old black frock-coat,
he looked still young, although his sparse beard was already turning
grey; and, short and emaciated, he seemed to experience great suffering,
his fleshless, livid face being covered with sweat. However, he remained
motionless, ensconced in his corner, speaking to nobody, but staring
straight before him with dilated eyes. And all at once Marie noticed that
his eyelids were falling, and that he was fainting away.

She thereupon drew Sister’s Hyacinthe’s attention to him: “Look, Sister!
One would think that that gentleman is dangerously ill.”

“Which one, my dear child?”

“That one, over there, with his head thrown back.”

General excitement followed, all the healthy pilgrims rose up to look,
and it occurred to Madame de Jonquiere to call to Marthe, Brother
Isidore’s sister, and tell her to tap the man’s hands.

“Question him,” she added; “ask what ails him.”

Marthe drew near, shook the man, and questioned him.

But instead of an answer only a rattle came from his throat, and his eyes
remained closed.

Then a frightened voice was heard saying, “I think he is going to die.”

The dread increased, words flew about, advice was tendered from one to
the other end of the carriage. Nobody knew the man. He had certainly not
obtained _hospitalisation_, for no white card was hanging from his neck.
Somebody related, however, that he had seen him arrive, dragging himself
along, but three minutes or so before the train started; and that he had
remained quite motionless, scarce breathing, ever since he had flung
himself with an air of intense weariness into that corner, where he was
now apparently dying. His ticket was at last seen protruding from under
the band of an old silk hat which was hung from a peg near him.

“Ah, he is breathing again now!” Sister Hyacinthe suddenly exclaimed.
“Ask him his name.”

However, on being again questioned by Marthe, the man merely gave vent to
a low plaint, an exclamation scarcely articulated, “Oh, how I suffer!”

And thenceforward that was the only answer that could be obtained from
him. With reference to everything that they wished to know, who he was,
whence he came, what his illness was, what could be done for him, he gave
no information, but still and ever continued moaning, “Oh, how I
suffer--how I suffer!”

Sister Hyacinthe grew restless with impatience. Ah, if she had only been
in the same compartment with him! And she resolved that she would change
her seat at the first station they should stop at. Only there would be no
stoppage for a long time. The position was becoming terrible, the more so
as the man’s head again fell back.

“He is dying, he is dying!” repeated the frightened voice.

What was to be done, _mon Dieu_? The Sister was aware that one of the
Fathers of the Assumption, Father Massias, was in the train with the Holy
Oils, ready to administer extreme unction to the dying; for every year
some of the patients passed away during the journey. But she did not dare
to have recourse to the alarm signal. Moreover, in the _cantine_ van
where Sister Saint Francois officiated, there was a doctor with a little
medicine chest. If the sufferer should survive until they reached
Poitiers, where there would be half an hour’s stoppage, all possible help
might be given to him.

But on the other hand he might suddenly expire. However, they ended by
becoming somewhat calmer. The man, though still unconscious, began to
breathe in a more regular manner, and seemed to fall asleep.

“To think of it, to die before getting there,” murmured Marie with a
shudder, “to die in sight of the promised land!” And as her father sought
to reassure her she added: “I am suffering--I am suffering dreadfully
myself.”

“Have confidence,” said Pierre; “the Blessed Virgin is watching over
you.”

She could no longer remain seated, and it became necessary to replace her
in a recumbent position in her narrow coffin. Her father and the priest
had to take every precaution in doing so, for the slightest hurt drew a
moan from her. And she lay there breathless, like one dead, her face
contracted by suffering, and surrounded by her regal fair hair. They had
now been rolling on, ever rolling on for nearly four hours. And if the
carriage was so greatly shaken, with an unbearable spreading tendency, it
was from its position at the rear part of the train. The coupling irons
shrieked, the wheels growled furiously; and as it was necessary to leave
the windows partially open, the dust came in, acrid and burning; but it
was especially the heat which grew terrible, a devouring, stormy heat
falling from a tawny sky which large hanging clouds had slowly covered.
The hot carriages, those rolling boxes where the pilgrims ate and drank,
where the sick lay in a vitiated atmosphere, amid dizzying moans,
prayers, and hymns, became like so many furnaces.

And Marie was not the only one whose condition had been aggravated;
others also were suffering from the journey. Resting in the lap of her
despairing mother, who gazed at her with large, tear-blurred eyes, little
Rose had ceased to stir, and had grown so pale that Madame Maze had twice
leant forward to feel her hands, fearful lest she should find them cold.
At each moment also Madame Sabathier had to move her husband’s legs, for
their weight was so great, said he, that it seemed as if his hips were
being torn from him. Brother Isidore too had just begun to cry out,
emerging from his wonted torpor; and his sister had only been able to
assuage his sufferings by raising him, and clasping him in her arms. La
Grivotte seemed to be asleep, but a continuous hiccoughing shook her, and
a tiny streamlet of blood dribbled from her mouth. Madame Vetu had again
vomited, Elise Rouquet no longer thought of hiding the frightful sore
open on her face. And from the man yonder, breathing hard, there still
came a lugubrious rattle, as though he were at every moment on the point
of expiring. In vain did Madame de Jonquiere and Sister Hyacinthe lavish
their attentions on the patients, they could but slightly assuage so much
suffering. At times it all seemed like an evil dream--that carriage of
wretchedness and pain, hurried along at express speed, with a continuous
shaking and jolting which made everything hanging from the pegs--the old
clothes, the worn-out baskets mended with bits of string--swing to and
fro incessantly. And in the compartment at the far end, the ten female
pilgrims, some old, some young, and all pitifully ugly, sang on without a
pause in cracked voices, shrill and dreary.

Then Pierre began to think of the other carriages of the train, that
white train which conveyed most, if not all, of the more seriously
afflicted patients; these carriages were rolling along, all displaying
similar scenes of suffering among the three hundred sick and five hundred
healthy pilgrims crowded within them. And afterwards he thought of the
other trains which were leaving Paris that day, the grey train and the
blue train* which had preceded the white one, the green train, the yellow
train, the pink train, the orange train which were following it. From
hour to hour trains set out from one to the other end of France. And he
thought, too, of those which that same morning had started from Orleans,
Le Mans, Poitiers, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Carcassonne. Coming from all
parts, trains were rushing across that land of France at the same hour,
all directing their course yonder towards the holy Grotto, bringing
thirty thousand patients and pilgrims to the Virgin’s feet. And he
reflected that other days of the year witnessed a like rush of human
beings, that not a week went by without Lourdes beholding the arrival of
some pilgrimage; that it was not merely France which set out on the
march, but all Europe, the whole world; that in certain years of great
religious fervour there had been three hundred thousand, and even five
hundred thousand, pilgrims and patients streaming to the spot.

  * Different-coloured tickets are issued for these trains; it is for
    this reason that they are called the white, blue, and grey trains,
    etc.--Trans.

Pierre fancied that he could hear those flying trains, those trains from
everywhere, all converging towards the same rocky cavity where the tapers
were blazing. They all rumbled loudly amid the cries of pain and snatches
of hymns wafted from their carriages. They were the rolling hospitals of
disease at its last stage, of human suffering rushing to the hope of
cure, furiously seeking consolation between attacks of increased
severity, with the ever-present threat of death--death hastened,
supervening under awful conditions, amidst the mob-like scramble. They
rolled on, they rolled on again and again, they rolled on without a
pause, carrying the wretchedness of the world on its way to the divine
illusion, the health of the infirm, the consolation of the afflicted.

And immense pity overflowed from Pierre’s heart, human compassion for all
the suffering and all the tears that consumed weak and naked men. He was
sad unto death and ardent charity burnt within him, the unextinguishable
flame as it were of his fraternal feelings towards all things and beings.

When they left the station of Saint Pierre des Corps at half-past ten,
Sister Hyacinthe gave the signal, and they recited the third chaplet, the
five glorious mysteries, the Resurrection of Our Lord, the Ascension of
Our Lord, the Mission of the Holy Ghost, the Assumption of the Most
Blessed Virgin, the Crowning of the Most Blessed Virgin. And afterwards
they sang the canticle of Bernadette, that long, long chant, composed of
six times ten couplets, to which the ever recurring Angelic Salutation
serves as a refrain--a prolonged lullaby slowly besetting one until it
ends by penetrating one’s entire being, transporting one into ecstatic
sleep, in delicious expectancy of a miracle.




II. PIERRE AND MARIE

THE green landscapes of Poitou were now defiling before them, and Abbe
Pierre Froment, gazing out of the window, watched the trees fly away
till, little by little, he ceased to distinguish them. A steeple appeared
and then vanished, and all the pilgrims crossed themselves. They would
not reach Poitiers until twelve-thirty-five, and the train was still
rolling on amid the growing weariness of that oppressive, stormy day.
Falling into a deep reverie, the young priest no longer heard the words
of the canticle, which sounded in his ears merely like a slow, wavy
lullaby.

Forgetfulness of the present had come upon him, an awakening of the past
filled his whole being. He was reascending the stream of memory,
reascending it to its source. He again beheld the house at Neuilly, where
he had been born and where he still lived, that home of peace and toil,
with its garden planted with a few fine trees, and parted by a quickset
hedge and palisade from the garden of the neighbouring house, which was
similar to his own. He was again three, perhaps four, years old, and
round a table, shaded by the big horse-chestnut tree he once more beheld
his father, his mother, and his elder brother at _dejeuner_. To his
father, Michel Froment, he could give no distinct lineaments; he pictured
him but faintly, vaguely, renowned as an illustrious chemist, bearing the
title of Member of the Institute, and leading a cloistered life in the
laboratory which he had installed in that secluded, deserted suburb.
However he could plainly see his first brother Guillaume, then fourteen
years of age, whom some holiday had brought from college that morning,
and then and even more vividly his mother, so gentle and so quiet, with
eyes so full of active kindliness. Later on he learnt what anguish had
racked that religious soul, that believing woman who, from esteem and
gratitude, had resignedly accepted marriage with an unbeliever, her
senior by fifteen years, to whom her relatives were indebted for great
services. He, Pierre, the tardy offspring of this union, born when his
father was already near his fiftieth year, had only known his mother as a
respectful, conquered woman in the presence of her husband, whom she had
learnt to love passionately, with the frightful torment of knowing,
however, that he was doomed to perdition. And, all at once, another
memory flashed upon the young priest, the terrible memory of the day when
his father had died, killed in his laboratory by an accident, the
explosion of a retort. He, Pierre, had then been five years old, and he
remembered the slightest incidents--his mother’s cry when she had found
the shattered body among the remnants of the chemical appliances, then
her terror, her sobs, her prayers at the idea that God had slain the
unbeliever, damned him for evermore. Not daring to burn his books and
papers, she had contented herself with locking up the laboratory, which
henceforth nobody entered. And from that moment, haunted by a vision of
hell, she had had but one idea, to possess herself of her second son, who
was still so young, to give him a strictly religious training, and
through him to ransom her husband--secure his forgiveness from God.
Guillaume, her elder boy, had already ceased to belong to her, having
grown up at college, where he had been won over by the ideas of the
century; but she resolved that the other, the younger one, should not
leave the house, but should have a priest as tutor; and her secret dream,
her consuming hope, was that she might some day see him a priest himself,
saying his first mass and solacing souls whom the thought of eternity
tortured.

Then between green, leafy boughs, flecked with sunlight, another figure
rose vividly before Pierre’s eyes. He suddenly beheld Marie de Guersaint
as he had seen her one morning through a gap in the hedge dividing the
two gardens. M. de Guersaint, who belonged to the petty Norman
_noblesse_, was a combination of architect and inventor; and he was at
that time busy with a scheme of model dwellings for the poor, to which
churches and schools were to be attached; an affair of considerable
magnitude, planned none too well, however, and in which, with his
customary impetuosity, the lack of foresight of an imperfect artist, he
was risking the three hundred thousand francs that he possessed. A
similarity of religious faith had drawn Madame de Guersaint and Madame
Froment together; but the former was altogether a superior woman,
perspicuous and rigid, with an iron hand which alone prevented her
household from gliding to a catastrophe; and she was bringing up her two
daughters, Blanche and Marie, in principles of narrow piety, the elder
one already being as grave as herself, whilst the younger, albeit very
devout, was still fond of play, with an intensity of life within her
which found vent in gay peals of sonorous laughter. From their early
childhood Pierre and Marie played together, the hedge was ever being
crossed, the two families constantly mingled. And on that clear sunshiny
morning, when he pictured her parting the leafy branches she was already
ten years old. He, who was sixteen, was to enter the seminary on the
following Tuesday. Never had she seemed to him so pretty. Her hair, of a
pure golden hue, was so long that when it was let down it sufficed to
clothe her. Well did he remember her face as it had been, with round
cheeks, blue eyes, red mouth, and skin of dazzling, snowy whiteness. She
was indeed as gay and brilliant as the sun itself, a transplendency. Yet
there were tears at the corners of her eyes, for she was aware of his
coming departure. They sat down together at the far end of the garden, in
the shadow cast by the hedge. Their hands mingled, and their hearts were
very heavy. They had, however, never exchanged any vows amid their
pastimes, for their innocence was absolute. But now, on the eve of
separation, their mutual tenderness rose to their lips, and they spoke
without knowing, swore that they would ever think of one another, and
find one another again, some day, even as one meets in heaven to be very,
very happy. Then, without understanding how it happened, they clasped
each other tightly, to the point of suffocation, and kissed each other’s
face, weeping, the while, hot tears. And it was that delightful memory
which Pierre had ever carried with him, which he felt alive within him
still, after so many years, and after so many painful renunciations.

Just then a more violent shock roused him from his reverie. He turned his
eyes upon the carriage and vaguely espied the suffering beings it
contained--Madame Maze motionless, overwhelmed with grief; little Rose
gently moaning in her mother’s lap; La Grivotte, whom a hoarse cough was
choking. For a moment Sister Hyacinthe’s gay face shone out amidst the
whiteness of her coif and wimple, dominating all the others. The painful
journey was continuing, with a ray of divine hope still and ever shining
yonder. Then everything slowly vanished from Pierre’s eyes as a fresh
wave of memory brought the past back from afar; and nothing of the
present remained save the lulling hymn, the indistinct voices of
dreamland, emerging from the invisible.

Henceforth he was at the seminary. The classrooms, the recreation ground
with its trees, rose up clearly before him. But all at once he only
beheld, as in a mirror, the youthful face which had then been his, and he
contemplated it and scrutinised it, as though it had been the face of a
stranger. Tall and slender, he had an elongated visage, with an unusually
developed forehead, lofty and straight like a tower; whilst his jaws
tapered, ending in a small refined chin. He seemed, in fact, to be all
brains; his mouth, rather large, alone retained an expression of
tenderness. Indeed, when his usually serious face relaxed, his mouth and
eyes acquired an exceedingly soft expression, betokening an unsatisfied,
hungry desire to love, devote oneself, and live. But immediately
afterwards, the look of intellectual passion would come back again, that
intellectuality which had ever consumed him with an anxiety to understand
and know. And it was with surprise that he now recalled those years of
seminary life. How was it that he had so long been able to accept the
rude discipline of blind faith, of obedient belief in everything without
the slightest examination? It had been required of him that he should
absolutely surrender his reasoning faculties, and he had striven to do
so, had succeeded indeed in stifling his torturing need of truth.
Doubtless he had been softened, weakened by his mother’s tears, had been
possessed by the sole desire to afford her the great happiness she dreamt
of. Yet now he remembered certain quiverings of revolt; he found in the
depths of his mind the memory of nights which he had spent in weeping
without knowing why, nights peopled with vague images, nights through
which galloped the free, virile life of the world, when Marie’s face
incessantly returned to him, such as he had seen it one morning, dazzling
and bathed in tears, while she embraced him with her whole soul. And that
alone now remained; his years of religious study with their monotonous
lessons, their ever similar exercises and ceremonies, had flown away into
the same haze, into a vague half-light, full of mortal silence.

Then, just as the train had passed though a station at full speed, with
the sudden uproar of its rush there arose within him a succession of
confused visions. He had noticed a large deserted enclosure, and fancied
that he could see himself within it at twenty years of age. His reverie
was wandering. An indisposition of rather long duration had, however, at
one time interrupted his studies, and led to his being sent into the
country. He had remained for a long time without seeing Marie; during his
vacations spent at Neuilly he had twice failed to meet her, for she was
almost always travelling. He knew that she was very ill, in consequence
of a fall from a horse when she was thirteen, a critical moment in a
girl’s life; and her despairing mother, perplexed by the contradictory
advice of medical men, was taking her each year to a different
watering-place. Then he learnt the startling news of the sudden tragical
death of that mother, who was so severe and yet so useful to her kin. She
had been carried off in five days by inflammation of the lungs, which she
had contracted one evening whilst she was out walking at La Bourboule,
through having taken off her mantle to place it round the shoulders of
Marie, who had been conveyed thither for treatment. It had been necessary
that the father should at once start off to fetch his daughter, who was
mad with grief, and the corpse of his wife, who had been so suddenly torn
from him. And unhappily, after losing her, the affairs of the family went
from bad to worse in the hands of this architect, who, without counting,
flung his fortune into the yawning gulf of his unsuccessful enterprises.
Marie no longer stirred from her couch; only Blanche remained to manage
the household, and she had matters of her own to attend to, being busy
with the last examinations which she had to pass, the diplomas which she
was obstinately intent on securing, foreseeing as she did that she would
someday have to earn her bread.

All at once, from amidst this mass of confused, half-forgotten incidents,
Pierre was conscious of the rise of a vivid vision. Ill-health, he
remembered, had again compelled him to take a holiday. He had just
completed his twenty-fourth year, he was greatly behindhand, having so
far only secured the four minor orders; but on his return a
sub-deaconship would be conferred on him, and an inviolable vow would
bind him for evermore. And the Guersaints’ little garden at Neuilly,
whither he had formerly so often gone to play, again distinctly appeared
before him. Marie’s couch had been rolled under the tall trees at the far
end of the garden near the hedge, they were alone together in the sad
peacefulness of an autumnal afternoon, and he saw Marie, clad in deep
mourning for her mother and reclining there with legs inert; whilst he,
also clad in black, in a cassock already, sat near her on an iron garden
chair. For five years she had been suffering. She was now eighteen, paler
and thinner than formerly, but still adorable with her regal golden hair,
which illness respected. He believed from what he had heard that she was
destined to remain infirm, condemned never to become a woman, stricken
even in her sex. The doctors, who failed to agree respecting her case,
had abandoned her. Doubtless it was she who told him these things that
dreary afternoon, whilst the yellow withered leaves rained upon them.
However, he could not remember the words that they had spoken; her pale
smile, her young face, still so charming though already dimmed by
regretfulness for life, alone remained present with him. But he realised
that she had evoked the far-off day of their parting, on that same spot,
behind the hedge flecked with sunlight; and all that was already as
though dead--their tears, their embrace, their promise to find one
another some day with a certainty of happiness. For although they had
found one another again, what availed it, since she was but a corpse, and
he was about to bid farewell to the life of the world? As the doctors
condemned her, as she would never be woman, nor wife, nor mother, he, on
his side, might well renounce manhood, and annihilate himself, dedicate
himself to God, to whom his mother gave him. And he still felt within him
the soft bitterness of that last interview: Marie smiling painfully at
memory of their childish play and prattle, and speaking to him of the
happiness which he would assuredly find in the service of God; so
penetrated indeed with emotion at this thought, that she had made him
promise that he would let her hear him say his first mass.

But the train was passing the station of Sainte-Maure, and just then a
sudden uproar momentarily brought Pierre’s attention back to the carriage
and its occupants. He fancied that there had been some fresh seizure or
swooning, but the suffering faces that he beheld were still the same,
ever contracted by the same expression of anxious waiting for the divine
succour which was so slow in coming. M. Sabathier was vainly striving to
get his legs into a comfortable position, whilst Brother Isidore raised a
feeble continuous moan like a dying child, and Madame Vetu, a prey to
terrible agony, devoured by her disease, sat motionless, and kept her
lips tightly closed, her face distorted, haggard, and almost black. The
noise which Pierre had heard had been occasioned by Madame de Jonquiere,
who whilst cleansing a basin had dropped the large zinc water-can. And,
despite their torment, this had made the patients laugh, like the simple
souls they were, rendered puerile by suffering. However, Sister
Hyacinthe, who rightly called them her children, children whom she
governed with a word, at once set them saying the chaplet again, pending
the Angelus, which would only be said at Chatellerault, in accordance
with the predetermined programme. And thereupon the “Aves” followed one
after the other, spreading into a confused murmuring and mumbling amidst
the rattling of the coupling irons and noisy growling of the wheels.

Pierre had meantime relapsed into his reverie, and beheld himself as he
had been at six-and-twenty, when ordained a priest. Tardy scruples had
come to him a few days before his ordination, a semi-consciousness that
he was binding himself without having clearly questioned his heart and
mind. But he had avoided doing so, living in the dizzy bewilderment of
his decision, fancying that he had lopped off all human ties and feelings
with a voluntary hatchet-stroke. His flesh had surely died with his
childhood’s innocent romance, that white-skinned girl with golden hair,
whom now he never beheld otherwise than stretched upon her couch of
suffering, her flesh as lifeless as his own. And he had afterwards made
the sacrifice of his mind, which he then fancied even an easier one,
hoping as he did that determination would suffice to prevent him from
thinking. Besides, it was too late, he could not recoil at the last
moment, and if when he pronounced the last solemn vow he felt a secret
terror, an indeterminate but immense regret agitating him, he forgot
everything, saving a divine reward for his efforts on the day when he
afforded his mother the great and long-expected joy of hearing him say
his first mass.

He could still see the poor woman in the little church of Neuilly, which
she herself had selected, the church where the funeral service for his
father had been celebrated; he saw her on that cold November morning,
kneeling almost alone in the dark little chapel, her hands hiding her
face as she continued weeping whilst he raised the Host. It was there
that she had tasted her last happiness, for she led a sad and lonely
life, no longer seeing her elder son, who had gone away, swayed by other
ideas than her own, bent on breaking off all family intercourse since his
brother intended to enter the Church. It was said that Guillaume, a
chemist of great talent, like his father, but at the same time a
Bohemian, addicted to revolutionary dreams, was living in a little house
in the suburbs, where he devoted himself to the dangerous study of
explosive substances; and folks added that he was living with a woman who
had come no one knew whence. This it was which had severed the last tie
between himself and his mother, all piety and propriety. For three years
Pierre had not once seen Guillaume, whom in his childhood he had
worshipped as a kind, merry, and fatherly big brother.

But there came an awful pang to his heart--he once more beheld his mother
lying dead. This again was a thunderbolt, an illness of scarce three
days’ duration, a sudden passing away, as in the case of Madame de
Guersaint. One evening, after a wild hunt for the doctor, he had found
her motionless and quite white. She had died during his absence; and his
lips had ever retained the icy thrill of the last kiss that he had given
her. Of everything else--the vigil, the preparations, the funeral--he
remembered nothing. All that had become lost in the black night of his
stupor and grief, grief so extreme that he had almost died of it--seized
with shivering on his return from the cemetery, struck down by a fever
which during three weeks had kept him delirious, hovering between life
and death. His brother had come and nursed him and had then attended to
pecuniary matters, dividing the little inheritance, leaving him the house
and a modest income and taking his own share in money. And as soon as
Guillaume had found him out of danger he had gone off again, once more
vanishing into the unknown. But then through what a long convalescence
he, Pierre, had passed, buried as it were in that deserted house. He had
done nothing to detain Guillaume, for he realised that there was an abyss
between them. At first the solitude had brought him suffering, but
afterwards it had grown very pleasant, whether in the deep silence of the
rooms which the rare noises of the street did not disturb, or under the
screening, shady foliage of the little garden, where he could spend whole
days without seeing a soul. His favourite place of refuge, however, was
the old laboratory, his father’s cabinet, which his mother for twenty
years had kept carefully locked up, as though to immure within it all the
incredulity and damnation of the past. And despite the gentleness, the
respectful submissiveness which she had shown in former times, she would
perhaps have some day ended by destroying all her husband’s books and
papers, had not death so suddenly surprised her. Pierre, however, had
once more had the windows opened, the writing-table and the bookcase
dusted; and, installed in the large leather arm-chair, he now spent
delicious hours there, regenerated as it were by his illness, brought
back to his youthful days again, deriving a wondrous intellectual delight
from the perusal of the books which he came upon.

The only person whom he remembered having received during those two
months of slow recovery was Doctor Chassaigne, an old friend of his
father, a medical man of real merit, who, with the one ambition of curing
disease, modestly confined himself to the _role_ of the practitioner. It
was in vain that the doctor had sought to save Madame Froment, but he
flattered himself that he had extricated the young priest from grievous
danger; and he came to see him from time to time, to chat with him and
cheer him, talking with him of his father, the great chemist, of whom he
recounted many a charming anecdote, many a particular, still glowing with
the flame of ardent friendship. Little by little, amidst the weak languor
of convalescence, the son had thus beheld an embodiment of charming
simplicity, affection, and good nature rising up before him. It was his
father such as he had really been, not the man of stern science whom he
had pictured whilst listening to his mother. Certainly she had never
taught him aught but respect for that dear memory; but had not her
husband been the unbeliever, the man who denied, and made the angels
weep, the artisan of impiety who sought to change the world that God had
made? And so he had long remained a gloomy vision, a spectre of damnation
prowling about the house, whereas now he became the house’s very light,
clear and gay, a worker consumed by a longing for truth, who had never
desired anything but the love and happiness of all. For his part, Doctor
Chassaigne, a Pyrenean by birth, born in a far-off secluded village where
folks still believed in sorceresses, inclined rather towards religion,
although he had not set his foot inside a church during the forty years
he had been living in Paris. However, his conviction was absolute: if
there were a heaven somewhere, Michel Froment was assuredly there, and
not merely there, but seated upon a throne on the Divinity’s right hand.

Then Pierre, in a few minutes, again lived through the frightful torment
which, during two long months, had ravaged him. It was not that he had
found controversial works of an anti-religious character in the bookcase,
or that his father, whose papers he sorted, had ever gone beyond his
technical studies as a _savant_. But little by little, despite himself,
the light of science dawned upon him, an _ensemble_ of proven phenomena,
which demolished dogmas and left within him nothing of the things which
as a priest he should have believed. It seemed, in fact, as though
illness had renewed him, as though he were again beginning to live and
learn amidst the physical pleasantness of convalescence, that still
subsisting weakness which lent penetrating lucidity to his brain. At the
seminary, by the advice of his masters, he had always kept the spirit of
inquiry, his thirst for knowledge, in check. Much of that which was
taught him there had surprised him; however, he had succeeded in making
the sacrifice of his mind required of his piety. But now, all the
laboriously raised scaffolding of dogmas was swept away in a revolt of
that sovereign mind which clamoured for its rights, and which he could no
longer silence. Truth was bubbling up and overflowing in such an
irresistible stream that he realised he would never succeed in lodging
error in his brain again. It was indeed the total and irreparable ruin of
faith. Although he had been able to kill his flesh by renouncing the
romance of his youth, although he felt that he had altogether mastered
carnal passion, he now knew that it would be impossible for him to make
the sacrifice of his intelligence. And he was not mistaken; it was indeed
his father again springing to life in the depths of his being, and at
last obtaining the mastery in that dual heredity in which, during so many
years, his mother had dominated. The upper part of his face, his
straight, towering brow, seemed to have risen yet higher, whilst the
lower part, the small chin, the affectionate mouth, were becoming less
distinct. However, he suffered; at certain twilight hours when his
kindliness, his need of love awoke, he felt distracted with grief at no
longer believing, distracted with desire to believe again; and it was
necessary that the lighted lamp should be brought in, that he should see
clearly around him and within him, before he could recover the energy and
calmness of reason, the strength of martyrdom, the determination to
sacrifice everything to the peace of his conscience.

Then came the crisis. He was a priest and he no longer believed. This had
suddenly dawned before him like a bottomless abyss. It was the end of his
life, the collapse of everything. What should he do? Did not simple
rectitude require that he should throw off the cassock and return to the
world? But he had seen some renegade priests and had despised them. A
married priest with whom he was acquainted filled him with disgust. All
this, no doubt, was but a survival of his long religious training. He
retained the notion that a priest cannot, must not, weaken; the idea that
when one has dedicated oneself to God one cannot take possession of
oneself again. Possibly, also, he felt that he was too plainly branded,
too different from other men already, to prove otherwise than awkward and
unwelcome among them. Since he had been cut off from them he would remain
apart in his grievous pride; And, after days of anguish, days of struggle
incessantly renewed, in which his thirst for happiness warred with the
energies of his returning health, he took the heroic resolution to remain
a priest, and an honest one. He would find the strength necessary for
such abnegation. Since he had conquered the flesh, albeit unable to
conquer the brain, he felt sure of keeping his vow of chastity, and that
would be unshakable; therein lay the pure, upright life which he was
absolutely certain of living. What mattered the rest if he alone
suffered, if nobody in the world suspected that his heart was reduced to
ashes, that nothing remained of his faith, that he was agonising amidst
fearful falsehood? His rectitude would prove a firm prop; he would follow
his priestly calling like an honest man, without breaking any of the vows
he had taken; he would, in due accordance with the rites, discharge his
duties as a minister of the Divinity, whom he would praise and glorify at
the altar, and distribute as the Bread of Life to the faithful. Who,
then, would dare to impute his loss of faith to him as a crime, even if
this great misfortune should some day become known? And what more could
be asked of him than lifelong devotion to his vow, regard for his
ministry, and the practice of every charity without the hope of any
future reward? In this wise he ended by calming himself, still upright,
still bearing his head erect, with the desolate grandeur of the priest
who himself no longer believes, but continues watching over the faith of
others. And he certainly was not alone; he felt that he had many
brothers, priests with ravaged minds, who had sunk into incredulity, and
who yet, like soldiers without a fatherland, remained at the altar, and,
despite, everything, found the courage to make the divine illusion shine
forth above the kneeling crowds.

On recovering his health Pierre had immediately resumed his service at
the little church of Neuilly. He said his mass there every morning. But
he had resolved to refuse any appointment, any preferment. Months and
years went by, and he obstinately insisted on remaining the least known
and the most humble of those priests who are tolerated in a parish, who
appear and disappear after discharging their duty. The acceptance of any
appointment would have seemed to him an aggravation of his falsehood, a
theft from those who were more deserving than himself. And he had to
resist frequent offers, for it was impossible for his merits to remain
unnoticed. Indeed, his obstinate modesty provoked astonishment at the
archbishop’s palace, where there was a desire to utilise the power which
could be divined in him. Now and again, it is true, he bitterly regretted
that he was not useful, that he did not co-operate in some great work, in
furthering the purification of the world, the salvation and happiness of
all, in accordance with his own ardent, torturing desire. Fortunately his
time was nearly all his own, and to console himself he gave rein to his
passion for work by devouring every volume in his father’s bookcase, and
then again resuming and considering his studies, feverishly preoccupied
with regard to the history of nations, full of a desire to explore the
depths of the social and religious crisis so that he might ascertain
whether it were really beyond remedy.

It was at this time, whilst rummaging one morning in one of the large
drawers in the lower part of the bookcase, that he discovered quite a
collection of papers respecting the apparitions of Lourdes. It was a very
complete set of documents, comprising detailed notes of the
interrogatories to which Bernadette had been subjected, copies of
numerous official documents, and police and medical reports, in addition
to many private and confidential letters of the greatest interest. This
discovery had surprised Pierre, and he had questioned, Doctor Chassaigne
concerning it. The latter thereupon remembered that his friend, Michel
Froment, had at one time passionately devoted himself to the study of
Bernadette’s case; and he himself, a native of the village near Lourdes,
had procured for the chemist a portion of the documents in the
collection. Pierre, in his turn, then became impassioned, and for a whole
month continued studying the affair, powerfully attracted by the
visionary’s pure, upright nature, but indignant with all that had
subsequently sprouted up--the barbarous fetishism, the painful
superstitions, and the triumphant simony. In the access of unbelief which
had come upon him, this story of Lourdes was certainly of a nature to
complete the collapse of his faith. However, it had also excited his
curiosity, and he would have liked to investigate it, to establish beyond
dispute what scientific truth might be in it, and render pure
Christianity the service of ridding it of this scoria, this fairy tale,
all touching and childish as it was. But he had been obliged to
relinquish his studies, shrinking from the necessity of making a journey
to the Grotto, and finding that it would be extremely difficult to obtain
the information which he still needed; and of it all there at last only
remained within him a tender feeling for Bernadette, of whom he could not
think without a sensation of delightful charm and infinite pity.

The days went by, and Pierre led a more and more lonely life. Doctor
Chassaigne had just left for the Pyrenees in a state of mortal anxiety.
Abandoning his patients, he had set out for Cauterets with his ailing
wife, who was sinking more and more each day, to the infinite distress of
both his charming daughter and himself. From that moment the little house
at Neuilly fell into deathlike silence and emptiness. Pierre had no other
distraction than that of occasionally going to see the Guersaints, who
had long since left the neighbouring house, but whom he had found again
in a small lodging in a wretched tenement of the district. And the memory
of his first visit to them there was yet so fresh within him, that he
felt a pang at his heart as he recalled his emotion at sight of the
hapless Marie.

That pang roused him from his reverie, and on looking round he perceived
Marie stretched on the seat, even as he had found her on the day which he
recalled, already imprisoned in that gutter-like box, that coffin to
which wheels were adapted when she was taken out-of-doors for an airing.
She, formerly so brimful of life, ever astir and laughing, was dying of
inaction and immobility in that box. Of her old-time beauty she had
retained nothing save her hair, which clad her as with a royal mantle,
and she was so emaciated that she seemed to have grown smaller again, to
have become once more a child. And what was most distressing was the
expression on her pale face, the blank, frigid stare of her eyes which
did not see, the ever haunting absent look, as of one whom suffering
overwhelmed. However, she noticed that Pierre was gazing at her, and at
once desired to smile at him; but irresistible moans escaped her, and
when she did at last smile, it was like a poor smitten creature who is
convinced that she will expire before the miracle takes place. He was
overcome by it, and, amidst all the sufferings with which the carriage
abounded, hers were now the only ones that he beheld and heard, as though
one and all were summed up in her, in the long and terrible agony of her
beauty, gaiety, and youth.

Then by degrees, without taking his eyes from Marie, he again reverted to
former days, again lived those hours, fraught with a mournful and bitter
charm, which he had often spent beside her, when he called at the sorry
lodging to keep her company. M. de Guersaint had finally ruined himself
by trying to improve the artistic quality of the religious prints so
widely sold in France, the faulty execution of which quite irritated him.
His last resources had been swallowed up in the failure of a
colour-printing firm; and, heedless as he was, deficient in foresight,
ever trusting in Providence, his childish mind continually swayed by
illusions, he did not notice the awful pecuniary embarrassment of the
household; but applied himself to the study of aerial navigation, without
even realising what prodigious activity his elder daughter, Blanche, was
forced to display, in order to earn the living of her two children, as
she was wont to call her father and her sister. It was Blanche who, by
running about Paris in the dust or the mud from morning to evening in
order to give French or music lessons, contrived to provide the money
necessary for the unremitting attentions which Marie required. And Marie
often experienced attacks of despair--bursting into tears and accusing
herself of being the primary cause of their ruin, as for years and years
now it had been necessary to pay for medical attendance and for taking
her to almost every imaginable spring--La Bourboule, Aix, Lamalou,
Amelie-les-Bains, and others. And the outcome of ten years of varied
diagnosis and treatment was that the doctors had now abandoned her. Some
thought her illness to be due to the rupture of certain ligaments, others
believed in the presence of a tumour, others again to paralysis due to
injury to the spinal cord, and as she, with maidenly revolt, refused to
undergo any examination, and they did not even dare to address precise
questions to her, they each contented themselves with their several
opinions and declared that she was beyond cure. Moreover, she now solely
relied upon the divine help, having grown rigidly pious since she had
been suffering, and finding her only relief in her ardent faith. Every
morning she herself read the holy offices, for to her great sorrow she
was unable to go to church. Her inert limbs indeed seemed quite lifeless,
and she had sunk into a condition of extreme weakness, to such a point,
in fact, that on certain days it became necessary for her sister to place
her food in her mouth.

Pierre was thinking of this when all at once he recalled an evening he
had spent with her. The lamp had not yet been lighted, he was seated
beside her in the growing obscurity, and she suddenly told him that she
wished to go to Lourdes, feeling certain that she would return cured. He
had experienced an uncomfortable sensation on hearing her speak in this
fashion, and quite forgetting himself had exclaimed that it was folly to
believe in such childishness. He had hitherto made it a rule never to
converse with her on religious matters, having not only refused to be her
confessor, but even to advise her with regard to the petty uncertainties
of her pietism. In this respect he was influenced by feelings of mingled
shame and compassion; to lie to her of all people would have made him
suffer, and, moreover, he would have deemed himself a criminal had he
even by a breath sullied that fervent pure faith which lent her such
strength against pain. And so, regretting that he had not been able to
restrain his exclamation, he remained sorely embarrassed, when all at
once he felt the girl’s cold hand take hold of his own. And then,
emboldened by the darkness, she ventured in a gentle, faltering voice, to
tell him that she already knew his secret, his misfortune, that
wretchedness, so fearful for a priest, of being unable to believe.

Despite himself he had revealed everything during their chats together,
and she, with the delicate intuition of a friend, had been able to read
his conscience. She felt terribly distressed on his account; she deemed
him, with that mortal moral malady, to be more deserving of pity than
herself. And then as he, thunderstruck, was still unable to find an
answer, acknowledging the truth of her words by his very silence, she
again began to speak to him of Lourdes, adding in a low whisper that she
wished to confide him as well as herself to the protection of the Blessed
Virgin, whom she entreated to restore him to faith. And from that evening
forward she did not cease speaking on the subject, repeating again and
again, that if she went to Lourdes she would be surely cured. But she was
prevented from making the journey by lack of means and she did not even
dare to speak to her sister of the pecuniary question. So two months went
by, and day by day she grew weaker, exhausted by her longing dreams, her
eyes ever turned towards the flashing light of the miraculous Grotto far
away. Pierre then experienced many painful days. He had at first told
Marie that he would not accompany her. But his decision was somewhat
shaken by the thought that if he made up his mind to go, he might profit
by the journey to continue his inquiries with regard to Bernadette, whose
charming image lingered in his heart. And at last he even felt penetrated
by a delightful feeling, an unacknowledged hope, the hope that Marie was
perhaps right, that the Virgin might take pity on him and restore to him
his former blind faith, the faith of the child who loves and does not
question. Oh! to believe, to believe with his whole soul, to plunge into
faith for ever! Doubtless there was no other possible happiness. He
longed for faith with all the joyousness of his youth, with all the love
that he had felt for his mother, with all his burning desire to escape
from the torment of understanding and knowing, and to slumber forever in
the depths of divine ignorance. It was cowardly, and yet so delightful;
to exist no more, to become a mere thing in the hands of the Divinity.
And thus he was at last possessed by a desire to make the supreme
experiment.

A week later the journey to Lourdes was decided upon. Pierre, however,
had insisted on a final consultation of medical men in order to ascertain
if it were really possible for Marie to travel; and this again was a
scene which rose up before him, with certain incidents which he ever
beheld whilst others were already fading from his mind. Two of the
doctors who had formerly attended the patient, and one of whom believed
in the rupture of certain ligaments, whilst the other asserted the case
to be one of medullary paralysis, had ended by agreeing that this
paralysis existed, and that there was also, possibly, some ligamentary
injury. In their opinion all the symptoms pointed to this diagnosis, and
the nature of the case seemed to them so evident that they did not
hesitate to give certificates, each his own, agreeing almost word for
word with one another, and so positive in character as to leave no room
for doubt. Moreover, they thought that the journey was practicable,
though it would certainly prove an exceedingly painful one. Pierre
thereupon resolved to risk it, for he had found the doctors very prudent,
and very desirous to arrive at the truth; and he retained but a confused
recollection of the third medical man who had been called in, a distant
cousin of his named De Beauclair, who was young, extremely intelligent,
but little known as yet, and said by some to be rather strange in his
theories. This doctor, after looking at Marie for a long time, had asked
somewhat anxiously about her parents, and had seemed greatly interested
by what was told him of M. de Guersaint, this architect and inventor with
a weak and exuberant mind. Then he had desired to measure the sufferer’s
visual field, and by a slight discreet touch had ascertained the locality
of the pain, which, under certain pressure, seemed to ascend like a heavy
shifting mass towards the breast. He did not appear to attach importance
to the paralysis of the legs; but on a direct question being put to him
he exclaimed that the girl ought to be taken to Lourdes and that she
would assuredly be cured there, if she herself were convinced of it.
Faith sufficed, said he, with a smile; two pious lady patients of his,
whom he had sent thither during the preceding year, had returned in
radiant health. He even predicted how the miracle would come about; it
would be like a lightning stroke, an awakening, an exaltation of the
entire being, whilst the evil, that horrid, diabolical weight which
stifled the poor girl would once more ascend and fly away as though
emerging by her mouth. But at the same time he flatly declined to give a
certificate. He had failed to agree with his two _confreres_, who treated
him coldly, as though they considered him a wild, adventurous young
fellow. Pierre confusedly remembered some shreds of the discussion which
had begun again in his presence, some little part of the diagnosis framed
by Beauclair. First, a dislocation of the organ, with a slight laceration
of the ligaments, resulting from the patient’s fall from her horse; then
a slow healing, everything returning to its place, followed by
consecutive nervous symptoms, so that the sufferer was now simply beset
by her original fright, her attention fixed on the injured part, arrested
there amidst increasing pain, incapable of acquiring fresh notions unless
it were under the lash of some violent emotion. Moreover, he also
admitted the probability of accidents due to nutrition, as yet
unexplained, and on the course and importance of which he himself would
not venture to give an opinion. However, the idea that Marie _dreamt_ her
disease, that the fearful sufferings torturing her came from an injury
long since healed, appeared such a paradox to Pierre when he gazed at her
and saw her in such agony, her limbs already stretched out lifeless on
her bed of misery, that he did not even pause to consider it; but at that
moment felt simply happy in the thought that all three doctors agreed in
authorising the journey to Lourdes. To him it was sufficient that she
_might_ be cured, and to attain that result he would have followed her to
the end of the world.

Ah! those last days of Paris, amid what a scramble they were spent! The
national pilgrimage was about to start, and in order to avoid heavy
expenses, it had occurred to him to obtain _hospitalisation_ for Marie.
Then he had been obliged to run about in order to obtain his own
admission, as a helper, into the Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation. M.
de Guersaint was delighted with the prospect of the journey, for he was
fond of nature, and ardently desired to become acquainted with the
Pyrenees. Moreover, he did not allow anything to worry him, but was
perfectly willing that the young priest should pay his railway fare, and
provide for him at the hotel yonder as for a child; and his daughter
Blanche, having slipped a twenty-franc piece into his hand at the last
moment, he had even thought himself rich again. That poor brave Blanche
had a little hidden store of her own, savings to the amount of fifty
francs, which it had been absolutely necessary to accept, for she became
quite angry in her determination to contribute towards her sister’s cure,
unable as she was to form one of the party, owing to the lessons which
she had to give in Paris, whose hard pavements she must continue pacing,
whilst her dear ones were kneeling yonder, amidst the enchantments of the
Grotto. And so the others had started on, and were now rolling, ever
rolling along.

As they passed the station of Chatellerault a sudden burst of voices made
Pierre start, and drove away the torpor into which his reverie had
plunged him. What was the matter? Were they reaching Poitiers? But it was
only half-past twelve o’clock, and it was simply Sister Hyacinthe who had
roused him, by making her patients and pilgrims say the Angelus, the
three “Aves” thrice repeated. Then the voices burst forth, and the sound
of a fresh canticle arose, and continued like a lamentation. Fully five
and twenty minutes must elapse before they would reach Poitiers, where it
seemed as if the half-hour’s stoppage would bring relief to every
suffering! They were all so uncomfortable, so roughly shaken in that
malodorous, burning carriage! Such wretchedness was beyond endurance. Big
tears coursed down the cheeks of Madame Vincent, a muttered oath escaped
M. Sabathier usually so resigned, and Brother Isidore, La Grivotte, and
Madame Vetu seemed to have become inanimate, mere waifs carried along by
a torrent. Moreover, Marie no longer answered, but had closed her eyes
and would not open them, pursued as she was by the horrible vision of
Elise Rouquet’s face, that face with its gaping cavities which seemed to
her to be the image of death. And whilst the train increased its speed,
bearing all this human despair onward, under the heavy sky, athwart the
burning plains, there was yet another scare in the carriage. The strange
man had apparently ceased to breathe, and a voice cried out that he was
expiring.




III. POITIERS

AS soon as the train arrived at Poitiers, Sister Hyacinthe alighted in
all haste, amidst the crowd of porters opening the carriage doors, and of
pilgrims darting forward to reach the platform. “Wait a moment, wait a
moment,” she repeated, “let me pass first. I wish to see if all is over.”

Then, having entered the other compartment, she raised the strange man’s
head, and seeing him so pale, with such blank eyes, she did at first
think him already dead. At last, however, she detected a faint breathing.
“No, no,” she then exclaimed, “he still breathes. Quick! there is no time
to be lost.” And, perceiving the other Sister, she added: “Sister Claire
des Anges, will you go and fetch Father Massias, who must be in the third
or fourth carriage of the train? Tell him that we have a patient in very
great danger here, and ask him to bring the Holy Oils at once.”

Without answering, the other Sister at once plunged into the midst of the
scramble. She was small, slender, and gentle, with a meditative air and
mysterious eyes, but withal extremely active.

Pierre, who was standing in the other compartment watching the scene, now
ventured to make a suggestion: “And would it not be as well to fetch the
doctor?” said he.

“Yes, I was thinking of it,” replied Sister Hyacinthe, “and, Monsieur
l’Abbe, it would be very kind of you to go for him yourself.”

It so happened that Pierre intended going to the cantine carriage to
fetch some broth for Marie. Now that she was no longer being jolted she
felt somewhat relieved, and had opened her eyes, and caused her father to
raise her to a sitting posture. Keenly thirsting for fresh air, she would
have much liked them to carry her out on to the platform for a moment,
but she felt that it would be asking too much, that it would be too
troublesome a task to place her inside the carriage again. So M. de
Guersaint remained by himself on the platform, near the open door,
smoking a cigarette, whilst Pierre hastened to the cantine van, where he
knew he would find the doctor on duty, with his travelling pharmacy.

Some other patients, whom one could not think of removing, also remained
in the carriage. Amongst them was La Grivotte, who was stifling and
almost delirious, in such a state indeed as to detain Madame de
Jonquiere, who had arranged to meet her daughter Raymonde, with Madame
Volmar and Madame Desagneaux, in the refreshment-room, in order that they
might all four lunch together. But that unfortunate creature seemed on
the point of expiring, so how could she leave her all alone, on the hard
seat of that carriage? On his side, M. Sabathier, likewise riveted to his
seat, was waiting for his wife, who had gone to fetch a bunch of grapes
for him; whilst Marthe had remained with her brother the missionary,
whose faint moan never ceased. The others, those who were able to walk,
had hustled one another in their haste to alight, all eager as they were
to escape for a moment from that cage of wretchedness where their limbs
had been quite numbed by the seven hours’ journey which they had so far
gone. Madame Maze had at once drawn apart, straying with melancholy face
to the far end of the platform, where she found herself all alone; Madame
Vetu, stupefied by her sufferings, had found sufficient strength to take
a few steps, and sit down on a bench, in the full sunlight, where she did
not even feel the burning heat; whilst Elise Rouquet, who had had the
decency to cover her face with a black wrap, and was consumed by a desire
for fresh water, went hither and thither in search of a drinking
fountain. And meantime Madame Vincent, walking slowly, carried her little
Rose about in her arms, trying to smile at her, and to cheer her by
showing her some gaudily coloured picture bills, which the child gravely
gazed at, but did not see.

Pierre had the greatest possible difficulty in making his way through the
crowd inundating the platform. No effort of imagination could enable one
to picture the living torrent of ailing and healthy beings which the
train had here set down--a mob of more than a thousand persons just
emerging from suffocation, and bustling, hurrying hither and thither.
Each carriage had contributed its share of wretchedness, like some
hospital ward suddenly evacuated; and it was now possible to form an idea
of the frightful amount of suffering which this terrible white train
carried along with it, this train which disseminated a legend of horror
wheresoever it passed. Some infirm sufferers were dragging themselves
about, others were being carried, and many remained in a heap on the
platform. There were sudden pushes, violent calls, innumerable displays
of distracted eagerness to reach the refreshment-room and the _buvette_.
Each and all made haste, going wheresoever their wants called them. This
stoppage of half an hour’s duration, the only stoppage there would be
before reaching Lourdes, was, after all, such a short one. And the only
gay note, amidst all the black cassocks and the threadbare garments of
the poor, never of any precise shade of colour, was supplied by the
smiling whiteness of the Little Sisters of the Assumption, all bright and
active in their snowy coifs, wimples, and aprons.

When Pierre at last reached the cantine van near the middle of the train,
he found it already besieged. There was here a petroleum stove, with a
small supply of cooking utensils. The broth prepared from concentrated
meat-extract was being warmed in wrought-iron pans, whilst the preserved
milk in tins was diluted and supplied as occasion required. There were
some other provisions, such as biscuits, fruit, and chocolate, on a few
shelves. But Sister Saint-Francois, to whom the service was entrusted, a
short, stout woman of five-and-forty, with a good-natured fresh-coloured
face, was somewhat losing her head in the presence of all the hands so
eagerly stretched towards her. Whilst continuing her distribution, she
lent ear to Pierre, as he called the doctor, who with his travelling
pharmacy occupied another corner of the van. Then, when the young priest
began to explain matters, speaking of the poor unknown man who was dying,
a sudden desire came to her to go and see him, and she summoned another
Sister to take her place.

“Oh! I wished to ask you, Sister, for some broth for a passenger who is
ill,” said Pierre, at that moment turning towards her.

“Very well, Monsieur l’Abbe, I will bring some. Go on in front.”

The doctor and the abbe went off in all haste, rapidly questioning and
answering one another, whilst behind them followed Sister Saint-Francois,
carrying the bowl of broth with all possible caution amidst the jostling
of the crowd. The doctor was a dark-complexioned man of eight-and-twenty,
robust and extremely handsome, with the head of a young Roman emperor,
such as may still be occasionally met with in the sunburnt land of
Provence. As soon as Sister Hyacinthe caught sight of him, she raised an
exclamation of surprise: “What! Monsieur Ferrand, is it you?” Indeed,
they both seemed amazed at meeting in this manner.

It is, however, the courageous mission of the Sisters of the Assumption
to tend the ailing poor, those who lie in agony in their humble garrets,
and cannot pay for nursing; and thus these good women spend their lives
among the wretched, installing themselves beside the sufferer’s pallet in
his tiny lodging, and ministering to every want, attending alike to
cooking and cleaning, and living there as servants and relatives, until
either cure or death supervenes. And it was in this wise that Sister
Hyacinthe, young as she was, with her milky face, and her blue eyes which
ever laughed, had installed herself one day in the abode of this young
fellow, Ferrand, then a medical student, prostrated by typhoid fever, and
so desperately poor that he lived in a kind of loft reached by a ladder,
in the Rue du Four. And from that moment she had not stirred from his
side, but had remained with him until she cured him, with the passion of
one who lived only for others, one who when an infant had been found in a
church porch, and who had no other family than that of those who
suffered, to whom she devoted herself with all her ardently affectionate
nature. And what a delightful month, what exquisite comradeship, fraught
with the pure fraternity of suffering, had followed! When he called her
“Sister,” it was really to a sister that he was speaking. And she was a
mother also, a mother who helped him to rise, and who put him to bed as
though he were her child, without aught springing up between them save
supreme pity, the divine, gentle compassion of charity. She ever showed
herself gay, sexless, devoid of any instinct excepting that which
prompted her to assuage and to console. And he worshipped her, venerated
her, and had retained of her the most chaste and passionate of
recollections.

“O Sister Hyacinthe!” he murmured in delight.

Chance alone had brought them face to face again, for Ferrand was not a
believer, and if he found himself in that train it was simply because he
had at the last moment consented to take the place of a friend who was
suddenly prevented from coming. For nearly a twelvemonth he had been a
house-surgeon at the Hospital of La Pitie. However, this journey to
Lourdes, in such peculiar circumstances, greatly interested him.

The joy of the meeting was making them forget the ailing stranger. And so
the Sister resumed: “You see, Monsieur Ferrand, it is for this man that
we want you. At one moment we thought him dead. Ever since we passed
Amboise he has been filling us with fear, and I have just sent for the
Holy Oils. Do you find him so very low? Could you not revive him a
little?”

The doctor was already examining the man, and thereupon the sufferers who
had remained in the carriage became greatly interested and began to look.
Marie, to whom Sister Saint-Francois had given the bowl of broth, was
holding it with such an unsteady hand that Pierre had to take it from
her, and endeavour to make her drink; but she could not swallow, and she
left the broth scarce tasted, fixing her eyes upon the man waiting to see
what would happen like one whose own existence is at stake.

“Tell me,” again asked Sister Hyacinthe, “how do you find him? What is
his illness?”

“What is his illness!” muttered Ferrand; “he has every illness.”

Then, drawing a little phial from his pocket, he endeavoured to introduce
a few drops of the contents between the sufferer’s clenched teeth. The
man heaved a sigh, raised his eyelids and let them fall again; that was
all, he gave no other sign of life.

Sister Hyacinthe, usually so calm and composed, so little accustomed to
despair, became impatient.

“But it is terrible,” said she, “and Sister Claire des Anges does not
come back! Yet I told her plainly enough where she would find Father
Massias’s carriage. _Mon Dieu!_ what will become of us?”

Sister Saint-Francois, seeing that she could render no help, was now
about to return to the cantine van. Before doing so, however, she
inquired if the man were not simply dying of hunger; for such cases
presented themselves, and indeed she had only come to the compartment
with the view of offering some of her provisions. At last, as she went
off, she promised that she would make Sister Claire des Anges hasten her
return should she happen to meet her; and she had not gone twenty yards
when she turned round and waved her arm to call attention to her
colleague, who with discreet short steps was coming back alone.

Leaning out of the window, Sister Hyacinthe kept on calling to her, “Make
haste, make haste! Well, and where is Father Massias?”

“He isn’t there.”

“What! not there?”

“No. I went as fast as I could, but with all these people about it was
not possible to get there quickly. When I reached the carriage Father
Massias had already alighted, and gone out of the station, no doubt.”

She thereupon explained, that according to what she had heard, Father
Massias and the priest of Sainte-Radegonde had some appointment together.
In other years the national pilgrimage halted at Poitiers for
four-and-twenty hours, and after those who were ill had been placed in
the town hospital the others went in procession to Sainte-Radegonde.*
That year, however, there was some obstacle to this course being
followed, so the train was going straight on to Lourdes; and Father
Massias was certainly with his friend the priest, talking with him on
some matter of importance.

  * The church of Sainte-Radegonde, built by the saint of that name
    in the sixth century, is famous throughout Poitou. In the crypt
    between the tombs of Ste. Agnes and St. Disciole is that of Ste.
    Radegonde herself, but it now only contains some particles of her
    remains, as the greater portion was burnt by the Huguenots in
    1562. On a previous occasion (1412) the tomb had been violated by
    Jean, Duc de Berry, who wished to remove both the saint’s head
    and her two rings. Whilst he was making the attempt, however, the
    skeleton is said to have withdrawn its hand so that he might not
    possess himself of the rings. A greater curiosity which the church
    contains is a footprint on a stone slab, said to have been left
    by Christ when He appeared to Ste. Radegonde in her cell. This
    attracts pilgrims from many parts.--Trans.

“They promised to tell him and send him here with the Holy Oils as soon
as they found him,” added Sister Claire.

However, this was quite a disaster for Sister Hyacinthe. Since Science
was powerless, perhaps the Holy Oils would have brought the sufferer some
relief. She had often seen that happen.

“O Sister, Sister, how worried I am!” she said to her companion. “Do you
know, I wish you would go back and watch for Father Massias and bring him
to me as soon as you see him. It would be so kind of you to do so!”

“Yes, Sister,” compliantly answered Sister Claire des Anges, and off she
went again with that grave, mysterious air of hers, wending her way
through the crowd like a gliding shadow.

Ferrand, meantime, was still looking at the man, sorely distressed at his
inability to please Sister Hyacinthe by reviving him. And as he made a
gesture expressive of his powerlessness she again raised her voice
entreatingly: “Stay with me, Monsieur Ferrand, pray stay,” she said.
“Wait till Father Massias comes--I shall be a little more at ease with
you here.”

He remained and helped her to raise the man, who was slipping down upon
the seat. Then, taking a linen cloth, she wiped the poor fellow’s face
which a dense perspiration was continually covering. And the spell of
waiting continued amid the uneasiness of the patients who had remained in
the carriage, and the curiosity of the folks who had begun to assemble on
the platform in front of the compartment.

All at once however a girl hastily pushed the crowd aside, and, mounting
on the footboard, addressed herself to Madame de Jonquiere: “What is the
matter, mamma?” she said. “They are waiting for you in the
refreshment-room.”

It was Raymonde de Jonquiere, who, already somewhat ripe for her
four-and-twenty years, was remarkably like her mother, being very dark,
with a pronounced nose, large mouth, and full, pleasant-looking face.

“But, my dear, you can see for yourself. I can’t leave this poor woman,”
 replied the lady-hospitaller; and thereupon she pointed to La Grivotte,
who had been attacked by a fit of coughing which shook her frightfully.

“Oh, how annoying, mamma!” retorted Raymonde, “Madame Desagneaux and
Madame Volmar were looking forward with so much pleasure to this little
lunch together.”

“Well, it can’t be helped, my dear. At all events, you can begin without
waiting for me. Tell the ladies that I will come and join them as soon as
I can.” Then, an idea occurring to her, Madame de Jonquiere added: “Wait
a moment, the doctor is here. I will try to get him to take charge of my
patient. Go back, I will follow you. As you can guess, I am dying of
hunger.”

Raymonde briskly returned to the refreshment-room whilst her mother
begged Ferrand to come into her compartment to see if he could do
something to relieve La Grivotte. At Marthe’s request he had already
examined Brother Isidore, whose moaning never ceased; and with a
sorrowful gesture he had again confessed his powerlessness. However, he
hastened to comply with Madame de Jonquiere’s appeal, and raised the
consumptive woman to a sitting posture in the hope of thus stopping her
cough, which indeed gradually ceased. And then he helped the
lady-hospitaller to make her swallow a spoonful of some soothing draught.
The doctor’s presence in the carriage was still causing a stir among the
ailing ones. M. Sabathier, who was slowly eating the grapes which his
wife had been to fetch him, did not, however, question Ferrand, for he
knew full well what his answer would be, and was weary, as he expressed
it, of consulting all the princes of science; nevertheless he felt
comforted as it were at seeing him set that poor consumptive woman on her
feet again. And even Marie watched all that the doctor did with
increasing interest, though not daring to call him herself, certain as
she also was that he could do nothing for her.

Meantime, the crush on the platform was increasing. Only a quarter of an
hour now remained to the pilgrims. Madame Vetu, whose eyes were open but
who saw nothing, sat like an insensible being in the broad sunlight, in
the hope possibly that the scorching heat would deaden her pains; whilst
up and down, in front of her, went Madame Vincent ever with the same
sleep-inducing step and ever carrying her little Rose, her poor ailing
birdie, whose weight was so trifling that she scarcely felt her in her
arms. Many people meantime were hastening to the water tap in order to
fill their pitchers, cans, and bottles. Madame Maze, who was of refined
tastes and careful of her person, thought of going to wash her hands
there; but just as she arrived she found Elise Rouquet drinking, and she
recoiled at sight of that disease-smitten face, so terribly disfigured
and robbed of nearly all semblance of humanity. And all the others
likewise shuddered, likewise hesitated to fill their bottles, pitchers,
and cans at the tap from which she had drunk.

A large number of pilgrims had now begun to eat whilst pacing the
platform. You could hear the rhythmical taps of the crutches carried by a
woman who incessantly wended her way through the groups. On the ground, a
legless cripple was painfully dragging herself about in search of nobody
knew what. Others, seated there in heaps, no longer stirred. All these
sufferers, momentarily unpacked as it were, these patients of a
travelling hospital emptied for a brief half-hour, were taking the air
amidst the bewilderment and agitation of the healthy passengers; and the
whole throng had a frightfully woeful, poverty-stricken appearance in the
broad noontide light.

Pierre no longer stirred from the side of Marie, for M. de Guersaint had
disappeared, attracted by a verdant patch of landscape which could be
seen at the far end of the station. And, feeling anxious about her, since
she had not been able to finish her broth, the young priest with a
smiling air tried to tempt her palate by offering to go and buy her a
peach; but she refused it; she was suffering too much, she cared for
nothing. She was gazing at him with her large, woeful eyes, on the one
hand impatient at this stoppage which delayed her chance of cure, and on
the other terrified at the thought of again being jolted along that hard
and endless railroad.

Just then a stout gentleman whose full beard was turning grey, and who
had a broad, fatherly kind of face, drew near and touched Pierre’s arm:
“Excuse me, Monsieur l’Abbe,” said he, “but is it not in this carriage
that there is a poor man dying?”

And on the priest returning an affirmative answer, the gentleman became
quite affable and familiar.

“My name is Vigneron,” he said; “I am the head clerk at the Ministry of
Finances, and applied for leave in order that I might help my wife to
take our son Gustave to Lourdes. The dear lad places all his hope in the
Blessed Virgin, to whom we pray morning and evening on his behalf. We are
in a second-class compartment of the carriage just in front of yours.”

Then, turning round, he summoned his party with a wave of the hand.
“Come, come!” said he, “it is here. The unfortunate man is indeed in the
last throes.”

Madame Vigneron was a little woman with the correct bearing of a
respectable _bourgeoise_, but her long, livid face denoted impoverished
blood, terrible evidence of which was furnished by her son Gustave. The
latter, who was fifteen years of age, looked scarcely ten. Twisted out of
shape, he was a mere skeleton, with his right leg so wasted, so reduced,
that he had to walk with a crutch. He had a small, thin face, somewhat
awry, in which one saw little excepting his eyes, clear eyes, sparkling
with intelligence, sharpened as it were by suffering, and doubtless well
able to dive into the human soul.

An old puffy-faced lady followed the others, dragging her legs along with
difficulty; and M. Vigneron, remembering that he had forgotten her,
stepped back towards Pierre so that he might complete the introduction.
“That lady,” said he, “is Madame Chaise, my wife’s eldest sister. She
also wished to accompany Gustave, whom she is very fond of.” And then,
leaning forward, he added in a whisper, with a confidential air: “She is
the widow of Chaise, the silk merchant, you know, who left such an
immense fortune. She is suffering from a heart complaint which causes her
much anxiety.”

The whole family, grouped together, then gazed with lively curiosity at
what was taking place in the railway carriage. People were incessantly
flocking to the spot; and so that the lad might be the better able to
see, his father took him up in his arms for a moment whilst his aunt held
the crutch, and his mother on her side raised herself on tip-toe.

The scene in the carriage was still the same; the strange man was still
stiffly seated in his corner, his head resting against the hard wood. He
was livid, his eyes were closed, and his mouth was twisted by suffering;
and every now and then Sister Hyacinthe with her linen cloth wiped away
the cold sweat which was constantly covering his face. She no longer
spoke, no longer evinced any impatience, but had recovered her serenity
and relied on Heaven. From time to time she would simply glance towards
the platform to see if Father Massias were coming.

“Look at him, Gustave,” said M. Vigneron to his son; “he must be
consumptive.”

The lad, whom scrofula was eating away, whose hip was attacked by an
abscess, and in whom there were already signs of necrosis of the
vertebrae, seemed to take a passionate interest in the agony he thus
beheld. It did not frighten him, he smiled at it with a smile of infinite
sadness.

“Oh! how dreadful!” muttered Madame Chaise, who, living in continual
terror of a sudden attack which would carry her off, turned pale with the
fear of death.

“Ah! well,” replied M. Vigneron, philosophically, “it will come to each
of us in turn. We are all mortal.”

Thereupon, a painful, mocking expression came over Gustave’s smile, as
though he had heard other words than those--perchance an unconscious
wish, the hope that the old aunt might die before he himself did, that he
would inherit the promised half-million of francs, and then not long
encumber his family.

“Put the boy down now,” said Madame Vigneron to her husband. “You are
tiring him, holding him by the legs like that.”

Then both she and Madame Chaise bestirred themselves in order that the
lad might not be shaken. The poor darling was so much in need of care and
attention. At each moment they feared that they might lose him. Even his
father was of opinion that they had better put him in the train again at
once. And as the two women went off with the child, the old gentleman
once more turned towards Pierre, and with evident emotion exclaimed: “Ah!
Monsieur l’Abbe, if God should take him from us, the light of our life
would be extinguished--I don’t speak of his aunt’s fortune, which would
go to other nephews. But it would be unnatural, would it not, that he
should go off before her, especially as she is so ill? However, we are
all in the hands of Providence, and place our reliance in the Blessed
Virgin, who will assuredly perform a miracle.”

Just then Madame de Jonquiere, having been reassured by Doctor Ferrand,
was able to leave La Grivotte. Before going off, however, she took care
to say to Pierre: “I am dying of hunger and am going to the
refreshment-room for a moment. But if my patient should begin coughing
again, pray come and fetch me.”

When, after great difficulty, she had managed to cross the platform and
reach the refreshment-room, she found herself in the midst of another
scramble. The better-circumstanced pilgrims had taken the tables by
assault, and a great many priests were to be seen hastily lunching amidst
all the clatter of knives, forks, and crockery. The three or four waiters
were not able to attend to all the requirements, especially as they were
hampered in their movements by the crowd purchasing fruit, bread, and
cold meat at the counter. It was at a little table at the far end of the
room that Raymonde was lunching with Madame Desagneaux and Madame Volmar.

“Ah! here you are at last, mamma!” the girl exclaimed, as Madame de
Jonquiere approached. “I was just going back to fetch you. You certainly
ought to be allowed time to eat!”

She was laughing, with a very animated expression on her face, quite
delighted as she was with the adventures of the journey and this
indifferent scrambling meal. “There,” said she, “I have kept you some
trout with green sauce, and there’s a cutlet also waiting for you. We
have already got to the artichokes.”

Then everything became charming. The gaiety prevailing in that little
corner rejoiced the sight.

Young Madame Desagneaux was particularly adorable. A delicate blonde,
with wild, wavy, yellow hair, a round, dimpled, milky face, a gay,
laughing disposition, and a remarkably good heart, she had made a rich
marriage, and for three years past had been wont to leave her husband at
Trouville in the fine August weather, in order to accompany the national
pilgrimage as a lady-hospitaller. This was her great passion, an access
of quivering pity, a longing desire to place herself unreservedly at the
disposal of the sick for five days, a real debauch of devotion from which
she returned tired to death but full of intense delight. Her only regret
was that she as yet had no children, and with comical passion, she
occasionally expressed a regret that she had missed her true vocation,
that of a sister of charity.

“Ah! my dear,” she hastily said to Raymonde, “don’t pity your mother for
being so much taken up with her patients. She, at all events, has
something to occupy her.” And addressing herself to Madame de Jonquiere,
she added: “If you only knew how long we find the time in our fine
first-class carriage. We cannot even occupy ourselves with a little
needlework, as it is forbidden. I asked for a place with the patients,
but all were already distributed, so that my only resource will be to try
to sleep tonight.”

She began to laugh, and then resumed: “Yes, Madame Volmar, we will try to
sleep, won’t we, since talking seems to tire you?” Madame Volmar, who
looked over thirty, was very dark, with a long face and delicate but
drawn features. Her magnificent eyes shone out like brasiers, though
every now and then a cloud seemed to veil and extinguish them. At the
first glance she did not appear beautiful, but as you gazed at her she
became more and more perturbing, till she conquered you and inspired you
with passionate admiration. It should be said though that she shrank from
all self-assertion, comporting herself with much modesty, ever keeping in
the background, striving to hide her lustre, invariably clad in black and
unadorned by a single jewel, although she was the wife of a Parisian
diamond-merchant.

“Oh! for my part,” she murmured, “as long as I am not hustled too much I
am well pleased.”

She had been to Lourdes as an auxiliary lady-helper already on two
occasions, though but little had been seen of her there--at the hospital
of Our Lady of Dolours--as, on arriving, she had been overcome by such
great fatigue that she had been forced, she said, to keep her room.

However, Madame de Jonquiere, who managed the ward, treated her with
good-natured tolerance. “Ah! my poor friends,” said she, “there will be
plenty of time for you to exert yourselves. Get to sleep if you can, and
your turn will come when I can no longer keep up.” Then addressing her
daughter, she resumed: “And you would do well, darling, not to excite
yourself too much if you wish to keep your head clear.”

Raymonde smiled and gave her mother a reproachful glance: “Mamma, mamma,
why do you say that? Am I not sensible?” she asked.

Doubtless she was not boasting, for, despite her youthful, thoughtless
air, the air of one who simply feels happy in living, there appeared in
her grey eyes an expression of firm resolution, a resolution to shape her
life for herself.

“It is true,” the mother confessed with a little confusion, “this little
girl is at times more sensible than I am myself. Come, pass me the
cutlet--it is welcome, I assure you. Lord! how hungry I was!”

The meal continued, enlivened by the constant laughter of Madame
Desagneaux and Raymonde. The latter was very animated, and her face,
which was already growing somewhat yellow through long pining for a
suitor, again assumed the rosy bloom of twenty. They had to eat very
fast, for only ten minutes now remained to them. On all sides one heard
the growing tumult of customers who feared that they would not have time
to take their coffee.

All at once, however, Pierre made his appearance; a fit of stifling had
again come over La Grivotte; and Madame de Jonquiere hastily finished her
artichoke and returned to her compartment, after kissing her daughter,
who wished her “good-night” in a facetious way. The priest, however, had
made a movement of surprise on perceiving Madame Volmar with the red
cross of the lady-hospitallers on her black bodice. He knew her, for he
still called at long intervals on old Madame Volmar, the
diamond-merchant’s mother, who had been one of his own mother’s friends.
She was the most terrible woman in the world, religious beyond all
reason, so harsh and stern, moreover, as to close the very window
shutters in order to prevent her daughter-in-law from looking into the
street. And he knew the young woman’s story, how she had been imprisoned
on the very morrow of her marriage, shut up between her mother-in-law,
who tyrannised over her, and her husband, a repulsively ugly monster who
went so far as to beat her, mad as he was with jealousy, although he
himself kept mistresses. The unhappy woman was not allowed out of the
house excepting it were to go to mass. And one day, at La Trinite, Pierre
had surprised her secret, on seeing her behind the church exchanging a
few hasty words with a well-groomed, distinguished-looking man.

The priest’s sudden appearance in the refreshment-room had somewhat
disconcerted Madame Volmar.

“What an unexpected meeting, Monsieur l’Abbe!” she said, offering him her
long, warm hand. “What a long time it is since I last saw you!” And
thereupon she explained that this was the third year she had gone to
Lourdes, her mother-in-law having required her to join the Association of
Our Lady of Salvation. “It is surprising that you did not see her at the
station when we started,” she added. “She sees me into the train and
comes to meet me on my return.”

This was said in an apparently simple way, but with such a subtle touch
of irony that Pierre fancied he could guess the truth. He knew that she
really had no religious principles at all, and that she merely followed
the rites and ceremonies of the Church in order that she might now and
again obtain an hour’s freedom; and all at once he intuitively realised
that someone must be waiting for her yonder, that it was for the purpose
of meeting him that she was thus hastening to Lourdes with her shrinking
yet ardent air and flaming eyes, which she so prudently shrouded with a
veil of lifeless indifference.

“For my part,” he answered, “I am accompanying a friend of my childhood,
a poor girl who is very ill indeed. I must ask your help for her; you
shall nurse her.”

Thereupon she faintly blushed, and he no longer doubted the truth of his
surmise. However, Raymonde was just then settling the bill with the easy
assurance of a girl who is expert in figures; and immediately afterwards
Madame Desagneaux led Madame Volmar away. The waiters were now growing
more distracted and the tables were fast being vacated; for, on hearing a
bell ring, everybody had begun to rush towards the door.

Pierre, on his side, was hastening back to his carriage, when he was
stopped by an old priest. “Ah! Monsieur le Cure,” he said, “I saw you
just before we started, but I was unable to get near enough to shake
hands with you.”

Thereupon he offered his hand to his brother ecclesiastic, who was
looking and smiling at him in a kindly way. The Abbe Judaine was the
parish priest of Saligny, a little village in the department of the Oise.
Tall and sturdy, he had a broad pink face, around which clustered a mass
of white, curly hair, and it could be divined by his appearance that he
was a worthy man whom neither the flesh nor the spirit had ever
tormented. He believed indeed firmly and absolutely, with a tranquil
godliness, never having known a struggle, endowed as he was with the
ready faith of a child who is unacquainted with human passions. And ever
since the Virgin at Lourdes had cured him of a disease of the eyes, by a
famous miracle which folks still talked about, his belief had become yet
more absolute and tender, as though impregnated with divine gratitude.

“I am pleased that you are with us, my friend,” he gently said; “for
there is much in these pilgrimages for young priests to profit by. I am
told that some of them at times experience a feeling of rebellion. Well,
you will see all these poor people praying,--it is a sight which will
make you weep. How can one do otherwise than place oneself in God’s
hands, on seeing so much suffering cured or consoled?”

The old priest himself was accompanying a patient; and he pointed to a
first-class compartment, at the door of which hung a placard bearing the
inscription: “M. l’Abbe Judaine, Reserved.” Then lowering his voice, he
said: “It is Madame Dieulafay, you know, the great banker’s wife. Their
chateau, a royal domain, is in my parish, and when they learned that the
Blessed Virgin had vouchsafed me such an undeserved favour, they begged
me to intercede for their poor sufferer. I have already said several
masses, and most sincerely pray for her. There, you see her yonder on the
ground. She insisted on being taken out of the carriage, in spite of all
the trouble which one will have to place her in it again.”

On a shady part of the platform, in a kind of long box, there was, as the
old priest said, a woman whose beautiful, perfectly oval face, lighted up
by splendid eyes, denoted no greater age than six-and-twenty. She was
suffering from a frightful disease. The disappearance from her system of
the calcareous salts had led to a softening of the osseous framework, the
slow destruction of her bones. Three years previously, after the advent
of a stillborn child, she had felt vague pains in the spinal column. And
then, little by little, her bones had rarefied and lost shape, the
vertebrae had sunk, the bones of the pelvis had flattened, and those of
the arms and legs had contracted. Thus shrunken, melting away as it were,
she had become a mere human remnant, a nameless, fluid thing, which could
not be set erect, but had to be carried hither and thither with infinite
care, for fear lest she should vanish between one’s fingers. Her face, a
motionless face, on which sat a stupefied imbecile expression, still
retained its beauty of outline, and yet it was impossible to gaze at this
wretched shred of a woman without feeling a heart-pang, the keener on
account of all the luxury surrounding her; for not only was the box in
which she lay lined with blue quilted silk, but she was covered with
valuable lace, and a cap of rare valenciennes was set upon her head, her
wealth thus being proclaimed, displayed, in the midst of her awful agony.

“Ah! how pitiable it is,” resumed the Abbe Judaine in an undertone. “To
think that she is so young, so pretty, possessed of millions of money!
And if you knew how dearly loved she was, with what adoration she is
still surrounded. That tall gentleman near her is her husband, that
elegantly dressed lady is her sister, Madame Jousseur.”

Pierre remembered having often noticed in the newspapers the name of
Madame Jousseur, wife of a diplomatist, and a conspicuous member of the
higher spheres of Catholic society in Paris. People had even circulated a
story of some great passion which she had fought against and vanquished.
She also was very prettily dressed, with marvellously tasteful
simplicity, and she ministered to the wants of her sorry sister with an
air of perfect devotion. As for the unhappy woman’s husband, who at the
age of five-and-thirty had inherited his father’s colossal business, he
was a clear-complexioned, well-groomed, handsome man, clad in a closely
buttoned frock-coat. His eyes, however, were full of tears, for he adored
his wife, and had left his business in order to take her to Lourdes,
placing his last hope in this appeal to the mercy of Heaven.

Ever since the morning, Pierre had beheld many frightful sufferings in
that woeful white train. But none had so distressed his soul as did that
wretched female skeleton, slowly liquefying in the midst of its lace and
its millions. “The unhappy woman!” he murmured with a shudder.

The Abbe Judaine, however, made a gesture of serene hope. “The Blessed
Virgin will cure her,” said he; “I have prayed to her so much.”

Just then a bell again pealed, and this time it was really the signal for
starting. Only two minutes remained. There was a last rush, and folks
hurried back towards the train carrying eatables wrapped in paper, and
bottles and cans which they had filled with water. Several of them quite
lost their heads, and in their inability to find their carriages, ran
distractedly from one to the other end of the train; whilst some of the
infirm ones dragged themselves about amidst the precipitate tapping of
crutches, and others, only able to walk with difficulty, strove to hasten
their steps whilst leaning on the arms of some of the lady-hospitallers.
It was only with infinite difficulty that four men managed to replace
Madame Dieulafay in her first-class compartment. The Vignerons, who were
content with second-class accommodation, had already reinstalled
themselves in their quarters amidst an extraordinary heap of baskets,
boxes, and valises which scarcely allowed little Gustave enough room to
stretch his poor puny limbs--the limbs as it were of a deformed insect.
And then all the women appeared again: Madame Maze gliding along in
silence; Madame Vincent raising her dear little girl in her outstretched
arms and dreading lest she should hear her cry out; Madame Vetu, whom it
had been necessary to push into the train, after rousing her from her
stupefying torment; and Elise Rouquet, who was quite drenched through her
obstinacy in endeavouring to drink from the tap, and was still wiping her
monstrous face. Whilst each returned to her place and the carriage filled
once more, Marie listened to her father, who had come back delighted with
his stroll to a pointsman’s little house beyond the station, whence a
really pleasant stretch of landscape could be discerned.

“Shall we lay you down again at once?” asked Pierre, sorely distressed by
the pained expression on Marie’s face.

“Oh no, no, by-and-by!” she replied. “I shall have plenty of time to hear
those wheels roaring in my head as though they were grinding my bones.”

Then, as Ferrand seemed on the point of returning to the cantine van,
Sister Hyacinthe begged him to take another look at the strange man
before he went off. She was still waiting for Father Massias, astonished
at the inexplicable delay in his arrival, but not yet without hope, as
Sister Claire des Anges had not returned.

“Pray, Monsieur Ferrand,” said she, “tell me if this unfortunate man is
in any immediate danger.”

The young doctor again looked at the sufferer, felt him, and listened to
his breathing. Then with a gesture of discouragement he answered in a low
voice, “I feel convinced that you will not get him to Lourdes alive.”

Every head was still anxiously stretched forward. If they had only known
the man’s name, the place he had come from, who he was! But it was
impossible to extract a word from this unhappy stranger, who was about to
die there, in that carriage, without anybody being able to give his face
a name!

It suddenly occurred to Sister Hyacinthe to have him searched. Under the
circumstances there could certainly be no harm in such a course. “Feel in
his pockets, Monsieur Ferrand,” she said.

The doctor thereupon searched the man in a gentle, cautious way, but the
only things that he found in his pockets were a chaplet, a knife, and
three sous. And nothing more was ever learnt of the man.

At that moment, however, a voice announced that Sister Claire des Anges
was at last coming back with Father Massias. All this while the latter
had simply been chatting with the priest of Sainte-Radegonde in one of
the waiting-rooms. Keen emotion attended his arrival; for a moment all
seemed saved. But the train was about to start, the porters were already
closing the carriage doors, and it was necessary that extreme unction
should be administered in all haste in order to avoid too long a delay.

“This way, reverend Father!” exclaimed Sister Hyacinthe; “yes, yes, pray
come in; our unfortunate patient is here.”

Father Massias, who was five years older than Pierre, whose
fellow-student however he had been at the seminary, had a tall, spare
figure with an ascetic countenance, framed round with a light-coloured
beard and vividly lighted up by burning eyes, He was neither the priest
harassed by doubt, nor the priest with childlike faith, but an apostle
carried away by his passion, ever ready to fight and vanquish for the
pure glory of the Blessed Virgin. In his black cloak with its large hood,
and his broad-brimmed flossy hat, he shone resplendently with the
perpetual ardour of battle.

He immediately took from his pocket the silver case containing the Holy
Oils, and the ceremony began whilst the last carriage doors were being
slammed and belated pilgrims were rushing back to the train; the
station-master, meantime, anxiously glancing at the clock, and realising
that it would be necessary for him to grant a few minutes’ grace.

“_Credo in unum Deum_,” hastily murmured the Father.

“_Amen_,” replied Sister Hyacinthe and the other occupants of the
carriage.

Those who had been able to do so, had knelt upon the seats, whilst the
others joined their hands, or repeatedly made the sign of the cross; and
when the murmured prayers were followed by the Litanies of the ritual,
every voice rose, an ardent desire for the remission of the man’s sins
and for his physical and spiritual cure winging its flight heavenward
with each successive _Kyrie eleison_. Might his whole life, of which they
knew nought, be forgiven him; might he enter, stranger though he was, in
triumph into the Kingdom of God!

“_Christe, exaudi nos_.”

“_Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genitrix_.”

Father Massias had pulled out the silver needle from which hung a drop of
Holy Oil. In the midst of such a scramble, with the whole train
waiting--many people now thrusting their heads out of the carriage
windows in surprise at the delay in starting--he could not think of
following the usual practice, of anointing in turn all the organs of the
senses, those portals of the soul which give admittance to evil.

He must content himself, as the rules authorised him to do in pressing
cases, with one anointment; and this he made upon the man’s lips, those
livid parted lips from between which only a faint breath escaped, whilst
the rest of his face, with its lowered eyelids, already seemed
indistinct, again merged into the dust of the earth.

“_Per istam sanctam unctionem_,” said the Father, “_et suam piissimam
misericordiam indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per visum, auditum,
odoratum, gustum, tactum, deliquisti_.” *

  * Through this holy unction and His most tender mercy may the
    Lord pardon thee whatever sins thou hast committed by thy sight,
    hearing, etc.

The remainder of the ceremony was lost amid the hurry and scramble of the
departure. Father Massias scarcely had time to wipe off the oil with the
little piece of cotton-wool which Sister Hyacinthe held in readiness,
before he had to leave the compartment and get into his own as fast as
possible, setting the case containing the Holy Oils in order as he did
so, whilst the pilgrims finished repeating the final prayer.

“We cannot wait any longer! It is impossible!” repeated the
station-master as he bustled about. “Come, come, make haste everybody!”

At last then they were about to resume their journey. Everybody sat down,
returned to his or her corner again. Madame de Jonquiere, however, had
changed her place, in order to be nearer La Grivotte, whose condition
still worried her, and she was now seated in front of M. Sabathier, who
remained waiting with silent resignation. Moreover, Sister Hyacinthe had
not returned to her compartment, having decided to remain near the
unknown man so that she might watch over him and help him. By following
this course, too, she was able to minister to Brother Isidore, whose
sufferings his sister Marthe was at a loss to assuage. And Marie, turning
pale, felt the jolting of the train in her ailing flesh, even before it
had resumed its journey under the heavy sun, rolling onward once more
with its load of sufferers stifling in the pestilential atmosphere of the
over-heated carriages.

At last a loud whistle resounded, the engine puffed, and Sister Hyacinthe
rose up to say: The _Magnificat_, my children!




IV. MIRACLES

JUST as the train was beginning to move, the door of the compartment in
which Pierre and Marie found themselves was opened and a porter pushed a
girl of fourteen inside, saying: “There’s a seat here--make haste!”

The others were already pulling long faces and were about to protest,
when Sister Hyacinthe exclaimed: “What, is it you, Sophie? So you are
going back to see the Blessed Virgin who cured you last year!”

And at the same time Madame de Jonquiere remarked: “Ah! Sophie, my little
friend, I am very pleased to see that you are grateful.”

“Why, yes, Sister; why, yes, madame,” answered the girl, in a pretty way.

The carriage door had already been closed again, so that it was necessary
that they should accept the presence of this new pilgrim who had fallen
from heaven as it were at the very moment when the train, which she had
almost missed, was starting off again. She was a slender damsel and would
not take up much room. Moreover these ladies knew her, and all the
patients had turned their eyes upon her on hearing that the Blessed
Virgin had been pleased to cure her. They had now got beyond the station,
the engine was still puffing, whilst the wheels increased their speed,
and Sister Hyacinthe, clapping her hands, repeated: “Come, come, my
children, the _Magnificat_.”

Whilst the joyful chant arose amidst the jolting of the train, Pierre
gazed at Sophie. She was evidently a young peasant girl, the daughter of
some poor husbandman of the vicinity of Poitiers, petted by her parents,
treated in fact like a young lady since she had become the subject of a
miracle, one of the elect, whom the priests of the district flocked to
see. She wore a straw hat with pink ribbons, and a grey woollen dress
trimmed with a flounce. Her round face although not pretty was a very
pleasant one, with a beautifully fresh complexion and clear, intelligent
eyes which lent her a smiling, modest air.

When the _Magnificat_ had been sung, Pierre was unable to resist his
desire to question Sophie. A child of her age, with so candid an air, so
utterly unlike a liar, greatly interested him.

“And so you nearly missed the train, my child?” he said.

“I should have been much ashamed if I had, Monsieur l’Abbe,” she replied.
“I had been at the station since twelve o’clock. And all at once I saw
his reverence, the priest of Sainte-Radegonde, who knows me well and who
called me to him, to kiss me and tell me that it was very good of me to
go back to Lourdes. But it seems the train was starting and I only just
had time to run on to the platform. Oh! I ran so fast!”

She paused, laughing, still slightly out of breath, but already repenting
that she had been so giddy.

“And what is your name, my child?” asked Pierre.

“Sophie Couteau, Monsieur l’Abbe.”

“You do not belong to the town of Poitiers?”

“Oh no! certainly not. We belong to Vivonne, which is seven kilometres
away. My father and mother have a little land there, and things would not
be so bad if there were not eight children at home--I am the
fifth,--fortunately the four older ones are beginning to work.”

“And you, my child, what do you do?”

“I, Monsieur l’Abbe! Oh! I am no great help. Since last year, when I came
home cured, I have not been left quiet a single day, for, as you can
understand, so many people have come to see me, and then too I have been
taken to Monseigneur’s,* and to the convents and all manner of other
places. And before all that I was a long time ill. I could not walk
without a stick, and each step I took made me cry out, so dreadfully did
my foot hurt me.”

  * The Bishop’s residence.

“So it was of some injury to the foot that the Blessed Virgin cured you?”

Sophie did not have time to reply, for Sister Hyacinthe, who was
listening, intervened: “Of caries of the bones of the left heel, which
had been going on for three years,” said she. “The foot was swollen and
quite deformed, and there were fistulas giving egress to continual
suppuration.”

On hearing this, all the sufferers in the carriage became intensely
interested. They no longer took their eyes off this little girl on whom a
miracle had been performed, but scanned her from head to foot as though
seeking for some sign of the prodigy. Those who were able to stand rose
up in order that they might the better see her, and the others, the
infirm ones, stretched on their mattresses, strove to raise themselves
and turn their heads. Amidst the suffering which had again come upon them
on leaving Poitiers, the terror which filled them at the thought that
they must continue rolling onward for another fifteen hours, the sudden
advent of this child, favoured by Heaven, was like a divine relief, a ray
of hope whence they would derive sufficient strength to accomplish the
remainder of their terrible journey. The moaning had abated somewhat
already, and every face was turned towards the girl with an ardent desire
to believe.

This was especially the case with Marie, who, already reviving, joined
her trembling hands, and in a gentle supplicating voice said to Pierre,
“Question her, pray question her, ask her to tell us everything--cured, O
God! cured of such a terrible complaint!”

Madame de Jonquiere, who was quite affected, had leant over the partition
to kiss the girl. “Certainly,” said she, “our little friend will tell you
all about it. Won’t you, my darling? You will tell us what the Blessed
Virgin did for you?”

“Oh, certainly! madame-as much as you like,” answered Sophie with her
smiling, modest air, her eyes gleaming with intelligence. Indeed, she
wished to begin at once, and raised her right hand with a pretty gesture,
as a sign to everybody to be attentive. Plainly enough, she had already
acquired the habit of speaking in public.

She could not be seen, however, from some parts of the carriage, and an
idea came to Sister Hyacinthe, who said: “Get up on the seat, Sophie, and
speak loudly, on account of the noise which the train makes.”

This amused the girl, and before beginning she needed time to become
serious again. “Well, it was like this,” said she; “my foot was past
cure, I couldn’t even go to church any more, and it had to be kept
bandaged, because there was always a lot of nasty matter coming from it.
Monsieur Rivoire, the doctor, who had made a cut in it, so as to see
inside it, said that he should be obliged to take out a piece of the
bone; and that, sure enough, would have made me lame for life. But when I
got to Lourdes and had prayed a great deal to the Blessed Virgin, I went
to dip my foot in the water, wishing so much that I might be cured that I
did not even take the time to pull the bandage off. And everything
remained in the water, there was no longer anything the matter with my
foot when I took it out.”

A murmur of mingled surprise, wonder, and desire arose and spread among
those who heard this marvellous tale, so sweet and soothing to all who
were in despair. But the little one had not yet finished. She had simply
paused. And now, making a fresh gesture, holding her arms somewhat apart,
she concluded: “When I got back to Vivonne and Monsieur Rivoire saw my
foot again, he said: ‘Whether it be God or the Devil who has cured this
child, it is all the same to me; but in all truth she _is_ cured.’”

This time a burst of laughter rang out. The girl spoke in too recitative
a way, having repeated her story so many times already that she knew it
by heart. The doctor’s remark was sure to produce an effect, and she
herself laughed at it in advance, certain as she was that the others
would laugh also. However, she still retained her candid, touching air.

But she had evidently forgotten some particular, for Sister Hyacinthe, a
glance from whom had foreshadowed the doctor’s jest, now softly prompted
her “And what was it you said to Madame la Comtesse, the superintendent
of your ward, Sophie?”

“Ah! yes. I hadn’t brought many bandages for my foot with me, and I said
to her, ‘It was very kind of the Blessed Virgin to cure me the first day,
as I should have run out of linen on the morrow.’”

This provoked a fresh outburst of delight. They all thought her so nice,
to have been cured like that! And in reply to a question from Madame de
Jonquiere, she also had to tell the story of her boots, a pair of
beautiful new boots which Madame la Comtesse had given her, and in which
she had run, jumped, and danced about, full of childish delight. Boots!
think of it, she who for three years had not even been able to wear a
slipper.

Pierre, who had become grave, waxing pale with the secret uneasiness
which was penetrating him, continued to look at her. And he also asked
her other questions. She was certainly not lying, and he merely suspected
a slow distortion of the actual truth, an easily explained embellishment
of the real facts amidst all the joy she felt at being cured and becoming
an important little personage. Who now knew if the cicatrisation of her
injuries, effected, so it was asserted, completely, instantaneously, in a
few seconds, had not in reality been the work of days? Where were the
witnesses?

Just then Madame de Jonquiere began to relate that she had been at the
hospital at the time referred to. “Sophie was not in my ward,” said she,
“but I had met her walking lame that very morning--”

Pierre hastily interrupted the lady-hospitaller. “Ah! you saw her foot
before and after the immersion?”

“No, no! I don’t think that anybody was able to see it, for it was bound
round with bandages. She told you that the bandages had fallen into the
piscina.” And, turning towards the child, Madame de Jonquiere added, “But
she will show you her foot--won’t you, Sophie? Undo your shoe.”

The girl took off her shoe, and pulled down her stocking, with a
promptness and ease of manner which showed how thoroughly accustomed she
had become to it all. And she not only stretched out her foot, which was
very clean and very white, carefully tended indeed, with well-cut, pink
nails, but complacently turned it so that the young priest might examine
it at his ease. Just below the ankle there was a long scar, whose whity
seam, plainly defined, testified to the gravity of the complaint from
which the girl had suffered.

“Oh! take hold of the heel, Monsieur l’Abbe,” said she. “Press it as hard
as you like. I no longer feel any pain at all.”

Pierre made a gesture from which it might have been thought that he was
delighted with the power exercised by the Blessed Virgin. But he was
still tortured by doubt. What unknown force had acted in this case? Or
rather what faulty medical diagnosis, what assemblage of errors and
exaggerations, had ended in this fine tale?

All the patients, however, wished to see the miraculous foot, that
outward and visible sign of the divine cure which each of them was going
in search of. And it was Marie, sitting up in her box, and already
feeling less pain, who touched it first. Then Madame Maze, quite roused
from her melancholy, passed it on to Madame Vincent, who would have
kissed it for the hope which it restored to her. M. Sabathier had
listened to all the explanations with a beatific air; Madame Vetu, La
Grivotte, and even Brother Isidore opened their eyes, and evinced signs
of interest; whilst the face of Elise Rouquet had assumed an
extraordinary expression, transfigured by faith, almost beatified. If a
sore had thus disappeared, might not her own sore close and disappear,
her face retaining no trace of it save a slight scar, and again becoming
such a face as other people had? Sophie, who was still standing, had to
hold on to one of the iron rails, and place her foot on the partition,
now on the right, now on the left. And she did not weary of it all, but
felt exceedingly happy and proud at the many exclamations which were
raised, the quivering admiration and religious respect which were
bestowed on that little piece of her person, that little foot which had
now, so to say, become sacred.

“One must possess great faith, no doubt,” said Marie, thinking aloud.
“One must have a pure unspotted soul.” And, addressing herself to M. de
Guersaint, she added: “Father, I feel that I should get well if I were
ten years old, if I had the unspotted soul of a little girl.”

“But you are ten years old, my darling! Is it not so, Pierre? A little
girl of ten years old could not have a more spotless soul.”

Possessed of a mind prone to chimeras, M. de Guersaint was fond of
hearing tales of miracles. As for the young priest, profoundly affected
by the ardent purity which the young girl evinced, he no longer sought to
discuss the question, but let her surrender herself to the consoling
illusions which Sophie’s tale had wafted through the carriage.

The temperature had become yet more oppressive since their departure from
Poitiers, a storm was rising in the coppery sky, and it seemed as though
the train were rushing through a furnace. The villages passed, mournful
and solitary under the burning sun. At Couhe-Verac they had again said
their chaplets, and sung another canticle. At present, however, there was
some slight abatement of the religious exercises. Sister Hyacinthe, who
had not yet been able to lunch, ventured to eat a roll and some fruit in
all haste, whilst still ministering to the strange man whose faint,
painful breathing seemed to have become more regular. And it was only on
passing Ruffec at three o’clock that they said the vespers of the Blessed
Virgin.

“_Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genitrix_.”

“_Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi_.” *

  * “Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
     That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”

As they were finishing, M. Sabathier, who had watched little Sophie while
she put on her shoe and stocking, turned towards M. de Guersaint.

“This child’s case is interesting, no doubt,” he remarked. “But it is a
mere nothing, monsieur, for there have been far more marvellous cures
than that. Do you know the story of Pierre de Rudder, a Belgian
working-man?”

Everybody had again begun to listen.

“This man,” continued M. Sabathier, “had his leg broken by the fall of a
tree. Eight years afterwards the two fragments of the bone had not yet
joined together again--the two ends could be seen in the depths of a sore
which was continually suppurating; and the leg hung down quite limp,
swaying in all directions. Well, it was sufficient for this man to drink
a glassful of the miraculous water, and his leg was made whole again. He
was able to walk without crutches, and the doctor said to him: ‘Your leg
is like that of a new-born child.’ Yes, indeed, a perfectly new leg.”

Nobody spoke, but the listeners exchanged glances of ecstasy.

“And, by the way,” resumed M. Sabathier, “it is like the story of Louis
Bouriette, a quarryman, one of the first of the Lourdes miracles. Do you
know it? Bouriette had been injured by an explosion during some blasting
operations. The sight of his right eye was altogether destroyed, and he
was even threatened with the loss of the left one. Well, one day he sent
his daughter to fetch a bottleful of the muddy water of the source, which
then scarcely bubbled up to the surface. He washed his eye with this
muddy liquid, and prayed fervently. And, all at once, he raised a cry,
for he could see, monsieur, see as well as you and I. The doctor who was
attending him drew up a detailed narrative of the case, and there cannot
be the slightest doubt about its truth.”

“It is marvellous,” murmured M. de Guersaint in his delight.

“Would you like another example, monsieur? I can give you a famous one,
that of Francois Macary, the carpenter of Lavaur. During eighteen years
he had suffered from a deep varicose ulcer, with considerable enlargement
of the tissues in the mesial part of the left leg. He had reached such a
point that he could no longer move, and science decreed that he would
forever remain infirm. Well, one evening he shuts himself up with a
bottle of Lourdes water. He takes off his bandages, washes both his legs,
and drinks what little water then remains in the bottle. Then he goes to
bed and falls asleep; and when he awakes, he feels his legs and looks at
them. There is nothing left; the varicose enlargement, the ulcers, have
all disappeared. The skin of his knee, monsieur, had become as smooth, as
fresh as it had been when he was twenty.”

This time there was an explosion of surprise and admiration. The patients
and the pilgrims were entering into the enchanted land of miracles, where
impossibilities are accomplished at each bend of the pathways, where one
marches on at ease from prodigy to prodigy. And each had his or her story
to tell, burning with a desire to contribute a fresh proof, to fortify
faith and hope by yet another example.

That silent creature, Madame Maze, was so transported that she spoke the
first. “I have a friend,” said she, “who knew the Widow Rizan, that lady
whose cure also created so great a stir. For four-and-twenty years her
left side had been entirely paralysed. Her stomach was unable to retain
any solid food, and she had become an inert bag of bones which had to be
turned over in bed, The friction of the sheets, too, had ended by rubbing
her skin away in parts. Well, she was so low one evening that the doctor
announced that she would die during the night. An hour later, however,
she emerged from her torpor and asked her daughter in a faint voice to go
and fetch her a glass of Lourdes water from a neighbour’s. But she was
only able to obtain this glass of water on the following morning; and she
cried out to her daughter: ‘Oh! it is life that I am drinking--rub my
face with it, rub my arm and my leg, rub my whole body with it!’ And when
her daughter obeyed her, she gradually saw the huge swelling subside, and
the paralysed, tumefied limbs recover their natural suppleness and
appearance. Nor was that all, for Madame Rizan cried out that she was
cured and felt hungry, and wanted bread and meat--she who had eaten none
for four-and-twenty years! And she got out of bed and dressed herself,
whilst her daughter, who was so overpowered that the neighbours thought
she had become an orphan, replied to them: ‘No, no, mamma isn’t dead, she
has come to life again!’”

This narrative had brought tears to Madame Vincent’s eyes. Ah! if she had
only been able to see her little Rose recover like that, eat with a good
appetite, and run about again! At the same time, another case, which she
had been told of in Paris and which had greatly influenced her in
deciding to take her ailing child to Lourdes, returned to her memory.

“And I, too,” said she, “know the story of a girl who was paralysed. Her
name was Lucie Druon, and she was an inmate of an orphan asylum. She was
quite young and could not even kneel down. Her limbs were bent like
hoops. Her right leg, the shorter of the two, had ended by becoming
twisted round the left one; and when any of the other girls carried her
about you saw her feet hanging down quite limp, like dead ones. Please
notice that she did not even go to Lourdes. She simply performed a
novena; but she fasted during the nine days, and her desire to be cured
was so great that she spent her nights in prayer. At last, on the ninth
day, whilst she was drinking a little Lourdes water, she felt a violent
commotion in her legs. She picked herself up, fell down, picked herself
up again and walked. All her little companions, who were astonished,
almost frightened at the sight, began to cry out ‘Lucie can walk! Lucie
can walk!’ It was quite true. In a few seconds her legs had become
straight and strong and healthy. She crossed the courtyard and was able
to climb up the steps of the chapel, where the whole sisterhood,
transported with gratitude, chanted the _Magnificat_. Ah! the dear child,
how happy, how happy she must have been!”

As Madame Vincent finished, two tears fell from her cheeks on to the pale
face of her little girl, whom she kissed distractedly.

The general interest was still increasing, becoming quite impassioned.
The rapturous joy born of these beautiful stories, in which Heaven
invariably triumphed over human reality, transported these childlike
souls to such a point that those who were suffering the most grievously
sat up in their turn, and recovered the power of speech. And with the
narratives of one and all was blended a thought of the sufferer’s own
ailment, a belief that he or she would also be cured, since a malady of
the same description had vanished like an evil dream beneath the breath
of the Divinity.

“Ah!” stammered Madame Vetu, her articulation hindered by her sufferings,
“there was another one, Antoinette Thardivail, whose stomach was being
eaten away like mine. You would have said that dogs were devouring it,
and sometimes there was a swelling in it as big as a child’s head.
Tumours indeed were ever forming in it, like fowl’s eggs, so that for
eight months she brought up blood. And she also was at the point of
death, with nothing but her skin left on her bones, and dying of hunger,
when she drank some water of Lourdes and had the pit of her stomach
washed with it. Three minutes afterwards, her doctor, who on the previous
day had left her almost in the last throes, scarce breathing, found her
up and sitting by the fireside, eating a tender chicken’s wing with a
good appetite. She had no more tumours, she laughed as she had laughed
when she was twenty, and her face had regained the brilliancy of youth.
Ah! to be able to eat what one likes, to become young again, to cease
suffering!”

“And the cure of Sister Julienne!” then exclaimed La Grivotte, raising
herself on one of her elbows, her eyes glittering with fever. “In her
case it commenced with a bad cold as it did with me, and then she began
to spit blood. And every six months she fell ill again and had to take to
her bed. The last time everybody said that she wouldn’t leave it alive.
The doctors had vainly tried every remedy, iodine, blistering, and
cauterising. In fact, hers was a real case of phthisis, certified by half
a dozen medical men. Well, she comes to Lourdes, and Heaven alone knows
amidst what awful suffering--she was so bad, indeed, that at Toulouse
they thought for a moment that she was about to die! The Sisters had to
carry her in their arms, and on reaching the piscina the
lady-hospitallers wouldn’t bathe her. She was dead, they said. No matter!
she was undressed at last, and plunged into the water, quite unconscious
and covered with perspiration. And when they took her out she was so pale
that they laid her on the ground, thinking that it was certainly all over
with her at last. But, all at once, colour came back to her cheeks, her
eyes opened, and she drew a long breath. She was cured; she dressed
herself without any help and made a good meal after she had been to the
Grotto to thank the Blessed Virgin. There! there’s no gainsaying it, that
was a real case of phthisis, completely cured as though by medicine!”

Thereupon Brother Isidore in his turn wished to speak; but he was unable
to do so at any length, and could only with difficulty manage to say to
his sister: “Marthe, tell them the story of Sister Dorothee which the
priest of Saint-Sauveur related to us.”

“Sister Dorothee,” began the peasant girl in an awkward way, “felt her
leg quite numbed when she got up one morning, and from that time she lost
the use of it, for it got as cold and as heavy as a stone. Besides which
she felt a great pain in the back. The doctors couldn’t understand it.
She saw half a dozen of them, who pricked her with pins and burnt her
skin with a lot of drugs. But it was just as if they had sung to her.
Sister Dorothee had well understood that only the Blessed Virgin could
find the right remedy for her, and so she went off to Lourdes, and had
herself dipped in the piscina. She thought at first that the water was
going to kill her, for it was so bitterly cold. But by-and-by it became
so soft that she fancied it was warm, as nice as milk. She had never felt
so nice before, it seemed to her as if her veins were opening and the
water were flowing into them. As you will understand, life was returning
into her body since the Blessed Virgin was concerning herself in the
case. She no longer had anything the matter with her when she came out,
but walked about, ate the whole of a pigeon for her dinner, and slept all
night long like the happy woman she was. Glory to the Blessed Virgin,
eternal gratitude to the most Powerful Mother and her Divine Son!”

Elise Rouquet would also have liked to bring forward a miracle which she
was acquainted with. Only she spoke with so much difficulty owing to the
deformity of her mouth, that she had not yet been able to secure a turn.
Just then, however, there was a pause, and drawing the wrap, which
concealed the horror of her sore, slightly on one side, she profited by
the opportunity to begin.

“For my part, I wasn’t told anything about a great illness, but it was a
very funny case at all events,” she said. “It was about a woman,
Celestine Dubois, as she was called, who had run a needle right into her
hand while she was washing. It stopped there for seven years, for no
doctor was able to take it out. Her hand shrivelled up, and she could no
longer open it. Well, she got to Lourdes, and dipped her hand into the
piscina. But as soon as she did so she began to shriek, and took it out
again. Then they caught hold of her and put her hand into the water by
force, and kept it there while she continued sobbing, with her face
covered with sweat. Three times did they plunge her hand into the
piscina, and each time they saw the needle moving along, till it came out
by the tip of the thumb. She shrieked, of course, because the needle was
moving though her flesh just as though somebody had been pushing it to
drive it out. And after that Celestine never suffered again, and only a
little scar could be seen on her hand as a mark of what the Blessed
Virgin had done.”

This anecdote produced a greater effect than even the miraculous cures of
the most fearful illnesses. A needle which moved as though somebody were
pushing it! This peopled the Invisible, showed each sufferer his Guardian
Angel standing behind him, only awaiting the orders of Heaven in order to
render him assistance. And besides, how pretty and childlike the story
was--this needle which came out in the miraculous water after obstinately
refusing to stir during seven long years. Exclamations of delight
resounded from all the pleased listeners; they smiled and laughed with
satisfaction, radiant at finding that nothing was beyond the power of
Heaven, and that if it were Heaven’s pleasure they themselves would all
become healthy, young, and superb. It was sufficient that one should
fervently believe and pray in order that nature might be confounded and
that the Incredible might come to pass. Apart from that there was merely
a question of good luck, since Heaven seemed to make a selection of those
sufferers who should be cured.

“Oh! how beautiful it is, father,” murmured Marie, who, revived by the
passionate interest which she took in the momentous subject, had so far
contented herself with listening, dumb with amazement as it were. “Do you
remember,” she continued, “what you yourself told me of that poor woman,
Joachine Dehaut, who came from Belgium and made her way right across
France with her twisted leg eaten away by an ulcer, the awful smell of
which drove everybody away from her? First of all the ulcer was healed;
you could press her knee and she felt nothing, only a slight redness
remained to mark where it had been. And then came the turn of the
dislocation. She shrieked while she was in the water, it seemed to her as
if somebody were breaking her bones, pulling her leg away from her; and,
at the same time, she and the woman who was bathing her, saw her deformed
foot rise and extend into its natural shape with the regular movement of
a clock hand. Her leg also straightened itself, the muscles extended, the
knee replaced itself in its proper position, all amidst such acute pain
that Joachine ended by fainting. But as soon as she recovered
consciousness, she darted off, erect and agile, to carry her crutches to
the Grotto.”

M. de Guersaint in his turn was laughing with wonderment, waving his hand
to confirm this story, which had been told him by a Father of the
Assumption. He could have related a score of similar instances, said he,
each more touching, more extraordinary than the other. He even invoked
Pierre’s testimony, and the young priest, who was unable to believe,
contented himself with nodding his head. At first, unwilling as he was to
afflict Marie, he had striven to divert his thoughts by gazing though the
carriage window at the fields, trees, and houses which defiled before his
eyes. They had just passed Angouleme, and meadows stretched out, and
lines of poplar trees fled away amidst the continuous fanning of the air,
which the velocity of the train occasioned.

They were late, no doubt, for they were hastening onward at full speed,
thundering along under the stormy sky, through the fiery atmosphere,
devouring kilometre after kilometre in swift succession. However, despite
himself, Pierre heard snatches of the various narratives, and grew
interested in these extravagant stories, which the rough jolting of the
wheels accompanied like a lullaby, as though the engine had been turned
loose and were wildly bearing them away to the divine land of dreams,
They were rolling, still rolling along, and Pierre at last ceased to gaze
at the landscape, and surrendered himself to the heavy, sleep-inviting
atmosphere of the carriage, where ecstasy was growing and spreading,
carrying everyone far from the world of reality across which they were so
rapidly rushing, The sight of Marie’s face with its brightened look
filled the young priest with sincere joy, and he let her retain his hand,
which she had taken in order to acquaint him, by the pressure of her
fingers, with all the confidence which was reviving in her soul. And why
should he have saddened her by his doubts, since he was so desirous of
her cure? So he continued clasping her small, moist hand, feeling
infinite affection for her, a dolorous brotherly love which distracted
him, and made him anxious to believe in the pity of the spheres, in a
superior kindness which tempered suffering to those who were plunged in
despair, “Oh!” she repeated, “how beautiful it is, Pierre! How beautiful
it is! And what glory it will be if the Blessed Virgin deigns to disturb
herself for me! Do you really think me worthy of such a favour?”

“Assuredly I do,” he exclaimed; “you are the best and the purest, with a
spotless soul as your father said; there are not enough good angels in
Paradise to form your escort.”

But the narratives were not yet finished. Sister Hyacinthe and Madame de
Jonquiere were now enumerating all the miracles with which they were
acquainted, the long, long series of miracles which for more than thirty
years had been flowering at Lourdes, like the uninterrupted budding of
the roses on the Mystical Rose-tree. They could be counted by thousands,
they put forth fresh shoots every year with prodigious verdancy of sap,
becoming brighter and brighter each successive season. And the sufferers
who listened to these marvellous stories with increasing feverishness
were like little children who, after hearing one fine fairy tale, ask for
another, and another, and yet another. Oh! that they might have more and
more of those stories in which evil reality was flouted, in which unjust
nature was cuffed and slapped, in which the Divinity intervened as the
supreme healer, He who laughs at science and distributes happiness
according to His own good pleasure.

First of all there were the deaf and the dumb who suddenly heard and
spoke; such as Aurelie Bruneau, who was incurably deaf, with the drums of
both ears broken, and yet was suddenly enraptured by the celestial music
of a harmonium; such also as Louise Pourchet, who on her side had been
dumb for five-and-twenty years, and yet, whilst praying in the Grotto,
suddenly exclaimed, “Hail, Mary, full of grace!” And there were others and
yet others who were completely cured by merely letting a few drops of
water fall into their ears or upon their tongues. Then came the procession
of the blind: Father Hermann, who felt the Blessed Virgin’s gentle hand
removing the veil which covered his eyes; Mademoiselle de Pontbriant, who
was threatened with a total loss of sight, but after a simple prayer was
enabled to see better than she had ever seen before; then a child twelve
years old whose corneas resembled marbles, but who, in three seconds,
became possessed of clear, deep eyes, bright with an angelic smile.
However, there was especially an abundance of paralytics, of lame people
suddenly enabled to walk upright, of sufferers for long years powerless to
stir from their beds of misery and to whom the voice said: “Arise and
walk!” Delannoy,* afflicted with ataxia, vainly cauterised and burnt,
fifteen times an inmate of the Paris hospitals, whence he had emerged with
the concurring diagnosis of twelve doctors, feels a strange force raising
him up as the Blessed Sacrament goes by, and he begins to follow it, his
legs strong and healthy once more. Marie Louise Delpon, a girl of
fourteen, suffering from paralysis which had stiffened her legs, drawn
back her hands, and twisted her mouth on one side, sees her limbs loosen
and the distortion of her mouth disappear as though an invisible hand were
severing the fearful bonds which had deformed her. Marie Vachier, riveted
to her arm-chair during seventeen years by paraplegia, not only runs and
flies on emerging from the piscina, but finds no trace even of the sores
with which her long-enforced immobility had covered her body. And Georges
Hanquet, attacked by softening of the spinal marrow, passes without
transition from agony to perfect health; while Leonie Charton, likewise
afflicted with softening of the medulla, and whose vertebrae bulge out to
a considerable extent, feels her hump melting away as though by
enchantment, and her legs rise and straighten, renovated and vigorous.

  * This was one of the most notorious of the recorded cases and had
    a very strange sequel subsequent to the first publication of this
    work. Pierre Delannoy had been employed as a ward-assistant in one
    of the large Paris hospitals from 1877 to 1881, when he came to
    the conclusion that the life of an in-patient was far preferable
    to the one he was leading. He, therefore, resolved to pass the
    rest of his days inside different hospitals in the capacity of
    invalid. He started by feigning locomotor ataxia, and for six
    years deceived the highest medical experts in Paris, so curiously
    did he appear to suffer. He stayed in turn in all the hospitals in
    the city, being treated with every care and consideration, until
    at last he met with a doctor who insisted on cauterisation and
    other disagreeable remedies. Delannoy thereupon opined that the
    time to be cured had arrived, and cured he became, and was
    discharged. He next appeared at Lourdes, supported by crutches,
    and presenting every symptom of being hopelessly crippled. With
    other infirm and decrepid people he was dipped in the piscina and
    so efficacious did this treatment prove that he came out another
    man, threw his crutches to the ground and walked, as an onlooker
    expressed it, “like a rural postman.” All Lourdes rang with the
    fame of the miracle, and the Church, after starring Delannoy
    round the country as a specimen of what could be done at the holy
    spring, placed him in charge of a home for invalids. But this was
    too much like hard work, and he soon decamped with all the money
    he could lay his hands on. Returning to Paris he was admitted to
    the Hospital of Ste. Anne as suffering from mental debility, but
    this did not prevent him from running off one night with about
    $300 belonging to a dispenser. The police were put on his track
    and arrested him in May, 1895, when he tried to pass himself off
    as a lunatic; but he had become by this time too well known, and
    was indicted in due course. At his trial he energetically denied
    that he had ever shammed, but the Court would not believe him,
    and sentenced him to four years’ imprisonment with hard labour.
    --Trans.

Then came all sorts of ailments. First those brought about by scrofula--a
great many more legs long incapable of service and made anew. There was
Margaret Gehier, who had suffered from coxalgia for seven-and-twenty
years, whose hip was devoured by the disease, whose left knee was
anchylosed, and who yet was suddenly able to fall upon her knees to thank
the Blessed Virgin for healing her. There was also Philomene Simonneau,
the young Vendeenne, whose left leg was perforated by three horrible
sores in the depths of which her carious bones were visible, and whose
bones, whose flesh, and whose skin were all formed afresh.

Next came the dropsical ones: Madame Ancelin, the swelling of whose feet,
hands, and entire body subsided without anyone being able to tell whither
all the water had gone; Mademoiselle Montagnon, from whom, on various
occasions, nearly twenty quarts of water had been drawn, and who, on
again swelling, was entirely rid of the fluid by the application of a
bandage which had been dipped in the miraculous source. And, in her case
also, none of the water could be found, either in her bed or on the
floor. In the same way, not a complaint of the stomach resisted, all
disappeared with the first glass of water. There was Marie Souchet, who
vomited black blood, who had wasted to a skeleton, and who devoured her
food and recovered her flesh in two days’ time! There was Marie Jarlaud,
who had burnt herself internally through drinking a glass of a metallic
solution used for cleansing and brightening kitchen utensils, and who
felt the tumour which had resulted from her injuries melt rapidly away.
Moreover, every tumour disappeared in this fashion, in the piscina,
without leaving the slightest trace behind. But that which caused yet
greater wonderment was the manner in which ulcers, cancers, all sorts of
horrible, visible sores were cicatrised as by a breath from on high. A
Jew, an actor, whose hand was devoured by an ulcer, merely had to dip it
in the water and he was cured. A very wealthy young foreigner, who had a
wen as large as a hen’s egg, on his right wrist, _beheld_ it dissolve.
Rose Duval, who, as a result of a white tumour, had a hole in her left
elbow, large enough to accommodate a walnut, was able to watch and follow
the prompt action of the new flesh in filling up this cavity! The Widow
Fromond, with a lip half decoyed by a cancerous formation, merely had to
apply the miraculous water to it as a lotion, and not even a red mark
remained. Marie Moreau, who experienced fearful sufferings from a cancer
in the breast, fell asleep, after laying on it a linen cloth soaked in
some water of Lourdes, and when she awoke, two hours later, the pain had
disappeared, and her flesh was once more smooth and pink and fresh.

At last Sister Hyacinthe began to speak of the immediate and complete
cures of phthisis, and this was the triumph, the healing of that terrible
disease which ravages humanity, which unbelievers defied the Blessed
Virgin to cure, but which she did cure, it was said, by merely raising
her little finger. A hundred instances, more extraordinary one than the
other, pressed forward for citation.

Marguerite Coupel, who had suffered from phthisis for three years, and
the upper part of whose lungs is destroyed by tuberculosis, rises up and
goes off, radiant with health. Madame de la Riviere, who spits blood, who
is ever covered with a cold perspiration, whose nails have already
acquired a violet tinge, who is indeed on the point of drawing her last
breath, requires but a spoonful of the water to be administered to her
between her teeth, and lo! the rattles cease, she sits up, makes the
responses to the litanies, and asks for some broth. Julie Jadot requires
four spoonfuls; but then she could no longer hold up her head, she was of
such a delicate constitution that disease had reduced her to nothing; and
yet, in a few days, she becomes quite fat. Anna Catry, who is in the most
advanced stage of the malady, with her left lung half destroyed by a
cavity, is plunged five times into the cold water, contrary to all the
dictates of prudence, and she is cured, her lung is healthy once more.
Another consumptive girl, condemned by fifteen doctors, has asked
nothing, has simply fallen on her knees in the Grotto, by chance as it
were, and is afterwards quite surprised at having been cured _au
passage_, through the lucky circumstance of having been there, no doubt,
at the hour when the Blessed Virgin, moved to pity, allows miracles to
fall from her invisible hands.

Miracles and yet more miracles! They rained down like the flowers of
dreams from a clear and balmy sky. Some of them were touching, some of
them were childish. An old woman, who, having her hand anchylosed, had
been incapable of moving it for thirty years, washes it in the water and
is at once able to make the sign of the Cross. Sister Sophie, who barked
like a dog, plunges into the piscina and emerges from it with a clear,
pure voice, chanting a canticle. Mustapha, a Turk, invokes the White Lady
and recovers the use of his right eye by applying a compress to it. An
officer of Turcos was protected at Sedan; a cuirassier of Reichsoffen
would have died, pierced in the heart by a bullet, if this bullet after
passing though his pocket-book had not stayed its flight on reaching a
little picture of Our Lady of Lourdes! And, as with the men and women, so
did the children, the poor, suffering little ones, find mercy; a
paralytic boy of five rose and walked after being held for five minutes
under the icy jet of the spring; another one, fifteen years of age, who,
lying in bed, could only raise an inarticulate cry, sprang out of the
piscina, shouting that he was cured; another one, but two years old, a
poor tiny fellow who had never been able to walk, remained for a quarter
of an hour in the cold water and then, invigorated and smiling, took his
first steps like a little man! And for all of them, the little ones as
well as the adults, the pain was acute whilst the miracle was being
accomplished; for the work of repair could not be effected without
causing an extraordinary shock to the whole human organism; the bones
grew again, new flesh was formed, and the disease, driven away, made its
escape in a final convulsion. But how great was the feeling of comfort
which followed! The doctors could not believe their eyes, their
astonishment burst forth at each fresh cure, when they saw the patients
whom they had despaired of run and jump and eat with ravenous appetites.
All these chosen ones, these women cured of their ailments, walked a
couple of miles, sat down to roast fowl, and slept the soundest of sleeps
for a dozen hours. Moreover, there was no convalescence, it was a sudden
leap from the death throes to complete health. Limbs were renovated,
sores were filled up, organs were reformed in their entirety, plumpness
returned to the emaciated, all with the velocity of a lightning flash!
Science was completely baffled. Not even the most simple precautions were
taken, women were bathed at all times and seasons, perspiring
consumptives were plunged into the icy water, sores were left to their
putrefaction without any thought of employing antiseptics. And then what
canticles of joy, what shouts of gratitude and love arose at each fresh
miracle! The favoured one falls upon her knees, all who are present weep,
conversions are effected, Protestants and Jews alike embrace
Catholicism--other miracles these, miracles of faith, at which Heaven
triumphs. And when the favoured one, chosen for the miracle, returns to
her village, all the inhabitants crowd to meet her, whilst the bells peal
merrily; and when she is seen springing lightly from the vehicle which
has brought her home, shouts and sobs of joy burst forth and all intonate
the _Magnificat_: Glory to the Blessed Virgin! Gratitude and love for
ever!

Indeed, that which was more particularly evolved from the realisation of
all these hopes, from the celebration of all these ardent thanksgivings,
was gratitude--gratitude to the Mother most pure and most admirable. She
was the great passion of every soul, she, the Virgin most powerful, the
Virgin most merciful, the Mirror of Justice, the Seat of Wisdom.* All
hands were stretched towards her, Mystical Rose in the dim light of the
chapels, Tower of Ivory on the horizon of dreamland, Gate of Heaven
leading into the Infinite. Each day at early dawn she shone forth, bright
Morning Star, gay with juvenescent hope. And was she not also the Health
of the weak, the Refuge of sinners, the Comforter of the afflicted?
France had ever been her well-loved country, she was adored there with an
ardent worship, the worship of her womanhood and her motherhood, the
soaring of a divine affection; and it was particularly in France that it
pleased her to show herself to little shepherdesses. She was so good to
the little and the humble; she continually occupied herself with them;
and if she was appealed to so willingly it was because she was known to
be the intermediary of love betwixt Earth and Heaven. Every evening she
wept tears of gold at the feet of her divine Son to obtain favours from
Him, and these favours were the miracles which He permitted her to
work,--these beautiful, flower-like miracles, as sweet-scented as the
roses of Paradise, so prodigiously splendid and fragrant.

  * For the information of Protestant and other non-Catholic readers
    it may be mentioned that all the titles enumerated in this passage
    are taken from the Litany of the Blessed Virgin.--Trans.

But the train was still rolling, rolling onward. They had just passed
Contras, it was six o’clock, and Sister Hyacinthe, rising to her, feet,
clapped her hands together and once again repeated: “The Angelus, my
children!”

Never had “Aves” impregnated with greater faith, inflamed with a more
fervent desire to be heard by Heaven, winged their flight on high. And
Pierre suddenly understood everything, clearly realised the meaning of
all these pilgrimages, of all these trains rolling along through every
country of the civilised world, of all these eager crowds, hastening
towards Lourdes, which blazed over yonder like the abode of salvation for
body and for mind. Ah! the poor wretches whom, ever since morning, he had
heard groaning with pain, the poor wretches who exposed their sorry
carcasses to the fatigues of such a journey! They were all condemned,
abandoned by science, weary of consulting doctors, of having tried the
torturing effects of futile remedies. And how well one could understand
that, burning with a desire to preserve their lives, unable to resign
themselves to the injustice and indifference of Nature, they should dream
of a superhuman power, of an almighty Divinity who, in their favour,
would perchance annul the established laws, alter the course of the
planets, and reconsider His creation! For if the world failed them, did
not the Divinity remain to them? In their cases reality was too
abominable, and an immense need of illusion and falsehood sprang up
within them. Oh! to believe that there is a supreme Justiciar somewhere,
one who rights the apparent wrongs of things and beings; to believe that
there is a Redeemer, a consoler who is the real master, who can carry the
torrents back to their source, who can restore youth to the aged, and
life to the dead! And when you are covered with sores, when your limbs
are twisted, when your stomach is swollen by tumours, when your lungs are
destroyed by disease, to be able to say that all this is of no
consequence, that everything may disappear and be renewed at a sign from
the Blessed Virgin, that it is sufficient that you should pray to her,
touch her heart, and obtain the favour of being chosen by her. And then
what a heavenly fount of hope appeared with the prodigious flow of those
beautiful stories of cure, those adorable fairy tales which lulled and
intoxicated the feverish imaginations of the sick and the infirm. Since
little Sophie Couteau, with her white, sound foot, had climbed into that
carriage, opening to the gaze of those within it the limitless heavens of
the Divine and the Supernatural, how well one could understand the breath
of resurrection that was passing over the world, slowly raising those who
despaired the most from their beds of misery, and making their eyes shine
since life was itself a possibility for them, and they were, perhaps,
about to begin it afresh.

Yes, ‘t was indeed that. If that woeful train was rolling, rolling on, if
that carriage was full, if the other carriages were full also, if France
and the world, from the uttermost limits of the earth, were crossed by
similar trains, if crowds of three hundred thousand believers, bringing
thousands of sick along with them, were ever setting out, from one end of
the year to the other, it was because the Grotto yonder was shining forth
in its glory like a beacon of hope and illusion, like a sign of the
revolt and triumph of the Impossible over inexorable materiality. Never
had a more impassionating romance been devised to exalt the souls of men
above the stern laws of life. To dream that dream, this was the great,
the ineffable happiness. If the Fathers of the Assumption had seen the
success of their pilgrimages increase and spread from year to year, it
was because they sold to all the flocking peoples the bread of
consolation and illusion, the delicious bread of hope, for which
suffering humanity ever hungers with a hunger that nothing will ever
appease. And it was not merely the physical sores which cried aloud for
cure, the whole of man’s moral and intellectual being likewise shrieked
forth its wretchedness, with an insatiable yearning for happiness. To be
happy, to place the certainty of life in faith, to lean till death should
come upon that one strong staff of travel--such was the desire exhaled by
every breast, the desire which made every moral grief bend the knee,
imploring a continuance of grace, the conversion of dear ones, the
spiritual salvation of self and those one loved. The mighty cry spread
from pole to pole, ascended and filled all the regions of space: To be
happy, happy for evermore, both in life and in death!

And Pierre saw the suffering beings around him lose all perception of the
jolting and recover their strength as league by league they drew nearer
to the miracle. Even Madame Maze grew talkative, certain as she felt that
the Blessed Virgin would restore her husband to her. With a smile on her
face Madame Vincent gently rocked her little Rose in her arms, thinking
that she was not nearly so ill as those all but lifeless children who,
after being plunged in the icy water, sprang out and played. M. Sabathier
jested with M. de Guersaint, and explained to him that, next October,
when he had recovered the use of his legs, he should go on a trip to
Rome--a journey which he had been postponing for fifteen years and more.
Madame Vetu, quite calmed, feeling nothing but a slight twinge in the
stomach, imagined that she was hungry, and asked Madame de Jonquiere to
let her dip some strips of bread in a glass of milk; whilst Elise
Rouquet, forgetting her sores, ate some grapes, with face uncovered. And
in La Grivotte who was sitting up and Brother Isidore who had ceased
moaning, all those fine stories had left a pleasant fever, to such a
point that, impatient to be cured, they grew anxious to know the time.
For a minute also the man, the strange man, resuscitated. Whilst Sister
Hyacinthe was again wiping the cold sweat from his brow, he raised his
eyelids, and a smile momentarily brightened his pallid countenance. Yet
once again he, also, had hoped.

Marie was still holding Pierre’s fingers in her own small, warm hand. It
was seven o’clock, they were not due at Bordeaux till half-past seven;
and the belated train was quickening its pace yet more and more, rushing
along with wild speed in order to make up for the minutes it had lost.
The storm had ended by coming down, and now a gentle light of infinite
purity fell from the vast clear heavens.

“Oh! how beautiful it is, Pierre--how beautiful it is!” Marie again
repeated, pressing his hand with tender affection. And leaning towards
him, she added in an undertone: “I beheld the Blessed Virgin a little
while ago, Pierre, and it was your cure that I implored and shall
obtain.”

The priest, who understood her meaning, was thrown into confusion by the
divine light which gleamed in her eyes as she fixed them on his own. She
had forgotten her own sufferings; that which she had asked for was his
conversion; and that prayer of faith, emanating, pure and candid, from
that dear, suffering creature, upset his soul. Yet why should he not
believe some day? He himself had been distracted by all those
extraordinary narratives. The stifling heat of the carriage had made him
dizzy, the sight of all the woe heaped up there caused his heart to bleed
with pity. And contagion was doing its work; he no longer knew where the
real and the possible ceased, he lacked the power to disentangle such a
mass of stupefying facts, to explain such as admitted of explanation and
reject the others. At one moment, indeed, as a hymn once more resounded
and carried him off with its stubborn importunate rhythm, he ceased to be
master of himself, and imagined that he was at last beginning to believe
amidst the hallucinatory vertigo which reigned in that travelling
hospital, rolling, ever rolling onward at full speed.




V. BERNADETTE

THE train left Bordeaux after a stoppage of a few minutes, during which
those who had not dined hastened to purchase some provisions. Moreover,
the ailing ones were constantly drinking milk, and asking for biscuits,
like little children. And, as soon as they were off again, Sister
Hyacinthe clapped her hands, and exclaimed: “Come, let us make haste; the
evening prayer.”

Thereupon, during a quarter of an hour came a confused murmuring, made up
of “Paters” and “Aves,” self-examinations, acts of contrition, and vows
of trustful reliance in God, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, with
thanksgiving for protection and preservation that day, and, at last, a
prayer for the living and for the faithful departed.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

It was ten minutes past eight o’clock, the shades of night were already
bedimming the landscape--a vast plain which the evening mist seemed to
prolong into the infinite, and where, far away, bright dots of light
shone out from the windows of lonely, scattered houses. In the carriage,
the lights of the lamps were flickering, casting a subdued yellow glow on
the luggage and the pilgrims, who were sorely shaken by the spreading
tendency of the train’s motion.

“You know, my children,” resumed Sister Hyacinthe, who had remained
standing, “I shall order silence when we get to Lamothe, in about an
hour’s time. So you have an hour to amuse yourselves, but you must be
reasonable and not excite yourselves too much. And when we have passed
Lamothe, you hear me, there must not be another word, another sound, you
must all go to sleep.”

This made them laugh.

“Oh! but it is the rule, you know,” added the Sister, “and surely you
have too much sense not to obey me.”

Since the morning they had punctually fulfilled the programme of
religious exercises specified for each successive hour. And now that all
the prayers had been said, the beads told, the hymns chanted, the day’s
duties were over, and a brief interval for recreation was allowed before
sleeping. They were, however, at a loss as to what they should do.

“Sister,” suddenly said Marie, “if you would allow Monsieur l’Abbe to
read to us--he reads extremely well,--and as it happens I have a little
book with me--a history of Bernadette which is so interesting--”

The others did nor let her finish, but with the suddenly awakened desire
of children to whom a beautiful story has been promised, loudly
exclaimed: “Oh! yes, Sister. Oh! yes, Sister--”

“Of course I will allow it,” replied Sister Hyacinthe, “since it is a
question of reading something instructive and edifying.”

Pierre was obliged to consent. But to be able to read the book he wished
to be under the lamp, and it was necessary that he should change seats
with M. de Guersaint, whom the promise of a story had delighted as much
as it did the ailing ones. And when the young priest, after changing
seats and declaring that he would be able to see well enough, at last
opened the little book, a quiver of curiosity sped from one end of the
carriage to the other, and every head was stretched out, lending ear with
rapt attention. Fortunately, Pierre had a clear, powerful voice and made
himself distinctly heard above the wheels, which, now that the train
travelled across a vast level plain, gave out but a subdued, rumbling
sound.

Before beginning, however, the young priest had examined the book. It was
one of those little works of propaganda issued from the Catholic
printing-presses and circulated in profusion throughout all Christendom.
Badly printed, on wretched paper, it was adorned on its blue cover with a
little wood-cut of Our Lady of Lourdes, a naive design alike stiff and
awkward. The book itself was short, and half an hour would certainly
suffice to read it from cover to cover without hurrying.

Accordingly, in his fine, clear voice, with its penetrating, musical
tones, he began his perusal as follows:--

“It happened at Lourdes, a little town near the Pyrenees, on a Thursday,
February 11, 1858. The weather was cold, and somewhat cloudy, and in the
humble home of a poor but honest miller named Francois Soubirous there
was no wood to cook the dinner. The miller’s wife, Louise, said to her
younger daughter Marie, ‘Go and gather some wood on the bank of the Gave
or on the common-land.’ The Gave is a torrent which passes through
Lourdes.

“Marie had an elder sister, named Bernadette, who had lately arrived from
the country, where some worthy villagers had employed her as a
shepherdess. She was a slender, delicate, extremely innocent child, and
knew nothing except her rosary. Louise Soubirous hesitated to send her
out with her sister, on account of the cold, but at last, yielding to the
entreaties of Marie and a young girl of the neighbourhood called Jeanne
Abadie, she consented to let her go.

“Following the bank of the torrent and gathering stray fragments of dead
wood, the three maidens at last found themselves in front of the Grotto,
hollowed out in a huge mass of rock which the people of the district
called Massabielle.”

Pierre had reached this point and was turning the page when he suddenly
paused and let the little book fall on his knees. The childish character
of the narrative, its ready-made, empty phraseology, filled him with
impatience. He himself possessed quite a collection of documents
concerning this extraordinary story, had passionately studied even its
most trifling details, and in the depths of his heart retained a feeling
of tender affection and infinite pity for Bernadette. He had just
reflected, too, that on the very next day he would be able to begin that
decisive inquiry which he had formerly dreamt of making at Lourdes. In
fact, this was one of the reasons which had induced him to accompany
Marie on her journey. And he was now conscious of an awakening of all his
curiosity respecting the Visionary, whom he loved because he felt that
she had been a girl of candid soul, truthful and ill-fated, though at the
same time he would much have liked to analyse and explain her case.
Assuredly, she had not lied, she had indeed beheld a vision and heard
voices, like Joan of Arc; and like Joan of Arc also, she was now, in the
opinion of the devout, accomplishing the deliverance of France--from sin
if not from invaders. Pierre wondered what force could have produced
her--her and her work. How was it that the visionary faculty had become
developed in that lowly girl, so distracting believing souls as to bring
about a renewal of the miracles of primitive times, as to found almost a
new religion in the midst of a Holy City, built at an outlay of millions,
and ever invaded by crowds of worshippers more numerous and more exalted
in mind than had ever been known since the days of the Crusades?

And so, ceasing to read the book, Pierre began to tell his companions all
that he knew, all that he had divined and reconstructed of that story
which is yet so obscure despite the vast rivers of ink which it has
already caused to flow. He knew the country and its manners and customs,
through his long conversations with his friend Doctor Chassaigne. And he
was endowed with charming fluency of language, an emotional power of
exquisite purity, many remarkable gifts well fitting him to be a pulpit
orator, which he never made use of, although he had known them to be
within him ever since his seminary days. When the occupants of the
carriage perceived that he knew the story, far better and in far greater
detail than it appeared in Marie’s little book, and that he related it
also in such a gentle yet passionate way, there came an increase of
attention, and all those afflicted souls hungering for happiness went
forth towards him. First came the story of Bernadette’s childhood at
Bartres, where she had grown up in the abode of her foster-mother, Madame
Lagues, who, having lost an infant of her own, had rendered those poor
folks, the Soubirouses, the service of suckling and keeping their child
for them. Bartres, a village of four hundred souls, at a league or so
from Lourdes, lay as it were in a desert oasis, sequestered amidst
greenery, and far from any frequented highway. The road dips down, the
few houses are scattered over grassland, divided by hedges and planted
with walnut and chestnut trees, whilst the clear rivulets, which are
never silent, follow the sloping banks beside the pathways, and nothing
rises on high save the small ancient romanesque church, which is perched
on a hillock, covered with graves. Wooded slopes undulate upon all sides.
Bartres lies in a hollow amidst grass of delicious freshness, grass of
intense greenness, which is ever moist at the roots, thanks to the
eternal subterraneous expanse of water which is fed by the mountain
torrents. And Bernadette, who, since becoming a big girl, had paid for
her keep by tending lambs, was wont to take them with her, season after
season, through all the greenery where she never met a soul. It was only
now and then, from the summit of some slope, that she saw the far-away
mountains, the Pic du Midi, the Pic de Viscos, those masses which rose
up, bright or gloomy, according to the weather, and which stretched away
to other peaks, lightly and faintly coloured, vaguely and confusedly
outlined, like apparitions seen in dreams.

Then came the home of the Lagueses, where her cradle was still preserved,
a solitary, silent house, the last of the village. A meadow planted with
pear and apple trees, and only separated from the open country by a
narrow stream which one could jump across, stretched out in front of the
house. Inside the latter, a low and damp abode, there were, on either
side of the wooden stairway leading to the loft, but two spacious rooms,
flagged with stones, and each containing four or five beds. The girls,
who slept together, fell asleep at even, gazing at the fine pictures
affixed to the walls, whilst the big clock in its pinewood case gravely
struck the hours in the midst of the deep silence.

Ah! those years at Bartres; in what sweet peacefulness did Bernadette
live them! Yet she grew up very thin, always in bad health, suffering
from a nervous asthma which stifled her in the least veering of the wind;
and on attaining her twelfth year she could neither read nor write, nor
speak otherwise than in dialect, having remained quite infantile,
behindhand in mind as in body. She was a very good little girl, very
gentle and well behaved, and but little different from other children,
except that instead of talking she preferred to listen. Limited as was
her intelligence, she often evinced much natural common-sense, and at
times was prompt in her _reparties_, with a kind of simple gaiety which
made one smile. It was only with infinite trouble that she was taught her
rosary, and when she knew it she seemed bent on carrying her knowledge no
further, but repeated it all day long, so that whenever you met her with
her lambs, she invariably had her chaplet between her fingers, diligently
telling each successive “Pater” and “Ave.” For long, long hours she lived
like this on the grassy slopes of the hills, hidden away and haunted as
it were amidst the mysteries of the foliage, seeing nought of the world
save the crests of the distant mountains, which, for an instant, every
now and then, would soar aloft in the radiant light, as ethereal as the
peaks of dreamland.

Days followed days, and Bernadette roamed, dreaming her one narrow dream,
repeating the sole prayer she knew, which gave her amidst her solitude,
so fresh and naively infantile, no other companion and friend than the
Blessed Virgin. But what pleasant evenings she spent in the winter-time
in the room on the left, where a fire was kept burning! Her foster-mother
had a brother, a priest, who occasionally read some marvellous stories to
them--stories of saints, prodigious adventures of a kind to make one
tremble with mingled fear and joy, in which Paradise appeared upon earth,
whilst the heavens opened and a glimpse was caught of the splendour of
the angels. The books he brought with him were often full of
pictures--God the Father enthroned amidst His glory; Jesus, so gentle and
so handsome with His beaming face; the Blessed Virgin, who recurred again
and again, radiant with splendour, clad now in white, now in azure, now
in gold, and ever so amiable that Bernadette would see her again in her
dreams. But the book which was read more than all others was the Bible,
an old Bible which had been in the family for more than a hundred years,
and which time and usage had turned yellow. Each winter evening
Bernadette’s foster-father, the only member of the household who had
learnt to read, would take a pin, pass it at random between the leaves of
the book, open the latter, and then start reading from the top of the
right-hand page, amidst the deep attention of both the women and the
children, who ended by knowing the book by heart, and could have
continued reciting it without a single mistake.

However, Bernadette, for her part, preferred the religious works in which
the Blessed Virgin constantly appeared with her engaging smile. True, one
reading of a different character amused her, that of the marvellous story
of the Four Brothers Aymon. On the yellow paper cover of the little book,
which had doubtless fallen from the bale of some peddler who had lost his
way in that remote region, there was a naive cut showing the four doughty
knights, Renaud and his brothers, all mounted on Bayard, their famous
battle charger, that princely present made to them by the fairy Orlanda.
And inside were narratives of bloody fights, of the building and
besieging of fortresses, of the terrible swordthrusts exchanged by Roland
and Renaud, who was at last about to free the Holy Land, without
mentioning the tales of Maugis the Magician and his marvellous
enchantments, and the Princess Clarisse, the King of Aquitaine’s sister,
who was more lovely than sunlight. Her imagination fired by such stories
as these, Bernadette often found it difficult to get to sleep; and this
was especially the case on the evenings when the books were left aside,
and some person of the company related a tale of witchcraft. The girl was
very superstitious, and after sundown could never be prevailed upon to
pass near a tower in the vicinity, which was said to be haunted by the
fiend. For that matter, all the folks of the region were superstitious,
devout, and simple-minded, the whole countryside being peopled, so to
say, with mysteries--trees which sang, stones from which blood flowed,
cross-roads where it was necessary to say three “Paters” and three
“Aves,” if you did not wish to meet the seven-horned beast who carried
maidens off to perdition. And what a wealth of terrifying stories there
was! Hundreds of stories, so that there was no finishing on the evenings
when somebody started them. First came the wehrwolf adventures, the tales
of the unhappy men whom the demon forced to enter into the bodies of
dogs, the great white dogs of the mountains. If you fire a gun at the dog
and a single shot should strike him, the man will be delivered; but if
the shot should fall on the dog’s shadow, the man will immediately die.
Then came the endless procession of sorcerers and sorceresses. In one of
these tales Bernadette evinced a passionate interest; it was the story of
a clerk of the tribunal of Lourdes who, wishing to see the devil, was
conducted by a witch into an untilled field at midnight on Good Friday.
The devil arrived clad in magnificent scarlet garments, and at once
proposed to the clerk that he should buy his soul, an offer which the
clerk pretended to accept. It so happened that the devil was carrying
under his arm a register in which different persons of the town, who had
already sold themselves, had signed their names. However, the clerk, who
was a cunning fellow, pulled out of his pocket a pretended bottle of ink,
which in reality contained holy water, and with this he sprinkled the
devil, who raised frightful shrieks, whilst the clerk took to flight,
carrying the register off with him. Then began a wild, mad race, which
might last throughout the night, over the mountains, through the valleys,
across the forests and the torrents. “Give me back my register!” shouted
the fiend. “No, you sha’n’t have it!” replied the clerk. And again and
again it began afresh: “Give me back my register!”--“No, you sha’n’t have
it’!” And at last, finding himself out of breath, near the point of
succumbing, the clerk, who had his plan, threw himself into the cemetery,
which was consecrated ground, and was there able to deride the devil at
his ease, waving the register which he had purloined so as to save the
souls of all the unhappy people who had signed their names in it. On the
evening when this story was told, Bernadette, before surrendering herself
to sleep, would mentally repeat her rosary, delighted with the thought
that hell should have been baffled, though she trembled at the idea that
it would surely return to prowl around her, as soon as the lamp should
have been put out.

Throughout one winter, the long evenings were spent in the church. Abbe
Ader, the village priest, had authorised it, and many families came, in
order to economise oil and candles. Moreover, they felt less cold when
gathered together in this fashion. The Bible was read, and prayers were
repeated, whilst the children ended by falling asleep. Bernadette alone
struggled on to the finish, so pleased she was at being there, in that
narrow nave whose slender nervures were coloured blue and red. At the
farther end was the altar, also painted and gilded, with its twisted
columns and its screens on which appeared the Virgin and Ste. Anne, and
the beheading of St. John the Baptist--the whole of a gaudy and somewhat
barbaric splendour. And as sleepiness grew upon her, the child must have
often seen a mystical vision as it were of those crudely coloured designs
rising before her--have seen the blood flowing from St. John’s severed
head, have seen the aureolas shining, the Virgin ever returning and
gazing at her with her blue, living eyes, and looking as though she were
on the point of opening her vermilion lips in order to speak to her. For
some months Bernadette spent her evenings in this wise, half asleep in
front of that sumptuous, vaguely defined altar, in the incipiency of a
divine dream which she carried away with her, and finished in bed,
slumbering peacefully under the watchful care of her guardian angel.

And it was also in that old church, so humble yet so impregnated with
ardent faith, that Bernadette began to learn her catechism. She would
soon be fourteen now, and must think of her first communion. Her
foster-mother, who had the reputation of being avaricious, did not send
her to school, but employed her in or about the house from morning till
evening. M. Barbet, the schoolmaster, never saw her at his classes,
though one day, when he gave the catechism lesson, in the place of Abbe
Ader who was indisposed, he remarked her on account of her piety and
modesty. The village priest was very fond of Bernadette and often spoke
of her to the schoolmaster, saying that he could never look at her
without thinking of the children of La Salette, since they must have been
good, candid, and pious as she was, for the Blessed Virgin to have
appeared to them.* On another occasion whilst the two men were walking
one morning near the village, and saw Bernadette disappear with her
little flock under some spreading trees in the distance, the Abbe
repeatedly turned round to look for her, and again remarked “I cannot
account for it, but every time I meet that child it seems to me as if I
saw Melanie, the young shepherdess, little Maximin’s companion.” He was
certainly beset by this singular idea, which became, so to say, a
prediction. Moreover, had he not one day after catechism, or one evening,
when the villagers were gathered in the church, related that marvellous
story which was already twelve years old, that story of the Lady in the
dazzling robes who walked upon the grass without even making it bend, the
Blessed Virgin who showed herself to Melanie and Maximin on the banks of
a stream in the mountains, and confided to them a great secret and
announced the anger of her Son? Ever since that day a source had sprung
up from the tears which she had shed, a source which cured all ailments,
whilst the secret, inscribed on parchment fastened with three seals,
slumbered at Rome! And Bernadette, no doubt, with her dreamy, silent air,
had listened passionately to that wonderful tale and carried it off with
her into the desert of foliage where she spent her days, so that she
might live it over again as she walked along behind her lambs with her
rosary, slipping bead by bead between her slender fingers.

  * It was on September 19, 1846, that the Virgin is said to have
    appeared in the ravine of La Sezia, adjacent to the valley of La
    Salette, between Corps and Eutraigues, in the department of the
    Isere. The visionaries were Melanie Mathieu, a girl of fourteen,
    and Maximin Giraud, a boy of twelve. The local clergy speedily
    endorsed the story of the miracle, and thousands of people still
    go every year in pilgrimage to a church overlooking the valley,
    and bathe and drink at a so-called miraculous source. Two priests
    of Grenoble, however, Abbe Deleon and Abbe Cartellier, accused a
    Mlle. de Lamerliere of having concocted the miracle, and when she
    took proceedings against them for libel she lost her case.--Trans.

Thus her childhood ran its course at Bartres. That which delighted one in
this Bernadette, so poor-blooded, so slight of build, was her ecstatic
eyes, beautiful visionary eyes, from which dreams soared aloft like birds
winging their flight in a pure limpid sky. Her mouth was large, with lips
somewhat thick, expressive of kindliness; her square-shaped head had a
straight brow, and was covered with thick black hair, whilst her face
would have seemed rather common but for its charming expression of gentle
obstinacy. Those who did not gaze into her eyes, however, gave her no
thought. To them she was but an ordinary child, a poor thing of the
roads, a girl of reluctant growth, timidly humble in her ways. Assuredly
it was in her glance that Abbe Ader had with agitation detected the
stifling ailment which filled her puny, girlish form with suffering--that
ailment born of the greeny solitude in which she had grown up, the
gentleness of her bleating lambs, the Angelic Salutation which she had
carried with her, hither and thither, under the sky, repeating and
repeating it to the point of hallucination, the prodigious stories, too,
which she had heard folks tell at her foster-mother’s, the long evenings
spent before the living altar-screens in the church, and all the
atmosphere of primitive faith which she had breathed in that far-away
rural region, hemmed in by mountains.

At last, on one seventh of January, Bernadette had just reached her
fourteenth birthday, when her parents, finding that she learnt nothing at
Bartres, resolved to bring her back to Lourdes for good, in order that
she might diligently study her catechism, and in this wise seriously
prepare herself for her first communion. And so it happened that she had
already been at Lourdes some fifteen or twenty days, when on February 11,
a Thursday, cold and somewhat cloudy--

But Pierre could carry his narrative no further, for Sister Hyacinthe had
risen to her feet and was vigorously clapping her hands. “My children,”
 she exclaimed, “it is past nine o’clock. Silence! silence!”

The train had indeed just passed Lamothe, and was rolling with a dull
rumble across a sea of darkness--the endless plains of the Landes which
the night submerged. For ten minutes already not a sound ought to have
been heard in the carriage, one and all ought to have been sleeping or
suffering uncomplainingly. However, a mutiny broke out.

“Oh! Sister!” exclaimed Marie, whose eyes were sparkling, “allow us just
another short quarter of an hour! We have got to the most interesting
part.”

Ten, twenty voices took up the cry: “Oh yes, Sister, please do let us
have another short quarter of an hour!”

They all wished to hear the continuation, burning with as much curiosity
as though they had not known the story, so captivated were they by the
touches of compassionate human feeling which Pierre introduced into his
narrative. Their glances never left him, all their heads were stretched
towards him, fantastically illumined by the flickering light of the
lamps. And it was not only the sick who displayed this interest; the ten
women occupying the compartment at the far end of the carriage had also
become impassioned, and, happy at not missing a single word, turned their
poor ugly faces now beautified by naive faith.

“No, I cannot!” Sister Hyacinthe at first declared; “the rules are very
strict--you must be silent.”

However, she weakened, she herself feeling so interested in the tale that
she could detect her heart beating under her stomacher. Then Marie again
repeated her request in an entreating tone; whilst her father, M. de
Guersaint, who had listened like one hugely amused, declared that they
would all fall ill if the story were not continued. And thereupon, seeing
Madame de Jonquiere smile with an indulgent air, Sister Hyacinthe ended
by consenting.

“Well, then,” said she, “I will allow you another short quarter of an
hour; but only a short quarter of an hour, mind. That is understood, is
it not? For I should otherwise be in fault.”

Pierre had waited quietly without attempting to intervene. And he resumed
his narrative in the same penetrating voice as before, a voice in which
his own doubts were softened by pity for those who suffer and who hope.

The scene of the story was now transferred to Lourdes, to the Rue des
Petits Fosses, a narrow, tortuous, mournful street taking a downward
course between humble houses and roughly plastered dead walls. The
Soubirous family occupied a single room on the ground floor of one of
these sorry habitations, a room at the end of a dark passage, in which
seven persons were huddled together, the father, the mother, and five
children. You could scarcely see in the chamber; from the tiny, damp
inner courtyard of the house there came but a greenish light. And in that
room they slept, all of a heap; and there also they ate, when they had
bread. For some time past, the father, a miller by trade, could only with
difficulty obtain work as a journeyman. And it was from that dark hole,
that lowly wretchedness, that Bernadette, the elder girl, with Marie, her
sister, and Jeanne, a little friend of the neighbourhood, went out to
pick up dead wood, on the cold February Thursday already spoken of.

Then the beautiful tale was unfolded at length; how the three girls
followed the bank of the Gave from the other side of the castle, and how
they ended by finding themselves on the Ile du Chalet in front of the
rock of Massabielle, from which they were only separated by the narrow
stream diverted from the Gave, and used for working the mill of Savy. It
was a wild spot, whither the common herdsman often brought the pigs of
the neighbourhood, which, when showers suddenly came on, would take
shelter under this rock of Massabielle, at whose base there was a kind of
grotto of no great depth, blocked at the entrance by eglantine and
brambles. The girls found dead wood very scarce that day, but at last on
seeing on the other side of the stream quite a gleaning of branches
deposited there by the torrent, Marie and Jeanne crossed over through the
water; whilst Bernadette, more delicate than they were, a trifle
young-ladyfied, perhaps, remained on the bank lamenting, and not daring
to wet her feet. She was suffering slightly from humour in the head, and
her mother had expressly bidden her to wrap herself in her _capulet_,* a
large white _capulet_ which contrasted vividly with her old black woollen
dress. When she found that her companions would not help her, she
resignedly made up her mind to take off her _sabots_, and pull down her
stockings. It was then about noon, the three strokes of the Angelus rang
out from the parish church, rising into the broad calm winter sky, which
was somewhat veiled by fine fleecy clouds. And it was then that a great
agitation arose within her, resounding in her ears with such a
tempestuous roar that she fancied a hurricane had descended from the
mountains, and was passing over her. But she looked at the trees and was
stupefied, for not a leaf was stirring. Then she thought that she had
been mistaken, and was about to pick up her _sabots_, when again the
great gust swept through her; but, this time, the disturbance in her ears
reached her eyes, she no longer saw the trees, but was dazzled by a
whiteness, a kind of bright light which seemed to her to settle itself
against the rock, in a narrow, lofty slit above the Grotto, not unlike an
ogival window of a cathedral. In her fright she fell upon her knees. What
could it be, _mon Dieu_? Sometimes, during bad weather, when her asthma
oppressed her more than usual, she spent very bad nights, incessantly
dreaming dreams which were often painful, and whose stifling effect she
retained on awaking, even when she had ceased to remember anything.
Flames would surround her, the sun would flash before her face. Had she
dreamt in that fashion during the previous night? Was this the
continuation of some forgotten dream? However, little by little a form
became outlined, she believed that she could distinguish a figure which
the vivid light rendered intensely white. In her fear lest it should be
the devil, for her mind was haunted by tales of witchcraft, she began to
tell her beads. And when the light had slowly faded away, and she had
crossed the canal and joined Marie and Jeanne, she was surprised to find
that neither of them had seen anything whilst they were picking up the
wood in front of the Grotto. On their way back to Lourdes the three girls
talked together. So she, Bernadette, had seen something then? What was
it? At first, feeling uneasy, and somewhat ashamed, she would not answer;
but at last she said that she had seen something white.

  * This is a kind of hood, more generally known among the Bearnese
    peasantry as a _sarot_. Whilst forming a coif it also completely
    covers the back and shoulders.--Trans.

From this the rumours started and grew. The Soubirouses, on being made
acquainted with the circumstance, evinced much displeasure at such
childish nonsense, and told their daughter that she was not to return to
the rock of Massabielle. All the children of the neighbourhood, however,
were already repeating the tale, and when Sunday came the parents had to
give way, and allow Bernadette to betake herself to the Grotto with a
bottle of holy water to ascertain if it were really the devil whom one
had to deal with. She then again beheld the light, the figure became more
clearly defined, and smiled upon her, evincing no fear whatever of the
holy water. And, on the ensuing Thursday, she once more returned to the
spot accompanied by several persons, and then for the first time the
radiant lady assumed sufficient corporality to speak, and say to her: “Do
me the kindness to come here for fifteen days.”

Thus, little by little, the lady had assumed a precise appearance. The
something clad in white had become indeed a lady more beautiful than a
queen, of a kind such as is only seen in pictures. At first, in presence
of the questions with which all the neighbours plied her from morning
till evening, Bernadette had hesitated, disturbed, perhaps, by scruples
of conscience. But then, as though prompted by the very interrogatories
to which she was subjected, she seemed to perceive the figure which she
had beheld, more plainly, so that it definitely assumed life, with lines
and hues from which the child, in her after-descriptions, never departed.
The lady’s eyes were blue and very mild, her mouth was rosy and smiling,
the oval of her face expressed both the grace of youth and of maternity.
Below the veil covering her head and falling to her heels, only a glimpse
was caught of her admirable fair hair, which was slightly curled. Her
robe, which was of dazzling whiteness, must have been of some material
unknown on earth, some material woven of the sun’s rays. Her sash, of the
same hue as the heavens, was fastened loosely about her, its long ends
streaming downwards, with the light airiness of morning. Her chaplet,
wound about her right arm, had beads of a milky whiteness, whilst the
links and the cross were of gold. And on her bare feet, on her adorable
feet of virgin snow, flowered two golden roses, the mystic roses of this
divine mother’s immaculate flesh.

Where was it that Bernadette had seen this Blessed Virgin, of such
traditionally simple composition, unadorned by a single jewel, having but
the primitive grace imagined by the painters of a people in its
childhood? In which illustrated book belonging to her foster-mother’s
brother, the good priest, who read such attractive stories, had she
beheld this Virgin? Or in what picture, or what statuette, or what
stained-glass window of the painted and gilded church where she had spent
so many evenings whilst growing up? And whence, above all things, had
come those golden roses poised on the Virgin’s feet, that piously
imagined florescence of woman’s flesh--from what romance of chivalry,
from what story told after catechism by the Abbe Ader, from what
unconscious dream indulged in under the shady foliage of Bartres, whilst
ever and ever repeating that haunting Angelic Salutation?

Pierre’s voice had acquired a yet more feeling tone, for if he did not
say all these things to the simple-minded folks who were listening to
him, still the human explanation of all these prodigies which the feeling
of doubt in the depths of his being strove to supply, imparted to his
narrative a quiver of sympathetic, fraternal love. He loved Bernadette
the better for the great charm of her hallucination--that lady of such
gracious access, such perfect amiability, such politeness in appearing
and disappearing so appropriately. At first the great light would show
itself, then the vision took form, came and went, leant forward, moved
about, floating imperceptibly, with ethereal lightness; and when it
vanished the glow lingered for yet another moment, and then disappeared
like a star fading away. No lady in this world could have such a white
and rosy face, with a beauty so akin to that of the Virgins on the
picture-cards given to children at their first communions. And it was
strange that the eglantine of the Grotto did not even hurt her adorable
bare feet blooming with golden flowers.

Pierre, however, at once proceeded to recount the other apparitions. The
fourth and fifth occurred on the Friday and the Saturday; but the Lady,
who shone so brightly and who had not yet told her name, contented
herself on these occasions with smiling and saluting without pronouncing
a word. On the Sunday, however, she wept, and said to Bernadette, “Pray
for sinners.” On the Monday, to the child’s great grief, she did not
appear, wishing, no doubt, to try her. But on the Tuesday she confided to
her a secret which concerned her (the girl) alone, a secret which she was
never to divulge*; and then she at last told her what mission it was that
she entrusted to her: “Go and tell the priests,” she said, “that they
must build a chapel here.” On the Wednesday she frequently murmured the
word “Penitence! penitence! penitence!” which the child repeated,
afterwards kissing the earth. On the Thursday the Lady said to her: “Go,
and drink, and wash at the spring, and eat of the grass that is beside
it,” words which the Visionary ended by understanding, when in the depths
of the Grotto a source suddenly sprang up beneath her fingers. And this
was the miracle of the enchanted fountain.

  * In a like way, it will be remembered, the apparition at La
    Salette confided a secret to Melanie and Maximin (see _ante_,
    note). There can be little doubt that Bernadette was acquainted
    with the story of the miracle of La Salette.--Trans.

Then the second week ran its course. The lady did not appear on the
Friday, but was punctual on the five following days, repeating her
commands and gazing with a smile at the humble girl whom she had chosen
to do her bidding, and who, on her side, duly told her beads at each
apparition, kissed the earth, and repaired on her knees to the source,
there to drink and wash. At last, on Thursday, March 4, the last day of
these mystical assignations, the Lady requested more pressingly than
before that a chapel might be erected in order that the nations might
come thither in procession from all parts of the earth. So far, however,
in reply to all Bernadette’s appeals, she had refused to say who she was;
and it was only three weeks later, on Thursday, March 25, that, joining
her hands together, and raising her eyes to Heaven, she said: “I am the
Immaculate Conception.” On two other occasions, at somewhat long
intervals, April 7 and July 16, she again appeared: the first time to
perform the miracle of the lighted taper, that taper above which the
child, plunged in ecstasy, for a long time unconsciously left her hand,
without burning it; and the second time to bid Bernadette farewell, to
favour her with a last smile, and a last inclination of the head full of
charming politeness. This made eighteen apparitions all told; and never
again did the Lady show herself.

Whilst Pierre went on with his beautiful, marvellous story, so soothing
to the wretched, he evoked for himself a vision of that pitiable, lovable
Bernadette, whose sufferings had flowered so wonderfully. As a doctor had
roughly expressed it, this girl of fourteen, at a critical period of her
life, already ravaged, too, by asthma, was, after all, simply an
exceptional victim of hysteria, afflicted with a degenerate heredity and
lapsing into infancy. If there were no violent crises in her case, if
there were no stiffening of the muscles during her attacks, if she
retained a precise recollection of her dreams, the reason was that her
case was peculiar to herself, and she added, so to say, a new and very
curious form to all the forms of hysteria known at the time. Miracles
only begin when things cannot be explained; and science, so far, knows
and can explain so little, so infinitely do the phenomena of disease vary
according to the nature of the patient! But how many shepherdesses there
had been before Bernadette who had seen the Virgin in a similar way,
amidst all the same childish nonsense! Was it not always the same story,
the Lady clad in light, the secret confided, the spring bursting forth,
the mission which had to be fulfilled, the miracles whose enchantments
would convert the masses? And was not the personal appearance of the
Virgin always in accordance with a poor child’s dreams--akin to some
coloured figure in a missal, an ideal compounded of traditional beauty,
gentleness, and politeness. And the same dreams showed themselves in the
naivete of the means which were to be employed and of the object which
was to be attained--the deliverance of nations, the building of churches,
the processional pilgrimages of the faithful! Then, too, all the words
which fell from Heaven resembled one another, calls for penitence,
promises of help; and in this respect, in Bernadette’s case the only new
feature was that most extraordinary declaration: “I am the Immaculate
Conception,” which burst forth--very usefully--as the recognition by the
Blessed Virgin herself of the dogma promulgated by the Court of Rome but
three years previously! It was not the Immaculate Virgin who appeared:
no, it was the Immaculate Conception, the abstraction itself, the thing,
the dogma, so that one might well ask oneself if really the Virgin had
spoken in such a fashion. As for the other words, it was possible that
Bernadette had heard them somewhere and stored them up in some
unconscious nook of her memory. But these--“I am the Immaculate
Conception”--whence had they come as though expressly to fortify a
dogma--still bitterly discussed--with such prodigious support as the
direct testimony of the Mother conceived without sin? At this thought,
Pierre, who was convinced of Bernadette’s absolute good faith, who
refused to believe that she had been the instrument of a fraud, began to
waver, deeply agitated, feeling his belief in truth totter within him.

The apparitions, however, had caused intense emotion at Lourdes; crowds
flocked to the spot, miracles began, and those inevitable persecutions
broke out which ensure the triumph of new religions. Abbe Peyramale, the
parish priest of Lourdes, an extremely honest man, with an upright,
vigorous mind, was able in all truth to declare that he did not know this
child, that she had not yet been seen at catechism. Where was the
pressure, then, where the lesson learnt by heart? There was nothing but
those years of childhood spent at Bartres, the first teachings of Abbe
Ader, conversations possibly, religious ceremonies in honour of the
recently proclaimed dogma, or simply the gift of one of those
commemorative medals which had been scattered in profusion. Never did
Abbe Ader reappear upon the scene, he who had predicted the mission of
the future Visionary. He was destined to remain apart from Bernadette and
her future career, he who, the first, had seen her little soul blossom in
his pious hands. And yet all the unknown forces that had sprung from that
sequestered village, from that nook of greenery where superstition and
poverty of intelligence prevailed, were still making themselves felt,
disturbing the brains of men, disseminating the contagion of the
mysterious. It was remembered that a shepherd of Argeles, speaking of the
rock of Massabielle, had prophesied that great things would take place
there. Other children, moreover, now fell in ecstasy with their eyes
dilated and their limbs quivering with convulsions, but these only saw
the devil. A whirlwind of madness seemed to be passing over the region.
An old lady of Lourdes declared that Bernadette was simply a witch and
that she had herself seen the toad’s foot in her eye. But for the others,
for the thousands of pilgrims who hastened to the spot, she was a saint,
and they kissed her garments. Sobs burst forth and frenzy seemed to seize
upon the souls of the beholders, when she fell upon her knees before the
Grotto, a lighted taper in her right hand, whilst with the left she told
the beads of her rosary. She became very pale and quite beautiful,
transfigured, so to say. Her features gently ascended in her face,
lengthened into an expression of extraordinary beatitude, whilst her eyes
filled with light, and her lips parted as though she were speaking words
which could not be heard. And it was quite certain that she had no will
of her own left her, penetrated as she was by a dream, possessed by it to
such a point in the confined, exclusive sphere in which she lived, that
she continued dreaming it even when awake, and thus accepted it as the
only indisputable reality, prepared to testify to it even at the cost of
her blood, repeating it over and over again, obstinately, stubbornly
clinging to it, and never varying in the details she gave. She did not
lie, for she did not know, could not and would not desire anything apart
from it.

Forgetful of the flight of time, Pierre was now sketching a charming
picture of old Lourdes, that pious little town, slumbering at the foot of
the Pyrenees. The castle, perched on a rock at the point of intersection
of the seven valleys of Lavedan, had formerly been the key of the
mountain districts. But, in Bernadette’s time, it had become a mere
dismantled, ruined pile, at the entrance of a road leading nowhere.
Modern life found its march stayed by a formidable rampart of lofty,
snow-capped peaks, and only the trans-Pyrenean railway--had it been
constructed--could have established an active circulation of social life
in that sequestered nook where human existence stagnated like dead water.
Forgotten, therefore, Lourdes remained slumbering, happy and sluggish
amidst its old-time peacefulness, with its narrow, pebble-paved streets
and its bleak houses with dressings of marble. The old roofs were still
all massed on the eastern side of the castle; the Rue de la Grotte, then
called the Rue du Bois, was but a deserted and often impassable road; no
houses stretched down to the Gave as now, and the scum-laden waters
rolled through a perfect solitude of pollard willows and tall grass. On
week-days but few people passed across the Place du Marcadal, such as
housewives hastening on errands, and petty cits airing their leisure
hours; and you had to wait till Sundays or fair days to find the
inhabitants rigged out in their best clothes and assembled on the Champ
Commun, in company with the crowd of graziers who had come down from the
distant tablelands with their cattle. During the season when people
resort to the Pyrenean-waters, the passage of the visitors to Cauterets
and Bagneres also brought some animation; _diligences_ passed through the
town twice a day, but they came from Pau by a wretched road, and had to
ford the Lapaca, which often overflowed its banks. Then climbing the
steep ascent of the Rue Basse, they skirted the terrace of the church,
which was shaded by large elms. And what soft peacefulness prevailed in
and around that old semi-Spanish church, full of ancient carvings,
columns, screens, and statues, peopled with visionary patches of gilding
and painted flesh, which time had mellowed and which you faintly
discerned as by the light of mystical lamps! The whole population came
there to worship, to fill their eyes with the dream of the mysterious.
There were no unbelievers, the inhabitants of Lourdes were a people of
primitive faith; each corporation marched behind the banner of its saint,
brotherhoods of all kinds united the entire town, on festival mornings,
in one large Christian family. And, as with some exquisite flower that
has grown in the soil of its choice, great purity of life reigned there.
There was not even a resort of debauchery for young men to wreck their
lives, and the girls, one and all, grew up with the perfume and beauty of
innocence, under the eyes of the Blessed Virgin, Tower of Ivory and Seat
of Wisdom.

And how well one could understand that Bernadette, born in that holy
soil, should flower in it, like one of nature’s roses budding in the
wayside bushes! She was indeed the very florescence of that region of
ancient belief and rectitude; she would certainly not have sprouted
elsewhere; she could only appear and develop there, amidst that belated
race, amidst the slumberous peacefulness of a childlike people, under the
moral discipline of religion. And what intense love at once burst forth
all around her! What blind confidence was displayed in her mission, what
immense consolation and hope came to human hearts on the very morrow of
the first miracles! A long cry of relief had greeted the cure of old
Bourriette recovering his sight, and of little Justin Bouhohorts coming
to life again in the icy water of the spring. At last, then, the Blessed
Virgin was intervening in favour of those who despaired, forcing that
unkind mother, Nature, to be just and charitable. This was divine
omnipotence returning to reign on earth, sweeping the laws of the world
aside in order to work the happiness of the suffering and the poor. The
miracles multiplied, blazed forth, from day to day more and more
extraordinary, like unimpeachable proof of Bernadette’s veracity. And she
was, indeed, the rose of the divine garden, whose deeds shed perfume, the
rose who beholds all the other flowers of grace and salvation spring into
being around her.

Pierre had reached this point of his story, and was again enumerating the
miracles, on the point of recounting the prodigious triumph of the
Grotto, when Sister Hyacinthe, awaking with a start from the ecstasy into
which the narrative had plunged her, hastily rose to her feet. “Really,
really,” said she, “there is no sense in it. It will soon be eleven
o’clock.”

This was true. They had left Morceux behind them, and would now soon be
at Mont de Marsan. So Sister Hyacinthe clapped her hands once more, and
added: “Silence, my children, silence!”

This time they did not dare to rebel, for they felt she was in the right;
they were unreasonable. But how greatly they regretted not hearing the
continuation, how vexed they were that the story should cease when only
half told! The ten women in the farther compartment even let a murmur of
disappointment escape them; whilst the sick, their faces still
outstretched, their dilated eyes gazing upon the light of hope, seemed to
be yet listening. Those miracles which ever and ever returned to their
minds and filled them with unlimited, haunting, supernatural joy.

“And don’t let me hear anyone breathe, even,” added Sister Hyacinthe
gaily, “or otherwise I shall impose penance on you.”

Madame de Jonquiere laughed good-naturedly. “You must obey, my children,”
 she said; “be good and get to sleep, so that you may have strength to
pray at the Grotto to-morrow with all your hearts.”

Then silence fell, nobody spoke any further; and the only sounds were
those of the rumbling of the wheels and the jolting of the train as it
was carried along at full speed through the black night.

Pierre, however, was unable to sleep. Beside him, M. de Guersaint was
already snoring lightly, looking very happy despite the hardness of his
seat. For a time the young priest saw Marie’s eyes wide open, still full
of all the radiance of the marvels that he had related. For a long while
she kept them ardently fixed upon his own, but at last closed them, and
then he knew not whether she was sleeping, or with eyelids simply closed
was living the everlasting miracle over again. Some of the sufferers were
dreaming aloud, giving vent to bursts of laughter which unconscious moans
interrupted. Perhaps they beheld the Archangels opening their flesh to
wrest their diseases from them. Others, restless with insomnia, turned
over and over, stifling their sobs and gazing fixedly into the darkness.
And, with a shudder born of all the mystery he had evoked, Pierre,
distracted, no longer master of himself in that delirious sphere of
fraternal suffering, ended by hating his very mind, and, drawn into close
communion with all those humble folks, sought to believe like them. What
could be the use of that physiological inquiry into Bernadette’s case, so
full of gaps and intricacies? Why should he not accept her as a messenger
from the spheres beyond, as one of the elect chosen for the divine
mystery? Doctors were but ignorant men with rough and brutal hands, and
it would be so delightful to fall asleep in childlike faith, in the
enchanted gardens of the impossible. And for a moment indeed he
surrendered himself, experiencing a delightful feeling of comfort, no
longer seeking to explain anything, but accepting the Visionary with her
sumptuous _cortege_ of miracles, and relying on God to think and
determine for him. Then he looked out through the window, which they did
not dare to open on account of the consumptive patients, and beheld the
immeasurable night which enwrapped the country across which the train was
fleeing. The storm must have burst forth there; the sky was now of an
admirable nocturnal purity, as though cleansed by the masses of fallen
water. Large stars shone out in the dark velvet, alone illumining, with
their mysterious gleams, the silent, refreshed fields, which incessantly
displayed only the black solitude of slumber. And across the Landes,
through the valleys, between the hills, that carriage of wretchedness and
suffering rolled on and on, over-heated, pestilential, rueful, and
wailing, amidst the serenity of the august night, so lovely and so mild.

They had passed Riscle at one in the morning. Between the jolting, the
painful, the hallucinatory silence still continued. At two o’clock, as
they reached Vic-de-Bigorre, low moans were heard; the bad state of the
line, with the unbearable spreading tendency of the train’s motion, was
sorely shaking the patients. It was only at Tarbes, at half-past two,
that silence was at length broken, and that morning prayers were said,
though black night still reigned around them. There came first the
“Pater,” and then the “Ave,” the “Credo,” and the supplication to God to
grant them the happiness of a glorious day.

“O God, vouchsafe me sufficient strength that I may avoid all that is
evil, do all that is good, and suffer uncomplainingly every pain.”

And now there was to be no further stoppage until they reached Lourdes.
Barely three more quarters of an hour, and Lourdes, with all its vast
hopes, would blaze forth in the midst of that night, so long and cruel.
Their painful awakening was enfevered by the thought; a final agitation
arose amidst the morning discomfort, as the abominable sufferings began
afresh.

Sister Hyacinthe, however, was especially anxious about the strange man,
whose sweat-covered face she had been continually wiping. He had so far
managed to keep alive, she watching him without a pause, never having
once closed her eyes, but unremittingly listening to his faint breathing
with the stubborn desire to take him to the holy Grotto before he died.

All at once, however, she felt frightened; and addressing Madame de
Jonquiere, she hastily exclaimed, “Pray pass me the vinegar bottle at
once--I can no longer hear him breathe.”

For an instant, indeed, the man’s faint breathing had ceased. His eyes
were still closed, his lips parted; he could not have been paler, he had
an ashen hue, and was cold. And the carriage was rolling along with its
ceaseless rattle of coupling-irons; the speed of the train seemed even to
have increased.

“I will rub his temples,” resumed Sister Hyacinthe. “Help me, do!”

But, at a more violent jolt of the train, the man suddenly fell from the
seat, face downward.

“Ah! _mon Dieu_, help me, pick him up!”

They picked him up, and found him dead. And they had to seat him in his
corner again, with his back resting against the woodwork. He remained
there erect, his torso stiffened, and his head wagging slightly at each
successive jolt. Thus the train continued carrying him along, with the
same thundering noise of wheels, while the engine, well pleased, no
doubt, to be reaching its destination, began whistling shrilly, giving
vent to quite a flourish of delirious joy as it sped through the calm
night.

And then came the last and seemingly endless half-hour of the journey, in
company with that wretched corpse. Two big tears had rolled down Sister
Hyacinthe’s cheeks, and with her hands joined she had begun to pray. The
whole carriage shuddered with terror at sight of that terrible companion
who was being taken, too late alas! to the Blessed Virgin.

Hope, however, proved stronger than sorrow or pain, and although all the
sufferings there assembled awoke and grew again, irritated by
overwhelming weariness, a song of joy nevertheless proclaimed the
sufferers’ triumphal entry into the Land of Miracles. Amidst the tears
which their pains drew from them, the exasperated and howling sick began
to chant the “Ave maris Stella” with a growing clamour in which
lamentation finally turned into cries of hope.

Marie had again taken Pierre’s hand between her little feverish fingers.
“Oh, _mon Dieu!_” said she, “to think that poor man is dead, and I feared
so much that it was I who would die before arriving. And we are
there--there at last!”

The priest was trembling with intense emotion. “It means that you are to
be cured, Marie,” he replied, “and that I myself shall be cured if you
pray for me--”

The engine was now whistling in a yet louder key in the depths of the
bluish darkness. They were nearing their destination. The lights of
Lourdes already shone out on the horizon. Then the whole train again sang
a canticle--the rhymed story of Bernadette, that endless ballad of six
times ten couplets, in which the Angelic Salutation ever returns as a
refrain, all besetting and distracting, opening to the human mind the
portals of the heaven of ecstasy:--


  “It was the hour for ev’ning pray’r;
   Soft bells chimed on the chilly air.
                    Ave, ave, ave Maria!

  “The maid stood on the torrent’s bank,
   A breeze arose, then swiftly sank.
                    Ave, ave, ave Maria!

  “And she beheld, e’en as it fell,
   The Virgin on Massabielle.
                    Ave, ave, ave Maria!

  “All white appeared the Lady chaste,
   A zone of Heaven round her waist.
                    Ave, ave, ave Maria!

  “Two golden roses, pure and sweet,
   Bloomed brightly on her naked feet.
                    Ave, ave, ave Maria!

  “Upon her arm, so white and round,
   Her chaplet’s milky pearls were wound.
                    Ave, ave, ave Maria!

  “The maiden prayed till, from her eyes,
   The vision sped to Paradise.
                    Ave, ave, ave Maria!”





THE SECOND DAY




I. THE TRAIN ARRIVES

IT was twenty minutes past three by the clock of the Lourdes railway
station, the dial of which was illumined by a reflector. Under the
slanting roof sheltering the platform, a hundred yards or so in length,
some shadowy forms went to and fro, resignedly waiting. Only a red signal
light peeped out of the black countryside, far away.

Two of the promenaders suddenly halted. The taller of them, a Father of
the Assumption, none other indeed than the Reverend Father Fourcade,
director of the national pilgrimage, who had reached Lourdes on the
previous day, was a man of sixty, looking superb in his black cloak with
its large hood. His fine head, with its clear, domineering eyes and thick
grizzly beard, was the head of a general whom an intelligent
determination to conquer inflames. In consequence, however, of a sudden
attack of gout he slightly dragged one of his legs, and was leaning on
the shoulder of his companion, Dr. Bonamy, the practitioner attached to
the Miracle Verification Office, a short, thick-set man, with a
square-shaped, clean-shaven face, which had dull, blurred eyes and a
tranquil cast of features.

Father Fourcade had stopped to question the station-master whom he
perceived running out of his office. “Will the white train be very late,
monsieur?” he asked.

“No, your reverence. It hasn’t lost more than ten minutes; it will be
here at the half-hour. It’s the Bayonne train which worries me; it ought
to have passed through already.”

So saying, he ran off to give an order; but soon came back again, his
slim, nervous figure displaying marked signs of agitation. He lived,
indeed, in a state of high fever throughout the period of the great
pilgrimages. Apart from the usual service, he that day expected eighteen
trains, containing more than fifteen thousand passengers. The grey and
the blue trains which had started from Paris the first had already
arrived at the regulation hour. But the delay in the arrival of the white
train was very troublesome, the more so as the Bayonne express--which
passed over the same rails--had not yet been signalled. It was easy to
understand, therefore, what incessant watchfulness was necessary, not a
second passing without the entire staff of the station being called upon
to exercise its vigilance.

“In ten minutes, then?” repeated Father Fourcade.

“Yes, in ten minutes, unless I’m obliged to close the line!” cried the
station-master as he hastened into the telegraph office.

Father Fourcade and the doctor slowly resumed their promenade. The thing
which astonished them was that no serious accident had ever happened in
the midst of such a fearful scramble. In past times, especially, the most
terrible disorder had prevailed. Father Fourcade complacently recalled
the first pilgrimage which he had organised and led, in 1875; the
terrible endless journey without pillows or mattresses, the patients
exhausted, half dead, with no means of reviving them at hand; and then
the arrival at Lourdes, the train evacuated in confusion, no _materiel_
in readiness, no straps, nor stretchers, nor carts. But now there was a
powerful organisation; a hospital awaited the sick, who were no longer
reduced to lying upon straw in sheds. What a shock for those unhappy
ones! What force of will in the man of faith who led them to the scene of
miracles! The reverend Father smiled gently at the thought of the work
which he had accomplished.

Then, still leaning on the doctor’s shoulder, he began to question him:
“How many pilgrims did you have last year?” he asked.

“About two hundred thousand. That is still the average. In the year of
the Coronation of the Virgin the figure rose to five hundred thousand.
But to bring that about an exceptional occasion was needed with a great
effort of propaganda. Such vast masses cannot be collected together every
day.”

A pause followed, and then Father Fourcade murmured: “No doubt. Still the
blessing of Heaven attends our endeavours; our work thrives more and
more. We have collected more than two hundred thousand francs in
donations for this journey, and God will be with us, there will be many
cures for you to proclaim to-morrow, I am sure of it.” Then, breaking
off, he inquired: “Has not Father Dargeles come here?”

Dr. Bonamy waved his hand as though to say that he did not know. Father
Dargeles was the editor of the “Journal de la Grotte.” He belonged to the
Order of the Fathers of the Immaculate Conception whom the Bishop had
installed at Lourdes and who were the absolute masters there; though,
when the Fathers of the Assumption came to the town with the national
pilgrimage from Paris, which crowds of faithful Catholics from Cambrai,
Arras, Chartres, Troyes, Rheims, Sens, Orleans, Blois, and Poitiers
joined, they evinced a kind of affectation in disappearing from the
scene. Their omnipotence was no longer felt either at the Grotto or at
the Basilica; they seemed to surrender every key together with every
responsibility. Their superior, Father Capdebarthe, a tall, peasant-like
man, with a knotty frame, a big head which looked as if it had been
fashioned with a bill-hook, and a worn face which retained a ruddy
mournful reflection of the soil, did not even show himself. Of the whole
community you only saw little, insinuating Father Dargeles; but he was
met everywhere, incessantly on the look-out for paragraphs for his
newspaper. At the same time, however, although the Fathers of the
Immaculate Conception disappeared in this fashion, it could be divined
that they were behind the vast stage, like a hidden sovereign power,
coining money and toiling without a pause to increase the triumphant
prosperity of their business. Indeed, they turned even their humility to
account.

“It’s true that we have had to get up early--two in the morning,” resumed
Father Fourcade gaily. “But I wished to be here. What would my poor
children have said, indeed, if I had not come?”

He was alluding to the sick pilgrims, those who were so much flesh for
miracle-working; and it was a fact that he had never missed coming to the
station, no matter what the hour, to meet that woeful white train, that
train which brought such grievous suffering with it.

“Five-and-twenty minutes past three--only another five minutes now,”
 exclaimed Dr. Bonamy repressing a yawn as he glanced at the clock; for,
despite his obsequious air, he was at bottom very much annoyed at having
had to get out of bed so early. However, he continued his slow promenade
with Father Fourcade along that platform which resembled a covered walk,
pacing up and down in the dense night which the gas jets here and there
illumined with patches of yellow light. Little parties, dimly outlined,
composed of priests and gentlemen in frock-coats, with a solitary officer
of dragoons, went to and fro incessantly, talking together the while in
discreet murmuring tones. Other people, seated on benches, ranged along
the station wall, were also chatting or putting their patience to proof
with their glances wandering away into the black stretch of country
before them. The doorways of the offices and waiting-rooms, which were
brilliantly lighted, looked like great holes in the darkness, and all was
flaring in the refreshment-room, where you could see the marble tables
and the counter laden with bottles and glasses and baskets of bread and
fruit.

On the right hand, beyond the roofing of the platform, there was a
confused swarming of people. There was here a goods gate, by which the
sick were taken out of the station, and a mass of stretchers, litters,
and hand-carts, with piles of pillows and mattresses, obstructed the
broad walk. Three parties of bearers were also assembled here, persons of
well-nigh every class, but more particularly young men of good society,
all wearing red, orange-tipped crosses and straps of yellow leather. Many
of them, too, had adopted the Bearnese cap, the convenient head-gear of
the region; and a few, clad as though they were bound on some distant
expedition, displayed wonderful gaiters reaching to their knees. Some
were smoking, whilst others, installed in their little vehicles, slept or
read newspapers by the light of the neighbouring gas jets. One group,
standing apart, were discussing some service question.

Suddenly, however, one and all began to salute. A paternal-looking man,
with a heavy but good-natured face, lighted by large blue eyes, like
those of a credulous child, was approaching. It was Baron Suire, the
President of the Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation. He possessed a
great fortune and occupied a high position at Toulouse.

“Where is Berthaud?” he inquired of one bearer after another, with a busy
air. “Where is Berthaud? I must speak to him.”

The others answered, volunteering contradictory information. Berthaud was
their superintendent, and whilst some said that they had seen him with
the Reverend Father Fourcade, others affirmed that he must be in the
courtyard of the station inspecting the ambulance vehicles. And they
thereupon offered to go and fetch him.

“No, no, thank you,” replied the Baron. “I shall manage to find him
myself.”

Whilst this was happening, Berthaud, who had just seated himself on a
bench at the other end of the station, was talking with his young friend,
Gerard de Peyrelongue, by way of occupation pending the arrival of the
train. The superintendent of the bearers was a man of forty, with a
broad, regular-featured, handsome face and carefully trimmed whiskers of
a lawyer-like pattern. Belonging to a militant Legitimist family and
holding extremely reactionary opinions, he had been Procureur de la
Republique (public prosecutor) in a town of the south of France from the
time of the parliamentary revolution of the twenty-fourth of May* until
that of the decree of the Religious Communities,** when he had resigned
his post in a blusterous fashion, by addressing an insulting letter to
the Minister of Justice. And he had never since laid down his arms, but
had joined the Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation as a sort of protest,
repairing year after year to Lourdes in order to “demonstrate”; convinced
as he was that the pilgrimages were both disagreeable and hurtful to the
Republic, and that God alone could re-establish the Monarchy by one of
those miracles which He worked so lavishly at the Grotto. Despite all
this, however, Berthaud possessed no small amount of good sense, and
being of a gay disposition, displayed a kind of jovial charity towards
the poor sufferers whose transport he had to provide for during the three
days that the national pilgrimage remained at Lourdes.

  * The parliamentary revolution of May, 1873, by which M. Thiers
    was overthrown and Marshal MacMahon installed in his place with
    the object of restoring the Monarchy in France.--Trans.

  ** M. Grevy’s decree by which the Jesuits were expelled.--Trans.

“And so, my dear Gerard,” he said to the young man seated beside him,
“your marriage is really to come off this year?”

“Why yes, if I can find such a wife as I want,” replied the other. “Come,
cousin, give me some good advice.”

Gerard de Peyrelongue, a short, thin, carroty young man, with a
pronounced nose and prominent cheek-bones, belonged to Tarbes, where his
father and mother had lately died, leaving him at the utmost some seven
or eight thousand francs a year. Extremely ambitious, he had been unable
to find such a wife as he desired in his native province--a
well-connected young woman capable of helping him to push both forward
and upward in the world; and so he had joined the Hospitality, and betook
himself every summer to Lourdes, in the vague hope that amidst the mass
of believers, the torrent of devout mammas and daughters which flowed
thither, he might find the family whose help he needed to enable him to
make his way in this terrestrial sphere. However, he remained in
perplexity, for if, on the one hand, he already had several young ladies
in view, on the other, none of them completely satisfied him.

“Eh, cousin? You will advise me, won’t you?” he said to Berthaud. “You
are a man of experience. There is Mademoiselle Lemercier who comes here
with her aunt. She is very rich; according to what is said she has over a
million francs. But she doesn’t belong to our set, and besides I think
her a bit of a madcap.”

Berthaud nodded. “I told you so; if I were you I should choose little
Raymonde, Mademoiselle de Jonquiere.”

“But she hasn’t a copper!”

“That’s true--she has barely enough to pay for her board. But she is
fairly good-looking, she has been well brought up, and she has no
extravagant tastes. That is the really important point, for what is the
use of marrying a rich girl if she squanders the dowry she brings you?
Besides, I know Madame and Mademoiselle de Jonquiere very well, I meet
them all through the winter in the most influential drawing-rooms of
Paris. And, finally, don’t forget the girl’s uncle, the diplomatist, who
has had the painful courage to remain in the service of the Republic. He
will be able to do whatever he pleases for his niece’s husband.”

For a moment Gerard seemed shaken, and then he relapsed into perplexity.
“But she hasn’t a copper,” he said, “no, not a copper. It’s too stiff. I
am quite willing to think it over, but it really frightens me too much.”

This time Berthaud burst into a frank laugh. “Come, you are ambitious, so
you must be daring. I tell you that it means the secretaryship of an
embassy before two years are over. By the way, Madame and Mademoiselle de
Jonquiere are in the white train which we are waiting for. Make up your
mind and pay your court at once.”

“No, no! Later on. I want to think it over.”

At this moment they were interrupted, for Baron Suire, who had already
once gone by without perceiving them, so completely did the darkness
enshroud them in that retired corner, had just recognised the ex-public
prosecutor’s good-natured laugh. And, thereupon, with the volubility of a
man whose head is easily unhinged, he gave him several orders respecting
the vehicles and the transport service, deploring the circumstance that
it would be impossible to conduct the patients to the Grotto immediately
on their arrival, as it was yet so extremely early. It had therefore been
decided that they should in the first instance be taken to the Hospital
of Our Lady of Dolours, where they would be able to rest awhile after
their trying journey.

Whilst the Baron and the superintendent were thus settling what measures
should be adopted, Gerard shook hands with a priest who had sat down
beside him. This was the Abbe des Hermoises, who was barely
eight-and-thirty years of age and had a superb head--such a head as one
might expect to find on the shoulders of a worldly priest. With his hair
well combed, and his person perfumed, he was not unnaturally a great
favourite among women. Very amiable and distinguished in his manners, he
did not come to Lourdes in any official capacity, but simply for his
pleasure, as so many other people did; and the bright, sparkling smile of
a sceptic above all idolatry gleamed in the depths of his fine eyes. He
certainly believed, and bowed to superior decisions; but the Church--the
Holy See--had not pronounced itself with regard to the miracles; and he
seemed quite ready to dispute their authenticity. Having lived at Tarbes
he was already acquainted with Gerard.

“Ah!” he said to him, “how impressive it is--isn’t it?--this waiting for
the trains in the middle of the night! I have come to meet a lady--one of
my former Paris penitents--but I don’t know what train she will come by.
Still, as you see, I stop on, for it all interests me so much.”

Then another priest, an old country priest, having come to sit down on
the same bench, the Abbe considerately began talking to him, speaking of
the beauty of the Lourdes district and of the theatrical effect which
would take place by-and-by when the sun rose and the mountains appeared.

However, there was again a sudden alert, and the station-master ran along
shouting orders. Removing his hand from Dr. Bonamy’s shoulder, Father
Fourcade, despite his gouty leg, hastily drew near.

“Oh! it’s that Bayonne express which is so late,” answered the
station-master in reply to the questions addressed to him. “I should like
some information about it; I’m not at ease.”

At this moment the telegraph bells rang out and a porter rushed away into
the darkness swinging a lantern, whilst a distant signal began to work.
Thereupon the station-master resumed: “Ah! this time it’s the white
train. Let us hope we shall have time to get the sick people out before
the express passes.”

He started off once more and disappeared. Berthaud meanwhile called to
Gerard, who was at the head of a squad of bearers, and they both made
haste to join their men, into whom Baron Suire was already instilling
activity. The bearers flocked to the spot from all sides, and setting
themselves in motion began dragging their little vehicles across the
lines to the platform at which the white train would come in--an unroofed
platform plunged in darkness. A mass of pillows, mattresses, stretchers,
and litters was soon waiting there, whilst Father Fourcade, Dr. Bonamy,
the priests, the gentlemen, and the officer of dragoons in their turn
crossed over in order to witness the removal of the ailing pilgrims. All
that they could as yet see, far away in the depths of the black country,
was the lantern in front of the engine, looking like a red star which
grew larger and larger. Strident whistles pierced the night, then
suddenly ceased, and you only heard the panting of the steam and the dull
roar of the wheels gradually slackening their speed. Then the canticle
became distinctly audible, the song of Bernadette with the ever-recurring
“Aves” of its refrain, which the whole train was chanting in chorus. And
at last this train of suffering and faith, this moaning, singing train,
thus making its entry into Lourdes, drew up in the station.

The carriage doors were at once opened, the whole throng of healthy
pilgrims, and of ailing ones able to walk, alighted, and streamed over
the platform. The few gas lamps cast but a feeble light on the crowd of
poverty-stricken beings clad in faded garments, and encumbered with all
sorts of parcels, baskets, valises, and boxes. And amidst all the
jostling of this scared flock, which did not know in which direction to
turn to find its way out of the station, loud exclamations were heard,
the shouts of people calling relatives whom they had lost, mingled with
the embraces of others whom relatives or friends had come to meet. One
woman declared with beatifical satisfaction, “I have slept well.” A
priest went off carrying his travelling-bag, after wishing a crippled
lady “good luck!” Most of them had the bewildered, weary, yet joyous
appearance of people whom an excursion train sets down at some unknown
station. And such became the scramble and the confusion in the darkness,
that they did not hear the railway _employes_ who grew quite hoarse
through shouting, “This way! this way!” in their eagerness to clear the
platform as soon as possible.

Sister Hyacinthe had nimbly alighted from her compartment, leaving the
dead man in the charge of Sister Claire des Anges; and, losing her head
somewhat, she ran off to the cantine van in the idea that Ferrand would
be able to help her. Fortunately she found Father Fourcade in front of
the van and acquainted him with the fatality in a low voice. Repressing a
gesture of annoyance, he thereupon called Baron Suire, who was passing,
and began whispering in his ear. The muttering lasted for a few seconds,
and then the Baron rushed off, and clove his way through the crowd with
two bearers carrying a covered litter. In this the man was removed from
the carriage as though he were a patient who had simply fainted, the mob
of pilgrims paying no further attention to him amidst all the emotion of
their arrival. Preceded by the Baron, the bearers carried the corpse into
a goods office, where they provisionally lodged it behind some barrels;
one of them, a fair-haired little fellow, a general’s son, remaining to
watch over it.

Meanwhile, after begging Ferrand and Sister Saint-Francois to go and wait
for her in the courtyard of the station, near the reserved vehicle which
was to take them to the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours, Sister Hyacinthe
returned to the railway carriage and talked of helping her patients to
alight before going away. But Marie would not let her touch her. “No,
no!” said the girl, “do not trouble about me, Sister. I shall remain here
the last. My father and Abbe Froment have gone to the van to fetch the
wheels; I am waiting for their return; they know how to fix them, and
they will take me away all right, you may be sure of it.”

In the same way M. Sabathier and Brother Isidore did not desire to be
moved until the crowd had decreased. Madame de Jonquiere, who had taken
charge of La Grivotte, also promised to see to Madame Vetu’s removal in
an ambulance vehicle. And thereupon Sister Hyacinthe decided that she
would go off at once so as to get everything ready at the hospital.
Moreover, she took with her both little Sophie Couteau and Elise Rouquet,
whose face she very carefully wrapped up. Madame Maze preceded them,
while Madame Vincent, carrying her little girl, who was unconscious and
quite white, struggled through the crowd, possessed by the fixed idea of
running off as soon as possible and depositing the child in the Grotto at
the feet of the Blessed Virgin.

The mob was now pressing towards the doorway by which passengers left the
station, and to facilitate the egress of all these people it at last
became necessary to open the luggage gates. The _employes_, at a loss how
to take the tickets, held out their caps, which a downpour of the little
cards speedily filled. And in the courtyard, a large square courtyard,
skirted on three sides by the low buildings of the station, the most
extraordinary uproar prevailed amongst all the vehicles of divers kinds
which were there jumbled together. The hotel omnibuses, backed against
the curb of the footway, displayed the most sacred names on their large
boards--Jesus and Mary, St. Michel, the Rosary, and the Sacred Heart.
Then there were ambulance vehicles, landaus, cabriolets, brakes, and
little donkey carts, all entangled together, with their drivers shouting,
swearing, and cracking their whips--the tumult being apparently increased
by the obscurity in which the lanterns set brilliant patches of light.

Rain had fallen heavily a few hours previously. Liquid mud splashed up
under the hoofs of the horses; the foot passengers sank into it to their
ankles. M. Vigneron, whom Madame Vigneron and Madame Chaise were
following in a state of distraction, raised Gustave, in order to place
him in the omnibus from the Hotel of the Apparitions, after which he
himself and the ladies climbed into the vehicle. Madame Maze, shuddering
slightly, like a delicate tabby who fears to dirty the tips of her paws,
made a sign to the driver of an old brougham, got into it, and quickly
drove away, after giving as address the Convent of the Blue Sisters. And
at last Sister Hyacinthe was able to install herself with Elise Rouquet
and Sophie Couteau in a large _char-a-bancs_, in which Ferrand and
Sisters Saint-Francois and Claire des Anges were already seated. The
drivers whipped up their spirited little horses, and the vehicles went
off at a breakneck pace, amidst the shouts of those left behind, and the
splashing of the mire.

In presence of that rushing torrent, Madame Vincent, with her dear little
burden in her arms, hesitated to cross over. Bursts of laughter rang out
around her every now and then. Oh! what a filthy mess! And at sight of
all the mud, the women caught up their skirts before attempting to pass
through it. At last, when the courtyard had somewhat emptied, Madame
Vincent herself ventured on her way, all terror lest the mire should make
her fall in that black darkness. Then, on reaching a downhill road, she
noticed there a number of women of the locality who were on the watch,
offering furnished rooms, bed and board, according to the state of the
pilgrim’s purse.

“Which is the way to the Grotto, madame, if you please?” asked Madame
Vincent, addressing one old woman of the party.

Instead of answering the question, however, the other offered her a cheap
room. “You won’t find anything in the hotels,” said she, “for they are
all full. Perhaps you will be able to eat there, but you certainly won’t
find a closet even to sleep in.”

Eat, sleep, indeed! Had Madame Vincent any thought of such things; she
who had left Paris with thirty sous in her pocket, all that remained to
her after the expenses she had been put to!

“The way to the Grotto, if you please, madame?” she repeated.

Among the women who were thus touting for lodgers, there was a tall,
well-built girl, dressed like a superior servant, and looking very clean,
with carefully tended hands. She glanced at Madame Vincent and slightly
shrugged her shoulders. And then, seeing a broad-chested priest with a
red face go by, she rushed after him, offered him a furnished room, and
continued following him, whispering in his ear.

Another girl, however, at last took pity on Madame Vincent and said to
her: “Here, go down this road, and when you get to the bottom, turn to
the right and you will reach the Grotto.”

Meanwhile, the confusion inside the station continued. The healthy
pilgrims, and those of the sick who retained the use of their legs could
go off, thus, in some measure, clearing the platform; but the others, the
more grievously stricken sufferers whom it was difficult to get out of
the carriages and remove to the hospital, remained waiting. The bearers
seemed to become quite bewildered, rushing madly hither and thither with
their litters and vehicles, not knowing at what end to set about the
profusion of work which lay before them.

As Berthaud, followed by Gerard, went along the platform, gesticulating,
he noticed two ladies and a girl who were standing under a gas jet and to
all appearance waiting. In the girl he recognised Raymonde, and with a
sign of the hand he at once stopped his companion. “Ah! mademoiselle,”
 said he, “how pleased I am to see you! Is Madame de Jonquiere quite well?
You have made a good journey, I hope?” Then, without a pause, he added:
“This is my friend, Monsieur Gerard de Peyrelongue.”

Raymonde gazed fixedly at the young man with her clear, smiling eyes.
“Oh! I already have the pleasure of being slightly acquainted with this
gentleman,” she said. “We have previously met one another at Lourdes.”

Thereupon Gerard, who thought that his cousin Berthaud was conducting
matters too quickly, and was quite resolved that he would not enter into
any hasty engagement, contented himself with bowing in a ceremonious way.

“We are waiting for mamma,” resumed Raymonde. “She is extremely busy; she
has to see after some pilgrims who are very ill.”

At this, little Madame Desagneaux, with her pretty, light wavy-haired
head, began to say that it served Madame de Jonquiere right for refusing
her services. She herself was stamping with impatience, eager to join in
the work and make herself useful, whilst Madame Volmar, silent, shrinking
back as though taking no interest in it at all, seemed simply desirous of
penetrating the darkness, as though, indeed, she were seeking somebody
with those magnificent eyes of hers, usually bedimmed, but now shining
out like brasiers.

Just then, however, they were all pushed back. Madame Dieulafay was being
removed from her first-class compartment, and Madame Desagneaux could not
restrain an exclamation of pity. “Ah! the poor woman!”

There could in fact be no more distressing sight than this young woman,
encompassed by luxury, covered with lace in her species of coffin, so
wasted that she seemed to be a mere human shred, deposited on that
platform till it could be taken away. Her husband and her sister, both
very elegant and very sad, remained standing near her, whilst a
man-servant and maid ran off with the valises to ascertain if the
carriage which had been ordered by telegram was in the courtyard. Abbe
Judaine also helped the sufferer; and when two men at last took her up he
bent over her and wished her _au revoir_, adding some kind words which
she did not seem to hear. Then as he watched her removal, he resumed,
addressing himself to Berthaud, whom he knew: “Ah! the poor people, if
they could only purchase their dear sufferer’s cure. I told them that
prayer was the most precious thing in the Blessed Virgin’s eyes, and I
hope that I have myself prayed fervently enough to obtain the compassion
of Heaven. Nevertheless, they have brought a magnificent gift, a golden
lantern for the Basilica, a perfect marvel, adorned with precious stones.
May the Immaculate Virgin deign to smile upon it!”

In this way a great many offerings were brought by the pilgrims. Some
huge bouquets of flowers had just gone by, together with a kind of triple
crown of roses, mounted on a wooden stand. And the old priest explained
that before leaving the station he wished to secure a banner, the gift of
the beautiful Madame Jousseur, Madame Dieulafay’s sister.

Madame de Jonquiere was at last approaching, however, and on perceiving
Berthaud and Gerard she exclaimed: “Pray do go to that carriage,
gentlemen--that one, there! We want some men very badly. There are three
or four sick persons to be taken out. I am in despair; I can do nothing
myself.”

Gerard ran off after bowing to Raymonde, whilst Berthaud advised Madame
de Jonquiere to leave the station with her daughter and those ladies
instead of remaining on the platform. Her presence was in nowise
necessary, he said; he would undertake everything, and within three
quarters of an hour she would find her patients in her ward at the
hospital. She ended by giving way, and took a conveyance in company with
Raymonde and Madame Desagneaux. As for Madame Volmar, she had at the last
moment disappeared, as though seized with a sudden fit of impatience. The
others fancied that they had seen her approach a strange gentleman, with
the object no doubt of making some inquiry of him. However, they would of
course find her at the hospital.

Berthaud joined Gerard again just as the young man, assisted by two
fellow-bearers, was endeavouring to remove M. Sabathier from the
carriage. It was a difficult task, for he was very stout and very heavy,
and they began to think that he would never pass through the doorway of
the compartment. However, as he had been got in they ought to be able to
get him out; and indeed when two other bearers had entered the carriage
from the other side, they were at last able to deposit him on the
platform.

The dawn was now appearing, a faint pale dawn; and the platform presented
the woeful appearance of an improvised hospital. La Grivotte, who had
lost consciousness, lay there on a mattress pending her removal in a
litter; whilst Madame Vetu had been seated against a lamp-post, suffering
so severely from another attack of her ailment that they scarcely dared
to touch her. Some hospitallers, whose hands were gloved, were with
difficulty wheeling their little vehicles in which were poor,
sordid-looking women with old baskets at their feet. Others, with
stretchers on which lay the stiffened, woeful bodies of silent sufferers,
whose eyes gleamed with anguish, found themselves unable to pass; but
some of the infirm pilgrims, some unfortunate cripples, contrived to slip
through the ranks, among them a young priest who was lame, and a little
humpbacked boy, one of whose legs had been amputated, and who, looking
like a gnome, managed to drag himself with his crutches from group to
group. Then there was quite a block around a man who was bent in half,
twisted by paralysis to such a point that he had to be carried on a chair
with his head and feet hanging downward. It seemed as though hours would
be required to clear the platform.

The dismay therefore reached a climax when the station-master suddenly
rushed up shouting: “The Bayonne express is signalled. Make haste! make
haste! You have only three minutes left!”

Father Fourcade, who had remained in the midst of the throng, leaning on
Doctor Bonamy’s arm, and gaily encouraging the more stricken of the
sufferers, beckoned to Berthaud and said to him: “Finish taking them out
of the train; you will be able to clear the platform afterwards!”

The advice was very sensible, and in accordance with it they finished
placing the sufferers on the platform. In Madame de Jonquiere’s carriage
Marie now alone remained, waiting patiently. M. de Guersaint and Pierre
had at last returned to her, bringing the two pairs of wheels by means of
which the box in which she lay was rolled about. And with Gerard’s
assistance Pierre in all haste removed the girl from the train. She was
as light as a poor shivering bird, and it was only the box that gave them
any trouble. However, they soon placed it on the wheels and made the
latter fast, and then Pierre might have rolled Marie away had it not been
for the crowd which hampered him.

“Make haste! make haste!” furiously repeated the station-master.

He himself lent a hand, taking hold of a sick man by the feet in order to
remove him from the compartment more speedily. And he also pushed the
little hand-carts back, so as to clear the edge of the platform. In a
second-class carriage, however, there still remained one woman who had
just been overpowered by a terrible nervous attack. She was howling and
struggling, and it was impossible to think of touching her at that
moment. But on the other hand the express, signalled by the incessant
tinkling of the electric bells, was now fast approaching, and they had to
close the door and in all haste shunt the train to the siding where it
would remain for three days, until in fact it was required to convey its
load of sick and healthy passengers back to Paris. As it went off to the
siding the crowd still heard the cries of the suffering woman, whom it
had been necessary to leave in it, in charge of a Sister, cries which
grew weaker and weaker, like those of a strengthless child whom one at
last succeeds in consoling.

“Good Lord!” muttered the station-master; “it was high time!”

In fact the Bayonne express was now coming along at full speed, and the
next moment it rushed like a crash of thunder past that woeful platform
littered with all the grievous wretchedness of a hospital hastily
evacuated. The litters and little handcarts were shaken, but there was no
accident, for the porters were on the watch, and pushed back the
bewildered flock which was still jostling and struggling in its eagerness
to get away. As soon as the express had passed, however, circulation was
re-established, and the bearers were at last able to complete the removal
of the sick with prudent deliberation.

Little by little the daylight was increasing--a clear dawn it was,
whitening the heavens whose reflection illumined the earth, which was
still black. One began to distinguish things and people clearly.

“Oh, by-and-by!” Marie repeated to Pierre, as he endeavoured to roll her
away. “Let us wait till some part of the crowd has gone.”

Then, looking around, she began to feel interested in a man of military
bearing, apparently some sixty years of age, who was walking about among
the sick pilgrims. With a square-shaped head and white bushy hair, he
would still have looked sturdy if he had not dragged his left foot,
throwing it inward at each step he took. With the left hand, too, he
leant heavily on a thick walking-stick. When M. Sabathier, who had
visited Lourdes for six years past, perceived him, he became quite gay.
“Ah!” said he, “it is you, Commander!”

Commander was perhaps the old man’s name. But as he was decorated with a
broad red riband, he was possibly called Commander on account of his
decoration, albeit the latter was that of a mere chevalier. Nobody
exactly knew his story. No doubt he had relatives and children of his own
somewhere, but these matters remained vague and mysterious. For the last
three years he had been employed at the railway station as a
superintendent in the goods department, a simple occupation, a little
berth which had been given him by favour and which enabled him to live in
perfect happiness. A first stroke of apoplexy at fifty-five years of age
had been followed by a second one three years later, which had left him
slightly paralysed in the left side. And now he was awaiting the third
stroke with an air of perfect tranquillity. As he himself put it, he was
at the disposal of death, which might come for him that night, the next
day, or possibly that very moment. All Lourdes knew him on account of the
habit, the mania he had, at pilgrimage time, of coming to witness the
arrival of the trains, dragging his foot along and leaning upon his
stick, whilst expressing his astonishment and reproaching the ailing ones
for their intense desire to be made whole and sound again.

This was the third year that he had seen M. Sabathier arrive, and all his
anger fell upon him. “What! you have come back _again_!” he exclaimed.
“Well, you _must_ be desirous of living this hateful life! But
_sacrebleu_! go and die quietly in your bed at home. Isn’t that the best
thing that can happen to anyone?”

M. Sabathier evinced no anger, but laughed, exhausted though he was by
the handling to which he had been subjected during his removal from the
carriage. “No, no,” said he, “I prefer to be cured.”

“To be cured, to be cured! That’s what they all ask for. They travel
hundreds of leagues and arrive in fragments, howling with pain, and all
this to be cured--to go through every worry and every suffering again.
Come, monsieur, you would be nicely caught if, at your age and with your
dilapidated old body, your Blessed Virgin should be pleased to restore
the use of your legs to you. What would you do with them, _mon Dieu?_
What pleasure would you find in prolonging the abomination of old age for
a few years more? It’s much better to die at once, while you are like
that! Death is happiness!”

He spoke in this fashion, not as a believer who aspires to the delicious
reward of eternal life, but as a weary man who expects to fall into
nihility, to enjoy the great everlasting peace of being no more.

Whilst M. Sabathier was gaily shrugging his shoulders as though he had a
child to deal with, Abbe Judaine, who had at last secured his banner,
came by and stopped for a moment in order that he might gently scold the
Commander, with whom he also was well acquainted.

“Don’t blaspheme, my dear friend,” he said. “It is an offence against God
to refuse life and to treat health with contempt. If you yourself had
listened to me, you would have asked the Blessed Virgin to cure your leg
before now.”

At this the Commander became angry. “My leg! The Virgin can do nothing to
it! I’m quite at my ease. May death come and may it all be over forever!
When the time comes to die you turn your face to the wall and you
die--it’s simple enough.”

The old priest interrupted him, however. Pointing to Marie, who was lying
on her box listening to them, he exclaimed: “You tell all our sick to go
home and die--even mademoiselle, eh? She who is full of youth and wishes
to live.”

Marie’s eyes were wide open, burning with the ardent desire which she
felt to _be_, to enjoy her share of the vast world; and the Commander,
who had drawn near, gazed upon her, suddenly seized with deep emotion
which made his voice tremble. “If mademoiselle gets well,” he said, “I
will wish her another miracle, that she be happy.”

Then he went off, dragging his foot and tapping the flagstones with the
ferrule of his stout stick as he continued wending his way, like an angry
philosopher among the suffering pilgrims.

Little by little, the platform was at last cleared. Madame Vetu and La
Grivotte were carried away, and Gerard removed M. Sabathier in a little
cart, whilst Baron Suire and Berthaud already began giving orders for the
green train, which would be the next one to arrive. Of all the ailing
pilgrims the only one now remaining at the station was Marie, of whom
Pierre jealously took charge. He had already dragged her into the
courtyard when he noticed that M. de Guersaint had disappeared; but a
moment later he perceived him conversing with the Abbe des Hermoises,
whose acquaintance he had just made. Their admiration of the beauties of
nature had brought them together. The daylight had now appeared, and the
surrounding mountains displayed themselves in all their majesty.

“What a lovely country, monsieur!” exclaimed M. de Guersaint. “I have
been wishing to see the Cirque de Gavarnie for thirty years past. But it
is some distance away and the trip must be an expensive one, so that I
fear I shall not be able to make it.”

“You are mistaken, monsieur,” said the Abbe; “nothing is more easily
managed. By making up a party the expense becomes very slight. And as it
happens, I wish to return there this year, so that if you would like to
join us--”

“Oh, certainly, monsieur. We will speak of it again. A thousand thanks,”
 replied M. de Guersaint.

His daughter was now calling him, however, and he joined her after taking
leave of the Abbe in a very cordial manner. Pierre had decided that he
would drag Marie to the hospital so as to spare her the pain of
transference to another vehicle. But as the omnibuses, landaus, and other
conveyances were already coming back, again filling the courtyard in
readiness for the arrival of the next train, the young priest had some
difficulty in reaching the road with the little chariot whose low wheels
sank deeply in the mud. Some police agents charged with maintaining order
were cursing that fearful mire which splashed their boots; and indeed it
was only the touts, the young and old women who had rooms to let, who
laughed at the puddles, which they crossed and crossed again in every
direction, pursuing the last pilgrims that emerged from the station.

When the little car had begun to roll more easily over the sloping road
Marie suddenly inquired of M. de Guersaint, who was walking near her:
“What day of the week is it, father?”

“Saturday, my darling.”

“Ah! yes, Saturday, the day of the Blessed Virgin. Is it to-day that she
will cure me?”

Then she began thinking again; while, at some distance behind her, two
bearers came furtively down the road, with a covered stretcher in which
lay the corpse of the man who had died in the train. They had gone to
take it from behind the barrels in the goods office, and were now
conveying it to a secret spot of which Father Fourcade had told them.




II. HOSPITAL AND GROTTO

BUILT, so far as it extends, by a charitable Canon, and left unfinished
through lack of money, the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours is a vast
pile, four storeys high, and consequently far too lofty, since it is
difficult to carry the sufferers to the topmost wards. As a rule the
building is occupied by a hundred infirm and aged paupers; but at the
season of the national pilgrimage these old folks are for three days
sheltered elsewhere, and the hospital is let to the Fathers of the
Assumption, who at times lodge in it as many as five and six hundred
patients. Still, however closely packed they may be, the accommodation
never suffices, so that the three or four hundred remaining sufferers
have to be distributed between the Hospital of Salvation and the town
hospital, the men being sent to the former and the women to the latter
institution.

That morning at sunrise great confusion prevailed in the sand-covered
courtyard of Our Lady of Dolours, at the door of which a couple of
priests were mounting guard. The temporary staff, with its formidable
supply of registers, cards, and printed formulas, had installed itself in
one of the ground-floor rooms on the previous day. The managers were
desirous of greatly improving upon the organisation of the preceding
year. The lower wards were this time to be reserved to the most helpless
sufferers; and in order to prevent a repetition of the cases of mistaken
identity which had occurred in the past, very great care was to be taken
in filling in and distributing the admission cards, each of which bore
the name of a ward and the number of a bed. It became difficult, however,
to act in accordance with these good intentions in presence of the
torrent of ailing beings which the white train had brought to Lourdes,
and the new formalities so complicated matters that the patients had to
be deposited in the courtyard as they arrived, to wait there until it
became possible to admit them in something like an orderly manner. It was
the scene witnessed at the railway station all over again, the same
woeful camping in the open, whilst the bearers and the young seminarists
who acted as the secretary’s assistants ran hither and thither in
bewilderment.

“We have been over-ambitious, we wanted to do things too well!” exclaimed
Baron Suire in despair.

There was much truth in his remark, for never had a greater number of
useless precautions been taken, and they now discovered that, by some
inexplicable error, they had allotted not the lower--but the
higher-placed wards to the patients whom it was most difficult to move.
It was impossible to begin the classification afresh, however, and so as
in former years things must be allowed to take their course, in a
haphazard way. The distribution of the cards began, a young priest at the
same time entering each patient’s name and address in a register.
Moreover, all the _hospitalisation_ cards bearing the patients’ names and
numbers had to be produced, so that the names of the wards and the
numbers of the beds might be added to them; and all these formalities
greatly protracted the _defile_.

Then there was an endless coming and going from the top to the bottom of
the building, and from one to the other end of each of its four floors.
M. Sabathier was one of the first to secure admittance, being placed in a
ground-floor room which was known as the Family Ward. Sick men were there
allowed to have their wives with them; but to the other wards of the
hospital only women were admitted. Brother Isidore, it is true, was
accompanied by his sister; however, by a special favour it was agreed
that they should be considered as conjoints, and the missionary was
accordingly placed in the bed next to that allotted to M. Sabathier. The
chapel, still littered with plaster and with its unfinished windows
boarded up, was close at hand. There were also various wards in an
unfinished state; still these were filled with mattresses, on which
sufferers were rapidly placed. All those who could walk, however, were
already besieging the refectory, a long gallery whose broad windows
looked into an inner courtyard; and the Saint-Frai Sisters, who managed
the hospital at other times, and had remained to attend to the cooking,
began to distribute bowls of coffee and chocolate among the poor women
whom the terrible journey had exhausted.

“Rest yourselves and try to gain a little strength,” repeated Baron
Suire, who was ever on the move, showing himself here, there, and
everywhere in rapid succession. “You have three good hours before you, it
is not yet five, and their reverences have given orders that you are not
to be taken to the Grotto until eight o’clock, so as to avoid any
excessive fatigue.”

Meanwhile, up above on the second floor, Madame de Jonquiere had been one
of the first to take possession of the Sainte-Honorine Ward of which she
was the superintendent. She had been obliged to leave her daughter
Raymonde downstairs, for the regulations did not allow young girls to
enter the wards, where they might have witnessed sights that were
scarcely proper or else too horrible for such eyes as theirs. Raymonde
had therefore remained in the refectory as a helper; however, little
Madame Desagneaux, being a lady-hospitaller, had not left the
superintendent, and was already asking her for orders, in her delight
that she should at last be able to render some assistance.

“Are all these beds properly made, madame?” she inquired; “perhaps I had
better make them afresh with Sister Hyacinthe.”

The ward, whose walls were painted a light yellow, and whose few windows
admitted but little light from an inner yard, contained fifteen beds,
standing in two rows against the walls.

“We will see by-and-by,” replied Madame de Jonquiere with an absorbed
air. She was busy counting the beds and examining the long narrow
apartment. And this accomplished she added in an undertone: “I shall
never have room enough. They say that I must accommodate twenty-three
patients. We shall have to put some mattresses down.”

Sister Hyacinthe, who had followed the ladies after leaving Sister
Saint-Francois and Sister Claire des Anges in a small adjoining apartment
which was being transformed into a linen-room, then began to lift up the
coverlets and examine the bedding. And she promptly reassured Madame
Desagneaux with regard to her surmises. “Oh! the beds are properly made,”
 she said; “everything is very clean too. One can see that the Saint-Frai
Sisters have attended to things themselves. The reserve mattresses are in
the next room, however, and if madame will lend me a hand we can place
some of them between the beds at once.

“Oh, certainly!” exclaimed young Madame Desagneaux, quite excited by the
idea of carrying mattresses about with her weak slender arms.

It became necessary for Madame de Jonquiere to calm her. “By-and-by,”
 said the lady-superintendent; “there is no hurry. Let us wait till our
patients arrive. I don’t much like this ward, it is so difficult to air.
Last year I had the Sainte-Rosalie Ward on the first floor. However, we
will organise matters, all the same.”

Some other lady-hospitallers were now arriving, quite a hiveful of busy
bees, all eager to start on their work. The confusion which so often
arose was, in fact, increased by the excessive number of nurses, women of
the aristocracy and upper-middle class, with whose fervent zeal some
little vanity was blended. There were more than two hundred of them, and
as each had to make a donation on joining the Hospitality of Our Lady of
Salvation, the managers did not dare to refuse any applicants, for fear
lest they might check the flow of alms-giving. Thus the number of
lady-hospitallers increased year by year. Fortunately there were among
them some who cared for nothing beyond the privilege of wearing the red
cloth cross, and who started off on excursions as soon as they reached
Lourdes. Still it must be acknowledged that those who devoted themselves
were really deserving, for they underwent five days of awful fatigue,
sleeping scarcely a couple of hours each night, and living in the midst
of the most terrible and repulsive spectacles. They witnessed the death
agonies, dressed the pestilential sores, cleaned up, changed linen,
turned the sufferers over in their beds, went through a sickening and
overwhelming labour to which they were in no wise accustomed. And thus
they emerged from it aching all over, tired to death, with feverish eyes
flaming with the joy of the charity which so excited them.

“And Madame Volmar?” suddenly asked Madame Desagneaux. “I thought we
should find her here.”

This was apparently a subject which Madame de Jonquiere did not care to
have discussed; for, as though she were aware of the truth and wished to
bury it in silence, with the indulgence of a woman who compassionates
human wretchedness, she promptly retorted: “Madame Volmar isn’t strong,
she must have gone to the hotel to rest. We must let her sleep.”

Then she apportioned the beds among the ladies present, allotting two to
each of them; and this done they all finished taking possession of the
place, hastening up and down and backwards and forwards in order to
ascertain where the offices, the linen-room, and the kitchens were
situated.

“And the dispensary?” then asked one of the ladies.

But there was no dispensary. There was no medical staff even. What would
have been the use of any?--since the patients were those whom science had
given up, despairing creatures who had come to beg of God the cure which
powerless men were unable to promise them. Logically enough, all
treatment was suspended during the pilgrimage. If a patient seemed likely
to die, extreme unction was administered. The only medical man about the
place was the young doctor who had come by the white train with his
little medicine chest; and his intervention was limited to an endeavour
to assuage the sufferings of those patients who chanced to ask for him
during an attack.

As it happened, Sister Hyacinthe was just bringing Ferrand, whom Sister
Saint-Francois had kept with her in a closet near the linen-room which he
proposed to make his quarters. “Madame,” said he to Madame de Jonquiere,
“I am entirely at your disposal. In case of need you will only have to
ring for me.”

She barely listened to him, however, engaged as she was in a quarrel with
a young priest belonging to the management with reference to a deficiency
of certain utensils. “Certainly, monsieur, if we should need a soothing
draught,” she answered, and then, reverting to her discussion, she went
on: “Well, Monsieur l’Abbe, you must certainly get me four or five more.
How can we possibly manage with so few? Things are bad enough as it is.”

Ferrand looked and listened, quite bewildered by the extraordinary
behaviour of the people amongst whom he had been thrown by chance since
the previous day. He who did not believe, who was only present out of
friendship and charity, was amazed at this extraordinary scramble of
wretchedness and suffering rushing towards the hope of happiness. And, as
a medical man of the new school, he was altogether upset by the careless
neglect of precautions, the contempt which was shown for the most simple
teachings of science, in the certainty which was apparently felt that, if
Heaven should so will it, cure would supervene, sudden and resounding,
like a lie given to the very laws of nature. But if this were the case,
what was the use of that last concession to human prejudices--why engage
a doctor for the journey if none were wanted? At this thought the young
man returned to his little room, experiencing a vague feeling of shame as
he realised that his presence was useless, and even a trifle ridiculous.

“Get some opium pills ready all the same,” said Sister Hyacinthe, as she
went back with him as far as the linen-room. “You will be asked for some,
for I feel anxious about some of the patients.”

While speaking she looked at him with her large blue eyes, so gentle and
so kind, and ever lighted by a divine smile. The constant exercise which
she gave herself brought the rosy flush of her quick blood to her skin
all dazzling with youthfulness. And like a good friend who was willing
that he should share the work to which she gave her heart, she added:
“Besides, if I should need somebody to get a patient in or out of bed,
you will help me, won’t you?”

Thereupon, at the idea that he might be of use to her, he was pleased
that he had come and was there. In his mind’s eye, he again beheld her at
his bedside, at the time when he had so narrowly escaped death, nursing
him with fraternal hands, with the smiling, compassionate grace of a
sexless angel, in whom there was something more than a comrade, something
of a woman left. However, the thought never occurred to him that there
was religion, belief, behind her.

“Oh! I will help you as much as you like, Sister,” he replied. “I belong
to you, I shall be so happy to serve you. You know very well what a debt
of gratitude I have to pay you.”

In a pretty way she raised her finger to her lips so as to silence him.
Nobody owed her anything. She was merely the servant of the ailing and
the poor.

At this moment a first patient was making her entry into the
Sainte-Honorine Ward. It was Marie, lying in her wooden box, which
Pierre, with Gerard’s assistance, had just brought up-stairs. The last to
start from the railway station, she had secured admission before the
others, thanks to the endless complications which, after keeping them all
in suspense, now freed them according to the chance distribution of the
admission cards. M. de Guersaint had quitted his daughter at the hospital
door by her own desire; for, fearing the hotels would be very full, she
had wished him to secure two rooms for himself and Pierre at once. Then,
on reaching the ward, she felt so weary that, after venting her chagrin
at not being immediately taken to the Grotto, she consented to be laid on
a bed for a short time.

“Come, my child,” repeated Madame de Jonquiere, “you have three hours
before you. We will put you to bed. It will ease you to take you out of
that case.”

Thereupon the lady-superintendent raised her by the shoulders, whilst
Sister Hyacinthe held her feet. The bed was in the central part of the
ward, near a window. For a moment the poor girl remained on it with her
eyes closed, as though exhausted by being moved about so much. Then it
became necessary that Pierre should be readmitted, for she grew very
fidgety, saying that there were things which she must explain to him.

“Pray don’t go away, my friend,” she exclaimed when he approached her.
“Take the case out on to the landing, but stay there, because I want to
be taken down as soon as I can get permission.”

“Do you feel more comfortable now?” asked the young priest.

“Yes, no doubt--but I really don’t know. I so much want to be taken
yonder to the Blessed Virgin’s feet.”

However, when Pierre had removed the case, the successive arrivals of the
other patients supplied her with some little diversion. Madame Vetu, whom
two bearers had brought up-stairs, holding her under the arms, was laid,
fully dressed, on the next bed, where she remained motionless, scarce
breathing, with her heavy, yellow, cancerous mask. None of the patients,
it should be mentioned, were divested of their clothes, they were simply
stretched out on the beds, and advised to go to sleep if they could
manage to do so. Those whose complaints were less grievous contented
themselves with sitting down on their mattresses, chatting together, and
putting the things they had brought with them in order. For instance,
Elise Rouquet, who was also near Marie, on the other side of the latter’s
bed, opened her basket to take a clean fichu out of it, and seemed sorely
annoyed at having no hand-glass with her. In less than ten minutes all
the beds were occupied, so that when La Grivotte appeared, half carried
by Sister Hyacinthe and Sister Claire des Anges, it became necessary to
place some mattresses on the floor.

“Here! here is one,” exclaimed Madame Desagneaux; “she will be very well
here, out of the draught from the door.”

Seven other mattresses were soon added in a line, occupying the space
between the rows of beds, so that it became difficult to move about. One
had to be very careful, and follow narrow pathways which had been left
between the beds and the mattresses. Each of the patients had retained
possession of her parcel, or box, or bag, and round about the improvised
shakedowns were piles of poor old things, sorry remnants of garments,
straying among the sheets and the coverlets. You might have thought
yourself in some woeful infirmary, hastily organised after some great
catastrophe, some conflagration or earthquake which had thrown hundreds
of wounded and penniless beings into the streets.

Madame de Jonquiere made her way from one to the other end of the ward,
ever and ever repeating, “Come, my children, don’t excite yourselves; try
to sleep a little.”

However, she did not succeed in calming them, and indeed, she herself,
like the other lady-hospitallers under her orders, increased the general
fever by her own bewilderment. The linen of several patients had to be
changed, and there were other needs to be attended to. One woman,
suffering from an ulcer in the leg, began moaning so dreadfully that
Madame Desagneaux undertook to dress her sore afresh; but she was not
skilful, and despite all her passionate courage she almost fainted, so
greatly was she distressed by the unbearable odour. Those patients who
were in better health asked for broth, bowlfuls of which began to
circulate amidst the calls, the answers, and the contradictory orders
which nobody executed. And meanwhile, let loose amidst this frightful
scramble, little Sophie Couteau, who remained with the Sisters, and was
very gay, imagined that it was playtime, and ran, and jumped, and hopped
in turn, called and petted first by one and then by another, dear as she
was to all alike for the miraculous hope which she brought them.

However, amidst this agitation, the hours went by. Seven o’clock had just
struck when Abbe Judaine came in. He was the chaplain of the
Sainte-Honorine Ward, and only the difficulty of finding an unoccupied
altar at which he might say his mass had delayed his arrival. As soon as
he appeared, a cry of impatience arose from every bed.

“Oh! Monsieur le Cure, let us start, let us start at once!”

An ardent desire, which each passing minute heightened and irritated, was
upbuoying them, like a more and more devouring thirst, which only the
waters of the miraculous fountain could appease. And more fervently than
any of the others, La Grivotte, sitting up on her mattress, and joining
her hands, begged and begged that she might be taken to the Grotto. Was
there not a beginning of the miracle in this--in this awakening of her
will power, this feverish desire for cure which enabled her to set
herself erect? Inert and fainting on her arrival, she was now seated,
turning her dark glances in all directions, waiting and watching for the
happy moment when she would be removed. And colour also was returning to
her livid face. She was already resuscitating.

“Oh! Monsieur le Cure, pray do tell them to take me--I feel that I shall
be cured,” she exclaimed.

With a loving, fatherly smile on his good-natured face, Abbe Judaine
listened to them all, and allayed their impatience with kind words. They
would soon set out; but they must be reasonable, and allow sufficient
time for things to be organised; and besides, the Blessed Virgin did not
like to have violence done her; she bided her time, and distributed her
divine favours among those who behaved themselves the best.

As he paused before Marie’s bed and beheld her, stammering entreaties
with joined hands, he again paused. “And you, too, my daughter, you are
in a hurry?” he said. “Be easy, there is grace enough in heaven for you
all.”

“I am dying of love, Father,” she murmured in reply. “My heart is so
swollen with prayers, it stifles me--”

He was greatly touched by the passion of this poor emaciated child, so
harshly stricken in her youth and beauty, and wishing to appease her, he
called her attention to Madame Vetu, who did not move, though with her
eyes wide open she stared at all who passed.

“Look at madame, how quiet she is!” he said. “She is meditating, and she
does right to place herself in God’s hands, like a little child.”

However, in a scarcely audible voice, a mere breath, Madame Vetu
stammered: “Oh! I am suffering, I am suffering.”

At last, at a quarter to eight o’clock, Madame de Jonquiere warned her
charges that they would do well to prepare themselves. She herself,
assisted by Sister Hyacinthe and Madame Desagneaux, buttoned several
dresses, and put shoes on impotent feet. It was a real toilette, for they
all desired to appear to the greatest advantage before the Blessed
Virgin. A large number had sufficient sense of delicacy to wash their
hands. Others unpacked their parcels, and put on clean linen. On her
side, Elise Rouquet had ended by discovering a little pocket-glass in the
hands of a woman near her, a huge, dropsical creature, who was very
coquettish; and having borrowed it, she leant it against the bolster, and
then, with infinite care, began to fasten her fichu as elegantly as
possible about her head, in order to hide her distorted features.
Meanwhile, erect in front of her, little Sophie watched her with an air
of profound interest.

It was Abbe Judaine who gave the signal for starting on the journey to
the Grotto. He wished, he said, to accompany his dear suffering daughters
thither, whilst the lady-hospitallers and the Sisters remained in the
ward, so as to put things in some little order again. Then the ward was
at once emptied, the patients being carried down-stairs amidst renewed
tumult. And Pierre, having replaced Marie’s box upon its wheels, took the
first place in the _cortege_, which was formed of a score of little
handcarts, bath-chairs, and litters. The other wards, however, were also
emptying, the courtyard became crowded, and the _defile_ was organised in
haphazard fashion. There was soon an interminable train descending the
rather steep slope of the Avenue de la Grotte, so that Pierre was already
reaching the Plateau de la Merlasse when the last stretchers were barely
leaving the precincts of the hospital.

It was eight o’clock, and the sun, already high, a triumphant August sun,
was flaming in the great sky, which was beautifully clear. It seemed as
if the blue of the atmosphere, cleansed by the storm of the previous
night, were quite new, fresh with youth. And the frightful _defile_, a
perfect “Cour des Miracles” of human woe, rolled along the sloping
pavement amid all the brilliancy of that radiant morning. There was no
end to the train of abominations; it appeared to grow longer and longer.
No order was observed, ailments of all kinds were jumbled together; it
seemed like the clearing of some inferno where the most monstrous
maladies, the rare and awful cases which provoke a shudder, had been
gathered together. Eczema, roseola, elephantiasis, presented a long array
of doleful victims. Well-nigh vanished diseases reappeared; one old woman
was affected with leprosy, another was, covered with impetiginous lichen
like a tree which has rotted in the shade. Then came the dropsical ones,
inflated like wine-skins; and beside some stretchers there dangled hands
twisted by rheumatism, while from others protruded feet swollen by oedema
beyond all recognition, looking, in fact, like bags full of rags. One
woman, suffering from hydrocephalus, sat in a little cart, the dolorous
motions of her head bespeaking her grievous malady. A tall girl afflicted
with chorea--St. Vitus’s dance--was dancing with every limb, without a
pause, the left side of her face being continually distorted by sudden,
convulsive grimaces. A younger one, who followed, gave vent to a bark, a
kind of plaintive animal cry, each time that the tic douloureux which was
torturing her twisted her mouth and her right cheek, which she seemed to
throw forward. Next came the consumptives, trembling with fever,
exhausted by dysentery, wasted to skeletons, with livid skins, recalling
the colour of that earth in which they would soon be laid to rest; and
there was one among them who was quite white, with flaming eyes, who
looked indeed like a death’s head in which a torch had been lighted. Then
every deformity of the contractions followed in succession--twisted
trunks, twisted arms, necks askew, all the distortions of poor creatures
whom nature had warped and broken; and among these was one whose right
hand was thrust back behind her ribs whilst her head fell to the left
resting fixedly upon her shoulder. Afterwards came poor rachitic girls
displaying waxen complexions and slender necks eaten away by sores, and
yellow-faced women in the painful stupor which falls on those whose
bosoms are devoured by cancers; whilst others, lying down with their
mournful eyes gazing heavenwards, seemed to be listening to the throbs of
the tumours which obstructed their organs. And still more and more went
by; there was always something more frightful to come; this woman
following that other one increased the general shudder of horror. From
the neck of a girl of twenty who had a crushed, flattened head like a
toad’s, there hung so large a goitre that it fell even to her waist like
the bib of an apron. A blind woman walked along, her head erect, her face
pale like marble, displaying the acute inflammation of her poor,
ulcerated eyes. An aged woman stricken with imbecility, afflicted with
dreadful facial disfigurements, laughed aloud with a terrifying laugh.
And all at once an epileptic was seized with convulsions, and began
foaming on her stretcher, without, however, causing any stoppage of the
procession, which never slackened its march, lashed onward as it was by
the blizzard of feverish passion which impelled it towards the Grotto.

The bearers, the priests, and the ailing ones themselves had just
intonated a canticle, the song of Bernadette, and all rolled along amid
the besetting “Aves,” so that the little carts, the litters, and the
pedestrians descended the sloping road like a swollen and overflowing
torrent of roaring water. At the corner of the Rue Saint-Joseph, near the
Plateau de la Merlasse, a family of excursionists, who had come from
Cauterets or Bagneres, stood at the edge of the footway, overcome with
profound astonishment. These people were evidently well-to-do
_bourgeois_, the father and mother very correct in appearance and
demeanour, while their two big girls, attired in light-coloured dresses,
had the smiling faces of happy creatures who are amusing themselves. But
their first feeling of surprise was soon followed by terror, a growing
terror, as if they beheld the opening of some pesthouse of ancient times,
some hospital of the legendary ages, evacuated after a great epidemic.
The two girls became quite pale, while the father and the mother felt icy
cold in presence of that endless _defile_ of so many horrors, the
pestilential emanations of which were blown full in their faces. O God!
to think that such hideousness, such filth, such suffering, should exist!
Was it possible--under that magnificently radiant sun, under those broad
heavens so full of light and joy whither the freshness of the Gave’s
waters ascended, and the breeze of morning wafted the pure perfumes of
the mountains!

When Pierre, at the head of the _cortege_, reached the Plateau de la
Merlasse, he found himself immersed in that clear sunlight, that fresh
and balmy air. He turned round and smiled affectionately at Marie; and as
they came out on the Place du Rosaire in the morning splendour, they were
both enchanted with the lovely panorama which spread around them.

In front, on the east, was Old Lourdes, lying in a broad fold of the
ground beyond a rock. The sun was rising behind the distant mountains,
and its oblique rays clearly outlined the dark lilac mass of that
solitary rock, which was crowned by the tower and crumbling walls of the
ancient castle, once the redoubtable key of the seven valleys. Through
the dancing, golden dust you discerned little of the ruined pile except
some stately outlines, some huge blocks of building which looked as
though reared by Cyclopean hands; and beyond the rock you but vaguely
distinguished the discoloured, intermingled house-roofs of the old town.
Nearer in than the castle, however, the new town--the rich and noisy city
which had sprung up in a few years as though by miracle--spread out on
either hand, displaying its hotels, its stylish shops, its lodging-houses
all with white fronts smiling amidst patches of greenery. Then there was
the Gave flowing along at the base of the rock, rolling clamorous, clear
waters, now blue and now green, now deep as they passed under the old
bridge, and now leaping as they careered under the new one, which the
Fathers of the Immaculate Conception had built in order to connect the
Grotto with the railway station and the recently opened Boulevard. And as
a background to this delightful picture, this fresh water, this greenery,
this gay, scattered, rejuvenated town, the little and the big Gers arose,
two huge ridges of bare rock and low herbage, which, in the projected
shade that bathed them, assumed delicate tints of pale mauve and green,
fading softly into pink.

Then, upon the north, on the right bank of the Gave, beyond the hills
followed by the railway line, the heights of La Buala ascended, their
wooded slopes radiant in the morning light. On that side lay Bartres.
More to the left arose the Serre de Julos, dominated by the Miramont.
Other crests, far off, faded away into the ether. And in the foreground,
rising in tiers among the grassy valleys beyond the Gave, a number of
convents, which seemed to have sprung up in this region of prodigies like
early vegetation, imparted some measure of life to the landscape. First,
there was an Orphan Asylum founded by the Sisters of Nevers, whose vast
buildings shone brightly in the sunlight. Next came the Carmelite
convent, on the highway to Pau, just in front of the Grotto; and then
that of the Assumptionists higher up, skirting the road to Poueyferre;
whilst the Dominicans showed but a corner of their roofs, sequestered in
the far-away solitude. And at last appeared the establishment of the
Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, those who were called the Blue
Sisters, and who had founded at the far end of the valley a home where
they received well-to-do lady pilgrims, desirous of solitude, as
boarders.

At that early hour all the bells of these convents were pealing joyfully
in the crystalline atmosphere, whilst the bells of other convents, on the
other, the southern horizon, answered them with the same silvery strains
of joy. The bell of the nunnery of Sainte Clarissa, near the old bridge,
rang a scale of gay, clear notes, which one might have fancied to be the
chirruping of a bird. And on this side of the town, also, there were
valleys that dipped down between the ridges, and mountains that upreared
their bare sides, a commingling of smiling and of agitated nature, an
endless surging of heights amongst which you noticed those of Visens,
whose slopes the sunlight tinged ornately with soft blue and carmine of a
rippling, moire-like effect.

However, when Marie and Pierre turned their eyes to the west, they were
quite dazzled. The sun rays were here streaming on the large and the
little Beout with their cupolas of unequal height. And on this side the
background was one of gold and purple, a dazzling mountain on whose sides
one could only discern the road which snaked between the trees on its way
to the Calvary above. And here, too, against the sunlit background,
radiant like an aureola, stood out the three superposed churches which at
the voice of Bernadette had sprung from the rock to the glory of the
Blessed Virgin. First of all, down below, came the church of the Rosary,
squat, circular, and half cut out of the rock, at the farther end of an
esplanade on either side of which, like two huge arms, were colossal
gradient ways ascending gently to the Crypt church. Vast labour had been
expended here, a quarryful of stones had been cut and set in position,
there were arches as lofty as naves supporting the gigantic terraced
avenues which had been constructed so that the processions might roll
along in all their pomp, and the little conveyances containing sick
children might ascend without hindrance to the divine presence. Then came
the Crypt, the subterranean church within the rock, with only its low
door visible above the church of the Rosary, whose paved roof, with its
vast promenade, formed a continuation of the terraced inclines. And at
last, from the summit sprang the Basilica, somewhat slender and frail,
recalling some finely chased jewel of the Renascence, and looking very
new and very white--like a prayer, a spotless dove, soaring aloft from
the rocks of Massabielle. The spire, which appeared the more delicate and
slight when compared with the gigantic inclines below, seemed like the
little vertical flame of a taper set in the midst of the vast landscape,
those endless waves of valleys and mountains. By the side, too, of the
dense greenery of the Calvary hill, it looked fragile and candid, like
childish faith; and at sight of it you instinctively thought of the
little white arm, the little thin hand of the puny girl, who had here
pointed to Heaven in the crisis of her human sufferings. You could not
see the Grotto, the entrance of which was on the left, at the base of the
rock. Beyond the Basilica, the only buildings which caught the eye were
the heavy square pile where the Fathers of the Immaculate Conception had
their abode, and the episcopal palace, standing much farther away, in a
spreading, wooded valley. And the three churches were flaming in the
morning glow, and the rain of gold scattered by the sun rays was sweeping
the whole countryside, whilst the flying peals of the bells seemed to be
the very vibration of the light, the musical awakening of the lovely day
that was now beginning.

Whilst crossing the Place du Rosaire, Pierre and Marie glanced at the
Esplanade, the public walk with its long central lawn skirted by broad
parallel paths and extending as far as the new bridge. Here, with face
turned towards the Basilica, was the great crowned statue of the Virgin.
All the sufferers crossed themselves as they went by. And still
passionately chanting its canticle, the fearful _cortege_ rolled on,
through nature in festive array. Under the dazzling sky, past the
mountains of gold and purple, amidst the centenarian trees, symbolical of
health, the running waters whose freshness was eternal, that _cortege_
still and ever marched on with its sufferers, whom nature, if not God,
had condemned, those who were afflicted with skin diseases, those whose
flesh was eaten away, those who were dropsical and inflated like
wine-skins, and those whom rheumatism and paralysis had twisted into
postures of agony. And the victims of hydrocephalus followed, with the
dancers of St. Vitus, the consumptives, the rickety, the epileptic, the
cancerous, the goitrous, the blind, the mad, and the idiotic. “Ave, ave,
ave, Maria!” they sang; and the stubborn plaint acquired increased
volume, as nearer and nearer to the Grotto it bore that abominable
torrent of human wretchedness and pain, amidst all the fright and horror
of the passers-by, who stopped short, unable to stir, their hearts frozen
as this nightmare swept before their eyes.

Pierre and Marie were the first to pass under the lofty arcade of one of
the terraced inclines. And then, as they followed the quay of the Gave,
they all at once came upon the Grotto. And Marie, whom Pierre wheeled as
near to the railing as possible, was only able to raise herself in her
little conveyance, and murmur: “O most Blessed Virgin, Virgin most
loved!”

She had seen neither the entrances to the piscinas nor the twelve-piped
fountain, which she had just passed; nor did she distinguish any better
the shop on her left hand where crucifixes, chaplets, statuettes,
pictures, and other religious articles were sold, or the stone pulpit on
her right which Father Massias already occupied. Her eyes were dazzled by
the splendour of the Grotto; it seemed to her as if a hundred thousand
tapers were burning there behind the railing, filling the low entrance
with the glow of a furnace and illuminating, as with star rays, the
statue of the Virgin, which stood, higher up, at the edge of a narrow
ogive-like cavity. And for her, apart from that glorious apparition,
nothing existed there, neither the crutches with which a part of the
vault had been covered, nor the piles of bouquets fading away amidst the
ivy and the eglantine, nor even the altar placed in the centre near a
little portable organ over which a cover had been thrown. However, as she
raised her eyes above the rock, she once more beheld the slender white
Basilica profiled against the sky, its slight, tapering spire soaring
into the azure of the Infinite like a prayer.

“O Virgin most powerful--Queen of the Virgins--Holy Virgin of Virgins!”

Pierre had now succeeded in wheeling Marie’s box to the front rank,
beyond the numerous oak benches which were set out here in the open air
as in the nave of a church. Nearly all these benches were already
occupied by those sufferers who could sit down, while the vacant spaces
were soon filled with litters and little vehicles whose wheels became
entangled together, and on whose close-packed mattresses and pillows all
sorts of diseases were gathered pell-mell. Immediately on arriving, the
young priest had recognised the Vignerons seated with their sorry child
Gustave in the middle of a bench, and now, on the flagstones, he caught
sight of the lace-trimmed bed of Madame Dieulafay, beside whom her
husband and sister knelt in prayer. Moreover, all the patients of Madame
de Jonquiere’s carriage took up position here--M. Sabathier and Brother
Isidore side by side, Madame Vetu reclining hopelessly in a conveyance,
Elise Rouquet seated, La Grivotte excited and raising herself on her
clenched hands. Pierre also again perceived Madame Maze, standing
somewhat apart from the others, and humbling herself in prayer; whilst
Madame Vincent, who had fallen on her knees, still holding her little
Rose in her arms, presented the child to the Virgin with ardent entreaty,
the distracted gesture of a mother soliciting compassion from the mother
of divine grace. And around this reserved space was the ever-growing
throng of pilgrims, the pressing, jostling mob which gradually stretched
to the parapet overlooking the Gave.

“O Virgin most merciful,” continued Marie in an undertone, “Virgin most
faithful, Virgin conceived without sin!”

Then, almost fainting, she spoke no more, but with her lips still moving,
as though in silent prayer, gazed distractedly at Pierre. He thought that
she wished to speak to him and leant forward: “Shall I remain here at
your disposal to take you to the piscina by-and-by?” he asked.

But as soon as she understood him she shook her head. And then in a
feverish way she said: “No, no, I don’t want to be bathed this morning.
It seems to me that one must be truly worthy, truly pure, truly holy
before seeking the miracle! I want to spend the whole morning in
imploring it with joined hands; I want to pray, to pray with all my
strength and all my soul--” She was stifling, and paused. Then she added:
“Don’t come to take me back to the hospital till eleven o’clock. I will
not let them take me from here till then.”

However, Pierre did not go away, but remained near her. For a moment, he
even fell upon his knees; he also would have liked to pray with the same
burning faith, to beg of God the cure of that poor sick child, whom he
loved with such fraternal affection. But since he had reached the Grotto
he had felt a singular sensation invading him, a covert revolt, as it
were, which hampered the pious flight of his prayer. He wished to
believe; he had spent the whole night hoping that belief would once more
blossom in his soul, like some lovely flower of innocence and candour, as
soon as he should have knelt upon the soil of that land of miracle. And
yet he only experienced discomfort and anxiety in presence of the
theatrical scene before him, that pale stiff statue in the false light of
the tapers, with the chaplet shop full of jostling customers on the one
hand, and the large stone pulpit whence a Father of the Assumption was
shouting “Aves” on the other. Had his soul become utterly withered then?
Could no divine dew again impregnate it with innocence, render it like
the souls of little children, who at the slightest caressing touch of the
sacred legend give themselves to it entirely?

Then, while his thoughts were still wandering, he recognised Father
Massias in the ecclesiastic who occupied the pulpit. He had formerly
known him, and was quite stirred by his sombre ardour, by the sight of
his thin face and sparkling eyes, by the eloquence which poured from his
large mouth as he offered violence to Heaven to compel it to descend upon
earth. And whilst he thus examined Father Massias, astonished at feeling
himself so unlike the preacher, he caught sight of Father Fourcade, who,
at the foot of the pulpit, was deep in conference with Baron Suire. The
latter seemed much perplexed by something which Father Fourcade said to
him; however he ended by approving it with a complaisant nod. Then, as
Abbe Judaine was also standing there, Father Fourcade likewise spoke to
him for a moment, and a scared expression came over the Abbe’s broad,
fatherly face while he listened; nevertheless, like the Baron, he at last
bowed assent.

Then, all at once, Father Fourcade appeared in the pulpit, erect, drawing
up his lofty figure which his attack of gout had slightly bent; and he
had not wished that Father Massias, his well-loved brother, whom he
preferred above all others, should altogether go down the narrow
stairway, for he had kept him upon one of the steps, and was leaning on
his shoulder. And in a full, grave voice, with an air of sovereign
authority which caused perfect silence to reign around, he spoke as
follows:

“My dear brethren, my dear sisters, I ask your forgiveness for
interrupting your prayers, but I have a communication to make to you, and
I have to ask the help of all your faithful souls. We had a very sad
accident to deplore this morning, one of our brethren died in one of the
trains by which you came to Lourdes, died just as he was about to set
foot in the promised land.”

A brief pause followed and Father Fourcade seemed to become yet taller,
his handsome face beaming with fervour, amidst his long, streaming, royal
beard.

“Well, my dear brethren, my dear sisters,” he resumed, “in spite of
everything, the idea has come to me that we ought not to despair. Who
knows if God Almighty did not will that death in order that He might
prove His Omnipotence to the world? It is as though a voice were speaking
to me, urging me to ascend this pulpit and ask your prayers for this man,
this man who is no more, but whose life is nevertheless in the hands of
the most Blessed Virgin who can still implore her Divine Son in his
favour. Yes, the man is here, I have caused his body to be brought
hither, and it depends on you, perhaps, whether a brilliant miracle shall
dazzle the universe, if you pray with sufficient ardour to touch the
compassion of Heaven. We will plunge the man’s body into the piscina and
we will entreat the Lord, the master of the world, to resuscitate him, to
give unto us this extraordinary sign of His sovereign beneficence!”

An icy thrill, wafted from the Invisible, passed through the listeners.
They had all become pale, and though the lips of none of them had opened,
it seemed as if a murmur sped through their ranks amidst a shudder.

“But with what ardour must we not pray!” violently resumed Father
Fourcade, exalted by genuine faith. “It is your souls, your whole souls,
that I ask of you, my dear brothers, my dear sisters, it is a prayer in
which you must put your hearts, your blood, your very life with whatever
may be most noble and loving in it! Pray with all your strength, pray
till you no longer know who you are, or where you are; pray as one loves,
pray as one dies, for that which we are about to ask is so precious, so
rare, so astounding a grace that only the energy of our worship can
induce God to answer us. And in order that our prayers may be the more
efficacious, in order that they may have time to spread and ascend to the
feet of the Eternal Father, we will not lower the body into the piscina
until four o’clock this afternoon. And now my dear brethren, now my dear
sisters, pray, pray to the most Blessed Virgin, the Queen of the Angels,
the Comforter of the Afflicted!”

Then he himself, distracted by emotion, resumed the recital of the
rosary, whilst near him Father Massias burst into sobs. And thereupon the
great anxious silence was broken, contagion seized upon the throng, it
was transported and gave vent to shouts, tears, and confused stammered
entreaties. It was as though a breath of delirium were sweeping by,
reducing men’s wills to naught, and turning all these beings into one
being, exasperated with love and seized with a mad desire for the
impossible prodigy.

And for a moment Pierre had thought that the ground was giving way
beneath him, that he was about to fall and faint. But with difficulty he
managed to rise from his knees and slowly walked away.




III. FOUNTAIN AND PISCINA

As Pierre went off, ill at ease, mastered by invincible repugnance,
unwilling to remain there any longer, he caught sight of M. de Guersaint,
kneeling near the Grotto, with the absorbed air of one who is praying
with his whole soul. The young priest had not seen him since the morning,
and did not know whether he had managed to secure a couple of rooms in
one or other of the hotels, so that his first impulse was to go and join
him. Then, however, he hesitated, unwilling to disturb his meditations,
for he was doubtless praying for his daughter, whom he fondly loved, in
spite of the constant absent-mindedness of his volatile brain.
Accordingly, the young priest passed on, and took his way under the
trees. Nine o’clock was now striking, he had a couple of hours before
him.

By dint of money, the wild bank where swine had formerly pastured had
been transformed into a superb avenue skirting the Gave. It had been
necessary to put back the river’s bed in order to gain ground, and lay
out a monumental quay bordered by a broad footway, and protected by a
parapet. Some two or three hundred yards farther on, a hill brought the
avenue to an end, and it thus resembled an enclosed promenade, provided
with benches, and shaded by magnificent trees. Nobody passed along,
however; merely the overflow of the crowd had settled there, and solitary
spots still abounded between the grassy wall limiting the promenade on
the south, and the extensive fields spreading out northward beyond the
Gave, as far as the wooded slopes which the white-walled convents
brightened. Under the foliage, on the margin of the running water, one
could enjoy delightful freshness, even during the burning days of August.

Thus Pierre, like a man at last awakening from a painful dream, soon
found rest of mind again. He had questioned himself in the acute anxiety
which he felt with regard to his sensations. Had he not reached Lourdes
that morning possessed by a genuine desire to believe, an idea that he
was indeed again beginning to believe even as he had done in the docile
days of childhood when his mother had made him join his hands, and taught
him to fear God? Yet as soon as he had found himself at the Grotto, the
idolatry of the worship, the violence of the display of faith, the
onslaught upon human reason which he witnessed, had so disturbed him that
he had almost fainted. What would become of him then? Could he not even
try to contend against his doubts by examining things and convincing
himself of their truth, thus turning his journey to profit? At all
events, he had made a bad beginning, which left him sorely agitated, and
he indeed needed the environment of those fine trees, that limpid,
rushing water, that calm, cool avenue, to recover from the shock.

Still pondering, he was approaching the end of the pathway, when he most
unexpectedly met a forgotten friend. He had, for a few seconds, been
looking at a tall old gentleman who was coming towards him, dressed in a
tightly buttoned frock-coat and broad-brimmed hat; and he had tried to
remember where it was that he had previously beheld that pale face, with
eagle nose, and black and penetrating eyes. These he had seen before, he
felt sure of it; but the promenader’s long white beard and long curly
white hair perplexed him. However, the other halted, also looking
extremely astonished, though he promptly exclaimed, “What, Pierre? Is it
you, at Lourdes?”

Then all at once the young priest recognised Doctor Chassaigne, his
father’s old friend, his own friend, the man who had cured and consoled
him in the terrible physical and mental crisis which had come upon him
after his mother’s death.

“Ah! my dear doctor, how pleased I am to see you!” he replied.

They embraced with deep emotion. And now, in presence of that snowy hair
and snowy beard, that slow walk, that sorrowful demeanour, Pierre
remembered with what unrelenting ferocity misfortune had fallen on that
unhappy man and aged him. But a few years had gone by, and now, when they
met again, he was bowed down by destiny.

“You did not know, I suppose, that I had remained at Lourdes?” said the
doctor. “It’s true that I no longer write to anybody; in fact, I am no
longer among the living. I live in the land of the dead.” Tears were
gathering in his eyes, and emotion made his voice falter as he resumed:
“There! come and sit down on that bench yonder; it will please me to live
the old days afresh with you, just for a moment.”

In his turn the young priest felt his sobs choking him. He could only
murmur: “Ah! my dear doctor, my old friend, I can truly tell you that I
pitied you with my whole heart, my whole soul.”

Doctor Chassaigne’s story was one of disaster, the shipwreck of a life.
He and his daughter Marguerite, a tall and lovable girl of twenty, had
gone to Cauterets with Madame Chassaigne, the model wife and mother,
whose state of health had made them somewhat anxious. A fortnight had
elapsed and she seemed much better, and was already planning several
pleasure trips, when one morning she was found dead in her bed. Her
husband and daughter were overwhelmed, stupefied by this sudden blow,
this cruel treachery of death. The doctor, who belonged to Bartres, had a
family vault in the Lourdes cemetery, a vault constructed at his own
expense, and in which his father and mother already rested. He desired,
therefore, that his wife should be interred there, in a compartment
adjoining that in which he expected soon to lie himself. And after the
burial he had lingered for a week at Lourdes, when Marguerite, who was
with him, was seized with a great shivering, and, taking to her bed one
evening, died two days afterwards without her distracted father being
able to form any exact notion of the illness which had carried her off.
And thus it was not himself, but his daughter, lately radiant with beauty
and health, in the very flower of her youth, who was laid in the vacant
compartment by the mother’s side. The man who had been so happy, so
worshipped by his two helpmates, whose heart had been kept so warm by the
love of two dear creatures all his own, was now nothing more than an old,
miserable, stammering, lost being, who shivered in his icy solitude. All
the joy of his life had departed; he envied the men who broke stones upon
the highways when he saw their barefooted wives and daughters bring them
their dinners at noontide. And he had refused to leave Lourdes, he had
relinquished everything, his studies, his practice in Paris, in order
that he might live near the tomb in which his wife and his daughter slept
the eternal sleep.

“Ah, my old friend,” repeated Pierre, “how I pitied you! How frightful
must have been your grief! But why did you not rely a little on those who
love you? Why did you shut yourself up here with your sorrow?”

The doctor made a gesture which embraced the horizon. “I could not go
away, they are here and keep me with them. It is all over, I am merely
waiting till my time comes to join them again.”

Then silence fell. Birds were fluttering among the shrubs on the bank
behind them, and in front they heard the loud murmur of the Gave. The sun
rays were falling more heavily in a slow, golden dust, upon the
hillsides; but on that retired bench under the beautiful trees, the
coolness was still delightful. And although the crowd was but a couple of
hundred yards distant, they were, so to say, in a desert, for nobody tore
himself away from the Grotto to stray as far as the spot which they had
chosen.

They talked together for a long time, and Pierre related under what
circumstances he had reached Lourdes that morning with M. de Guersaint
and his daughter, all three forming part of the national pilgrimage. Then
all at once he gave a start of astonishment and exclaimed: “What! doctor,
so you now believe that miracles are possible? You, good heavens! whom I
knew as an unbeliever, or at least as one altogether indifferent to these
matters?”

He was gazing at M. Chassaigne quite stupefied by something which he had
just heard him say of the Grotto and Bernadette. It was amazing, coming
from a man with so strong a mind, a _savant_ of such intelligence, whose
powerful analytical faculties he had formerly so much admired! How was it
that a lofty, clear mind, nourished by experience and method, had become
so changed as to acknowledge the miraculous cures effected by that divine
fountain which the Blessed Virgin had caused to spurt forth under the
pressure of a child’s fingers?

“But just think a little, my dear doctor,” he resumed. “It was you
yourself who supplied my father with memoranda about Bernadette, your
little fellow-villager as you used to call her; and it was you, too, who
spoke to me at such length about her, when, later on, I took a momentary
interest in her story. In your eyes she was simply an ailing child, prone
to hallucinations, infantile, but self-conscious of her acts, deficient
of will-power. Recollect our chats together, my doubts, and the healthy
reason which you again enabled me, to acquire!”

Pierre was feeling very moved, for was not this the strangest of
adventures? He a priest, who in a spirit of resignation had formerly
endeavoured to believe, had ended by completely losing all faith through
intercourse with this same doctor, who was then an unbeliever, but whom
he now found converted, conquered by the supernatural, whilst he himself
was racked by the torture of no longer believing.

“You who would only rely on accurate facts,” he said, “you who based
everything on observation! Do you renounce science then?”

Chassaigne, hitherto quiet, with a sorrowful smile playing on his lips,
now made a violent gesture expressive of sovereign contempt. “Science
indeed!” he exclaimed. “Do I know anything? Can I accomplish anything?
You asked me just now what malady it was that killed my poor Marguerite.
But I do not know! I, whom people think so learned, so well armed against
death, I understood nothing of it, and I could do nothing--not even
prolong my daughter’s life for a single hour! And my wife, whom I found
in bed already cold, when on the previous evening she had lain down in
much better health and quite gay--was I even capable of foreseeing what
ought to have been done in her case? No, no! for me at all events,
science has become bankrupt. I wish to know nothing; I am but a fool and
a poor old man!”

He spoke like this in a furious revolt against all his past life of pride
and happiness. Then, having become calm again, he added: “And now I only
feel a frightful remorse. Yes, a remorse which haunts me, which ever
brings me here, prowling around the people who are praying. It is remorse
for not having in the first instance come and humbled myself at that
Grotto, bringing my two dear ones with me. They would have knelt there
like those women whom you see, I should have knelt beside them, and
perhaps the Blessed Virgin would have cured and preserved them. But, fool
that I was, I only knew how to lose them! It is my fault.”

Tears were now streaming from his eyes. “I remember,” he continued, “that
in my childhood at Bartres, my mother, a peasant woman, made me join my
hands and implore God’s help each morning. The prayer she taught me came
back to my mind, word for word, when I again found myself alone, as weak,
as lost, as a little child. What would you have, my friend? I joined my
hands as in my younger days, I felt too wretched, too forsaken, I had too
keen a need of a superhuman help, of a divine power which should think
and determine for me, which should lull me and carry me on with its
eternal prescience. How great at first was the confusion, the aberration
of my poor brain, under the frightful, heavy blow which fell upon it! I
spent a score of nights without being able to sleep, thinking that I
should surely go mad. All sorts of ideas warred within me; I passed
through periods of revolt when I shook my fist at Heaven, and then I
lapsed into humility, entreating God to take me in my turn. And it was at
last a conviction that there must be justice, a conviction that there
must be love, which calmed me by restoring me my faith. You knew my
daughter, so tall and strong, so beautiful, so brimful of life. Would it
not be the most monstrous injustice if for her, who did not know life,
there should be nothing beyond the tomb? She will live again, I am
absolutely convinced of it, for I still hear her at times, she tells me
that we shall meet, that we shall see one another again. Oh! the dear
beings whom one has lost, my dear daughter, my dear wife, to see them
once more, to live with them elsewhere, that is the one hope, the one
consolation for all the sorrows of this world! I have given myself to
God, since God alone can restore them to me!”

He was shaking with a slight tremor, like the weak old man he had become;
and Pierre was at last able to understand and explain the conversion of
this _savant_, this man of intellect who, growing old, had reverted to
belief under the influence of sentiment. First of all, and this he had
previously suspected, he discovered a kind of atavism of faith in this
Pyrenean, this son of peasant mountaineers, who had been brought up in
belief of the legend, and whom the legend had again mastered even when
fifty years, of positive study had rolled over it. Then, too, there was
human weariness; this man, to whom science had not brought happiness,
revolted against science on the day when it seemed to him shallow,
powerless to prevent him from shedding tears. And finally there was
discouragement, a doubt of all things, ending in a need of certainty on
the part of one whom age had softened, and who felt happy at being able
to fall asleep in credulity.

Pierre did not protest, however; he did not jeer, for his heart was rent
at sight of this tall, stricken old man, with his woeful senility. Is it
not indeed pitiful to see the strongest, the clearest-minded become mere
children again under such blows of fate? “Ah!” he faintly sighed, “if I
could only suffer enough to be able to silence my reason, and kneel
yonder and believe in all those fine stories.”

The pale smile, which at times still passed over Doctor Chassaigne’s
lips, reappeared on them. “You mean the miracles?” said he. “You are a
priest, my child, and I know what your misfortune is. The miracles seem
impossible to you. But what do you know of them? Admit that you know
nothing, and that what to our senses seems impossible is every minute
taking place. And now we have been talking together for a long time, and
eleven o’clock will soon strike, so that you must return to the Grotto.
However, I shall expect you, at half-past three, when I will take you to
the Medical Verification Office, where I hope I shall be able to show you
some surprising things. Don’t forget, at half-past three.”

Thereupon he sent him off, and remained on the bench alone. The heat had
yet increased, and the distant hills were burning in the furnace-like
glow of the sun. However, he lingered there forgetfully, dreaming in the
greeny half-light amidst the foliage, and listening to the continuous
murmur of the Gave, as if a voice, a dear voice from the realms beyond,
were speaking to him.

Pierre meantime hastened back to Marie. He was able to join her without
much difficulty, for the crowd was thinning, a good many people having
already gone off to _dejeuner_. And on arriving he perceived the girl’s
father, who was quietly seated beside her, and who at once wished to
explain to him the reason of his long absence. For more than a couple of
hours that morning he had scoured Lourdes in all directions, applying at
twenty hotels in turn without being able to find the smallest closet
where they might sleep. Even the servants’ rooms were let and you could
not have even secured a mattress on which to stretch yourself in some
passage. However, all at once, just as he was despairing, he had
discovered two rooms, small ones, it is true, and just under the roof,
but in a very good hotel, that of the Apparitions, one of the best
patronised in the town. The persons who had retained these rooms had just
telegraphed that the patient whom they had meant to bring with them was
dead. Briefly, it was a piece of rare good luck, and seemed to make M. de
Guersaint quite gay.

Eleven o’clock was now striking and the woeful procession of sufferers
started off again through the sunlit streets and squares. When it reached
the hospital Marie begged her father and Pierre to go to the hotel, lunch
and rest there awhile, and return to fetch her at two o’clock, when the
patients would again be conducted to the Grotto. But when, after
lunching, the two men went up to the rooms which they were to occupy at
the Hotel of the Apparitions, M. de Guersaint, overcome by fatigue, fell
so soundly asleep that Pierre had not the heart to awaken him. What would
have been the use of it? His presence was not indispensable. And so the
young priest returned to the hospital alone. Then the _cortege_ again
descended the Avenue de la Grotte, again wended its way over the Plateau
de la Merlasse, again crossed the Place du Rosaire, past an ever-growing
crowd which shuddered and crossed itself amid all the joyousness of that
splendid August day. It was now the most glorious hour of a lovely
afternoon.

When Marie was again installed in front of the Grotto she inquired if her
father were coming. “Yes,” answered Pierre; “he is only taking a little
rest.”

She waved her hand as though to say that he was acting rightly, and then
in a sorely troubled voice she added: “Listen, Pierre; don’t take me to
the piscina for another hour. I am not yet in a state to find favour from
Heaven, I wish to pray, to keep on praying.”

After evincing such an ardent desire to come to Lourdes, terror was
agitating her now that the moment for attempting the miracle was at hand.
In fact, she began to relate that she had been unable to eat anything,
and a girl who overheard her at once approached saying: “If you feel too
weak, my dear young lady, remember we have some broth here.”

Marie looked at her and recognised Raymonde. Several young girls were in
this wise employed at the Grotto to distribute cups of broth and milk
among the sufferers. Some of them, indeed, in previous years had
displayed so much coquetry in the matter of silk, aprons trimmed with
lace, that a uniform apron, of modest linen, with a small check pattern,
blue and white, had been imposed on them. Nevertheless, in spite of this
enforced simplicity, Raymonde, thanks to her freshness and her active,
good-natured, housewifely air, had succeeded in making herself look quite
charming.

“You will remember, won’t you?” she added; “you have only to make me a
sign and I will serve you.”

Marie thanked her, saying, however, that she felt sure she would not be
able to take anything; and then, turning towards the young priest, she
resumed: “One hour--you must allow me one more hour, my friend.”

Pierre wished at any rate to remain near her, but the entire space was
reserved to the sufferers, the bearers not being allowed there. So he had
to retire, and, caught in the rolling waves of the crowd, he found
himself carried towards the piscinas, where he came upon an extraordinary
spectacle which stayed his steps. In front of the low buildings where the
baths were, three by three, six for the women and three for the men, he
perceived under the trees a long stretch of ground enclosed by a rope
fastened to the tree-trunks; and here, various sufferers, some sitting in
their bath-chairs and others lying on the mattresses of their litters,
were drawn up in line, waiting to be bathed, whilst outside the rope, a
huge, excited throng was ever pressing and surging. A Capuchin, erect in
the centre of the reserved space, was at that moment conducting the
prayers. “Aves” followed one after the other, repeated by the crowd in a
loud confused murmur. Then, all at once, as Madame Vincent, who, pale
with agony, had long been waiting, was admitted to the baths, carrying
her dear burden, her little girl who looked like a waxen image of the
child Christ, the Capuchin let himself fall upon his knees with his arms
extended, and cried aloud: “Lord, heal our sick!” He raised this cry a
dozen, twenty times, with a growing fury, and each time the crowd
repeated it, growing more and more excited at each shout, till it sobbed
and kissed the ground in a state of frenzy. It was like a hurricane of
delirium rushing by and laying every head in the dust. Pierre was utterly
distracted by the sob of suffering which arose from the very bowels of
these poor folks--at first a prayer, growing louder and louder, then
bursting forth like a demand in impatient, angry, deafening, obstinate
accents, as though to compel the help of Heaven. “Lord, heal our
sick!”--“Lord, heal our sick!” The shout soared on high incessantly.

An incident occurred, however; La Grivotte was weeping hot tears because
they would not bathe her. “They say that I’m a consumptive,” she
plaintively exclaimed, “and that they can’t dip consumptives in cold
water. Yet they dipped one this morning; I saw her. So why won’t they dip
me? I’ve been wearing myself out for the last half-hour in telling them
that they are only grieving the Blessed Virgin, for I am going to be
cured, I feel it, I am going to be cured!”

As she was beginning to cause a scandal, one of the chaplains of the
piscinas approached and endeavoured to calm her. They would see what they
could do for her, by-and-by, said he; they would consult the reverend
Fathers, and, if she were very good, perhaps they would bathe her all the
same.

Meantime the cry continued: “Lord, heal our sick! Lord, heal our sick!”
 And Pierre, who had just perceived Madame Vetu, also waiting at the
piscina entry, could no longer turn his eyes away from her hope-tortured
face, whose eyes were fixed upon the doorway by which the happy ones, the
elect, emerged from the divine presence, cured of all their ailments.
However, a sudden increase of the crowd’s frenzy, a perfect rage of
entreaties, gave him such a shock as to draw tears from his eyes. Madame
Vincent was now coming out again, still carrying her little girl in her
arms, her wretched, her fondly loved little girl, who had been dipped in
a fainting state in the icy water, and whose little face, but imperfectly
wiped, was as pale as ever, and indeed even more woeful and lifeless. The
mother was sobbing, crucified by this long agony, reduced to despair by
the refusal of the Blessed Virgin, who had remained insensible to her
child’s sufferings. And yet when Madame Vetu in her turn entered, with
the eager passion of a dying woman about to drink the water of life, the
haunting, obstinate cry burst out again, without sign of discouragement
or lassitude: “Lord, heal our sick! Lord, heal our sick!” The Capuchin
had now fallen with his face to the ground, and the howling crowd, with
arms outstretched, devoured the soil with its kisses.

Pierre wished to join Madame Vincent to soothe her with a few kind,
encouraging words; however, a fresh string of pilgrims not only prevented
him from passing, but threw him towards the fountain which another throng
besieged. There was here quite a range of low buildings, a long stone
wall with carved coping, and it had been necessary for the people to form
in procession, although there were twelve taps from which the water fell
into a narrow basin. Many came hither to fill bottles, metal cans, and
stoneware pitchers. To prevent too great a waste of water, the tap only
acted when a knob was pressed with the hand. And thus many weak-handed
women lingered there a long time, the water dripping on their feet. Those
who had no cans to fill at least came to drink and wash their faces.
Pierre noticed one young man who drank seven small glassfuls of water,
and washed his eyes seven times without wiping them. Others were drinking
out of shells, tin goblets, and leather cups. And he was particularly
interested by the sight of Elise Rouquet, who, thinking it useless to go
to the piscinas to bathe the frightful sore which was eating away her
face, had contented herself with employing the water of the fountain as a
lotion, every two hours since her arrival that morning. She knelt down,
threw back her fichu, and for a long time applied a handkerchief to her
face--a handkerchief which she had soaked with the miraculous fluid like
a sponge; and the crowd around rushed upon the fountain in such fury that
folks no longer noticed her diseased face, but washed themselves and
drank from the same pipe at which she constantly moistened her
handkerchief.

Just then, however, Gerard, who passed by dragging M. Sabathier to the
piscinas, called to Pierre, whom he saw unoccupied, and asked him to come
and help him, for it would not be an easy task to move and bathe this
helpless victim of ataxia. And thus Pierre lingered with the sufferer in
the men’s piscina for nearly half an hour, whilst Gerard returned to the
Grotto to fetch another patient. These piscinas seemed to the young
priest to be very well arranged. They were divided into three
compartments, three baths separated by partitions, with steps leading
into them. In order that one might isolate the patient, a linen curtain
hug before each entry, which was reached through a kind of waiting-room
having a paved floor, and furnished with a bench and a couple of chairs.
Here the patients undressed and dressed themselves with an awkward haste,
a nervous kind of shame. One man, whom Pierre found there when he
entered, was still naked, and wrapped himself in the curtain before
putting on a bandage with trembling hands. Another one, a consumptive who
was frightfully emaciated, sat shivering and groaning, his livid skin
mottled with violet marks. However, Pierre became more interested in
Brother Isidore, who was just being removed from one of the baths. He had
fainted away, and for a moment, indeed, it was thought that he was dead.
But at last he began moaning again, and one’s heart filled with pity at
sight of his long, lank frame, which suffering had withered, and which,
with his diseased hip, looked a human remnant on exhibition. The two
hospitallers who had been bathing him had the greatest difficulty to put
on his shirt, fearful as they were that if he were suddenly shaken he
might expire in their arms.

“You will help me, Monsieur l’Abbe, won’t you?” asked another hospitaller
as he began to undress M. Sabathier.

Pierre hastened to give his services, and found that the attendant,
discharging such humble duties, was none other than the Marquis de
Salmon-Roquebert whom M. de Guersaint had pointed out to him on the way
from the station to the hospital that morning. A man of forty, with a
large, aquiline, knightly nose set in a long face, the Marquis was the
last representative of one of the most ancient and illustrious families
of France. Possessing a large fortune, a regal mansion in the Rue de
Lille at Paris, and vast estates in Normandy, he came to Lourdes each
year, for the three days of the national pilgrimage, influenced solely by
his benevolent feelings, for he had no religious zeal and simply observed
the rites of the Church because it was customary for noblemen to do so.
And he obstinately declined any high functions. Resolved to remain a
hospitaller, he had that year assumed the duty of bathing the patients,
exhausting the strength of his arms, employing his fingers from morning
till night in handling rags and re-applying dressings to sores.

“Be careful,” he said to Pierre; “take off the stockings very slowly.
Just now, some flesh came away when they were taking off the things of
that poor fellow who is being dressed again, over yonder.”

Then, leaving M. Sabathier for a moment in order to put on the shoes of
the unhappy sufferer whom he alluded to, the Marquis found the left shoe
wet inside. Some matter had flowed into the fore part of it, and he had
to take the usual medical precautions before putting it on the patient’s
foot, a task which he performed with extreme care; and so as not to touch
the man’s leg, into which an ulcer was eating.

“And now,” he said to Pierre, as he returned to M. Sabathier, “pull down
the drawers at the same time I do, so that we may get them off at one
pull.”

In addition to the patients and the hospitallers selected for duty at the
piscinas, the only person in the little dressing-room was a chaplain who
kept on repeating “Paters” and “Aves,” for not even a momentary pause was
allowed in the prayers. Merely a loose curtain hung before the doorway
leading to the open space which the rope enclosed; and the ardent
clamorous entreaties of the throng were incessantly wafted into the room,
with the piercing shouts of the Capuchin, who ever repeated “Lord, heal
our sick! Lord, heal our sick!” A cold light fell from the high windows
of the building and constant dampness reigned there, with the mouldy
smell like that of a cellar dripping with water.

At last M. Sabathier was stripped, divested of all garments save a little
apron which had been fastened about his loins for decency’s sake.

“Pray don’t plunge me,” said he; “let me down into the water by degrees.”

In point of fact that cold water quite terrified him. He was still wont
to relate that he had experienced such a frightful chilling sensation on
the first occasion that he had sworn never to go in again. According to
his account, there could be no worse torture than that icy cold. And then
too, as he put it, the water was scarcely inviting; for, through fear
lest the output of the source should not suffice, the Fathers of the
Grotto only allowed the water of the baths to be changed twice a day. And
nearly a hundred patients being dipped in the same water, it can be
imagined what a terrible soup the latter at last became. All manner of
things were found in it, so that it was like a frightful _consomme_ of
all ailments, a field of cultivation for every kind of poisonous germ, a
quintessence of the most dreaded contagious diseases; the miraculous
feature of it all being that men should emerge alive from their immersion
in such filth.

“Gently, gently,” repeated M. Sabathier to Pierre and the Marquis, who
had taken hold of him under the hips in order to carry him to the bath.
And he gazed with childlike terror at that thick, livid water on which
floated so many greasy, nauseating patches of scum. However, his dread of
the cold was so great that he preferred the polluted baths of the
afternoon, since all the bodies that were dipped in the water during the
early part of the day ended by slightly warming it.

“We will let you slide down the steps,” exclaimed the Marquis in an
undertone; and then he instructed Pierre to hold the patient with all his
strength under the arm-pits.

“Have no fear,” replied the priest; “I will not let go.”

M. Sabathier was then slowly lowered. You could now only see his back,
his poor painful back which swayed and swelled, mottled by the rippling
of a shiver. And when they dipped him his head fell back in a spasm, a
sound like the cracking of bones was heard, and breathing hard, he almost
stifled.

The chaplain, standing beside the bath, had begun calling with renewed
fervour: “Lord, heal our sick! Lord, heal our sick!”

M. de Salmon-Roquebert repeated the cry, which the regulations required
the hospitallers to raise at each fresh immersion. Pierre, therefore, had
to imitate his companion, and his pitiful feelings at the sight of so
much suffering were so intense that he regained some little of his faith.
It was long indeed since he had prayed like this, devoutly wishing that
there might be a God in heaven, whose omnipotence could assuage the
wretchedness of humanity. At the end of three or four minutes, however,
when with great difficulty they drew M. Sabathier, livid and shivering,
out of the bath, the young priest fell into deeper, more despairing
sorrow than ever at beholding how downcast, how overwhelmed the sufferer
was at having experienced no relief. Again had he made a futile attempt;
for the seventh time the Blessed Virgin had not deigned to listen to his
prayers. He closed his eyes, from between the lids of which big tears
began to roll while they were dressing him again.

Then Pierre recognised little Gustave Vigneron coming in, on his crutch,
to take his first bath. His relatives, his father, his mother, and his
aunt, Madame Chaise, all three of substantial appearance and exemplary
piety, had just fallen on their knees at the door. Whispers ran through
the crowd; it was said that the gentleman was a functionary of the
Ministry of Finances. However, while the child was beginning to undress,
a tumult arose, and Father Fourcade and Father Massias, suddenly
arriving, gave orders to suspend the immersions. The great miracle was
about to be attempted, the extraordinary favour which had been so
ardently prayed for since the morning--the restoration of the dead man to
life.

The prayers were continuing outside, rising in a furious appeal which
died away in the sky of that warm summer afternoon. Two bearers came in
with a covered stretcher, which they deposited in the middle of the
dressing-room. Baron Suire, President of the Association, followed,
accompanied by Berthaud, one of its principal officers, for the affair
was causing a great stir among the whole staff, and before anything was
done a few words were exchanged in low voices between the gentlemen and
the two Fathers of the Assumption. Then the latter fell upon their knees,
with arms extended, and began to pray, their faces illumined,
transfigured by their burning desire to see God’s omnipotence displayed.

“Lord, hear us! Lord, grant our prayer!”

M. Sabathier had just been taken away, and the only patient now present
was little Gustave, who had remained on a chair, half-undressed and
forgotten. The curtains of the stretcher were raised, and the man’s
corpse appeared, already stiff, and seemingly reduced and shrunken, with
large eyes which had obstinately remained wide open. It was necessary,
however, to undress the body, which was still fully clad, and this
terrible duty made the bearers momentarily hesitate. Pierre noticed that
the Marquis de Salmon-Roquebert, who showed such devotion to the living,
such freedom from all repugnance whenever they were in question, had now
drawn aside and fallen on his knees, as though to avoid the necessity of
touching that lifeless corpse. And the young priest thereupon followed
his example, and knelt near him in order to keep countenance.

Father Massias meanwhile was gradually becoming excited, praying in so
loud a voice that it drowned that of his superior, Father Fourcade:
“Lord, restore our brother to us!” he cried. “Lord, do it for Thy glory!”

One of the hospitallers had already begun to pull at the man’s trousers,
but his legs were so stiff that the garment would not come off. In fact
the corpse ought to have been raised up; and the other hospitaller, who
was unbuttoning the dead man’s old frock coat, remarked in an undertone
that it would be best to cut everything away with a pair of scissors.
Otherwise there would be no end of the job.

Berthaud, however, rushed up to them, after rapidly consulting Baron
Suire. As a politician he secretly disapproved of Father Fourcade’s
action in making such an attempt, only they could not now do otherwise
than carry matters to an issue; for the crowd was waiting and had been
entreating God on the dead man’s behalf ever since the morning. The
wisest course, therefore, was to finish with the affair at once, showing
as much respect as possible for the remains of the deceased. In lieu,
therefore, of pulling the corpse about in order to strip it bare,
Berthaud was of opinion that it would be better to dip it in the piscina
clad as it was. Should the man resuscitate, it would be easy to procure
fresh clothes for him; and in the contrary event, no harm would have been
done. This is what he hastily said to the bearers; and forthwith he
helped them to pass some straps under the man’s hips and arms.

Father Fourcade had nodded his approval of this course, whilst Father
Massias prayed with increased fervour: “Breathe upon him, O Lord, and he
shall be born anew! Restore his soul to him, O, Lord, that he may glorify
Thee!”

Making an effort, the two hospitallers now raised the man by means of the
straps, carried him to the bath, and slowly lowered him into the water,
at each moment fearing that he would slip away from their hold. Pierre,
although overcome by horror, could not do otherwise than look at them,
and thus he distinctly beheld the immersion of this corpse in its sorry
garments, which on being wetted clung to the bones, outlining the
skeleton-like figure of the deceased, who floated like a man who has been
drowned. But the repulsive part of it all was, that in spite of the
_rigor mortis_, the head fell backward into the water, and was submerged
by it. In vain did the hospitallers try to raise it by pulling the
shoulder straps; as they made the attempt, the man almost sank to the
bottom of the bath. And how could he have recovered his breath when his
mouth was full of water, his staring eyes seemingly dying afresh, beneath
that watery veil?

Then, during the three long minutes allowed for the immersion, the two
Fathers of the Assumption and the chaplain, in a paroxysm of desire and
faith, strove to compel the intervention of Heaven, praying in such loud
voices that they seemed to choke.

“Do Thou but look on him, O Lord, and he will live again! Lord! may he
rise at Thy voice to convert the earth! Lord! Thou hast but one word to
say and all Thy people will acclaim Thee!”

At last, as though some vessel had broken in his throat, Father Massias
fell groaning and choking on his elbows, with only enough strength left
him to kiss the flagstones. And from without came the clamour of the
crowd, the ever-repeated cry, which the Capuchin was still leading:
“Lord, heal our sick! Lord, heal our sick!” This appeal seemed so
singular at that moment, that Pierre’s sufferings were increased. He
could feel, too, that the Marquis was shuddering beside him. And so the
relief was general when Berthaud, thoroughly annoyed with the whole
business, curtly shouted to the hospitallers: “Take him out! Take him out
at once!”

The body was removed from the bath and laid on the stretcher, looking
like the corpse of a drowned man with its sorry garments clinging to its
limbs. The water was trickling from the hair, and rivulets began falling
on either side, spreading out in pools on the floor. And naturally, dead
as the man had been, dead he remained.

The others had all risen and stood looking at him amidst a distressing
silence. Then, as he was covered up and carried away, Father Fourcade
followed the bier leaning on the shoulder of Father Massias and dragging
his gouty leg, the painful weight of which he had momentarily forgotten.
But he was already recovering his strong serenity, and as a hush fell
upon the crowd outside, he could be heard saying: “My dear brothers, my
dear sisters, God has not been willing to restore him to us, doubtless
because in His infinite goodness He has desired to retain him among His
elect.”

And that was all; there was no further question of the dead man. Patients
were again being brought into the dressing-room, the two other baths were
already occupied. And now little Gustave, who had watched that terrible
scene with his keen inquisitive eyes, evincing no sign of terror,
finished undressing himself. His wretched body, the body of a scrofulous
child, appeared with its prominent ribs and projecting spine, its limbs
so thin that they looked like mere walking-sticks. Especially was this
the case as regards the left one, which was withered, wasted to the bone;
and he also had two sores, one on the hip, and the other in the loins,
the last a terrible one, the skin being eaten away so that you distinctly
saw the raw flesh. Yet he smiled, rendered so precocious by his
sufferings that, although but fifteen years old and looking no more than
ten, he seemed to be endowed with the reason and philosophy of a grown
man.

The Marquis de Salmon-Roquebert, who had taken him gently in his arms,
refused Pierre’s offer of service: “Thanks, but he weighs no more than a
bird. And don’t be frightened, my dear little fellow. I will do it
gently.”

“Oh, I am not afraid of cold water, monsieur,” replied the boy; “you may
duck me.”

Then he was lowered into the bath in which the dead man had been dipped.
Madame Vigneron and Madame Chaise, who were not allowed to enter, had
remained at the door on their knees, whilst the father, M. Vigneron, who
was admitted into the dressing-room, went on making the sign of the
cross.

Finding that his services were no longer required, Pierre now departed.
The sudden idea that three o’clock must have long since struck and that
Marie must be waiting for him made him hasten his steps. However, whilst
he was endeavouring to pierce the crowd, he saw the girl arrive in her
little conveyance, dragged along by Gerard, who had not ceased
transporting sufferers to the piscina. She had become impatient, suddenly
filled with a conviction that she was at last in a frame of mind to find
grace. And at sight of Pierre she reproached him, saying, “What, my
friend, did you forget me?”

He could find no answer, but watched her as she was taken into the
piscina reserved for women, and then, in mortal sorrow, fell upon his
knees. It was there that he would wait for her, humbly kneeling, in order
that he might take her back to the Grotto, cured without doubt and
singing a hymn of praise. Since she was certain of it, would she not
assuredly be cured? However, it was in vain that he sought for words of
prayer in the depths of his distracted being. He was still under the blow
of all the terrible things that he had beheld, worn out with physical
fatigue, his brain depressed, no longer knowing what he saw or what he
believed. His desperate affection for Marie alone remained, making him
long to humble himself and supplicate, in the thought that when little
ones really love and entreat the powerful they end by obtaining favours.
And at last he caught himself repeating the prayers of the crowd, in a
distressful voice that came from the depths of his being “Lord, heal our
sick! Lord, heal our sick!”

Ten minutes, a quarter of an hour perhaps, went by. Then Marie reappeared
in her little conveyance. Her face was very pale and wore an expression
of despair. Her beautiful hair was fastened above her head in a heavy
golden coil which the water had not touched. And she was not cured. The
stupor of infinite discouragement hollowed and lengthened her face, and
she averted her eyes as though to avoid meeting those of the priest who
thunderstruck, chilled to the heart, at last made up his mind to grasp
the handle of the little vehicle, so as to take the girl back to the
Grotto.

And meantime the cry of the faithful, who with open arms were kneeling
there and kissing the earth, again rose with a growing fury, excited by
the Capuchin’s shrill voice: “Lord, heal our sick! Heal our sick, O
Lord!”

As Pierre was placing Marie in position again in front of the Grotto, an
attack of weakness came over her and she almost fainted. Gerard, who was
there, saw Raymonde quickly hurry to the spot with a cup of broth, and at
once they began zealously rivalling each other in their attentions to the
ailing girl. Raymonde, holding out the cup in a pretty way, and assuming
the coaxing airs of an expert nurse, especially insisted that Marie
should accept the bouillon; and Gerard, glancing at this portionless
girl, could not help finding her charming, already expert in the business
of life, and quite ready to manage a household with a firm hand without
ceasing to be amiable. Berthaud was no doubt right, this was the wife
that he, Gerard, needed.

“Mademoiselle,” said he to Raymonde, “shall I raise the young lady a
little?”

“Thank you, monsieur, I am quite strong enough. And besides I will give
it to her in spoonfuls; that will be the better way.”

Marie, however, obstinately preserving her fierce silence as she
recovered consciousness, refused the broth with a gesture. She wished to
be left in quietness, she did not want anybody to question her. And it
was only when the others had gone off smiling at one another, that she
said to Pierre in a husky voice: “Has not my father come then?”

After hesitating for a moment the priest was obliged to confess the
truth. “I left him sleeping and he cannot have woke up.”

Then Marie relapsed into her state of languid stupor and dismissed him in
his turn, with the gesture with which she declined all succour. She no
longer prayed, but remained quite motionless, gazing fixedly with her
large eyes at the marble Virgin, the white statue amidst the radiance of
the Grotto. And as four o’clock was now striking, Pierre with his heart
sore went off to the Verification Office, having suddenly remembered the
appointment given him by Doctor Chassaigne.




IV. VERIFICATION

THE doctor was waiting for the young priest outside the Verification
Office, in front of which a compact and feverish crowd of pilgrims was
assembled, waylaying and questioning the patients who went in, and
acclaiming them as they came out whenever the news spread of any miracle,
such as the restoration of some blind man’s sight, some deaf woman’s
hearing, or some paralytic’s power of motion.

Pierre had no little difficulty in making his way through the throng, but
at last he reached his friend. “Well,” he asked, “are we going to have a
miracle--a real, incontestable one I mean?”

The doctor smiled, indulgent despite his new faith. “Ah, well,” said he,
“a miracle is not worked to order. God intervenes when He pleases.”

Some hospitallers were mounting guard at the door, but they all knew M.
Chassaigne, and respectfully drew aside to let him enter with his
companion. The office where the cures were verified was very badly
installed in a wretched wooden shanty divided into two apartments, first
a narrow ante-chamber, and then a general meeting room which was by no
means so large as it should have been. However, there was a question of
providing the department with better accommodation the following year;
with which view some large premises, under one of the inclined ways of
the Rosary, were already being fitted up.

The only article of furniture in the antechamber was a wooden bench on
which Pierre perceived two female patients awaiting their turn in the
charge of a young hospitaller. But on entering the meeting room the
number of persons packed inside it quite surprised him, whilst the
suffocating heat within those wooden walls on which the sun was so
fiercely playing, almost scorched his face. It was a square bare room,
painted a light yellow, with the panes of its single window covered with
whitening, so that the pressing throng outside might see nothing of what
went on within. One dared not even open this window to admit a little
fresh air, for it was no sooner set ajar than a crowd of inquisitive
heads peeped in. The furniture was of a very rudimentary kind, consisting
simply of two deal tables of unequal height placed end to end and not
even covered with a cloth; together with a kind of big “canterbury”
 littered with untidy papers, sets of documents, registers and pamphlets,
and finally some thirty rush-seated chairs placed here and there over the
floor and a couple of ragged arm-chairs usually reserved for the
patients.

Doctor Bonamy at once hastened forward to greet Doctor Chassaigne, who
was one of the latest and most glorious conquests of the Grotto. He found
a chair for him and, bowing to Pierre’s cassock, also made the young
priest sit down. Then, in the tone of extreme politeness which was
customary with him, he exclaimed: “_Mon cher confrere_, you will kindly
allow me to continue. We were just examining mademoiselle.”

He referred to a deaf peasant girl of twenty, who was seated in one of
the arm-chairs. Instead of listening, however, Pierre, who was very
weary, still with a buzzing in his head, contented himself with gazing at
the scene, endeavouring to form some notion of the people assembled in
the room. There were some fifty altogether, many of them standing and
leaning against the walls. Half a dozen, however, were seated at the two
tables, a central position being occupied by the superintendent of the
piscinas, who was constantly consulting a thick register; whilst around
him were a Father of the Assumption and three young seminarists who acted
as secretaries, writing, searching for documents, passing them and
classifying them again after each examination. Pierre, however, took most
interest in a Father of the Immaculate Conception, Father Dargeles, who
had been pointed out to him that morning as being the editor of the
“Journal de la Grotte.” This ecclesiastic, whose thin little face, with
its blinking eyes, pointed nose, and delicate mouth was ever smiling, had
modestly seated himself at the end of the lower table where he
occasionally took notes for his newspaper. He alone, of the community to
which he belonged, showed himself during the three days of the national
pilgrimage. Behind him, however, one could divine the presence of all the
others, the slowly developed hidden power which organised everything and
raked in all the proceeds.

The onlookers consisted almost entirely of inquisitive people and
witnesses, including a score of doctors and a few priests. The medical
men, who had come from all parts, mostly preserved silence, only a few of
them occasionally venturing to ask a question; and every now and then
they would exchange oblique glances, more occupied apparently in watching
one another than in verifying the facts submitted to their examination.
Who could they be? Some names were mentioned, but they were quite
unknown. Only one had caused any stir, that of a celebrated doctor,
professor at a Catholic university.

That afternoon, however, Doctor Bonamy, who never sat down, busy as he
was conducting the proceedings and questioning the patients, reserved
most of his attentions for a short, fair-haired man, a writer of some
talent who contributed to one of the most widely read Paris newspapers,
and who, in the course of a holiday tour, had by chance reached Lourdes
that morning. Was not this an unbeliever whom it might be possible to
convert, whose influence it would be desirable to gain for
advertisement’s sake? Such at all events appeared to be M. Bonamy’s
opinion, for he had compelled the journalist to take the second
arm-chair, and with an affectation of smiling good-nature was treating
him to a full performance, again and again repeating that he and his
patrons had nothing to hide, and that everything took place in the most
open manner.

“We only desire light,” he exclaimed. “We never cease to call for the
investigations of all willing men.”

Then, as the alleged cure of the deaf girl did not seem at all a
promising case, he addressed her somewhat roughly: “Come, come, my girl,
this is only a beginning. You must come back when there are more distinct
signs of improvement.” And turning to the journalist he added in an
undertone: “If we were to believe them they would all be healed. But the
only cures we accept are those which are thoroughly proven, which are as
apparent as the sun itself. Pray notice moreover that I say cures and not
miracles; for we doctors do not take upon ourselves to interpret and
explain. We are simply here to see if the patients, who submit themselves
to our examination, have really lost all symptoms of their ailments.”

Thereupon he struck an attitude. Doubtless he spoke like this in order
that his rectitude might not be called in question. Believing without
believing, he knew that science was yet so obscure, so full of surprises,
that what seemed impossible might always come to pass; and thus, in the
declining years of his life, he had contrived to secure an exceptional
position at the Grotto, a position which had both its inconveniences and
its advantages, but which, taken for all in all, was very comfortable and
pleasant.

And now, in reply to a question from the Paris journalist, he began to
explain his mode of proceeding. Each patient who accompanied the
pilgrimage arrived provided with papers, amongst which there was almost
always a certificate of the doctor who had been attending the case. At
times even there were certificates given by several doctors, hospital
bulletins and so forth--quite a record of the illness in its various
stages. And thus if a cure took place and the cured person came forward,
it was only necessary to consult his or her set of documents in order to
ascertain the nature of the ailment, and then examination would show if
that ailment had really disappeared.

Pierre was now listening. Since he had been there, seated and resting
himself, he had grown calmer, and his mind was clear once more. It was
only the heat which at present caused him any inconvenience. And thus,
interested as he was by Doctor Bonamy’s explanations, and desirous of
forming an opinion, he would have spoken out and questioned, had it not
been for his cloth which condemned him to remain in the background. He
was delighted, therefore, when the little fair-haired gentleman, the
influential writer, began to bring forward the objections which at once
occurred to him.* Was it not most unfortunate that one doctor should
diagnose the illness and that another one should verify the cure? In this
mode of proceeding there was certainly a source of frequent error. The
better plan would have been for a medical commission to examine all the
patients as soon as they arrived at Lourdes and draw up reports on every
case, to which reports the same commission would have referred whenever
an alleged cure was brought before it. Doctor Bonamy, however, did not
fall in with this suggestion. He replied, with some reason, that a
commission would never suffice for such gigantic labour. Just think of
it! A thousand patients to examine in a single morning! And how many
different theories there would be, how many contrary diagnoses, how many
endless discussions, all of a nature to increase the general uncertainty!
The preliminary examination of the patients, which was almost always
impossible, would, even if attempted, leave the door open for as many
errors as the present system. In practice, it was necessary to remain
content with the certificates delivered by the medical men who had been
in attendance on the patients, and these certificates accordingly
acquired capital, decisive importance. Doctor Bonamy ran through the
documents lying on one of the tables and gave the Paris journalist some
of these certificates to read. A great many of them unfortunately were
very brief. Others, more skilfully drawn up, clearly specified the nature
of the complaint; and some of the doctors’ signatures were even certified
by the mayors of the localities where they resided. Nevertheless doubts
remained, innumerable and not to be surmounted. Who were these doctors?
Who could tell if they possessed sufficient scientific authority to write
as they did? With all respect to the medical profession, were there not
innumerable doctors whose attainments were very limited? And, besides,
might not these have been influenced by circumstances that one knew
nothing of, in some cases by considerations of a personal character? One
was tempted to ask for an inquiry respecting each of these medical men.
Since everything was based on the documents supplied by the patients,
these documents ought to have been most carefully controlled; for there
could be no proof of any miracle if the absolute certainty of the alleged
ailments had not been demonstrated by stringent examination.

  * The reader will doubtless have understood that the Parisian
    journalist is none other than M. Zola himself--Trans.

Very red and covered with perspiration, Doctor Bonamy waved his arms.
“But that is the course we follow, that is the course we follow!” said
he. “As soon as it seems to us that a case of cure cannot be explained by
natural means, we institute a minute inquiry, we request the person who
has been cured to return here for further examination. And as you can
see, we surround ourselves with all means of enlightenment. These
gentlemen here, who are listening to us, are nearly every one of them
doctors who have come from all parts of France. We always entreat them to
express their doubts if they feel any, to discuss the cases with us, and
a very detailed report of each discussion is drawn up. You hear me,
gentlemen; by all means protest if anything occurs here of a nature to
offend your sense of truth.”

Not one of the onlookers spoke. Most of the doctors present were
undoubtedly Catholics, and naturally enough they merely bowed. As for the
others, the unbelievers, the _savants_ pure and simple, they looked on
and evinced some interest in certain phenomena, but considerations of
courtesy deterred them from entering into discussions which they knew
would have been useless. When as men of sense their discomfort became too
great, and they felt themselves growing angry, they simply left the room.

As nobody breathed a word, Doctor Bonamy became quite triumphant, and on
the journalist asking him if he were all alone to accomplish so much
work, he replied: “Yes, all alone; but my functions as doctor of the
Grotto are not so complicated as you may think, for, I repeat it, they
simply consist in verifying cures whenever any take place.” However, he
corrected himself, and added with a smile: “All! I was forgetting, I am
not quite alone, I have Raboin, who helps me to keep things a little bit
in order here.”

So saying, he pointed to a stout, grey-haired man of forty, with a heavy
face and bull-dog jaw. Raboin was an ardent believer, one of those
excited beings who did not allow the miracles to be called in question.
And thus he often suffered from his duties at the Verification Office,
where he was ever ready to growl with anger when anybody disputed a
prodigy. The appeal to the doctors had made him quite lose his temper,
and his superior had to calm him.

“Come, Raboin, my friend, be quiet!” said Doctor Bonamy. “All sincere
opinions are entitled to a hearing.”

However, the _defile_ of patients was resumed. A man was now brought in
whose trunk was so covered with eczema that when he took off his shirt a
kind of grey flour fell from his skin. He was not cured, but simply
declared that he came to Lourdes every year, and always went away feeling
relieved. Then came a lady, a countess, who was fearfully emaciated, and
whose story was an extraordinary one. Cured of tuberculosis by the
Blessed Virgin, a first time, seven years previously, she had
subsequently given birth to four children, and had then again fallen into
consumption. At present she was a morphinomaniac, but her first bath had
already relieved her so much, that she proposed taking part in the
torchlight procession that same evening with the twenty-seven members of
her family whom she had brought with her to Lourdes. Then there was a
woman afflicted with nervous aphonia, who after months of absolute
dumbness had just recovered her voice at the moment when the Blessed
Sacrament went by at the head of the four o’clock procession.

“Gentlemen,” declared Doctor Bonamy, affecting the graciousness of a
_savant_ of extremely liberal views, “as you are aware, we do not draw
any conclusions when a nervous affection is in question. Still you will
kindly observe that this woman was treated at the Salpetriere for six
months, and that she had to come here to find her tongue suddenly
loosened.”

Despite all these fine words he displayed some little impatience, for he
would have greatly liked to show the gentleman from Paris one of those
remarkable instances of cure which occasionally presented themselves
during the four o’clock procession--that being the moment of grace and
exaltation when the Blessed Virgin interceded for those whom she had
chosen. But on this particular afternoon there had apparently been none.
The cures which had so far passed before them were doubtful ones,
deficient in interest. Meanwhile, out-of-doors, you could hear the
stamping and roaring of the crowd, goaded into a frenzy by repeated
hymns, enfevered by its earnest desire for the Divine interposition, and
growing more and more enervated by the delay.

All at once, however, a smiling, modest-looking young girl, whose clear
eyes sparkled with intelligence, entered the office. “Ah!” exclaimed
Doctor Bonamy joyously, “here is our little friend Sophie. A remarkable
cure, gentlemen, which took place at the same season last year, and the
results of which I will ask permission to show you.”

Pierre had immediately recognized Sophie Couteau, the _miraculee_ who had
got into the train at Poitiers. And he now witnessed a repetition of the
scene which had already been enacted in his presence. Doctor Bonamy began
giving detailed explanations to the little fair-haired gentleman, who
displayed great attention. The case, said the doctor, had been one of
caries of the bones of the left heel, with a commencement of necrosis
necessitating excision; and yet the frightful, suppurating sore had been
healed in a minute at the first immersion in the piscina.

“Tell the gentlemen how it happened, Sophie,” he added.

The little girl made her usual pretty gesture as a sign to everybody to
be attentive. And then she began: “Well, it was like this; my foot was
past cure, I couldn’t even go to church any more, and it had to be kept
bandaged because there was always a lot of matter coming from it.
Monsieur Rivoire, the doctor, who had made a cut in it so as to see
inside it, said that he should be obliged to take out a piece of the
bone; and that, sure enough, would have made me lame for life. But when I
got to Lourdes, and had prayed a great deal to the Blessed Virgin, I went
to dip my foot in the water, wishing so much that I might be cured, that
I did not even take the time to pull the bandages off. And everything
remained in the water; there was no longer anything the matter with my
foot when I took it out.”

Doctor Bonamy listened, and punctuated each word with an approving nod.
“And what did your doctor say, Sophie?” he asked.

“When I got back to Vivonne, and Monsieur Rivoire saw my foot again, he
said: ‘Whether it be God or the Devil who has cured this child, it is all
the same to me; but in all truth, she is cured.’”

A burst of laughter rang out. The doctor’s remark was sure to produce an
effect.

“And what was it, Sophie, that you said to Madame la Comtesse, the
superintendent of your ward?”

“Ah, yes! I hadn’t brought many bandages for my foot with me, and I said
to her, ‘It was very kind of the Blessed Virgin to cure me the first day,
as I should have run out of linen on the morrow.’”

Then there was fresh laughter, a general display of satisfaction at
seeing her look so pretty, telling her story, which she now knew by
heart, in too recitative a manner, but, nevertheless, remaining very
touching and truthful in appearance.

“Take off your shoe, Sophie,” now said Doctor Bonamy; “show your foot to
these gentlemen. Let them feel it. Nobody must retain any doubt.”

The little foot promptly appeared, very white, very clean, carefully
tended indeed, with its scar just below the ankle, a long scar, whose
whity seam testified to the gravity of the complaint. Some of the medical
men had drawn near, and looked on in silence. Others, whose opinions, no
doubt, were already formed, did not disturb themselves, though one of
them, with an air of extreme politeness, inquired why the Blessed Virgin
had not made a new foot while she was about it, for this would assuredly
have given her no more trouble. Doctor Bonamy, however, quickly replied,
that if the Blessed Virgin had left a scar, it was certainly in order
that a trace, a proof of the miracle, might remain. Then he entered into
technical particulars, demonstrating that a fragment of bone and flesh
must have been instantly formed, and this, of course, could not be
explained in any natural way.

“_Mon Dieu_!” interrupted the little fair-haired gentleman, “there is no
need of any such complicated affair. Let me merely see a finger cut with
a penknife, let me see it dipped in the water, and let it come out with
the cut cicatrised. The miracle will be quite as great, and I shall bow
to it respectfully.” Then he added: “If I possessed a source which could
thus close up sores and wounds, I would turn the world topsy-turvy. I do
not know exactly how I should manage it, but at all events I would summon
the nations, and the nations would come. I should cause the miracles to
be verified in such an indisputable manner, that I should be the master
of the earth. Just think what an extraordinary power it would be--a
divine power. But it would be necessary that not a doubt should remain,
the truth would have to be as patent, as apparent as the sun itself. The
whole world would behold it and believe!”

Then he began discussing various methods of control with the doctor. He
had admitted that, owing to the great number of patients, it would be
difficult, if not impossible, to examine them all on their arrival. Only,
why didn’t they organise a special ward at the hospital, a ward which
would be reserved for cases of visible sores? They would have thirty such
cases all told, which might be subjected to the preliminary examination
of a committee. Authentic reports would be drawn up, and the sores might
even be photographed. Then, if a case of cure should present itself, the
commission would merely have to authenticate it by a fresh report. And in
all this there would be no question of any internal complaint, the
diagnostication of which is difficult, and liable to be controverted.
There would be visible evidence of the ailment, and cure could be proved.

Somewhat embarrassed, Doctor Bonamy replied: “No doubt, no doubt; all we
ask for is enlightenment. The difficulty would be in forming the
committee you speak of. If you only knew how little medical men agree!
However, there is certainly an idea in what you say.”

Fortunately a fresh patient now came to his assistance. Whilst little
Sophie Couteau, already forgotten, was putting on, her shoes again, Elise
Rouquet appeared, and, removing her wrap, displayed her diseased face to
view. She related that she had been bathing it with her handkerchief ever
since the morning, and it seemed to her that her sore, previously so
fresh and raw, was already beginning to dry and grow paler in colour.
This was true; Pierre noticed, with great surprise, that the aspect of
the sore was now less horrible. This supplied fresh food for the
discussion on visible sores, for the little fair-haired gentleman clung
obstinately to his idea of organising a special ward. Indeed, said he, if
the condition of this girl had been verified that morning, and she should
be cured, what a triumph it would have been for the Grotto, which could
have claimed to have healed a lupus! It would then have no longer been
possible to deny that miracles were worked.

Doctor Chassaigne had so far kept in the background, motionless and
silent, as though he desired that the facts alone should exercise their
influence on Pierre. But he now leant forward and said to him in an
undertone: “Visible sores, visible sores indeed! That gentleman can have
no idea that our most learned medical men suspect many of these sores to
be of nervous origin. Yes, we are discovering that complaints of this
kind are often simply due to bad nutrition of the skin. These questions
of nutrition are still so imperfectly studied and understood! And some
medical men are also beginning to prove that the faith which heals can
even cure sores, certain forms of lupus among others. And so I would ask
what certainty that gentleman would obtain with his ward for visible
sores? There would simply be a little more confusion and passion in
arguing the eternal question. No, no! Science is vain, it is a sea of
uncertainty.”

He smiled sorrowfully whilst Doctor Bonamy, after advising Elise Rouquet
to continue using the water as lotion and to return each day for further
examination, repeated with his prudent, affable air: “At all events,
gentlemen, there are signs of improvement in this case--that is beyond
doubt.”

But all at once the office was fairly turned topsy-turvy by the arrival
of La Grivotte, who swept in like a whirlwind, almost dancing with
delight and shouting in a full voice: “I am cured! I am cured!”

And forthwith she began to relate that they had first of all refused to
bathe her, and that she had been obliged to insist and beg and sob in
order to prevail upon them to do so, after receiving Father Fourcade’s
express permission. And then it had all happened as she had previously
said it would. She had not been immersed in the icy water for three
minutes--all perspiring as she was with her consumptive rattle--before
she had felt strength returning to her like a whipstroke lashing her
whole body. And now a flaming excitement possessed her; radiant, stamping
her feet, she was unable to keep still.

“I am cured, my good gentlemen, I am cured!”

Pierre looked at her, this time quite stupefied. Was this the same girl
whom, on the previous night, he had seen lying on the carriage seat,
annihilated, coughing and spitting blood, with her face of ashen hue? He
could not recognise her as she now stood there, erect and slender, her
cheeks rosy, her eyes sparkling, upbuoyed by a determination to live, a
joy in living already.

“Gentlemen,” declared Doctor Bonamy, “the case appears to me to be a very
interesting one. We will see.”

Then he asked for the documents concerning La Grivotte. But they could
not be found among all the papers heaped together on the tables. The
young seminarists who acted as secretaries began turning everything over;
and the superintendent of the piscinas who sat in their midst himself had
to get up to see if these documents were in the “canterbury.” At last,
when he had sat down again, he found them under the register which lay
open before him. Among them were three medical certificates which he read
aloud. All three of them agreed in stating that the case was one of
advanced phthisis, complicated by nervous incidents which invested it
with a peculiar character.

Doctor Bonamy wagged his head as though to say that such an _ensemble_ of
testimony could leave no room for doubt. Forthwith, he subjected the
patient to a prolonged auscultation. And he murmured: “I hear nothing--I
hear nothing.” Then, correcting himself, he added: “At least I hear
scarcely anything.”

Finally he turned towards the five-and-twenty or thirty doctors who were
assembled there in silence. “Will some of you gentlemen,” he asked,
“kindly lend me the help of your science? We are here to study and
discuss these questions.”

At first nobody stirred. Then there was one who ventured to come forward
and, in his turn subject the patient to auscultation. But instead of
declaring himself, he continued reflecting, shaking his head anxiously.
At last he stammered that in his opinion one must await further
developments. Another doctor, however, at once took his place, and this
one expressed a decided opinion. He could hear nothing at all, that woman
could never have suffered from phthisis. Then others followed him; in
fact, with the exception of five or six whose smiling faces remained
impenetrable, they all joined the _defile_. And the confusion now
attained its apogee; for each gave an opinion sensibly differing from
that of his colleagues, so that a general uproar arose and one could no
longer hear oneself speak. Father Dargeles alone retained the calmness of
perfect serenity, for he had scented one of those cases which impassion
people and redound to the glory of Our Lady of Lourdes. He was already
taking notes on a corner of the table.

Thanks to all the noise of the discussion, Pierre and Doctor Chassaigne,
seated at some distance from the others, were now able to talk together
without being heard. “Oh! those piscinas!” said the young priest, “I have
just seen them. To think that the water should be so seldom changed! What
filth it is, what a soup of microbes! What a terrible blow for the
present-day mania, that rage for antiseptic precautions! How is it that
some pestilence does not carry off all these poor people? The opponents
of the microbe theory must be having a good laugh--”

M. Chassaigne stopped him. “No, no, my child,” said he. “The baths may be
scarcely clean, but they offer no danger. Please notice that the
temperature of the water never rises above fifty degrees, and that
seventy-seven are necessary for the cultivation of germs.* Besides,
scarcely any contagious diseases come to Lourdes, neither cholera, nor
typhus, nor variola, nor measles, nor scarlatina. We only see certain
organic affections here, paralysis, scrofula, tumours, ulcers and
abscesses, cancers and phthisis; and the latter cannot be transmitted by
the water of the baths. The old sores which are bathed have nothing to
fear, and offer no risk of contagion. I can assure you that on this point
there is even no necessity for the Blessed Virgin to intervene.”

  * The above are Fahrenheit degrees.--Trans.

“Then, in that case, doctor,” rejoined Pierre, “when you were practising,
you would have dipped all your patients in icy water--women at no matter
what season, rheumatic patients, people suffering from diseases of the
heart, consumptives, and so on? For instance, that unhappy girl, half
dead, and covered with sweat--would you have bathed her?”

“Certainly not! There are heroic methods of treatment to which, in
practice, one does not dare to have recourse. An icy bath may undoubtedly
kill a consumptive; but do we know, whether, in certain circumstances, it
might not save her? I, who have ended by admitting that a supernatural
power is at work here, I willingly admit that some cures must take place
under natural conditions, thanks to that immersion in cold water which
seems to us idiotic and barbarous. Ah! the things we don’t know, the
things we don’t know!”

He was relapsing into his anger, his hatred of science, which he scorned
since it had left him scared and powerless beside the deathbed of his
wife and his daughter. “You ask for certainties,” he resumed, “but
assuredly it is not medicine which will give you them. Listen for a
moment to those gentlemen and you will be edified. Is it not beautiful,
all that confusion in which so many opinions clash together? Certainly
there are ailments with which one is thoroughly acquainted, even to the
most minute details of their evolution; there are remedies also, the
effects of which have been studied with the most scrupulous care; but the
thing that one does not know, that one cannot know, is the relation of
the remedy to the ailment, for there are as many cases as there may be
patients, each liable to variation, so that experimentation begins afresh
every time. This is why the practice of medicine remains an art, for
there can be no experimental finality in it. Cure always depends on
chance, on some fortunate circumstance, on some bright idea of the
doctor’s. And so you will understand that all the people who come and
discuss here make me laugh when they talk about the absolute laws of
science. Where are those laws in medicine? I should like to have them
shown to me.”

He did not wish to say any more, but his passion carried him away, so he
went on: “I told you that I had become a believer--nevertheless, to speak
the truth, I understand very well why this worthy Doctor Bonamy is so
little affected, and why he continues calling upon doctors in all parts
of the world to come and study his miracles. The more doctors that might
come, the less likelihood there would be of the truth being established
in the inevitable battle between contradictory diagnoses and methods of
treatment. If men cannot agree about a visible sore, they surely cannot
do so about an internal lesion the existence of which will be admitted by
some, and denied by others. And why then should not everything become a
miracle? For, after all, whether the action comes from nature or from
some unknown power, medical men are, as a rule, none the less astonished
when an illness terminates in a manner which they have not foreseen. No
doubt, too, things are very badly organised here. Those certificates from
doctors whom nobody knows have no real value. All documents ought to be
stringently inquired into. But even admitting any absolute scientific
strictness, you must be very simple, my dear child, if you imagine that a
positive conviction would be arrived at, absolute for one and all. Error
is implanted in man, and there is no more difficult task than that of
demonstrating to universal satisfaction the most insignificant truth.”

Pierre had now begun to understand what was taking place at Lourdes, the
extraordinary spectacle which the world had been witnessing for years,
amidst the reverent admiration of some and the insulting laughter of
others. Forces as yet but imperfectly studied, of which one was even
ignorant, were certainly at work--auto-suggestion, long prepared
disturbance of the nerves; inspiriting influence of the journey, the
prayers, and the hymns; and especially the healing breath, the unknown
force which was evolved from the multitude, in the acute crisis of faith.
Thus it seemed to him anything but intelligent to believe in trickery.
The facts were both of a much more lofty and much more simple nature.
There was no occasion for the Fathers of the Grotto to descend to
falsehood; it was sufficient that they should help in creating confusion,
that they should utilise the universal ignorance. It might even be
admitted that everybody acted in good faith--the doctors void of genius
who delivered the certificates, the consoled patients who believed
themselves cured, and the impassioned witnesses who swore that they had
beheld what they described. And from all this was evolved the obvious
impossibility of proving whether there was a miracle or not. And such
being the case, did not the miracle naturally become a reality for the
greater number, for all those who suffered and who had need of hope?

Then, as Doctor Bonamy, who had noticed that they were chatting apart,
came up to them, Pierre ventured to inquire: “What is about the
proportion of the cures to the number of cases?”

“About ten per cent.,” answered the doctor; and reading in the young
priest’s eyes the words that he could not utter, he added in a very
cordial way: “Oh! there would be many more, they would all be cured if we
chose to listen to them. But it is as well to say it, I am only here to
keep an eye on the miracles, like a policeman as it were. My only
functions are to check excessive zeal, and to prevent holy things from
being made ridiculous. In one word, this office is simply an office where
a _visa_ is given when the cures have been verified and seem real ones.”

He was interrupted, however, by a low growl. Raboin was growing angry:
“The cures verified, the cures verified,” he muttered. “What is the use
of that? There is no pause in the working of the miracles. What is the
use of verifying them so far as believers are concerned? _They_ merely
have to bow down and believe. And what is the use, too, as regards the
unbelievers? _They_ will never be convinced. The work we do here is so
much foolishness.”

Doctor Bonamy severely ordered him to hold his tongue. “You are a rebel,
Raboin,” said he; “I shall tell Father Capdebarthe that I won’t have you
here any longer since you pass your time in sowing disobedience.”

Nevertheless, there was truth in what had just been said by this man, who
so promptly showed his teeth, eager to bite whenever his faith was
assailed; and Pierre looked at him with sympathy. All the work of the
Verification Office--work anything but well performed--was indeed
useless, for it wounded the feelings of the pious, and failed to satisfy
the incredulous. Besides, can a miracle be proved? No, you must believe
in it! When God is pleased to intervene, it is not for man to try to
understand. In the ages of real belief, Science did not make any
meddlesome attempt to explain the nature of the Divinity. And why should
it come and interfere here? By doing so, it simply hampered faith and
diminished its own prestige. No, no, there must be no Science, you must
throw yourself upon the ground, kiss it, and believe. Or else you must
take yourself off. No compromise was possible. If examination once began
it must go on, and must, fatally, conduct to doubt.

Pierre’s greatest sufferings, however, came from the extraordinary
conversations which he heard around him. There were some believers
present who spoke of the miracles with the most amazing ease and
tranquillity. The most stupefying stories left their serenity entire.
Another miracle, and yet another! And with smiles on their faces, their
reason never protesting, they went on relating such imaginings as could
only have come from diseased brains. They were evidently living in such a
state of visionary fever that nothing henceforth could astonish them. And
not only did Pierre notice this among folks of simple, childish minds,
illiterate, hallucinated creatures like Raboin, but also among the men of
intellect, the men with cultivated brains, the _savants_ like Doctor
Bonamy and others. It was incredible. And thus Pierre felt a growing
discomfort arising within him, a covert anger which would doubtless end
by bursting forth. His reason was struggling, like that of some poor
wretch who after being flung into a river, feels the waters seize him
from all sides and stifle him; and he reflected that the minds which,
like Doctor Chassaigne’s, sink at last into blind belief, must pass
though this same discomfort and struggle before the final shipwreck.

He glanced at his old friend and saw how sorrowful he looked, struck down
by destiny, as weak as a crying child, and henceforth quite alone in
life. Nevertheless, he was unable to check the cry of protest which rose
to his lips: “No, no, if we do not know everything, even if we shall
never know everything, there is no reason why we should leave off
learning. It is wrong that the Unknown should profit by man’s debility
and ignorance. On the contrary, the eternal hope should be that the
things which now seem inexplicable will some day be explained; and we
cannot, under healthy conditions, have any other ideal than this march
towards the discovery of the Unknown, this victory slowly achieved by
reason amidst all the miseries both of the flesh and of the mind. Ah!
reason--it is my reason which makes me suffer, and it is from my reason
too that I await all my strength. When reason dies, the whole being
perishes. And I feel but an ardent thirst to satisfy my reason more and
more, even though I may lose all happiness in doing so.”

Tears were appearing in Doctor Chassaigne’s eyes; doubtless the memory of
his dear dead ones had again flashed upon him. And, in his turn, he
murmured: “Reason, reason, yes, certainly it is a thing to be very proud
of; it embodies the very dignity of life. But there is love, which is
life’s omnipotence, the one blessing to be won again when you have lost
it.”

His voice sank in a stifled sob; and as in a mechanical way he began to
finger the sets of documents lying on the table, he espied among them one
whose cover bore the name of Marie de Guersaint in large letters. He
opened it and read the certificates of the two doctors who had inferred
that the case was one of paralysis of the marrow. “Come, my child,” he
then resumed, “I know that you feel warm affection for Mademoiselle de
Guersaint. What should you say if she were cured here? There are here
some certificates, bearing honourable names, and you know that paralysis
of this nature is virtually incurable. Well, if this young person should
all at once run and jump about as I have seen so many others do, would
you not feel very happy, would you not at last acknowledge the
intervention of a supernatural power?”

Pierre was about to reply, when he suddenly remembered his cousin
Beauclair’s expression of opinion, the prediction that the miracle would
come about like a lightning stroke, an awakening, an exaltation of the
whole being; and he felt his discomfort increase and contented himself
with replying: “Yes, indeed, I should be very happy. And you are right;
there is doubtless only a determination to secure happiness in all the
agitation one beholds here.”

However, he could remain in that office no longer. The heat was becoming
so great that perspiration streamed down the faces of those present.
Doctor Bonamy had begun to dictate a report of the examination of La
Grivotte to one of the seminarists, while Father Dargeles, watchful with
regard to the phraseology employed, occasionally rose and whispered some
verbal alteration in the writer’s ear. Meantime, the tumult around them
was continuing; the discussion among the medical men had taken another
turn and now bore on certain technical points of no significance with
regard to the case in question. You could no longer breathe within those
wooden walls, nausea was upsetting every heart and every head. The little
fair-haired gentleman, the influential writer from Paris, had already
gone away, quite vexed at not having seen a real miracle.

Pierre thereupon said to Doctor Chassaigne, “Let us go; I shall be taken
ill if I stay here any longer.”

They left the office at the same time as La Grivotte, who was at last
being dismissed. And as soon as they reached the door they found
themselves caught in a torrential, surging, jostling crowd, which was
eager to behold the girl so miraculously healed; for the report of the
miracle must have already spread, and one and all were struggling to see
the chosen one, question her, and touch her. And she, with her empurpled
cheeks, her flaming eyes, her dancing gait, could do nothing but repeat,
“I am cured, I am cured!”

Shouts drowned her voice, she herself was submerged, carried off amidst
the eddies of the throng. For a moment one lost sight of her as though
she had sunk in those tumultuous waters; then she suddenly reappeared
close to Pierre and the doctor, who endeavoured to extricate her from the
crush. They had just perceived the Commander, one of whose manias was to
come down to the piscinas and the Grotto in order to vent his anger
there. With his frock-coat tightly girding him in military fashion, he
was, as usual, leaning on his silver-knobbed walking-stick, slightly
dragging his left leg, which his second attack of paralysis had
stiffened. And his face reddened and his eyes flashed with anger when La
Grivotte, pushing him aside in order that she might pass, repeated amidst
the wild enthusiasm of the crowd, “I am cured, I am cured!”

“Well!” he cried, seized with sudden fury, “so much the worse for you, my
girl!”

Exclamations arose, folks began to laugh, for he was well known, and his
maniacal passion for death was forgiven him. However, when he began
stammering confused words, saying that it was pitiful to desire life when
one was possessed of neither beauty nor fortune, and that this girl ought
to have preferred to die at once rather than suffer again, people began
to growl around him, and Abbe Judaine, who was passing, had to extricate
him from his trouble. The priest drew him away. “Be quiet, my friend, be
quiet,” he said. “It is scandalous. Why do you rebel like this against
the goodness of God who occasionally shows His compassion for our
sufferings by alleviating them? I tell you again that you yourself ought
to fall on your knees and beg Him to restore to you the use of your leg
and let you live another ten years.”

The Commander almost choked with anger. “What!” he replied, “ask to live
for another ten years, when my finest day will be the day I die! Show
myself as spiritless, as cowardly as the thousands of patients whom I see
pass along here, full of a base terror of death, shrieking aloud their
weakness, their passion to remain alive! Ah! no, I should feel too much
contempt for myself. I want to die!--to die at once! It will be so
delightful to be no more.”

He was at last out of the scramble of the pilgrims, and again found
himself near Doctor Chassaigne and Pierre on the bank of the Gave. And he
addressed himself to the doctor, whom he often met: “Didn’t they try to
restore a dead man to life just now?” he asked; “I was told of it--it
almost suffocated me. Eh, doctor? You understand? That man was happy
enough to be dead, and they dared to dip him in their water in the
criminal hope to make him alive again! But suppose they had succeeded,
suppose their water had animated that poor devil once more--for one never
knows what may happen in this funny world--don’t you think that the man
would have had a perfect right to spit his anger in the face of those
corpse-menders? Had he asked them to awaken him? How did they know if he
were not well pleased at being dead? Folks ought to be consulted at any
rate. Just picture them playing the same vile trick on me when I at last
fall into the great deep sleep. Ah! I would give them a nice reception.
‘Meddle with what concerns you,’ I should say, and you may be sure I
should make all haste to die again!”

He looked so singular in the fit of rage which had come over him that
Abbe Judaine and the doctor could not help smiling. Pierre, however,
remained grave, chilled by the great quiver which swept by. Were not
those words he had just heard the despairing imprecations of Lazarus? He
had often imagined Lazarus emerging from the tomb and crying aloud: “Why
hast Thou again awakened me to this abominable life, O Lord? I was
sleeping the eternal, dreamless sleep so deeply; I was at last enjoying
such sweet repose amidst the delights of nihility! I had known every
wretchedness and every dolour, treachery, vain hope, defeat, sickness; as
one of the living I had paid my frightful debt to suffering, for I was
born without knowing why, and I lived without knowing how; and now,
behold, O Lord, Thou requirest me to pay my debt yet again; Thou
condemnest me to serve my term of punishment afresh! Have I then been
guilty of some inexpiable transgression that thou shouldst inflict such
cruel chastisement upon me? Alas! to live again, to feel oneself die a
little in one’s flesh each day, to have no intelligence save such as is
required in order to doubt; no will, save such as one must have to be
unable; no tenderness, save such as is needed to weep over one’s own
sorrows. Yet it was passed, I had crossed the terrifying threshold of
death, I had known that second which is so horrible that it sufficeth to
poison the whole of life. I had felt the sweat of agony cover me with
moisture, the blood flow back from my limbs, my breath forsake me, flee
away in a last gasp. And Thou ordainest that I should know this distress
a second time, that I should die twice, that my human misery should
exceed that of all mankind. Then may it be even now, O Lord! Yes, I
entreat Thee, do also this great miracle; may I once more lay myself down
in this grave, and again fall asleep without suffering from the
interruption of my eternal slumber. Have mercy upon me, and forbear from
inflicting on me the torture of living yet again; that torture which is
so frightful that Thou hast never inflicted it on any being. I have
always loved Thee and served Thee; and I beseech Thee do not make of me
the greatest example of Thy wrath, a cause of terror unto all
generations. But show unto me Thy gentleness and loving kindness, O Lord!
restore unto me the slumber I have earned, and let me sleep once more
amid the delights of Thy nihility.”

While Pierre was pondering in this wise, Abbe Judaine had led the
Commander away, at last managing to calm him; and now the young priest
shook hands with Doctor Chassaigne, recollecting that it was past five
o’clock, and that Marie must be waiting for him. On his way back to the
Grotto, however, he encountered the Abbe des Hermoises deep in
conversation with M. de Guersaint, who had only just left his room at the
hotel, and was quite enlivened by his good nap. He and his companion were
admiring the extraordinary beauty which the fervour of faith imparted to
some women’s countenances, and they also spoke of their projected trip to
the Cirque de Gavarnie.

On learning, however, that Marie had taken a first bath with no effect,
M. de Guersaint at once followed Pierre. They found the poor girl still
in the same painful stupor, with her eyes still fixed on the Blessed
Virgin who had not deigned to hear her. She did not answer the loving
words which her father addressed to her, but simply glanced at him with
her large distressful eyes, and then again turned them upon the marble
statue which looked so white amid the radiance of the tapers. And whilst
Pierre stood waiting to take her back to the hospital, M. de Guersaint
devoutly fell upon his knees. At first he prayed with passionate ardour
for his daughter’s cure, and then he solicited, on his own behalf, the
favour of finding some wealthy person who would provide him with the
million francs that he needed for his studies on aerial navigation.




V. BERNADETTE’S TRIALS

ABOUT eleven o’clock that night, leaving M. de Guersaint in his room at
the Hotel of the Apparitions, it occurred to Pierre to return for a
moment to the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours before going to bed
himself. He had left Marie in such a despairing state, so fiercely
silent, that he was full of anxiety about her. And when he had asked for
Madame de Jonquiere at the door of the Sainte-Honorine Ward he became yet
more anxious, for the news was by no means good. The young girl, said the
superintendent, had not even opened her mouth. She would answer nobody,
and had even refused to eat. Madame de Jonquiere, insisted therefore that
Pierre should come in. True, the presence of men was forbidden in the
women’s wards at night-time, but then a priest is not a man.

“She only cares for you and will only listen to you,” said the worthy
lady. “Pray come in and sit down near her till Abbe Judaine arrives. He
will come at about one in the morning to administer the communion to our
more afflicted sufferers, those who cannot move and who have to eat at
daybreak. You will be able to assist him.”

Pierre thereupon followed Madame de Jonquiere, who installed him at the
head of Marie’s bed. “My dear child,” she said to the girl, “I have
brought you somebody who is very fond of you. You will be able to chat
with him, and you will be reasonable now, won’t you?”

Marie, however, on recognising Pierre, gazed at him with an air of
exasperated suffering, a black, stern expression of revolt.

“Would you like him to read something to you,” resumed Madame de
Jonquiere, “something that would ease and console you as he did in the
train? No? It wouldn’t interest you, you don’t care for it? Well, we will
see by-and-by. I will leave him with you, and I am sure you will be quite
reasonable again in a few minutes.”

Pierre then began speaking to her in a low voice, saying all the kind
consoling things that his heart could think of, and entreating her not to
allow herself to sink into such despair. If the Blessed Virgin had not
cured her on the first day, it was because she reserved her for some
conspicuous miracle. But he spoke in vain. Marie had turned her head
away, and did not even seem to listen as she lay there with a bitter
expression on her mouth and a gleam of irritation in her eyes, which
wandered away into space. Accordingly he ceased speaking and began to
gaze at the ward around him.

The spectacle was a frightful one. Never before had such a nausea of pity
and terror affected his heart. They had long since dined, nevertheless
plates of food which had been brought up from the kitchens still lay
about the beds; and all through the night there were some who ate whilst
others continued restlessly moaning, asking to be turned over or helped
out of bed. As the hours went by a kind of vague delirium seemed to come
upon almost all of them. Very few were able to sleep quietly. Some had
been undressed and were lying between the sheets, but the greater number
were simply stretched out on the beds, it being so difficult to get their
clothes off that they did not even change their linen during the five
days of the pilgrimage. In the semi-obscurity, moreover, the obstruction
of the ward seemed to have increased. To the fifteen beds ranged along
the walls and the seven mattresses filling the central space, some fresh
pallets had been added, and on all sides there was a confused litter of
ragged garments, old baskets, boxes, and valises. Indeed, you no longer
knew where to step. Two smoky lanterns shed but a dim light upon this
encampment of dying women, in which a sickly smell prevailed; for,
instead of any freshness, merely the heavy heat of the August night came
in through the two windows which had been left ajar. Nightmare-like
shadows and cries sped to and fro, peopling the inferno, amidst the
nocturnal agony of so much accumulated suffering.

However, Pierre recognised Raymonde, who, her duties over, had come to
kiss her mother, before going to sleep in one of the garrets reserved to
the Sisters of the hospital. For her own part, Madame de Jonquiere,
taking her functions to heart, did not close her eyes during the three
nights spent at Lourdes.

She certainly had an arm-chair in which to rest herself, but she never
sat down in it for a moment with out being disturbed. It must be admitted
that she was bravely seconded by little Madame Desagneaux, who displayed
such enthusiastic zeal that Sister Hyacinthe asked her, with a smile:
“Why don’t you take the vows?” whereupon she responded, with an air of
scared surprise: “Oh! I can’t, I’m married, you know, and I’m very fond
of my husband.” As for Madame Volmar, she had not even shown herself; but
it was alleged that Madame de Jonquiere had sent her to bed on hearing
her complain of a frightful headache. And this had put Madame Desagneaux
in quite a temper; for, as she sensibly enough remarked, a person had no
business to offer to nurse the sick when the slightest exertion exhausted
her. She herself, however, at last began to feel her legs and arms
aching, though she would not admit it, but hastened to every patient whom
she heard calling, ever ready as she was to lend a helping hand. In Paris
she would have rung for a servant rather than have moved a candlestick
herself; but here she was ever coming and going, bringing and emptying
basins, and passing her arms around patients to hold them up, whilst
Madame de Jonquiere slipped pillows behind them. However, shortly after
eleven o’clock, she was all at once overpowered. Having imprudently
stretched herself in the armchair for a moment’s rest, she there fell
soundly asleep, her pretty head sinking on one of her shoulders amidst
her lovely, wavy fair hair, which was all in disorder. And from that
moment neither moan nor call, indeed no sound whatever, could waken her.

Madame de Jonquiere, however, had softly approached the young priest
again. “I had an idea,” said she in a low voice, “of sending for Monsieur
Ferrand, the house-surgeon, you know, who accompanies us. He would have
given the poor girl something to calm her. Only he is busy downstairs
trying to relieve Brother Isidore, in the Family Ward. Besides, as you
know, we are not supposed to give medical attendance here; our work
consists in placing our dear sick ones in the hands of the Blessed
Virgin.”

Sister Hyacinthe, who had made up her mind to spend the night with the
superintendent, now drew, near. “I have just come from the Family Ward,”
 she said; “I went to take Monsieur Sabathier some oranges which I had
promised him, and I saw Monsieur Ferrand, who had just succeeded in
reviving Brother Isidore. Would you like me to go down and fetch him?”

But Pierre declined the offer. “No, no,” he replied, “Marie will be
sensible. I will read her a few consoling pages by-and-by, and then she
will rest.”

For the moment, however, the girl still remained obstinately silent. One
of the two lanterns was hanging from the wall close by, and Pierre could
distinctly see her thin face, rigid and motionless like stone. Then,
farther away, in the adjoining bed, he perceived Elise Rouquet, who was
sound asleep and no longer wore her fichu, but openly displayed her face,
the ulcerations of which still continued to grow paler. And on the young
priest’s left hand was Madame Vetu, now greatly weakened, in a hopeless
state, unable to doze off for a moment, shaken as she was by a continuous
rattle. He said a few kind words to her, for which she thanked him with a
nod; and, gathering her remaining strength together, she was at last able
to say: “There were several cures to-day; I was very pleased to hear of
them.”

On a mattress at the foot of her bed was La Grivotte, who in a fever of
extraordinary activity kept on sitting up to repeat her favourite phrase:
“I am cured, I am cured!” And she went on to relate that she had eaten
half a fowl for dinner, she who had been unable to eat for long months
past. Then, too, she had followed the torchlight procession on foot
during nearly a couple of hours, and she would certainly have danced till
daybreak had the Blessed Virgin only been pleased to give a ball. And
once more she repeated: “I am cured, yes, cured, quite cured!”

Thereupon Madame Vetu found enough strength to say with childlike
serenity and perfect, gladsome abnegation: “The Blessed Virgin did well
to cure her since she is poor. I am better pleased than if it had been
myself, for I have my little shop to depend upon and can wait. We each
have our turn, each our turn.”

One and all displayed a like charity, a like pleasure that others should
have been cured. Seldom, indeed, was any jealousy shown; they surrendered
themselves to a kind of epidemical beatitude, to a contagious hope that
they would all be cured whenever it should so please the Blessed Virgin.
And it was necessary that she should not be offended by any undue
impatience; for assuredly she had her reasons and knew right well why she
began by healing some rather than others. Thus with the fraternity born
of common suffering and hope, the most grievously afflicted patients
prayed for the cure of their neighbours. None of them ever despaired,
each fresh miracle was the promise of another one, of the one which would
be worked on themselves. Their faith remained unshakable. A story was
told of a paralytic woman, some farm servant, who with extraordinary
strength of will had contrived to take a few steps at the Grotto, and who
while being conveyed back to the hospital had asked to be set down that
she might return to the Grotto on foot. But she had gone only half the
distance when she had staggered, panting and livid; and on being brought
to the hospital on a stretcher, she had died there, cured, however, said
her neighbours in the ward. Each, indeed, had her turn; the Blessed
Virgin forgot none of her dear daughters unless it were her design to
grant some chosen one immediate admission into Paradise.

All at once, at the moment when Pierre was leaning towards her, again
offering to read to her, Marie burst into furious sobs. Letting her head
fall upon her friend’s shoulder, she vented all her rebellion in a low,
terrible voice, amidst the vague shadows of that awful room. She had
experienced what seldom happened to her, a collapse of faith, a sudden
loss of courage, all the rage of the suffering being who can no longer
wait. Such was her despair, indeed, that she even became sacrilegious.

“No, no,” she stammered, “the Virgin is cruel; she is unjust, for she did
not cure me just now. Yet I felt so certain that she would grant my
prayer, I had prayed to her so fervently. I shall never be cured, now
that the first day is past. It was a Saturday, and I was convinced that I
should be cured on a Saturday. I did not want to speak--and oh! prevent
me, for my heart is too full, and I might say more than I ought to do.”

With fraternal hands he had quickly taken hold of her head, and he was
endeavouring to stifle the cry of her rebellion. “Be quiet, Marie, I
entreat you! It would never do for anyone to hear you--you so pious! Do
you want to scandalise every soul?”

But in spite of her efforts she was unable to keep silence. “I should
stifle, I must speak out,” she said. “I no longer love her, no longer
believe in her. The tales which are related here are all falsehoods;
there is _nothing_, she does not even exist, since she does not hear when
one speaks to her, and sobs. If you only knew all that I said to her! Oh!
I want to go away at once. Take me away, carry me away in your arms, so
that I may go and die in the street, where the passers-by, at least, will
take pity on my sufferings!”

She was growing weak again, and had once more fallen on her back,
stammering, talking childishly. “Besides, nobody loves me,” she said. “My
father was not even there. And you, my friend, forsook me. When I saw
that it was another who was taking me to the piscinas, I began to feel a
chill. Yes, that chill of doubt which I often felt in Paris. And that is
at least certain, I doubted--perhaps, indeed, that is why she did not
cure me. I cannot have prayed well enough, I am not pious enough, no
doubt.”

She was no longer blaspheming, but seeking for excuses to explain the
non-intervention of Heaven. However, her face retained an angry
expression amidst this struggle which she was waging with the Supreme
Power, that Power which she had loved so well and entreated so fervently,
but which had not obeyed her. When, on rare occasions, a fit of rage of
this description broke out in the ward, and the sufferers, lying on their
beds, rebelled against their fate, sobbing and lamenting, and at times
even swearing, the lady-hospitallers and the Sisters, somewhat shocked,
would content themselves with simply closing the bed-curtains. Grace had
departed, one must await its return. And at last, sometimes after long
hours, the rebellious complaints would die away, and peace would reign
again amidst the deep, woeful silence.

“Calm yourself, calm yourself, I implore you,” Pierre gently repeated to
Marie, seeing that a fresh attack was coming upon her, an attack of doubt
in herself, of fear that she was unworthy of the divine assistance.

Sister Hyacinthe, moreover, had again drawn near. “You will not be able
to take the sacrament by-and-by, my dear child,” said she, “if you
continue in such a state. Come, since we have given Monsieur l’Abbe
permission to read to you, why don’t you let him do so?”

Marie made a feeble gesture as though to say that she consented, and
Pierre at once took out of the valise at the foot of her bed, the little
blue-covered book in which the story of Bernadette was so naively
related. As on the previous night, however, when the train was rolling
on, he did not confine himself to the bald phraseology of the book, but
began improvising, relating all manner of details in his own fashion, in
order to charm the simple folks who listened to him. Nevertheless, with
his reasoning, analytical proclivities, he could not prevent himself from
secretly re-establishing the real facts, imparting, for himself alone, a
human character to this legend, whose wealth of prodigies contributed so
greatly to the cure of those that suffered. Women were soon sitting up on
all the surrounding beds. They wished to hear the continuation of the
story, for the thought of the sacrament which they were passionately
awaiting had prevented almost all of them from getting to sleep. And
seated there, in the pale light of the lantern hanging from the wall
above him, Pierre little by little raised his voice, so that he might be
heard by the whole ward.

“The persecutions began with the very first miracles. Called a liar and a
lunatic, Bernadette was threatened with imprisonment. Abbe Peyramale, the
parish priest of Lourdes, and Monseigneur Laurence, Bishop of Tarbes,
like the rest of the clergy, refrained from all intervention, waiting the
course of events with the greatest prudence; whilst the civil
authorities, the Prefect, the Public Prosecutor, the Mayor, and the
Commissary of Police, indulged in excessive anti-religious zeal.”

Continuing his perusal in this fashion, Pierre saw the real story rise up
before him with invincible force. His mind travelled a short distance
backward and he beheld Bernadette at the time of the first apparitions,
so candid, so charming in her ignorance and good faith, amidst all her
sufferings. And she was truly the visionary, the saint, her face assuming
an expression of superhuman beauty during her crises of ecstasy. Her brow
beamed, her features seemed to ascend, her eyes were bathed with light,
whilst her parted lips burnt with divine love. And then her whole person
became majestic; it was in a slow, stately way that she made the sign of
the cross, with gestures which seemed to embrace the whole horizon. The
neighbouring valleys, the villages, the towns, spoke of Bernadette alone.
Although the Lady had not yet told her name, she was recognised, and
people said, “It is she, the Blessed Virgin.” On the first market-day, so
many people flocked into Lourdes that the town quite overflowed. All
wished to see the blessed child whom the Queen of the Angels had chosen,
and who became so beautiful when the heavens opened to her enraptured
gaze. The crowd on the banks of the Gave grew larger each morning, and
thousands of people ended by installing themselves there, jostling one
another that they might lose nothing of the spectacle! As soon as
Bernadette appeared, a murmur of fervour spread: “Here is the saint, the
saint, the saint!” Folks rushed forward to kiss her garments. She was a
Messiah, the eternal Messiah whom the nations await, and the need of whom
is ever arising from generation to generation. And, moreover, it was ever
the same adventure beginning afresh: an apparition of the Virgin to a
shepherdess; a voice exhorting the world to penitence; a spring gushing
forth; and miracles astonishing and enrapturing the crowds that hastened
to the spot in larger and larger numbers.

Ah! those first miracles of Lourdes, what a spring-tide flowering of
consolation and hope they brought to the hearts of the wretched, upon
whom poverty and sickness were preying! Old Bourriette’s restored
eyesight, little Bouhohort’s resuscitation in the icy water, the deaf
recovering their hearing, the lame suddenly enabled to walk, and so many
other cases, Blaise Maumus, Bernade Soubies,* Auguste Bordes, Blaisette
Soupenne, Benoite Cazeaux, in turn cured of the most dreadful ailments,
became the subject of endless conversations, and fanned the illusions of
all those who suffered either in their hearts or their flesh. On
Thursday, March 4th, the last day of the fifteen visits solicited by the
Virgin, there were more than twenty thousand persons assembled before the
Grotto. Everybody, indeed, had come down from the mountains. And this
immense throng found at the Grotto the divine food that it hungered for,
a feast of the Marvellous, a sufficient meed of the Impossible to content
its belief in a superior Power, which deigned to bestow some attention
upon poor folks, and to intervene in the wretched affairs of this lower
world, in order to re-establish some measure of justice and kindness. It
was indeed the cry of heavenly charity bursting forth, the invisible
helping hand stretched out at last to dress the eternal sores of
humanity. Ah! that dream in which each successive generation sought
refuge, with what indestructible energy did it not arise among the
disinherited ones of this world as soon as it found a favourable spot,
prepared by circumstances! And for centuries, perhaps, circumstances had
never so combined to kindle the mystical fire of faith as they did at
Lourdes.

  * I give this name as written by M. Zola; but in other works on
    Lourdes I find it given as “Bernarde Loubie--a bed-ridden old
    woman, cured of a paralytic affection by drinking the water of
    the Grotto.”--Trans.

A new religion was about to be founded, and persecutions at once began,
for religions only spring up amidst vexations and rebellions. And even as
it was long ago at Jerusalem, when the tidings of miracles spread, the
civil authorities--the Public Prosecutor, the Justice of the Peace, the
Mayor, and particularly the Prefect of Tarbes--were all roused and began
to bestir themselves. The Prefect was a sincere Catholic, a worshipper, a
man of perfect honour, but he also had the firm mind of a public
functionary, was a passionate defender of order, and a declared adversary
of fanaticism which gives birth to disorder and religious perversion.
Under his orders at Lourdes there was a Commissary of Police, a man of
great intelligence and shrewdness, who had hitherto discharged his
functions in a very proper way, and who, legitimately enough, beheld in
this affair of the apparitions an opportunity to put his gift of
sagacious skill to the proof. So the struggle began, and it was this
Commissary who, on the first Sunday in Lent, at the time of the first
apparitions, summoned Bernadette to his office in order that he might
question her. He showed himself affectionate, then angry, then
threatening, but all in vain; the answers which the girl gave him were
ever the same. The story which she related, with its slowly accumulated
details, had little by little irrevocably implanted itself in her
infantile mind. And it was no lie on the part of this poor suffering
creature, this exceptional victim of hysteria, but an unconscious
haunting, a radical lack of will-power to free herself from her original
hallucination. She knew not how to exert any such will, she could not,
she would not exert it. Ah! the poor child, the dear child, so amiable
and so gentle, so incapable of any evil thought, from that time forward
lost to life, crucified by her fixed idea, whence one could only have
extricated her by changing her environment, by restoring her to the open
air, in some land of daylight and human affection. But she was the chosen
one, she had beheld the Virgin, she would suffer from it her whole life
long and die from it at last!

Pierre, who knew Bernadette so well, and who felt a fraternal pity for
her memory, the fervent compassion with which one regards a human saint,
a simple, upright, charming creature tortured by her faith, allowed his
emotion to appear in his moist eyes and trembling voice. And a pause in
his narrative ensued. Marie, who had hitherto been lying there quite
stiff, with a hard expression of revolt still upon her face, opened her
clenched hands and made a vague gesture of pity. “Ah,” she murmured, “the
poor child, all alone to contend against those magistrates, and so
innocent, so proud, so unshakable in her championship of the truth!”

The same compassionate sympathy was arising from all the beds in the
ward. That hospital inferno with its nocturnal wretchedness, its
pestilential atmosphere, its pallets of anguish heaped together, its
weary lady-hospitallers and Sisters flitting phantom-like hither and
thither, now seemed to be illumined by a ray of divine charity. Was not
the eternal illusion of happiness rising once more amidst tears and
unconscious falsehoods? Poor, poor Bernadette! All waxed indignant at the
thought of the persecutions which she had endured in defence of her
faith.

Then Pierre, resuming his story, related all that the child had had to
suffer. After being questioned by the Commissary she had to appear before
the judges of the local tribunal. The entire magistracy pursued her, and
endeavoured to wring a retractation from her. But the obstinacy of her
dream was stronger than the common sense of all the civil authorities put
together. Two doctors who were sent by the Prefect to make a careful
examination of the girl came, as all doctors would have done, to the
honest opinion that it was a case of nervous trouble, of which the asthma
was a sure sign, and which, in certain circumstances, might have induced
visions. This nearly led to her removal and confinement in a hospital at
Tarbes. But public exasperation was feared. A bishop had fallen on his
knees before her. Some ladies had sought to buy favours from her for
gold. Moreover she had found a refuge with the Sisters of Nevers, who
tended the aged in the town asylum, and there she made her first
communion, and was with difficulty taught to read and write. As the
Blessed Virgin seemed to have chosen her solely to work the happiness of
others, and she herself had not been cured, it was very sensibly decided
to take her to the baths of Cauterets, which were so near at hand.
However, they did her no good. And no sooner had she returned to Lourdes
than the torture of being questioned and adored by a whole people began
afresh, became aggravated, and filled her more and more with horror of
the world. Her life was over already; she would be a playful child no
more; she could never be a young girl dreaming of a husband, a young wife
kissing the cheeks of sturdy children. She had beheld the Virgin, she was
the chosen one, the martyr. If the Virgin, said believers, had confided
three secrets to her, investing her with a triple armour as it were, it
was simply in order to sustain her in her appointed course.

The clergy had for a long time remained aloof, on its own side full of
doubt and anxiety. Abby Peyramale, the parish priest of Lourdes, was a
man of somewhat blunt ways, but full of infinite kindness, rectitude, and
energy whenever he found himself in what he thought the right path. On
the first occasion when Bernadette visited him, he received this child
who had been brought up at Bartres and had not yet been seen at
Catechism, almost as sternly as the Commissary of Police had done; in
fact, he refused to believe her story, and with some irony told her to
entreat the Lady to begin by making the briars blossom beneath her feet,
which, by the way, the Lady never did. And if the Abbe ended by taking
the child under his protection like a good pastor who defends his flock,
it was simply through the advent of persecution and the talk of
imprisoning this puny child, whose clear eyes shone so frankly, and who
clung with such modest, gentle stubbornness to her original tale.
Besides, why should he have continued denying the miracle after merely
doubting it like a prudent priest who had no desire to see religion mixed
up in any suspicious affair? Holy Writ is full of prodigies, all dogma is
based on the mysterious; and that being so, there was nothing to prevent
him, a priest, from believing that the Virgin had really entrusted
Bernadette with a pious message for him, an injunction to build a church
whither the faithful would repair in procession. Thus it was that he
began loving and defending Bernadette for her charm’s sake, whilst still
refraining from active interference, awaiting as he did the decision of
his Bishop.

This Bishop, Monseigneur Laurence, seemed to have shut himself up in his
episcopal residence at Tarbes, locking himself within it and preserving
absolute silence as though there were nothing occurring at Lourdes of a
nature to interest him. He had given strict instructions to his clergy,
and so far not a priest had appeared among the vast crowds of people who
spent their days before the Grotto. He waited, and even allowed the
Prefect to state in his administrative circulars that the civil and the
religious authorities were acting in concert. In reality, he cannot have
believed in the apparitions of the Grotto of Massabielle, which he
doubtless considered to be the mere hallucinations of a sick child. This
affair, which was revolutionising the region, was of sufficient
importance for him to have studied it day by day, and the manner in which
he disregarded it for so long a time shows how little inclined he was to
admit the truth of the alleged miracles, and how greatly he desired to
avoid compromising the Church in a matter which seemed destined to end
badly. With all his piety, Monseigneur Laurence had a cool, practical
intellect, which enabled him to govern his diocese with great good sense.
Impatient and ardent people nicknamed him Saint Thomas at the time, on
account of the manner in which his doubts persisted until events at last
forced his hand. Indeed, he turned a deaf ear to all the stories that
were being related, firmly resolved as he was that he would only listen
to them if it should appear certain that religion had nothing to lose.

However, the persecutions were about to become more pronounced. The
Minister of Worship in Paris, who had been informed of what was going on,
required that a stop should be put to all disorders, and so the Prefect
caused the approaches to the Grotto to be occupied by the military. The
Grotto had already been decorated with vases of flowers offered by the
zeal of the faithful and the gratitude of sufferers who had been healed.
Money, moreover, was thrown into it; gifts to the Blessed Virgin
abounded. Rudimentary improvements, too, were carried out in a
spontaneous way; some quarrymen cut a kind of reservoir to receive the
miraculous water, and others removed the large blocks of stone, and
traced a path in the hillside. However, in presence of the swelling
torrents of people, the Prefect, after renouncing his idea of arresting
Bernadette, took the serious resolution of preventing all access to the
Grotto by placing a strong palisade in front of it. Some regrettable
incidents had lately occurred; various children pretended that they had
seen the devil, some of them being guilty of simulation in this respect,
whilst others had given way to real attacks of hysteria, in the
contagious nervous unhinging which was so prevalent. But what a terrible
business did the removal of the offerings from the Grotto prove! It was
only towards evening that the Commissary was able to find a girl willing
to let him have a cart on hire, and two hours later this girl fell from a
loft and broke one of her ribs. Likewise, a man who had lent an axe had
one of his feet crushed on the morrow by the fall of a block of stone.*
It was in the midst of jeers and hisses that the Commissary carried off
the pots of flowers, the tapers which he found burning, the coppers and
the silver hearts which lay upon the sand. People clenched their fists,
and covertly called him “thief” and “murderer.” Then the posts for the
palisades were planted in the ground, and the rails were nailed to the
crossbars, no little labour being performed to shut off the Mystery, in
order to bar access to the Unknown, and put the miracles in prison. And
the civil authorities were simple enough to imagine that it was all over,
that those few bits of boarding would suffice to stay the poor people who
hungered for illusion and hope.

  * Both of these accidents were interpreted as miracles.--Trans.

But as soon as the new religion was proscribed, forbidden by the law as
an offence, it began to burn with an inextinguishable flame in the depths
of every soul. Believers came to the river bank in far greater numbers,
fell upon their knees at a short distance from the Grotto, and sobbed
aloud as they gazed at the forbidden heaven. And the sick, the poor
ailing folks, who were forbidden to seek cure, rushed on the Grotto
despite all prohibitions, slipped in whenever they could find an aperture
or climbed over the palings when their strength enabled them to do so, in
the one ardent desire to steal a little of the water. What! there was a
prodigious water in that Grotto, which restored the sight to the blind,
which set the infirm erect upon their legs again, which instantaneously
healed all ailments; and there were officials cruel enough to put that
water under lock and key so that it might not cure any more poor people!
Why, it was monstrous! And a cry of hatred arose from all the humble
ones, all the disinherited ones who had as much need of the Marvellous as
of bread to live! In accordance with a municipal decree, the names of all
delinquents were to be taken by the police, and thus one soon beheld a
woeful _defile_ of old women and lame men summoned before the Justice of
the Peace for the sole offence of taking a little water from the fount of
life! They stammered and entreated, at their wit’s end when a fine was
imposed upon them. And, outside, the crowd was growling; rageful
unpopularity was gathering around those magistrates who treated human
wretchedness so harshly, those pitiless masters who after taking all the
wealth of the world, would not even leave to the poor their dream of the
realms beyond, their belief that a beneficent superior power took a
maternal interest in them, and was ready to endow them with peace of soul
and health of body. One day a whole band of poverty-stricken and ailing
folks went to the Mayor, knelt down in his courtyard, and implored him
with sobs to allow the Grotto to be reopened; and the words they spoke
were so pitiful that all who heard them wept. A mother showed her child
who was half-dead; would they let the little one die like that in her
arms when there was a source yonder which had saved the children of other
mothers? A blind man called attention to his dim eyes; a pale, scrofulous
youth displayed the sores on his legs; a paralytic woman sought to join
her woeful twisted hands: did the authorities wish to see them all
perish, did they refuse them the last divine chance of life, condemned
and abandoned as they were by the science of man? And equally great was
the distress of the believers, of those who were convinced that a corner
of heaven had opened amidst the night of their mournful existences, and
who were indignant that they should be deprived of the chimerical
delight, the supreme relief for their human and social sufferings, which
they found in the belief that the Blessed Virgin had indeed come down
from heaven to bring them the priceless balm of her intervention.
However, the Mayor was unable to promise anything, and the crowd withdrew
weeping, ready for rebellion, as though under the blow of some great act
of injustice, an act of idiotic cruelty towards the humble and the simple
for which Heaven would assuredly take vengeance.

The struggle went on for several months; and it was an extraordinary
spectacle which those sensible men--the Minister, the Prefect, and the
Commissary of Police--presented, all animated with the best intentions
and contending against the ever-swelling crowd of despairing ones, who
would not allow the doors of dreamland to be closed upon them, who would
not be shut off from the mystic glimpse of future happiness in which they
found consolation for their present wretchedness. The authorities
required order, the respect of a discreet religion, the triumph of
reason; whereas the need of happiness carried the people off into an
enthusiastic desire for cure both in this world and in the next. Oh! to
cease suffering, to secure equality in the comforts of life; to march on
under the protection of a just and beneficent Mother, to die only to
awaken in heaven! And necessarily the burning desire of the multitude,
the holy madness of the universal joy, was destined to sweep aside the
rigid, morose conceptions of a well-regulated society in which the
ever-recurring epidemical attacks of religious hallucination are
condemned as prejudicial to good order and healthiness of mind.

The Sainte-Honorine Ward, on hearing the story, likewise revolted. Pierre
again had to pause, for many were the stifled exclamations in which the
Commissary of Police was likened to Satan and Herod. La Grivotte had sat
up on her mattress, stammering: “Ah! the monsters! To behave like that to
the Blessed Virgin who has cured me!”

And even Madame Vetu--once more penetrated by a ray of hope amidst the
covert certainty she felt that she was going to die--grew angry at the
idea that the Grotto would not have existed had the Prefect won the day.
“There would have been no pilgrimages,” she said, “we should not be here,
hundreds of us would not be cured every year.”

A fit of stifling came over her, however, and Sister Hyacinthe had to
raise her to a sitting posture. Madame de Jonquiere was profiting by the
interruption to attend to a young woman afflicted with a spinal
complaint, whilst two other women, unable to remain on their beds, so
unbearable was the heat, prowled about with short, silent steps, looking
quite white in the misty darkness. And from the far end of the ward,
where all was black, there resounded a noise of painful breathing, which
had been going on without a pause, accompanying Pierre’s narrative like a
rattle. Elise Rouquet alone was sleeping peacefully, still stretched upon
her back, and displaying her disfigured countenance, which was slowly
drying.

Midnight had struck a quarter of an hour previously, and Abbe Judaine
might arrive at any moment for the communion. Grace was now again
descending into Marie’s heart, and she was convinced that if the Blessed
Virgin had refused to cure her it was, indeed, her own fault in having
doubted when she entered the piscina. And she, therefore, repented of her
rebellion as of a crime. Could she ever be forgiven? Her pale face sank
down among her beautiful fair hair, her eyes filled with tears, and she
looked at Pierre with an expression of anguish. “Oh! how wicked I was, my
friend,” she said. “It was through hearing you relate how that Prefect
and those magistrates sinned through pride, that I understood my
transgression. One must believe, my friend; there is no happiness outside
faith and love.”

Then, as Pierre wished to break off at the point which he had reached,
they all began protesting and calling for the continuation of his
narrative, so that he had to promise to go on to the triumph of the
Grotto.

Its entrance remained barred by the palisade, and you had to come
secretly at night if you wished to pray and carry off a stolen bottle of
water. Still, the fear of rioting increased, for it was rumoured that
whole villages intended to come down from the hills in order to deliver
God, as they naively expressed it. It was a _levee en masse_ of the
humble, a rush of those who hungered for the miraculous, so irresistible
in its impetuosity that mere common sense, mere considerations of public
order were to be swept away like chaff. 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. Only would he not be showing true
pity and mercy in silencing the scruples of his reason, the noble
prejudices of his faith, in presence of the necessity of granting that
bread of falsehood which poor humanity requires in order to be happy?
Doubtless, he begged the pardon of Heaven for allowing it to be mixed up
in what he regarded as childish pastime, for exposing it to ridicule in
connection with an affair in which there was only sickliness and
dementia. But his flock suffered so much, hungered so ravenously for the
marvellous, for fairy stories with which to lull the pains of life. And
thus, in tears, the Bishop at last sacrificed his respect for the dignity
of Providence to his sensitive pastoral charity for the woeful human
flock.

Then the Emperor in his turn gave way. He was at Biarritz at the time,
and was kept regularly informed of everything connected with this affair
of the apparitions, with which the entire Parisian press was also
occupying itself, for the persecutions would not have been complete if
the pens of Voltairean newspaper-men had not meddled in them. And whilst
his Minister, his Prefect, and his Commissary of Police were fighting for
common sense and public order, the Emperor preserved his wonted
silence--the deep silence of a day-dreamer which nobody ever penetrated.
Petitions arrived day by day, yet he held his tongue. Bishops came, great
personages, great ladies of his circle watched and drew him on one side,
and still he held his tongue. A truceless warfare was being waged around
him: on one side the believers and the men of fanciful minds whom the
Mysterious strongly interested; on the other the unbelievers and the
statesmen who distrusted the disturbances of the imagination;--and still
and ever he held his tongue. Then, all at once, with the sudden decision
of a naturally timid man, he spoke out. The rumour spread that he had
yielded to the entreaties of his wife Eugenie. No doubt she did
intervene, but the Emperor was more deeply influenced by a revival of his
old humanitarian dreams, his genuine compassion for the disinherited.*
Like the Bishop, he did not wish to close the portals of illusion to the
wretched by upholding the unpopular decree which forbade despairing
sufferers to go and drink life at the holy source. So he sent a telegram,
a curt order to remove the palisade, so as to allow everybody free access
to the Grotto.

  * I think this view of the matter the right one, for, as all who
    know the history of the Second Empire are aware, it was about
    this time that the Emperor began taking great interest in the
    erection of model dwellings for the working classes, and the
    plantation and transformation of the sandy wastes of the
    Landes.--Trans.

Then came a shout of joy and triumph. The decree annulling the previous
one was read at Lourdes to the sound of drum and trumpet. The Commissary
of Police had to come in person to superintend the removal of the
palisade. He was afterwards transferred elsewhere like the Prefect.*
People flocked to Lourdes from all parts, the new _cultus_ was organised
at the Grotto, and a cry of joy ascended: God had won the victory!
God?--alas, no! It was human wretchedness which had won the battle, human
wretchedness with its eternal need of falsehood, its hunger for the
marvellous, its everlasting hope akin to that of some condemned man who,
for salvation’s sake, surrenders himself into the hands of an invisible
Omnipotence, mightier than nature, and alone capable, should it be
willing, of annulling nature’s laws. And that which had also conquered
was the sovereign compassion of those pastors, the merciful Bishop and
merciful Emperor who allowed those big sick children to retain the fetich
which consoled some of them and at times even cured others.

  * The Prefect was transferred to Grenoble, and curiously enough his
    new jurisdiction extended over the hills and valleys of La
    Salette, whither pilgrims likewise flocked to drink, pray, and
    wash themselves at a miraculous fountain. Warned by experience,
    however, Baron Massy (such was the Prefect’s name) was careful to
    avoid any further interference in religious matters.--Trans.

In the middle of November the episcopal commission came to Lourdes to
prosecute the inquiry which had been entrusted to it. It questioned
Bernadette yet once again, and studied a large number of miracles.
However, in order that the evidence might be absolute, it only registered
some thirty cases of cure. And Monseigneur Laurence declared himself
convinced. Nevertheless, he gave a final proof of his prudence, by
continuing to wait another three years before declaring in a pastoral
letter that the Blessed Virgin had in truth appeared at the Grotto of
Massabielle and that numerous miracles had subsequently taken place
there. Meantime, he had purchased the Grotto itself, with all the land
around it, from the municipality of Lourdes, on behalf of his see. Work
was then begun, modestly at first, but soon on a larger and larger scale
as money began to flow in from all parts of Christendom. The Grotto was
cleared and enclosed with an iron railing. The Gave was thrown back into
a new bed, so as to allow of spacious approaches to the shrine, with
lawns, paths, and walks. At last, too, the church which the Virgin had
asked for, the Basilica, began to rise on the summit of the rock itself.
From the very first stroke of the pick, Abbe Peyramale, the parish priest
of Lourdes, went on directing everything with even excessive zeal, for
the struggle had made him the most ardent and most sincere of all
believers in the work that was to be accomplished. With his somewhat
rough but truly fatherly nature, he had begun to adore Bernadette, making
her mission his own, and devoting himself, soul and body, to realising
the orders which he had received from Heaven through her innocent mouth.
And he exhausted himself in mighty efforts; he wished everything to be
very beautiful and very grand, worthy of the Queen of the Angels who had
deigned to visit this mountain nook. The first religious ceremony did not
take place till six years after the apparitions. A marble statue of the
Virgin was installed with great pomp on the very spot where she had
appeared. It was a magnificent day, all Lourdes was gay with flags, and
every bell rang joyously. Five years later, in 1869, the first mass was
celebrated in the crypt of the Basilica, whose spire was not yet
finished. Meantime, gifts flowed in without a pause, a river of gold was
streaming towards the Grotto, a whole town was about to spring up from
the soil. It was the new religion completing its foundations. The desire
to be healed did heal; the thirst for a miracle worked the miracle. A
Deity of pity and hope was evolved from man’s sufferings, from that
longing for falsehood and relief which, in every age of humanity, has
created the marvellous palaces of the realms beyond, where an almighty
Power renders justice and distributes eternal happiness.

And thus the ailing ones of the Sainte-Honorine Ward only beheld in the
victory of the Grotto the triumph of their hopes of cure. Along the rows
of beds there was a quiver of joy when, with his heart stirred by all
those poor faces turned towards him, eager for certainty, Pierre
repeated: “God had conquered. Since that day the miracles have never
ceased, and it is the most humble who are the most frequently relieved.”

Then he laid down the little book. Abbe Judaine was coming in, and the
Sacrament was about to be administered. Marie, however, again penetrated
by the fever of faith, her hands burning, leant towards Pierre. “Oh, my
friend!” said she, “I pray you hear me confess my fault and absolve me. I
have blasphemed, and have been guilty of mortal sin. If you do not
succour me, I shall be unable to receive the Blessed Sacrament, and yet I
so greatly need to be consoled and strengthened.”

The young priest refused her request with a wave of the hand. He had
never been willing to act as confessor to this friend, the only woman he
had loved in the healthy, smiling days of youth. However, she insisted.
“I beg you to do so,” said she; “you will help to work the miracle of my
cure.”

Then he gave way and received the avowal of her fault, that impious
rebellion induced by suffering, that rebellion against the Virgin who had
remained deaf to her prayers. And afterwards he granted her absolution in
the sacramental form.

Meanwhile Abbe Judaine had already deposited the ciborium on a little
table, between two lighted tapers, which looked like woeful stars in the
semi-obscurity of the ward. Madame de Jonquiere had just decided to open
one of the windows quite wide, for the odour emanating from all the
suffering bodies and heaped-up rags had become unbearable. But no air
came in from the narrow courtyard into which the window opened; though
black with night, it seemed like a well of fire. Having offered to act as
server, Pierre repeated the “Confiteor.” Then, after responding with the
“Misereatur” and the “Indulgentiam,” the chaplain, who wore his alb,
raised the pyx, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins
of the world.” All the women who, writhing in agony, were impatiently
awaiting the communion, like dying creatures who await life from some
fresh medicine which is a long time coming, thereupon thrice repeated, in
all humility, and with lips almost closed: “Lord, I am not worthy that
Thou shouldst enter under my roof; but only say the word and my soul
shall be healed.”

Abbe Judaine had begun to make the round of those woeful beds,
accompanied by Pierre, and followed by Madame de Jonquiere and Sister
Hyacinthe, each of whom carried one of the lighted tapers. The Sister
designated those who were to communicate; and, murmuring the customary
Latin words, the priest leant forward and placed the Host somewhat at
random on the sufferer’s tongue. Almost all were waiting for him with
widely opened, glittering eyes, amidst the disorder of that hastily
pitched camp. Two were found to be sound asleep, however, and had to be
awakened. Several were moaning without being conscious of it, and
continued moaning even after they had received the sacrament. At the far
end of the ward, the rattle of the poor creature who could not be seen
still resounded. And nothing could have been more mournful than the
appearance of that little _cortege_ in the semi-darkness, amidst which
the yellow flames of the tapers gleamed like stars.

But Marie’s face, to which an expression of ecstasy had returned, was
like a divine apparition. Although La Grivotte was hungering for the
bread of life, they had refused her the sacrament on this occasion, as it
was to be administered to her in the morning at the Rosary; Madame Vetu,
however, had received the Host on her black tongue in a hiccough. And now
Marie was lying there under the pale light of the tapers, looking so
beautiful amidst her fair hair, with her eyes dilated and her features
transfigured by faith, that everyone admired her. She received the
sacrament with rapture; Heaven visibly descended into her poor, youthful
frame, reduced to such physical wretchedness. And, clasping Pierre’s
hand, she detained him for a moment, saying: “Oh! she will heal me, my
friend, she has just promised me that she will do so. Go and take some
rest. I shall sleep so soundly now!”

As he withdrew in company with Abbe Judaine, Pierre caught sight of
little Madame Desagneaux stretched out in the arm-chair in which
weariness had overpowered her. Nothing could awaken her. It was now
half-past one in the morning; and Madame de Jonquiere and her assistant,
Sister Hyacinthe, were still going backwards and forwards, turning the
patients over, cleansing them, and dressing their sores. However, the
ward was becoming more peaceful, its heavy darkness had grown less
oppressive since Bernadette with her charm had passed through it. The
visionary’s little shadow was now flitting in triumph from bed to bed,
completing its work, bringing a little of heaven to each of the
despairing ones, each of the disinherited ones of this world; and as they
all at last sank to sleep they could see the little shepherdess, so
young, so ill herself, leaning over them and kissing them with a kindly
smile.





THE THIRD DAY




I. BED AND BOARD

AT seven o’clock on the morning of that fine, bright, warm August Sunday,
M. de Guersaint was already up and dressed in one of the two little rooms
which he had fortunately been able to secure on the third floor of the
Hotel of the Apparitions. He had gone to bed at eleven o’clock the night
before and had awoke feeling quite fresh and gay. As soon as he was
dressed he entered the adjoining room which Pierre occupied; but the
young priest, who had not returned to the hotel until past one in the
morning, with his blood heated by insomnia, had been unable to doze off
until daybreak and was now still slumbering. His cassock flung across a
chair, his other garments scattered here and there, testified to his
great weariness and agitation of mind.

“Come, come, you lazybones!” cried M. de Guersaint gaily; “can’t you hear
the bells ringing?”

Pierre awoke with a start, quite surprised to find himself in that little
hotel room into which the sunlight was streaming. All the joyous peals of
the bells, the music of the chiming, happy town, moreover, came in
through the window which he had left open.

“We shall never have time to get to the hospital before eight o’clock to
fetch Marie,” resumed M. de Guersaint, “for we must have some breakfast,
eh?”

“Of course, make haste and order two cups of chocolate. I will get up at
once, I sha’n’t be long,” replied Pierre.

In spite of the fatigue which had already stiffened his joints, he sprang
out of bed as soon as he was alone, and made all haste with his toilet.
However, he still had his head in the washing basin, ducking it in the
fresh, cool water, when M. de Guersaint, who was unable to remain alone,
came back again. “I’ve given the order,” said he; “they will bring it up.
Ah! what a curious place this hotel is! You have of course seen the
landlord, Master Majeste, clad in white from head to foot and looking so
dignified in his office. The place is crammed, it appears; they have
never had so many people before. So it is no wonder that there should be
such a fearful noise. I was wakened up three times during the night.
People kept on talking in the room next to mine. And you, did you sleep
well?”

“No, indeed,” answered Pierre; “I was tired to death, but I couldn’t
close my eyes. No doubt it was the uproar you speak of that prevented
me.”

In his turn he then began to talk of the thin partitions, and the manner
in which the house had been crammed with people until it seemed as though
the floors and the walls would collapse with the strain. The place had
been shaking all night long; every now and then people suddenly rushed
along the passages, heavy footfalls resounded, gruff voices ascended
nobody knew whence; without speaking of all the moaning and coughing, the
frightful coughing which seemed to re-echo from every wall. Throughout
the night people evidently came in and went out, got up and lay down
again, paying no attention to time in the disorder in which they lived,
amid shocks of passion which made them hurry to their devotional
exercises as to pleasure parties.

“And Marie, how was she when you left her last night?” M. de Guersaint
suddenly inquired.

“A great deal better,” replied Pierre; “she had an attack of extreme
discouragement, but all her courage and faith returned to her at last.”

A pause followed; and then the girl’s father resumed with his tranquil
optimism: “Oh! I am not anxious. Things will go on all right, you’ll see.
For my own part, I am delighted. I had asked the Virgin to grant me her
protection in my affairs--you know, my great invention of navigable
balloons. Well, suppose I told you that she has already shown me her
favour? Yes, indeed yesterday evening while I was talking with Abbe des
Hermoises, he told me that at Toulouse he would no doubt be able to find
a person to finance me--one of his friends, in fact, who is extremely
wealthy and takes great interest in mechanics! And in this I at once saw
the hand of God!” M. de Guersaint began laughing with his childish laugh,
and then he added: “That Abbe des Hermoises is a charming man. I shall
see this afternoon if there is any means of my accompanying him on an
excursion to the Cirque de Gavarnie at small cost.”

Pierre, who wished to pay everything, the hotel bill and all the rest, at
once encouraged him in this idea. “Of course,” said he, “you ought not to
miss this opportunity to visit the mountains, since you have so great a
wish to do so. Your daughter will be very happy to know that you are
pleased.”

Their talk, however, was now interrupted by a servant girl bringing the
two cups of chocolate with a couple of rolls on a metal tray covered with
a napkin. She left the door open as she entered the room, so that a
glimpse was obtained of some portion of the passage. “Ah! they are
already doing my neighbour’s room!” exclaimed M. de Guersaint. “He is a
married man, isn’t he? His wife is with him?”

The servant looked astonished. “Oh, no,” she replied, “he is quite
alone!”

“Quite alone? Why, I heard people talking in his room this morning.”

“You must be mistaken, monsieur,” said the servant; “he has just gone out
after giving orders that his room was to be tidied up at once.” And then,
while taking the cups of chocolate off the tray and placing them on the
table, she continued: “Oh! he is a very respectable gentleman. Last year
he was able to have one of the pavilions which Monsieur Majeste lets out
to visitors, in the lane by the side of the hotel; but this year he
applied too late and had to content himself with that room, which greatly
worried him, for it isn’t a large one, though there is a big cupboard in
it. As he doesn’t care to eat with everybody, he takes his meals there,
and he orders good wine and the best of everything, I can tell you.”

“That explains it all!” replied M. de Guersaint gaily; “he dined too well
last night, and I must have heard him talking in his sleep.”

Pierre had been listening somewhat inquisitively to all this chatter.
“And on this side, my side,” said he, “isn’t there a gentleman with two
ladies, and a little boy who walks about with a crutch?”

“Yes, Monsieur l’Abbe, I know them. The aunt, Madame Chaise, took one of
the two rooms for herself; and Monsieur and Madame Vigneron with their
son Gustave have had to content themselves with the other one. This is
the second year they have come to Lourdes. They are very respectable
people too.”

Pierre nodded. During the night he had fancied he could recognise the
voice of M. Vigneron, whom the heat doubtless had incommoded. However,
the servant was now thoroughly started, and she began to enumerate the
other persons whose rooms were reached by the same passage; on the left
hand there was a priest, then a mother with three daughters, and then an
old married couple; whilst on the right lodged another gentleman who was
all alone, a young lady, too, who was unaccompanied, and then a family
party which included five young children. The hotel was crowded to its
garrets. The servants had had to give up their rooms the previous evening
and lie in a heap in the washhouse. During the night, also, some camp
bedsteads had even been set up on the landings; and one honourable
ecclesiastic, for lack of other accommodation, had been obliged to sleep
on a billiard-table.

When the girl had retired and the two men had drunk their chocolate, M.
de Guersaint went back into his own room to wash his hands again, for he
was very careful of his person; and Pierre, who remained alone, felt
attracted by the gay sunlight, and stepped for a moment on to the narrow
balcony outside his window. Each of the third-floor rooms on this side of
the hotel was provided with a similar balcony, having a carved-wood
balustrade. However, the young priest’s surprise was very great, for he
had scarcely stepped outside when he suddenly saw a woman protrude her
head over the balcony next to him--that of the room occupied by the
gentleman whom M. de Guersaint and the servant had been speaking of.

And this woman he had recognised: it was Madame Volmar. There was no
mistaking her long face with its delicate drawn features, its magnificent
large eyes, those brasiers over which a veil, a dimming _moire_, seemed
to pass at times. She gave a start of terror on perceiving him. And he,
extremely ill at ease, grieved that he should have frightened her, made
all haste to withdraw into his apartment. A sudden light had dawned upon
him, and he now understood and could picture everything. So this was why
she had not been seen at the hospital, where little Madame Desagneaux was
always asking for her. Standing motionless, his heart upset, Pierre fell
into a deep reverie, reflecting on the life led by this woman whom he
knew, that torturing conjugal life in Paris between a fierce
mother-in-law and an unworthy husband, and then those three days of
complete liberty spent at Lourdes, that brief bonfire of passion to which
she had hastened under the sacrilegious pretext of serving the divinity.
Tears whose cause he could not even explain, tears that ascended from the
very depths of his being, from his own voluntary chastity, welled into
his eyes amidst the feeling of intense sorrow which came over him.

“Well, are you ready?” joyously called M. de Guersaint as he came back,
with his grey jacket buttoned up and his hands gloved.

“Yes, yes, let us go,” replied Pierre, turning aside and pretending to
look for his hat so that he might wipe his eyes.

Then they went out, and on crossing the threshold heard on their left
hand an unctuous voice which they recognised; it was that of M. Vigneron,
who was loudly repeating the morning prayers. A moment afterwards came a
meeting which interested them. They were walking down the passage when
they were passed by a middle-aged, thick-set, sturdy-looking gentleman,
wearing carefully trimmed whiskers. He bent his back and passed so
rapidly that they were unable to distinguish his features, but they
noticed that he was carrying a carefully made parcel. And immediately
afterwards he slipped a key into the lock of the room adjoining M. de
Guersaint’s, and opening the door disappeared noiselessly, like a shadow.

M. de Guersaint had glanced round: “Ah! my neighbour,” said he; “he has
been to market and has brought back some delicacies, no doubt!”

Pierre pretended not to hear, for his companion was so light-minded that
he did not care to trust him with a secret which was not his own.
Besides, a feeling of uneasiness was returning to him, a kind of chaste
terror at the thought that the world and the flesh were there taking
their revenge, amidst all the mystical enthusiasm which he could feel
around him.

They reached the hospital just as the patients were being brought out to
be carried to the Grotto; and they found that Marie had slept well and
was very gay. She kissed her father and scolded him when she learnt that
he had not yet decided on his trip to Gavarnie. She should really be
displeased with him, she said, if he did not go. Still with the same
restful, smiling expression, she added that she did not expect to be
cured that day; and then, assuming an air of mystery, she begged Pierre
to obtain permission for her to spend the following night before the
Grotto. This was a favour which all the sufferers ardently coveted, but
which only a few favoured ones with difficulty secured. After protesting,
anxious as he felt with regard to the effect which a night spent in the
open air might have upon her health, the young priest, seeing how unhappy
she had suddenly become, at last promised that he would make the
application. Doubtless she imagined that she would only obtain a hearing
from the Virgin when they were alone together in the slumbering
peacefulness of the night. That morning, indeed, she felt so lost among
the innumerable patients who were heaped together in front of the Grotto,
that already at ten o’clock she asked to be taken back to the hospital,
complaining that the bright light tired her eyes. And when her father and
the priest had again installed her in the Sainte-Honorine Ward, she gave
them their liberty for the remainder of the day. “No, don’t come to fetch
me,” she said, “I shall not go back to the Grotto this afternoon--it
would be useless. But you will come for me this evening at nine o’clock,
won’t you, Pierre? It is agreed, you have given me your word.”

He repeated that he would endeavour to secure the requisite permission,
and that, if necessary, he would apply to Father Fourcade in person.

“Then, till this evening, darling,” said M. de Guersaint, kissing his
daughter. And he and Pierre went off together, leaving her lying on her
bed, with an absorbed expression on her features, as her large, smiling
eyes wandered away into space.

It was barely half-past ten when they got back to the Hotel of the
Apparitions; but M. de Guersaint, whom the fine weather delighted, talked
of having _dejeuner_ at once, so that he might the sooner start upon a
ramble through Lourdes. First of all, however, he wished to go up to his
room, and Pierre following him, they encountered quite a drama on their
way. The door of the room occupied by the Vignerons was wide open, and
little Gustave could be seen lying on the sofa which served as his bed.
He was livid; a moment previously he had suddenly fainted, and this had
made the father and mother imagine that the end had come. Madame Vigneron
was crouching on a chair, still stupefied by her fright, whilst M.
Vigneron rushed about the room, thrusting everything aside in order that
he might prepare a glass of sugared-water, to which he added a few drops
of some elixir. This draught, he exclaimed, would set the lad right
again. But all the same, it was incomprehensible. The boy was still
strong, and to think that he should have fainted like that, and have
turned as white as a chicken! Speaking in this wise, M. Vigneron glanced
at Madame Chaise, the aunt, who was standing in front of the sofa,
looking in good health that morning; and his hands shook yet more
violently at the covert idea that if that stupid attack had carried off
his son, they would no longer have inherited the aunt’s fortune. He was
quite beside himself at this thought, and eagerly opening the boy’s mouth
he compelled him to swallow the entire contents of the glass. Then,
however, when he heard Gustave sigh, and saw him open his eyes again, his
fatherly good-nature reappeared, and he shed tears, and called the lad
his dear little fellow. But on Madame Chaise drawing near to offer some
assistance, Gustave repulsed her with a sudden gesture of hatred, as
though he understood how this woman’s money unconsciously perverted his
parents, who, after all, were worthy folks. Greatly offended, the old
lady turned on her heel, and seated herself in a corner, whilst the
father and mother, at last freed from their anxiety, returned thanks to
the Blessed Virgin for having preserved their darling, who smiled at them
with his intelligent and infinitely sorrowful smile, knowing and
understanding everything as he did, and no longer having any taste for
life, although he was not fifteen.

“Can we be of any help to you?” asked Pierre in an obliging way.

“No, no, I thank you, gentlemen,” replied M. Vigneron, coming for a
moment into the passage. “But oh! we did have a fright! Think of it, an
only son, who is so dear to us too.”

All around them the approach of the _dejeuner_ hour was now throwing the
house into commotion. Every door was banging, and the passages and the
staircase resounded with the constant pitter-patter of feet. Three big
girls passed by, raising a current of air with the sweep of their skirts.
Some little children were crying in a neighbouring room. Then there were
old people who seemed quite scared, and distracted priests who,
forgetting their calling, caught up their cassocks with both hands, so
that they might run the faster to the dining-room. From the top to the
bottom of the house one could feel the floors shaking under the excessive
weight of all the people who were packed inside the hotel.

“Oh, I hope that it is all over now, and that the Blessed Virgin will
cure him,” repeated M. Vigneron, before allowing his neighbours to
retire. “We are going down-stairs, for I must confess that all this has
made me feel faint. I need something to eat, I am terribly hungry.”

When Pierre and M. de Guersaint at last left their rooms, and went
down-stairs, they found to their annoyance that there was not the
smallest table-corner vacant in the large dining-room. A most
extraordinary mob had assembled there, and the few seats that were still
unoccupied were reserved. A waiter informed them that the room never
emptied between ten and one o’clock, such was the rush of appetite,
sharpened by the keen mountain air. So they had to resign themselves to
wait, requesting the waiter to warn them as soon as there should be a
couple of vacant places. Then, scarcely knowing what to do with
themselves, they went to walk about the hotel porch, whence there was a
view of the street, along which the townsfolk, in their Sunday best,
streamed without a pause.

All at once, however, the landlord of the Hotel of the Apparitions,
Master Majeste in person, appeared before them, clad in white from head
to foot; and with a great show of politeness he inquired if the gentlemen
would like to wait in the drawing-room. He was a stout man of
five-and-forty, and strove to bear the burden of his name in a right
royal fashion. Bald and clean-shaven, with round blue eyes in a waxy
face, displaying three superposed chins, he always deported himself with
much dignity. He had come from Nevers with the Sisters who managed the
orphan asylum, and was married to a dusky little woman, a native of
Lourdes. In less than fifteen years they had made their hotel one of the
most substantial and best patronised establishments in the town. Of
recent times, moreover, they had started a business in religious
articles, installed in a large shop on the left of the hotel porch and
managed by a young niece under Madame Majeste’s Supervision.

“You can wait in the drawing-room, gentlemen,” again suggested the
hotel-keeper whom Pierre’s cassock rendered very attentive.

They replied, however, that they preferred to walk about and wait in the
open air. And thereupon Majeste would not leave them, but deigned to chat
with them for a moment as he was wont to do with those of his customers
whom he desired to honour. The conversation turned at first on the
procession which would take place that night and which promised to be a
superb spectacle as the weather was so fine. There were more than fifty
thousand strangers gathered together in Lourdes that day, for visitors
had come in from all the neighbouring bathing stations. This explained
the crush at the _table d’hote_. Possibly the town would run short of
bread as had been the case the previous year.

“You saw what a scramble there is,” concluded Majeste, “we really don’t
know how to manage. It isn’t my fault, I assure you, if you are kept
waiting for a short time.”

At this moment, however, a postman arrived with a large batch of
newspapers and letters which he deposited on a table in the office. He
had kept one letter in his hand and inquired of the landlord, “Have you a
Madame Maze here?”

“Madame Maze, Madame Maze,” repeated the hotel-keeper. “No, no, certainly
not.”

Pierre had heard both question and answer, and drawing near he exclaimed,
“I know of a Madame Maze who must be lodging with the Sisters of the
Immaculate Conception, the Blue Sisters as people call them here, I
think.”

The postman thanked him for the information and went off, but a somewhat
bitter smile had risen to Majeste’s lips. “The Blue Sisters,” he
muttered, “ah! the Blue Sisters.” Then, darting a side glance at Pierre’s
cassock, he stopped short, as though he feared that he might say too
much. Yet his heart was overflowing; he would have greatly liked to ease
his feelings, and this young priest from Paris, who looked so
liberal-minded, could not be one of the “band” as he called all those who
discharged functions at the Grotto and coined money out of Our Lady of
Lourdes. Accordingly, little by little, he ventured to speak out.

“I am a good Christian, I assure you, Monsieur l’Abbe,” said he. “In fact
we are all good Christians here. And I am a regular worshipper and take
the sacrament every Easter. But, really, I must say that members of a
religious community ought not to keep hotels. No, no, it isn’t right!”

And thereupon he vented all the spite of a tradesman in presence of what
he considered to be disloyal competition. Ought not those Blue Sisters,
those Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, to have confined themselves
to their real functions, the manufacture of wafers for sacramental
purposes, and the repairing and washing of church linen? Instead of that,
however, they had transformed their convent into a vast hostelry, where
ladies who came to Lourdes unaccompanied found separate rooms, and were
able to take their meals either in privacy or in a general dining-room.
Everything was certainly very clean, very well organised and very
inexpensive, thanks to the thousand advantages which the Sisters enjoyed;
in fact, no hotel at Lourdes did so much business. “But all the same,”
 continued Majeste, “I ask you if it is proper. To think of nuns selling
victuals! Besides, I must tell you that the lady superior is really a
clever woman, and as soon as she saw the stream of fortune rolling in,
she wanted to keep it all for her own community and resolutely parted
with the Fathers of the Grotto who wanted to lay their hands on it. Yes,
Monsieur l’Abbe, she even went to Rome and gained her cause there, so
that now she pockets all the money that her bills bring in. Think of it,
nuns, yes nuns, _mon Dieu_! letting furnished rooms and keeping a _table
d’hote_!”

He raised his arms to heaven, he was stifling with envy and vexation.

“But as your house is crammed,” Pierre gently objected, “as you no longer
have either a bed or a plate at anybody’s disposal, where would you put
any additional visitors who might arrive here?”

Majeste at once began protesting. “Ah! Monsieur l’Abbe!” said he, “one
can see very well that you don’t know the place. It’s quite true that
there is work for all of us, and that nobody has reason to complain
during the national pilgrimage. But that only lasts four or five days,
and in ordinary times the custom we secure isn’t nearly so great. For
myself, thank Heaven, I am always satisfied. My house is well known, it
occupies the same rank as the Hotel of the Grotto, where two landlords
have already made their fortunes. But no matter, it is vexing to see
those Blue Sisters taking all the cream of the custom, for instance the
ladies of the _bourgeoisie_ who spend a fortnight and three weeks here at
a stretch; and that, too, just in the quiet season, when there are not
many people here. You understand, don’t you? There are people of position
who dislike uproar; they go by themselves to the Grotto, and pray there
all day long, for days together, and pay good prices for their
accommodation without any higgling.”

Madame Majeste, whom Pierre and M. de Guersaint had not noticed leaning
over an account-book in which she was adding up some figures, thereupon
intervened in a shrill voice: “We had a customer like that, gentlemen,
who stayed here for two months last year. She went to the Grotto, came
back, went there again, took her meals, and went to bed. And never did we
have a word of complaint from her; she was always smiling, as though to
say that she found everything very nice. She paid her bill, too, without
even looking at it. Ah! one regrets people of that kind.”

Short, thin, very dark, and dressed in black, with a little white collar,
Madame Majeste had risen to her feet; and she now began to solicit
custom: “If you would like to buy a few little souvenirs of Lourdes
before you leave, gentlemen, I hope that you will not forget us. We have
a shop close by, where you will find an assortment of all the articles
that are most in request. As a rule, the persons who stay here are kind
enough not to deal elsewhere.”

However, Majeste was again wagging his head, with the air of a good
Christian saddened by the scandals of the time. “Certainly,” said he, “I
don’t want to show any disrespect to the reverend Fathers, but it must in
all truth be admitted that they are too greedy. You must have seen the
shop which they have set up near the Grotto, that shop which is always
crowded, and where tapers and articles of piety are sold. A bishop
declared that it was shameful, and that the buyers and sellers ought to
be driven out of the temple afresh. It is said, too, that the Fathers run
that big shop yonder, just across the street, which supplies all the
petty dealers in the town. And, according to the reports which circulate,
they have a finger in all the trade in religious articles, and levy a
percentage on the millions of chaplets, statuettes, and medals which are
sold every year at Lourdes.”

Majeste had now lowered his voice, for his accusations were becoming
precise, and he ended by trembling somewhat at his imprudence in talking
so confidentially to strangers. However, the expression of Pierre’s
gentle, attentive face reassured him; and so he continued with the
passion of a wounded rival, resolved to go on to the very end: “I am
willing to admit that there is some exaggeration in all this. But all the
same, it does religion no good for people to see the reverend Fathers
keeping shops like us tradesmen. For my part, of course, I don’t go and
ask for a share of the money which they make by their masses, or a
percentage on the presents which they receive, so why should they start
selling what I sell? Our business was a poor one last year owing to them.
There are already too many of us; nowadays everyone at Lourdes sells
‘religious articles,’ to such an extent, in fact, that there will soon be
no butchers or wine merchants left--nothing but bread to eat and water to
drink. Ah! Monsieur l’Abbe, it is no doubt nice to have the Blessed
Virgin with us, but things are none the less very bad at times.”

A person staying at the hotel at that moment disturbed him, but he
returned just as a young girl came in search of Madame Majeste. The
damsel, who evidently belonged to Lourdes, was very pretty, small but
plump, with beautiful black hair, and a round face full of bright gaiety.

“That is our niece Apolline,” resumed Majeste. “She has been keeping our
shop for two years past. She is the daughter of one of my wife’s
brothers, who is in poor circumstances. She was keeping sheep at Ossun,
in the neighbourhood of Bartres, when we were struck by her intelligence
and nice looks and decided to bring her here; and we don’t repent having
done so, for she has a great deal of merit, and has become a very good
saleswoman.”

A point to which he omitted to refer, was that there were rumours current
of somewhat flighty conduct on Mademoiselle Apolline’s part. But she
undoubtedly had her value: she attracted customers by the power,
possibly, of her large black eyes, which smiled so readily. During his
sojourn at Lourdes the previous year, Gerard de Peyrelongue had scarcely
stirred from the shop she managed, and doubtless it was only the
matrimonial ideas now flitting through his head that prevented him from
returning thither. It seemed as though the Abbe des Hermoises had taken
his place, for this gallant ecclesiastic brought a great many ladies to
make purchases at the repository.

“Ah! you are speaking of Apolline,” said Madame Majeste, at that moment
coming back from the shop. “Have you noticed one thing about her,
gentlemen--her extraordinary likeness to Bernadette? There, on the wall
yonder, is a photograph of Bernadette when she was eighteen years old.”

Pierre and M. de Guersaint drew near to examine the portrait, whilst
Majeste exclaimed: “Bernadette, yes, certainly--she was rather like
Apolline, but not nearly so nice; she looked so sad and poor.”

He would doubtless have gone on chattering, but just then the waiter
appeared and announced that there was at last a little table vacant. M.
de Guersaint had twice gone to glance inside the dining-room, for he was
eager to have his _dejeuner_ and spend the remainder of that fine Sunday
out-of-doors. So he now hastened away, without paying any further
attention to Majeste, who remarked, with an amiable smile, that the
gentlemen had not had so very long to wait after all.

To reach the table mentioned by the waiter, the architect and Pierre had
to cross the dining-room from end to end. It was a long apartment,
painted a light oak colour, an oily yellow, which was already peeling
away in places and soiled with stains in others. You realised that rapid
wear and tear went on here amidst the continual scramble of the big
eaters who sat down at table. The only ornaments were a gilt zinc clock
and a couple of meagre candelabra on the mantelpiece. Guipure curtains,
moreover, hung at the five large windows looking on to the street, which
was flooded with sunshine; some of the fierce arrow-like rays penetrating
into the room although the blinds had been lowered. And, in the middle of
the apartment, some forty persons were packed together at the _table
d’hote_, which was scarcely eleven yards in length and did not supply
proper accommodation for more than thirty people; whilst at the little
tables standing against the walls upon either side another forty persons
sat close together, hustled by the three waiters each time that they went
by. You had scarcely reached the threshold before you were deafened by
the extraordinary uproar, the noise of voices and the clatter of forks
and plates; and it seemed, too, as if you were entering a damp oven, for
a warm, steamy mist, laden with a suffocating smell of victuals, assailed
the face.

Pierre at first failed to distinguish anything, but, when he was
installed at the little table--a garden-table which had been brought
indoors for the occasion, and on which there was scarcely room for two
covers--he felt quite upset, almost sick, in fact, at the sight presented
by the _table d’hote_, which his glance now enfiladed from end to end.
People had been eating at it for an hour already, two sets of customers
had followed one upon the other, and the covers were strewn about in
higgledy-piggledy fashion. On the cloth were numerous stains of wine and
sauce, while there was no symmetry even in the arrangement of the glass
fruit-stands, which formed the only decorations of the table. And one’s
astonishment increased at sight of the motley mob which was collected
there--huge priests, scraggy girls, mothers overflowing with superfluous
fat, gentlemen with red faces, and families ranged in rows and displaying
all the pitiable, increasing ugliness of successive generations. All
these people were perspiring, greedily swallowing, seated slantwise,
lacking room to move their arms, and unable even to use their hands
deftly. And amidst this display of appetite, increased tenfold by
fatigue, and of eager haste to fill one’s stomach in order to return to
the Grotto more quickly, there was a corpulent ecclesiastic who in no
wise hurried, but ate of every dish with prudent slowness, crunching his
food with a ceaseless, dignified movement of the jaws.

“_Fichtre_!” exclaimed M. de Guersaint, “it is by no means cool in here.
All the same, I shall be glad of something to eat, for I’ve felt a
sinking in the stomach ever since I have been at Lourdes. And you--are
you hungry?”

“Yes, yes, I shall eat,” replied Pierre, though, truth to tell, he felt
quite upset.

The _menu_ was a copious one. There was salmon, an omelet, mutton cutlets
with mashed potatoes, stewed kidneys, cauliflowers, cold meats, and
apricot tarts--everything cooked too much, and swimming in sauce which,
but for its grittiness, would have been flavourless. However, there was
some fairly fine fruit on the glass stands, particularly some peaches.
And, besides, the people did not seem at all difficult to please; they
apparently had no palates, for there was no sign of nausea. Hemmed in
between an old priest and a dirty, full-bearded man, a girl of delicate
build, who looked very pretty with her soft eyes and silken skin, was
eating some kidneys with an expression of absolute beatitude, although
the so-called “sauce” in which they swam was simply greyish water.

“Hum!” resumed even M. de Guersaint, “this salmon is not so bad. Add a
little salt to it and you will find it all right.”

Pierre made up his mind to eat, for after all he must take sustenance for
strength’s sake. At a little table close by, however, he had just caught
sight of Madame Vigneron and Madame Chaise, who sat face to face,
apparently waiting. And indeed, M. Vigneron and his son Gustave soon
appeared, the latter still pale, and leaning more heavily than usual on
his crutch. “Sit down next to your aunt,” said his father; “I will take
the chair beside your mother.” But just then he perceived his two
neighbours, and stepping up to them, he added: “Oh! he is now all right
again. I have been rubbing him with some eau-de-Cologne, and by-and-by he
will be able to take his bath at the piscina.”

Thereupon M. Vigneron sat down and began to devour. But what an awful
fright he had had! He again began talking of it aloud, despite himself,
so intense had been his terror at the thought that the lad might go off
before his aunt. The latter related that whilst she was kneeling at the
Grotto the day before, she had experienced a sudden feeling of relief; in
fact, she flattered herself that she was cured of her heart complaint,
and began giving precise particulars, to which her brother-in-law
listened with dilated eyes, full of involuntary anxiety. Most certainly
he was a good-natured man, he had never desired anybody’s death; only he
felt indignant at the idea that the Virgin might cure this old woman, and
forget his son, who was so young. Talking and eating, he had got to the
cutlets, and was swallowing the mashed potatoes by the forkful, when he
fancied he could detect that Madame Chaise was sulking with her nephew.
“Gustave,” he suddenly inquired, “have you asked your aunt’s
forgiveness?” The lad, quite astonished, began staring at his father with
his large clear eyes. “Yes,” added M. Vigneron, “you behaved very badly,
you pushed her back just now when she wanted to help you to sit up.”

Madame Chaise said nothing, but waited with a dignified air, whilst
Gustave, who, without any show of appetite, was finishing the _noix_ of
his cutlet, which had been cut into small pieces, remained with his eyes
lowered on his plate, this time obstinately refusing to make the sorry
show of affection which was demanded of him.

“Come, Gustave,” resumed his father, “be a good boy. You know how kind
your aunt is, and all that she intends to do for you.”

But no, he would not yield. At that moment, indeed, he really hated that
woman, who did not die quickly enough, who polluted the affection of his
parents, to such a point that when he saw them surround him with
attentions he no longer knew whether it were himself or the inheritance
which his life represented that they wished to save. However, Madame
Vigneron, so dignified in her demeanour, came to her husband’s help. “You
really grieve me, Gustave,” said she; “ask your aunt’s forgiveness, or
you will make me quite angry with you.”

Thereupon he gave way. What was the use of resisting? Was it not better
that his parents should obtain that money? Would he not himself die later
on, so as to suit the family convenience? He was aware of all that; he
understood everything, even when not a word was spoken. So keen was the
sense of hearing with which suffering had endowed him, that he even heard
the others’ thoughts.

“I beg your pardon, aunt,” he said, “for not having behaved well to you
just now.”

Then two big tears rolled from his eyes, whilst he smiled with the air of
a tender-hearted man who has seen too much of life and can no longer be
deceived by anything. Madame Chaise at once kissed him and told him that
she was not at all angry. And the Vignerons’ delight in living was
displayed in all candour.

“If the kidneys are not up to much,” M. de Guersaint now said to Pierre,
“here at all events are some cauliflowers with a good flavour.”

The formidable mastication was still going on around them. Pierre had
never seen such an amount of eating, amidst such perspiration, in an
atmosphere as stifling as that of a washhouse full of hot steam. The
odour of the victuals seemed to thicken into a kind of smoke. You had to
shout to make yourself heard, for everybody was talking in loud tones,
and the scared waiters raised a fearful clatter in changing the plates
and forks; not to mention the noise of all the jaw-crunching, a mill-like
grinding which was distinctly audible. What most hurt the feelings of the
young priest, however, was the extraordinary promiscuity of the _table
d’hote_, at which men and women, young girls and ecclesiastics, were
packed together in chance order, and satisfied their hunger like a pack
of hounds snapping at offal in all haste. Baskets of bread went round and
were promptly emptied. And there was a perfect massacre of cold meats,
all the remnants of the victuals of the day before, leg of mutton, veal,
and ham, encompassed by a fallen mass of transparent jelly which quivered
like soft glue. They had all eaten too much already, but these viands
seemed to whet their appetites afresh, as though the idea had come to
them that nothing whatever ought to be left. The fat priest in the middle
of the table, who had shown himself such a capital knife-and-fork, was
now lingering over the fruit, having just got to his third peach, a huge
one, which he slowly peeled and swallowed in slices with an air of
compunction.

All at once, however, the whole room was thrown into agitation. A waiter
had come in and begun distributing the letters which Madame Majeste had
finished sorting. “Hallo!” exclaimed M. Vigneron; “a letter for me! This
is surprising--I did not give my address to anybody.” Then, at a sudden
recollection, he added, “Yes I did, though; this must have come from
Sauvageot, who is filling my place at the Ministry.” He opened the
letter, his hands began to tremble, and suddenly he raised a cry: “The
chief clerk is dead!”

Deeply agitated, Madame Vigneron was also unable to bridle her tongue:
“Then you will have the appointment!”

This was the secret dream in which they had so long and so fondly
indulged: the chief clerk’s death, in order that he, Vigneron, assistant
chief clerk for ten years past, might at last rise to the supreme post,
the bureaucratic marshalship. And so great was his delight that he cast
aside all restraint. “Ah! the Blessed Virgin is certainly protecting me,
my dear. Only this morning I again prayed to her for a rise, and, you
see, she grants my prayer!”

However, finding Madame Chaise’s eyes fixed upon his own, and seeing
Gustave smile, he realised that he ought not to exult in this fashion.
Each member of the family no doubt thought of his or her interests and
prayed to the Blessed Virgin for such personal favours as might be
desired. And so, again putting on his good-natured air, he resumed: “I
mean that the Blessed Virgin takes an interest in every one of us and
will send us all home well satisfied. Ah! the poor chief, I’m sorry for
him. I shall have to send my card to his widow.”

In spite of all his efforts he could not restrain his exultation, and no
longer doubted that his most secret desires, those which he did not even
confess to himself, would soon be gratified. And so all honour was done
to the apricot tarts, even Gustave being allowed to eat a portion of one.

“It is surprising,” now remarked M. de Guersaint, who had just ordered a
cup of coffee; “it is surprising that one doesn’t see more sick people
here. All these folks seem to me to have first-rate appetites.”

After a close inspection, however, in addition to Gustave, who ate no
more than a little chicken, he ended by finding a man with a goitre
seated at the _table d’hote_ between two women, one of whom certainly
suffered from cancer. Farther on, too, there was a girl so thin and pale
that she must surely be a consumptive. And still farther away there was a
female idiot who had made her entry leaning on two relatives, and with
expressionless eyes and lifeless features was now carrying her food to
her mouth with a spoon, and slobbering over her napkin. Perhaps there
were yet other ailing ones present who could not be distinguished among
all those noisy appetites, ailing ones whom the journey had braced, and
who were eating as they had not eaten for a long time past. The apricot
tarts, the cheese, the fruits were all engulfed amidst the increasing
disorder of the table, where at last there only remained the stains of
all the wine and sauce which had been spilt upon the cloth.

It was nearly noon. “We will go back to the Grotto at once, eh?” said M.
Vigneron.

Indeed, “To the Grotto! To the Grotto!” were well-nigh the only words you
now heard. The full mouths were eagerly masticating and swallowing, in
order that they might repeat prayers and hymns again with all speed.
“Well, as we have the whole afternoon before us,” declared M. de
Guersaint, “I suggest that we should visit the town a little. I want to
see also if I can get a conveyance for my excursion, as my daughter so
particularly wishes me to make it.”

Pierre, who was stifling, was glad indeed to leave the dining-room. In
the porch he was able to breathe again, though even there he found a
torrent of customers, new arrivals who were waiting for places. No sooner
did one of the little tables become vacant than its possession was
eagerly contested, whilst the smallest gap at the _table d’hote_ was
instantly filled up. In this wise the assault would continue for more
than another hour, and again would the different courses of the _menu_
appear in procession, to be engulfed amidst the crunching of jaws, the
stifling heat, and the growing nausea.




II. THE “ORDINARY.”

WHEN Pierre and M. de Guersaint got outside they began walking slowly
amidst the ever-growing stream of the Sundayfied crowd. The sky was a
bright blue, the sun warmed the whole town, and there was a festive
gaiety in the atmosphere, the keen delight that attends those great fairs
which bring entire communities into the open air. When they had descended
the crowded footway of the Avenue de la Grotte, and had reached the
corner of the Plateau de la Merlasse, they found their way barred by a
throng which was flowing backward amidst a block of vehicles and stamping
of horses. “There is no hurry, however,” remarked M. de Guersaint. “My
idea is to go as far as the Place du Marcadal in the old town; for the
servant girl at the hotel told me of a hairdresser there whose brother
lets out conveyances cheaply. Do you mind going so far?”

“I?” replied Pierre. “Go wherever you like, I’ll follow you.”

“All right--and I’ll profit by the opportunity to have a shave.”

They were nearing the Place du Rosaire, and found themselves in front of
the lawns stretching to the Gave, when an encounter again stopped them.
Mesdames Desagneaux and Raymonde de Jonquiere were here, chatting gaily
with Gerard de Peyrelongue. Both women wore light-coloured gowns, seaside
dresses as it were, and their white silk parasols shone in the bright
sunlight. They imparted, so to say, a pretty note to the scene--a touch
of society chatter blended with the fresh laughter of youth.

“No, no,” Madame Desagneaux was saying, “we certainly can’t go and visit
your ‘ordinary’ like that--at the very moment when all your comrades are
eating.”

Gerard, however, with a very gallant air, insisted on their accompanying
him, turning more particularly towards Raymonde, whose somewhat massive
face was that day brightened by the radiant charm of health.

“But it is a very curious sight, I assure you,” said the young man, “and
you would be very respectfully received. Trust yourself to me,
mademoiselle. Besides, we should certainly find M. Berthaud there, and he
would be delighted to do you the honours.”

Raymonde smiled, her clear eyes plainly saying that she was quite
agreeable. And just then, as Pierre and M. de Guersaint drew near in
order to present their respects to the ladies, they were made acquainted
with the question under discussion. The “ordinary” was a kind of
restaurant or _table d’hote_ which the members of the Hospitality of Our
Lady of Salvation--the bearers, the hospitallers of the Grotto, the
piscinas, and the hospitals--had established among themselves with the
view of taking their meals together at small cost. Many of them were not
rich, for they were recruited among all classes; however, they had
contrived to secure three good meals for the daily payment of three
francs apiece. And in fact they soon had provisions to spare and
distributed them among the poor. Everything was in their own management;
they purchased their own supplies, recruited a cook and a few waiters,
and did not disdain to lend a hand themselves, in order that everything
might be comfortable and orderly.

“It must be very interesting,” said M, de Guersaint, when these
explanations had been given him. “Let us go and see it, if we are not in
the way.”

Little Madame Desagneaux thereupon gave her consent. “Well, if we are
going in a party,” said she, “I am quite willing. But when this gentleman
first proposed to take Raymonde and me, I was afraid that it might not be
quite proper.”

Then, as she began to laugh, the others followed her example. She had
accepted M. de Guersaint’s arm, and Pierre walked beside her on the other
hand, experiencing a sudden feeling of sympathy for this gay little
woman, who was so full of life and so charming with her fair frizzy hair
and creamy complexion.

Behind them came Raymonde, leaning upon Gerard’s arm and talking to him
in the calm, staid voice of a young lady who holds the best principles
despite her air of heedless youth. And since here was the husband whom
she had so often dreamt of, she resolved that she would this time secure
him, make him beyond all question her own. She intoxicated him with the
perfume of health and youth which she diffused, and at the same time
astonished him by her knowledge of housewifely duties and of the manner
in which money may be economised even in the most trifling matters; for
having questioned him with regard to the purchases which he and his
comrades made for their “ordinary,” she proceeded to show him that they
might have reduced their expenditure still further.

Meantime M. de Guersaint and Madame Desagneaux were also chatting
together: “You must be fearfully tired, madame,” said the architect.

But with a gesture of revolt, and an exclamation of genuine anger, she
replied: “Oh no, indeed! Last night, it is true, fatigue quite overcame
me at the hospital; I sat down and dozed off, and Madame de Jonquiere and
the other ladies were good enough to let me sleep on.” At this the others
again began to laugh; but still with the same angry air she continued:
“And so I slept like a log until this morning. It was disgraceful,
especially as I had sworn that I would remain up all night.” Then,
merriment gaining upon her in her turn, she suddenly burst into a
sonorous laugh, displaying her beautiful white teeth. “Ah! a pretty nurse
I am, and no mistake! It was poor Madame de Jonquiere who had to remain
on her legs all the time. I tried to coax her to come out with us just
now. But she preferred to take a little rest.”

Raymonde, who overheard these words, thereupon raised her voice to say:
“Yes, indeed, my poor mamma could no longer keep on her feet. It was I
who compelled her to lie down, telling her that she could go to sleep
without any uneasiness, for we should get on all right without her--”

So saying, the girl gave Gerard a laughing glance. He even fancied that
he could detect a faint squeeze of the fresh round arm which was resting
on his own, as though, indeed, she had wished to express her happiness at
being alone with him so that they might settle their own affairs without
any interference. This quite delighted him; and he began to explain that
if he had not had _dejeuner_ with his comrades that day, it was because
some friends had invited him to join them at the railway-station
refreshment-room at ten o’clock, and had not given him his liberty until
after the departure of the eleven-thirty train.

“Ah! the rascals!” he suddenly resumed. “Do you hear them, mademoiselle?”

The little party was now nearing its destination, and the uproarious
laughter and chatter of youth rang out from a clump of trees which
concealed the old zinc and plaster building in which the “ordinary” was
installed. Gerard began by taking the visitors into the kitchen, a very
spacious apartment, well fitted up, and containing a huge range and an
immense table, to say nothing of numerous gigantic cauldrons. Here,
moreover, the young man called the attention of his companions to the
circumstance that the cook, a fat, jovial-looking man, had the red cross
pinned on his white jacket, being himself a member of the pilgrimage.
Then, pushing open a door, Gerard invited his friends to enter the common
room.

It was a long apartment containing two rows of plain deal tables; and the
only other articles of furniture were numerous rush-seated tavern chairs,
with an additional table which served as a sideboard. The whitewashed
walls and the flooring of shiny, red tiles looked, however, extremely
clean amidst this intentional bareness, which was similar to that of a
monkish refectory. But, the feature of the place which more particularly
struck you, as you crossed the threshold, was the childish gaiety which
reigned there; for, packed together at the tables, were a hundred and
fifty hospitallers of all ages, eating with splendid appetites, laughing,
applauding, and singing, with their mouths full. A wondrous fraternity
united these men, who had flocked to Lourdes from every province of
France, and who belonged to all classes, and represented every degree of
fortune. Many of them knew nothing of one another, save that they met
here and elbowed one another during three days every year, living
together like brothers, and then going off and remaining in absolute
ignorance of each other during the rest of the twelvemonth. Nothing could
be more charming, however, than to meet again at the next pilgrimage,
united in the same charitable work, and to spend a few days of hard
labour and boyish delight in common once more; for it all became, as it
were, an “outing” of a number of big fellows, let loose under a lovely
sky, and well pleased to be able to enjoy themselves and laugh together.
And even the frugality of the table, with the pride of managing things
themselves, of eating the provisions which they had purchased and cooked,
added to the general good humour.

“You see,” explained Gerard, “we are not at all inclined to be sad,
although we have so much hard work to get through. The Hospitality
numbers more than three hundred members, but there are only about one
hundred and fifty here at a time, for we have had to organise two
successive services, so that there may always be some of us on duty at
the Grotto and the hospitals.”

The sight of the little party of visitors assembled on the threshold of
the room seemed to have increased the general delight; and Berthaud, the
superintendent of the bearers, who was lunching at the head of one of the
tables, gallantly rose up to receive the ladies.

“But it smells very nice,” exclaimed Madame Desagneaux in her giddy way.
“Won’t you invite us to come and taste your cookery to-morrow?”

“Oh! we can’t ask ladies,” replied Berthaud, laughing. “But if you
gentlemen would like to join us to-morrow we should be extremely pleased
to entertain you.”

He had at once noticed the good understanding which prevailed between
Gerard and Raymonde, and seemed delighted at it, for he greatly wished
his cousin to make this match. He laughed pleasantly, at the enthusiastic
gaiety which the young girl displayed as she began to question him. “Is
not that the Marquis de Salmon-Roquebert,” she asked, “who is sitting
over yonder between those two young men who look like shop assistants?”

“They are, in fact, the sons of a small stationer at Tarbes,” replied
Berthaud; “and that is really the Marquis, your neighbour of the Rue de
Lille, the owner of that magnificent mansion, one of the richest and most
noble men of title in France. You see how he is enjoying our mutton
stew!”

It was true, the millionaire Marquis seemed delighted to be able to board
himself for his three francs a day, and to sit down at table in genuine
democratic fashion by the side of petty _bourgeois_ and workmen who would
not have dared to accost him in the street. Was not that chance table
symbolical of social communion, effected by the joint practice of
charity? For his part, the Marquis was the more hungry that day, as he
had bathed over sixty patients, sufferers from all the most abominable
diseases of unhappy humanity, at the piscinas that morning. And the scene
around him seemed like a realisation of the evangelical commonalty; but
doubtless it was so charming and so gay simply because its duration was
limited to three days.

Although M. de Guersaint had but lately risen from table, his curiosity
prompted him to taste the mutton stew, and he pronounced it perfect.
Meantime, Pierre caught sight of Baron Suire, the director of the
Hospitality, walking about between the rows of tables with an air of some
importance, as though he had allotted himself the task of keeping an eye
on everything, even on the manner in which his staff fed itself. The
young priest thereupon remembered the ardent desire which Marie had
expressed to spend the night in front of the Grotto, and it occurred to
him that the Baron might be willing to give the necessary authorisation.

“Certainly,” replied the director, who had become quite grave whilst
listening to Pierre, “we do sometimes allow it; but it is always a very
delicate matter! You assure me at all events that this young person is
not consumptive? Well, well, since you say that she so much desires it I
will mention the matter to Father Fourcade and warn Madame de Jonquiere,
so that she may let you take the young lady away.”

He was in reality a very good-natured fellow, albeit so fond of assuming
the air of an indispensable man weighed down by the heaviest
responsibilities. In his turn he now detained the visitors, and gave them
full particulars concerning the organisation of the Hospitality. Its
members said prayers together every morning. Two board meetings were held
each day, and were attended by all the heads of departments, as well as
by the reverend Fathers and some of the chaplains. All the hospitallers
took the Sacrament as frequently as possible. And, moreover, there were
many complicated tasks to be attended to, a prodigious rotation of
duties, quite a little world to be governed with a firm hand. The Baron
spoke like a general who each year gains a great victory over the spirit
of the age; and, sending Berthaud back to finish his _dejeuner_, he
insisted on escorting the ladies into the little sanded courtyard, which
was shaded by some fine trees.

“It is very interesting, very interesting,” repeated Madame Desagneaux.
“We are greatly obliged to you for your kindness, monsieur.”

“Don’t mention it, don’t mention it, madame,” answered the Baron. “It is
I who am pleased at having had an opportunity to show you my little
army.”

So far Gerard had not quitted Raymonde’s side; but M. de Guersaint and
Pierre were already exchanging glances suggestive of leave-taking, in
order that they might repair by themselves to the Place du Marcadal, when
Madame Desagneaux suddenly remembered that a friend had requested her to
send her a bottle of Lourdes water. And she thereupon asked Gerard how
she was to execute this commission. The young man began to laugh. “Will
you again accept me as a guide?” said he. “And by the way, if these
gentlemen like to come as well, I will show you the place where the
bottles are filled, corked, packed in cases, and then sent off. It is a
curious sight.”

M. de Guersaint immediately consented; and all five of them set out
again, Madame Desagneaux still between the architect and the priest,
whilst Raymonde and Gerard brought up the rear. The crowd in the burning
sunlight was increasing; the Place du Rosaire was now overflowing with an
idle sauntering mob resembling some concourse of sight-seers on a day of
public rejoicing.

The bottling and packing shops were situated under one of the arches on
the left-hand side of the Place. They formed a suite of three apartments
of very simple aspect. In the first one the bottles were filled in the
most ordinary of fashions. A little green-painted zinc barrel, not unlike
a watering-cask, was dragged by a man from the Grotto, and the
light-coloured bottles were then simply filled at its tap, one by one;
the blouse-clad workman entrusted with the duty exercising no particular
watchfulness to prevent the water from overflowing. In fact there was
quite a puddle of it upon the ground. There were no labels on the
bottles; the little leaden capsules placed over the corks alone bore an
inscription, and they were coated with a kind of ceruse, doubtless to
ensure preservation. Then came two other rooms which formed regular
packing shops, with carpenters’ benches, tools, and heaps of shavings.
The boxes, most frequently made for one bottle or for two, were put
together with great care, and the bottles were deposited inside them, on
beds of fine wood parings. The scene reminded one in some degree of the
packing halls for flowers at Nice and for preserved fruits at Grasse.

Gerard went on giving explanations with a quiet, satisfied air. “The
water,” he said, “really comes from the Grotto, as you can yourselves
see, so that all the foolish jokes which one hears really have no basis.
And everything is perfectly simple, natural, and goes on in the broad
daylight. I would also point out to you that the Fathers don’t sell the
water as they are accused of doing. For instance, a bottle of water here
costs twenty centimes,* which is only the price of the bottle itself. If
you wish to have it sent to anybody you naturally have to pay for the
packing and the carriage, and then it costs you one franc and seventy
centimes.** However, you are perfectly at liberty to go to the source and
fill the flasks and cans and other receptacles that you may choose to
bring with you.”

  * Four cents, U.S.A.

  ** About 32 cents, U.S.A.

Pierre reflected that the profits of the reverend Fathers in this respect
could not be very large ones, for their gains were limited to what they
made by manufacturing the boxes and supplying the bottles, which latter,
purchased by the thousand, certainly did not cost them so much as twenty
centimes apiece. However, Raymonde and Madame Desagneaux, as well as M.
de Guersaint, who had such a lively imagination, experienced deep
disappointment at sight of the little green barrel, the capsules, sticky
with ceruse, and the piles of shavings lying around the benches. They had
doubtless imagined all sorts of ceremonies, the observance of certain
rites in bottling the miraculous water, priests in vestments pronouncing
blessings, and choir-boys singing hymns of praise in pure crystalline
voices. For his part, Pierre, in presence of all this vulgar bottling and
packing, ended by thinking of the active power of faith. When one of
those bottles reaches some far-away sick-room, and is unpacked there, and
the sufferer falls upon his knees, and so excites himself by
contemplating and drinking the pure water that he actually brings about
the cure of his ailment, there must truly be a most extraordinary plunge
into all-powerful illusion.

“Ah!” exclaimed Gerard as they came out, “would you like to see the
storehouse where the tapers are kept, before going to the offices? It is
only a couple of steps away.”

And then, not even waiting for their answer, he led them to the opposite
side of the Place du Rosaire. His one desire was to amuse Raymonde, but,
in point of fact, the aspect of the place where the tapers were stored
was even less entertaining than that of the packing-rooms which they had
just left. This storehouse, a kind of deep vault under one of the
right-hand arches of the Place, was divided by timber into a number of
spacious compartments, in which lay an extraordinary collection of
tapers, classified according to size. The overplus of all the tapers
offered to the Grotto was deposited here; and such was the number of
these superfluous candles that the little conveyances stationed near the
Grotto railing, ready to receive the pilgrims’ offerings, had to be
brought to the storehouse several times a day in order to be emptied
there, after which they were returned to the Grotto, and were promptly
filled again. In theory, each taper that was offered ought to have been
burnt at the feet of the Virgin’s statue; but so great was the number of
these offerings, that, although a couple of hundred tapers of all sizes
were kept burning by day and night, it was impossible to exhaust the
supply, which went on increasing and increasing. There was a rumour that
the Fathers could not even find room to store all this wax, but had to
sell it over and over again; and, indeed, certain friends of the Grotto
confessed, with a touch of pride, that the profit on the tapers alone
would have sufficed to defray all the expenses of the business.

The quantity of these votive candles quite stupefied Raymonde and Madame
Desagneaux. How many, how many there were! The smaller ones, costing from
fifty centimes to a franc apiece, were piled up in fabulous numbers. M.
de Guersaint, desirous of getting at the exact figures, quite lost
himself in the puzzling calculation he attempted. As for Pierre, it was
in silence that he gazed upon this mass of wax, destined to be burnt in
open daylight to the glory of God; and although he was by no means a
rigid utilitarian, and could well understand that some apparent acts of
extravagance yield an illusive enjoyment and satisfaction which provide
humanity with as much sustenance as bread, he could not, on the other
hand, refrain from reflecting on the many benefits which might have been
conferred on the poor and the ailing with the money represented by all
that wax, which would fly away in smoke.

“But come, what about that bottle which I am to send off?” abruptly asked
Madame Desagneaux.

“We will go to the office,” replied Gerard. “In five minutes everything
will be settled.”

They had to cross the Place du Rosaire once more and ascend the stone
stairway leading to the Basilica. The office was up above, on the left
hand, at the corner of the path leading to the Calvary. The building was
a paltry one, a hut of lath and plaster which the wind and the rain had
reduced to a state of ruin. On a board outside was the inscription:
“Apply here with reference to Masses, Offerings, and Brotherhoods.
Forwarding office for Lourdes water. Subscriptions to the ‘Annals of O.
L. of Lourdes.’” How many millions of people must have already passed
through this wretched shanty, which seemed to date from the innocent days
when the foundations of the adjacent Basilica had scarcely been laid!

The whole party went in, eager to see what might be inside. But they
simply found a wicket at which Madame Desagneaux had to stop in order to
give her friend’s name and address; and when she had paid one franc and
seventy centimes, a small printed receipt was handed her, such as you
receive on registering luggage at a railway station.

As soon as they were outside again Gerard pointed to a large building
standing two or three hundred yards away, and resumed: “There, that is
where the Fathers reside.”

“But we see nothing of them,” remarked Pierre.

This observation so astonished the young man that he remained for a
moment without replying. “It’s true,” he at last said, “we do not see
them, but then they give up the custody of everything--the Grotto and all
the rest--to the Fathers of the Assumption during the national
pilgrimage.”

Pierre looked at the building which had been pointed out to him, and
noticed that it was a massive stone pile resembling a fortress. The
windows were closed, and the whole edifice looked lifeless. Yet
everything at Lourdes came from it, and to it also everything returned.
It seemed, in fact, to the young priest that he could hear the silent,
formidable rake-stroke which extended over the entire valley, which
caught hold of all who had come to the spot, and placed both the gold and
the blood of the throng in the clutches of those reverend Fathers!
However, Gerard just then resumed in a low voice “But come, they do show
themselves, for here is the reverend superior, Father Capdebarthe
himself.”

An ecclesiastic was indeed just passing, a man with the appearance of a
peasant, a knotty frame, and a large head which looked as though carved
with a billhook. His opaque eyes were quite expressionless, and his face,
with its worn features, had retained a loamy tint, a gloomy, russet
reflection of the earth. Monseigneur Laurence had really made a politic
selection in confiding the organisation and management of the Grotto to
those Garaison missionaries, who were so tenacious and covetous, for the
most part sons of mountain peasants and passionately attached to the
soil.

However, the little party now slowly retraced its steps by way of the
Plateau de la Merlasse, the broad boulevard which skirts the inclined way
on the left hand and leads to the Avenue de la Grotte. It was already
past one o’clock, but people were still eating their _dejeuners_ from one
to the other end of the overflowing town. Many of the fifty thousand
pilgrims and sight-seers collected within it had not yet been able to sit
down and eat; and Pierre, who had left the _table d’hote_ still crowded,
who had just seen the hospitallers squeezing together so gaily at the
“ordinary,” found more and more tables at each step he took. On all sides
people were eating, eating without a pause. Hereabouts, however, in the
open air, on either side of the broad road, the hungry ones were humble
folk who had rushed upon the tables set up on either footway--tables
formed of a couple of long boards, flanked by two forms, and shaded from
the sun by narrow linen awnings. Broth and coffee were sold at these
places at a penny a cup. The little loaves heaped up in high baskets also
cost a penny apiece. Hanging from the poles which upheld the awnings were
sausages, chitterlings, and hams. Some of the open-air _restaurateurs_
were frying potatoes, and others were concocting more or less savoury
messes of inferior meat and onions. A pungent smoke, a violent odour,
arose into the sunlight, mingling with the dust which was raised by the
continuous tramp of the promenaders. Rows of people, moreover, were
waiting at each cantine, so that each time a party rose from table fresh
customers took possession of the benches ranged beside the
oilcloth-covered planks, which were so narrow that there was scarcely
room for two bowls of soup to be placed side by side. And one and all
made haste, and devoured with the ravenous hunger born of their fatigue,
that insatiable appetite which so often follows upon great moral shocks.
In fact, when the mind had exhausted itself in prayer, when everything
physical had been forgotten amidst the mental flight into the legendary
heavens, the human animal suddenly appeared, again asserted itself, and
began to gorge. Moreover, under that dazzling Sunday sky, the scene was
like that of a fair-field with all the gluttony of a merrymaking
community, a display of the delight which they felt in living, despite
the multiplicity of their abominable ailments and the dearth of the
miracles they hoped for.

“They eat, they amuse themselves; what else can one expect?” remarked
Gerard, guessing the thoughts of his amiable companions.

“Ah! poor people!” murmured Pierre, “they have a perfect right to do so.”

He was greatly touched to see human nature reassert itself in this
fashion. However, when they had got to the lower part of the boulevard
near the Grotto, his feelings were hurt at sight of the desperate
eagerness displayed by the female vendors of tapers and bouquets, who
with the rough fierceness of conquerors assailed the passers-by in bands.
They were mostly young women, with bare heads, or with kerchiefs tied
over their hair, and they displayed extraordinary effrontery. Even the
old ones were scarcely more discreet. With parcels of tapers under their
arms, they brandished the one which they offered for sale and even thrust
it into the hand of the promenader. “Monsieur,” “madame,” they called,
“buy a taper, buy a taper, it will bring you luck!” One gentleman, who
was surrounded and shaken by three of the youngest of these harpies,
almost lost the skirts of his frock-coat in attempting to escape their
clutches. Then the scene began afresh with the bouquets--large round
bouquets they were, carelessly fastened together and looking like
cabbages. “A bouquet, madame!” was the cry. “A bouquet for the Blessed
Virgin!” If the lady escaped, she heard muttered insults behind her.
Trafficking, impudent trafficking, pursued the pilgrims to the very
outskirts of the Grotto. Trade was not merely triumphantly installed in
every one of the shops, standing close together and transforming each
street into a bazaar, but it overran the footways and barred the road
with hand-carts full of chaplets, medals, statuettes, and religious
prints. On all sides people were buying almost to the same extent as they
ate, in order that they might take away with them some souvenir of this
holy Kermesse. And the bright gay note of this commercial eagerness, this
scramble of hawkers, was supplied by the urchins who rushed about through
the crowd, crying the “Journal de la Grotte.” Their sharp, shrill voices
pierced the ear: “The ‘Journal de la Grotte,’ this morning’s number, two
sous, the ‘Journal de la Grotte.’”

Amidst the continual pushing which accompanied the eddying of the
ever-moving crowd, Gerard’s little party became separated. He and
Raymonde remained behind the others. They had begun talking together in
low tones, with an air of smiling intimacy, lost and isolated as they
were in the dense crowd. And Madame Desagneaux at last had to stop, look
back, and call to them: “Come on, or we shall lose one another!”

As they drew near, Pierre heard the girl exclaim: “Mamma is so very busy;
speak to her before we leave.” And Gerard thereupon replied: “It is
understood. You have made me very happy, mademoiselle.”

Thus the husband had been secured, the marriage decided upon, during this
charming promenade among the sights of Lourdes. Raymonde had completed
her conquest, and Gerard had at last taken a resolution, realising how
gay and sensible she was, as she walked beside him leaning on his arm.

M. de Guersaint, however, had raised his eyes, and was heard inquiring:
“Are not those people up there, on that balcony, the rich folk who made
the journey in the same train as ourselves?--You know whom I mean, that
lady who is so very ill, and whose husband and sister accompany her?”

He was alluding to the Dieulafays; and they indeed were the persons whom
he now saw on the balcony of a suite of rooms which they had rented in a
new house overlooking the lawns of the Rosary. They here occupied a
first-floor, furnished with all the luxury that Lourdes could provide,
carpets, hangings, mirrors, and many other things, without mentioning a
staff of servants despatched beforehand from Paris. As the weather was so
fine that afternoon, the large armchair on which lay the poor ailing
woman had been rolled on to the balcony. You could see her there, clad in
a lace _peignoir_. Her husband, always correctly attired in a black
frock-coat, stood beside her on her right hand, whilst her sister, in a
delightful pale mauve gown, sat on her left smiling and leaning over
every now and then so as to speak to her, but apparently receiving no
reply.

“Oh!” declared little Madame Desagneaux, “I have often heard people speak
of Madame Jousseur, that lady in mauve. She is the wife of a diplomatist
who neglects her, it seems, in spite of her great beauty; and last year
there was a deal of talk about her fancy for a young colonel who is well
known in Parisian society. It is said, however, in Catholic _salons_ that
her religious principles enabled her to conquer it.”

They all five remained there, looking up at the balcony. “To think,”
 resumed Madame Desagneaux, “that her sister, poor woman, was once her
living portrait.” And, indeed, there was an expression of greater
kindliness and more gentle gaiety on Madame Dieulafay’s face. And now you
see her--no different from a dead woman except that she is above instead
of under ground--with her flesh wasted away, reduced to a livid, boneless
thing which they scarcely dare to move. Ah! the unhappy woman!

Raymonde thereupon assured the others that Madame Dieulafay, who had been
married scarcely two years previously, had brought all the jewellery
given her on the occasion of her wedding to offer it as a gift to Our
Lady of Lourdes; and Gerard confirmed this assertion, saying that the
jewellery had been handed over to the treasurer of the Basilica that very
morning with a golden lantern studded with gems and a large sum of money
destined for the relief of the poor. However, the Blessed Virgin could
not have been touched as yet, for the sufferer’s condition seemed, if
anything, to be worse.

From that moment Pierre no longer beheld aught save that young woman on
that handsome balcony, that woeful, wealthy creature lying there high
above the merrymaking throng, the Lourdes mob which was feasting and
laughing in the Sunday sunshine. The two dear ones who were so tenderly
watching over her--her sister who had forsaken her society triumphs, her
husband who had forgotten his financial business, his millions dispersed
throughout the world--increased, by their irreproachable demeanour, the
woefulness of the group which they thus formed high above all other
heads, and face to face with the lovely valley. For Pierre they alone
remained; and they were exceedingly wealthy and exceedingly wretched.

However, lingering in this wise on the footway with their eyes upturned,
the five promenaders narrowly escaped being knocked down and run over,
for at every moment fresh vehicles were coming up, for the most part
landaus drawn by four horses, which were driven at a fast trot, and whose
bells jingled merrily. The occupants of these carriages were tourists,
visitors to the waters of Pau, Bareges, and Cauterets, whom curiosity had
attracted to Lourdes, and who were delighted with the fine weather and
quite inspirited by their rapid drive across the mountains. They would
remain at Lourdes only a few hours; after hastening to the Grotto and the
Basilica in seaside costumes, they would start off again, laughing, and
well pleased at having seen it all. In this wise families in light
attire, bands of young women with bright parasols, darted hither and
thither among the grey, neutral-tinted crowd of pilgrims, imparting to
it, in a yet more pronounced manner, the aspect of a fair-day mob, amidst
which folks of good society deign to come and amuse themselves.

All at once Madame Desagneaux raised a cry “What, is it you, Berthe?” And
thereupon she embraced a tall, charming brunette who had just alighted
from a landau with three other young women, the whole party smiling and
animated. Everyone began talking at once, and all sorts of merry
exclamations rang out, in the delight they felt at meeting in this
fashion. “Oh! we are at Cauterets, my dear,” said the tall brunette. “And
as everybody comes here, we decided to come all four together. And your
husband, is he here with you?”

Madame Desagneaux began protesting: “Of course not,” said she. “He is at
Trouville, as you ought to know. I shall start to join him on Thursday.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” resumed the tall brunette, who, like her friend,
seemed to be an amiable, giddy creature, “I was forgetting; you are here
with the pilgrimage.”

Then Madame Desagneaux offered to guide her friends, promising to show
them everything of interest in less than a couple of hours; and turning
to Raymonde, who stood by, smiling, she added “Come with us, my dear;
your mother won’t be anxious.”

The ladies and Pierre and M. de Guersaint thereupon exchanged bows: and
Gerard also took leave, tenderly pressing Raymonde’s hand, with his eyes
fixed on hers, as though to pledge himself definitively. The women
swiftly departed, directing their steps towards the Grotto, and when
Gerard also had gone off, returning to his duties, M. de Guersaint said
to Pierre: “And the hairdresser on the Place du Marcadal, I really must
go and see him. You will come with me, won’t you?”

“Of course I will go wherever you like. I am quite at your disposal as
Marie does not need us.”

Following the pathways between the large lawns which stretch out in front
of the Rosary, they reached the new bridge, where they had another
encounter, this time with Abbe des Hermoises, who was acting as guide to
two young married ladies who had arrived that morning from Tarbes.
Walking between them with the gallant air of a society priest, he was
showing them Lourdes and explaining it to them, keeping them well away,
however, from its more repugnant features, its poor and its ailing folk,
its odour of low misery, which, it must be admitted, had well-nigh
disappeared that fine, sunshiny day. At the first word which M. de
Guersaint addressed to him with respect to the hiring of a vehicle for
the trip to Gavarnie, the Abbe was seized with a dread lest he should be
obliged to leave his pretty lady-visitors: “As you please, my dear sir,”
 he replied. “Kindly attend to the matter, and--you are quite right, make
the cheapest arrangements possible, for I shall have two ecclesiastics of
small means with me. There will be four of us. Let me know at the hotel
this evening at what hour we shall start.”

Thereupon he again joined his lady-friends, and led them towards the
Grotto, following the shady path which skirts the Gave, a cool,
sequestered path well suited for lovers’ walks.

Feeling somewhat tired, Pierre had remained apart from the others,
leaning against the parapet of the new bridge. And now for the first time
he was struck by the prodigious number of priests among the crowd. He saw
all varieties of them swarming across the bridge: priests of correct mien
who had come with the pilgrimage and who could be recognised by their air
of assurance and their clean cassocks; poor village priests who were far
more timid and badly clothed, and who, after making sacrifices in order
that they might indulge in the journey, would return home quite scared
and, finally, there was the whole crowd of unattached ecclesiastics who
had come nobody knew whence, and who enjoyed such absolute liberty that
it was difficult to be sure whether they had even said their mass that
morning. They doubtless found this liberty very agreeable; and thus the
greater number of them, like Abbe des Hermoises, had simply come on a
holiday excursion, free from all duties, and happy at being able to live
like ordinary men, lost, unnoticed as they were in the multitude around
them. And from the young, carefully groomed and perfumed priest, to the
old one in a dirty cassock and shoes down at heel, the entire species had
its representative in the throng--there were corpulent ones, others but
moderately fat, thin ones, tall ones and short ones, some whom faith had
brought and whom ardour was consuming, some also who simply plied their
calling like worthy men, and some, moreover, who were fond of intriguing,
and who were only present in order that they might help the good cause.
However, Pierre was quite surprised to see such a stream of priests pass
before him, each with his special passion, and one and all hurrying to
the Grotto as one hurries to a duty, a belief, a pleasure, or a task. He
noticed one among the number, a very short, slim, dark man with a
pronounced Italian accent, whose glittering eyes seemed to be taking a
plan of Lourdes, who looked, indeed, like one of those spies who come and
peer around with a view to conquest; and then he observed another one, an
enormous fellow with a paternal air, who was breathing hard through
inordinate eating, and who paused in front of a poor sick woman, and
ended by slipping a five-franc piece into her hand.

Just then, however, M. de Guersaint returned: “We merely have to go down
the boulevard and the Rue Basse,” said he.

Pierre followed him without answering. He had just felt his cassock on
his shoulders for the first time that afternoon, for never had it seemed
so light to him as whilst he was walking about amidst the scramble of the
pilgrimage. The young fellow was now living in a state of mingled
unconsciousness and dizziness, ever hoping that faith would fall upon him
like a lightning flash, in spite of all the vague uneasiness which was
growing within him at sight of the things which he beheld. However, the
spectacle of that ever-swelling stream of priests no longer wounded his
heart; fraternal feelings towards these unknown colleagues had returned
to him; how many of them there must be who believed no more than he did
himself, and yet, like himself, honestly fulfilled their mission as
guides and consolers!

“This boulevard is a new one, you know,” said M. de Guersaint, all at
once raising his voice. “The number of houses built during the last
twenty years is almost beyond belief. There is quite a new town here.”

The Lapaca flowed along behind the buildings on their right and, their
curiosity inducing them to turn into a narrow lane, they came upon some
strange old structures on the margin of the narrow stream. Several
ancient mills here displayed their wheels; among them one which
Monseigneur Laurence had given to Bernadette’s parents after the
apparitions. Tourists, moreover, were here shown the pretended abode of
Bernadette, a hovel whither the Soubirous family had removed on leaving
the Rue des Petits Fosses, and in which the young girl, as she was
already boarding with the Sisters of Nevers, can have but seldom slept.
At last, by way of the Rue Basse, Pierre and his companion reached the
Place du Marcadal.

This was a long, triangular, open space, the most animated and luxurious
of the squares of the old town, the one where the cafes, the chemists,
all the finest shops were situated. And, among the latter, one showed
conspicuously, coloured as it was a lively green, adorned with lofty
mirrors, and surmounted by a broad board bearing in gilt letters the
inscription: “Cazaban, Hairdresser”.

M. de Guersaint and Pierre went in, but there was nobody in the salon and
they had to wait. A terrible clatter of forks resounded from the
adjoining room, an ordinary dining-room transformed into a _table
d’hote_, in which some twenty people were having _dejeuner_ although it
was already two o’clock. The afternoon was progressing, and yet people
were still eating from one to the other end of Lourdes. Like every other
householder in the town, whatever his religious convictions might be,
Cazaban, in the pilgrimage season, let his bedrooms, surrendered his
dining-room, end sought refuge in his cellar, where, heaped up with his
family, he ate and slept, although this unventilated hole was no more
than three yards square. However, the passion for trading and moneymaking
carried all before it; at pilgrimage time the whole population
disappeared like that of a conquered city, surrendering even the beds of
its women and its children to the pilgrims, seating them at its tables,
and supplying them with food.

“Is there nobody here?” called M. de Guersaint after waiting a moment.

At last a little man made his appearance, Cazaban himself, a type of the
knotty but active Pyrenean, with a long face, prominent cheek-bones, and
a sunburned complexion spotted here and there with red. His big,
glittering eyes never remained still; and the whole of his spare little
figure quivered with incessant exuberance of speech and gesture.

“For you, monsieur--a shave, eh?” said he. “I must beg your pardon for
keeping you waiting; but my assistant has gone out, and I was in there
with my boarders. If you will kindly sit down, I will attend to you at
once.”

Thereupon, deigning to operate in person, Cazaban began to stir up the
lather and strop the razor. He had glanced rather nervously, however, at
the cassock worn by Pierre, who without a word had seated himself in a
corner and taken up a newspaper in the perusal of which he appeared to be
absorbed.

A short interval of silence followed; but it was fraught with suffering
for Cazaban, and whilst lathering his customer’s chin he began to
chatter: “My boarders lingered this morning such a long time at the
Grotto, monsieur, that they have scarcely sat down to _dejeuner_. You can
hear them, eh? I was staying with them out of politeness. However, I owe
myself to my customers as well, do I not? One must try to please
everybody.”

M. de Guersaint, who also was fond of a chat, thereupon began to question
him: “You lodge some of the pilgrims, I suppose?”

“Oh! we all lodge some of them, monsieur; it is necessary for the town,”
 replied the barber.

“And you accompany them to the Grotto?”

At this, however, Cazaban revolted, and, holding up his razor, he
answered with an air of dignity “Never, monsieur, never! For five years
past I have not been in that new town which they are building.”

He was still seeking to restrain himself, and again glanced at Pierre,
whose face was hidden by the newspaper. The sight of the red cross pinned
on M. de Guersaint’s jacket was also calculated to render him prudent;
nevertheless his tongue won the victory. “Well, monsieur, opinions are
free, are they not?” said he. “I respect yours, but for my part I don’t
believe in all that phantasmagoria! Oh I’ve never concealed it! I was
already a republican and a freethinker in the days of the Empire. There
were barely four men of those views in the whole town at that time. Oh!
I’m proud of it.”

He had begun to shave M. de Guersaint’s left cheek and was quite
triumphant. From that moment a stream of words poured forth from his
mouth, a stream which seemed to be inexhaustible. To begin with, he
brought the same charges as Majeste against the Fathers of the Grotto. He
reproached them for their dealings in tapers, chaplets, prints, and
crucifixes, for the disloyal manner in which they competed with those who
sold those articles as well as with the hotel and lodging-house keepers.
And he was also wrathful with the Blue Sisters of the Immaculate
Conception, for had they not robbed him of two tenants, two old ladies,
who spent three weeks at Lourdes each year? Moreover you could divine
within him all the slowly accumulated, overflowing spite with which the
old town regarded the new town--that town which had sprung up so quickly
on the other side of the castle, that rich city with houses as big as
palaces, whither flowed all the life, all the luxury, all the money of
Lourdes, so that it was incessantly growing larger and wealthier, whilst
its elder sister, the poor, antique town of the mountains, with its
narrow, grass-grown, deserted streets, seemed near the point of death.
Nevertheless the struggle still continued; the old town seemed determined
not to die, and, by lodging pilgrims and opening shops on her side,
endeavoured to compel her ungrateful junior to grant her a share of the
spoils. But custom only flowed to the shops which were near the Grotto,
and only the poorer pilgrims were willing to lodge so far away; so that
the unequal conditions of the struggle intensified the rupture and turned
the high town and the low town into two irreconcilable enemies, who
preyed upon one another amidst continual intrigues.

“Ah, no! They certainly won’t see me at their Grotto,” resumed Cazaban,
with his rageful air. “What an abusive use they make of that Grotto of
theirs! They serve it up in every fashion! To think of such idolatry,
such gross superstition in the nineteenth century! Just ask them if they
have cured a single sufferer belonging to the town during the last twenty
years! Yet there are plenty of infirm people crawling about our streets.
It was our folk that benefited by the first miracles; but it would seem
that the miraculous water has long lost all its power, so far as we are
concerned. We are too near it; people have to come from a long distance
if they want it to act on them. It’s really all too stupid; why, I
wouldn’t go there even if I were offered a hundred francs!”

Pierre’s immobility was doubtless irritating the barber. He had now begun
to shave M. de Guersaint’s right cheek; and was inveighing against the
Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, whose greed for gain was the one
cause of all the misunderstanding. These Fathers who were at home there,
since they had purchased from the Municipality the land on which they
desired to build, did not even carry out the stipulations of the contract
they had signed, for there were two clauses in it forbidding all trading,
such as the sale of the water and of religious articles. Innumerable
actions might have been brought against them. But they snapped their
fingers, and felt themselves so powerful that they no longer allowed a
single offering to go to the parish, but arranged matters so that the
whole harvest of money should be garnered by the Grotto and the Basilica.

And, all at once, Cazaban candidly exclaimed: “If they were only
reasonable, if they would only share with us!” Then, when M. de Guersaint
had washed his face, and reseated himself, the hairdresser resumed: “And
if I were to tell you, monsieur, what they have done with our poor town!
Forty years ago all the young girls here conducted themselves properly, I
assure you. I remember that in my young days when a young man was wicked
he generally had to go elsewhere. But times have changed, our manners are
no longer the same. Nowadays nearly all the girls content themselves with
selling candles and nosegays; and you must have seen them catching hold
of the passers-by and thrusting their goods into their hands! It is
really shameful to see so many bold girls about! They make a lot of
money, acquire lazy habits, and, instead of working during the winter,
simply wait for the return of the pilgrimage season. And I assure you
that the young men don’t need to go elsewhere nowadays. No, indeed! And
add to all this the suspicious floating element which swells the
population as soon as the first fine weather sets in--the coachmen, the
hawkers, the cantine keepers, all the low-class, wandering folk reeking
with grossness and vice--and you can form an idea of the honest new town
which they have given us with the crowds that come to their Grotto and
their Basilica!”

Greatly struck by these remarks, Pierre had let his newspaper fall and
begun to listen. It was now, for the first time, that he fully realised
the difference between the two Lourdes--old Lourdes so honest and so
pious in its tranquil solitude, and new Lourdes corrupted, demoralised by
the circulation of so much money, by such a great enforced increase of
wealth, by the ever-growing torrent of strangers sweeping through it, by
the fatal rotting influence of the conflux of thousands of people, the
contagion of evil examples. And what a terrible result it seemed when one
thought of Bernadette, the pure, candid girl kneeling before the wild
primitive grotto, when one thought of all the naive faith, all the
fervent purity of those who had first begun the work! Had they desired
that the whole countryside should be poisoned in this wise by lucre and
human filth? Yet it had sufficed that the nations should flock there for
a pestilence to break out.

Seeing that Pierre was listening, Cazaban made a final threatening
gesture as though to sweep away all this poisonous superstition. Then,
relapsing into silence, he finished cutting M. de Guersaint’s hair.

“There you are, monsieur!”

The architect rose, and it was only now that he began to speak of the
conveyance which he wished to hire. At first the hairdresser declined to
enter into the matter, pretending that they must apply to his brother at
the Champ Commun; but at last he consented to take the order. A
pair-horse landau for Gavarnie was priced at fifty francs. However, he
was so pleased at having talked so much, and so flattered at hearing
himself called an honest man, that he eventually agreed to charge only
forty francs. There were four persons in the party, so this would make
ten francs apiece. And it was agreed that they should start off at about
two in the morning, so that they might get back to Lourdes at a tolerably
early hour on the Monday evening.

“The landau will be outside the Hotel of the Apparitions at the appointed
time,” repeated Cazaban in his emphatic way. “You may rely on me,
monsieur.”

Then he began to listen. The clatter of crockery did not cease in the
adjoining room. People were still eating there with that impulsive
voracity which had spread from one to the other end of Lourdes. And all
at once a voice was heard calling for more bread.

“Excuse me,” hastily resumed Cazaban, “my boarders want me.” And
thereupon he rushed away, his hands still greasy through fingering the
comb.

The door remained open for a second, and on the walls of the dining-room
Pierre espied various religious prints, and notably a view of the Grotto,
which surprised him; in all probability, however, the hairdresser only
hung these engravings there during the pilgrimage season by way of
pleasing his boarders.

It was now nearly three o’clock. When the young priest and M. de
Guersaint got outside they were astonished at the loud pealing of bells
which was flying through the air. The parish church had responded to the
first stroke of vespers chiming at the Basilica; and now all the
convents, one after another, were contributing to the swelling peals. The
crystalline notes of the bell of the Carmelites mingled with the grave
notes of the bell of the Immaculate Conception; and all the joyous bells
of the Sisters of Nevers and the Dominicans were jingling together. In
this wise, from morning till evening on fine days of festivity, the
chimes winged their flight above the house-roofs of Lourdes. And nothing
could have been gayer than that sonorous melody resounding in the broad
blue heavens above the gluttonous town, which had at last lunched, and
was now comfortably digesting as it strolled about in the sunlight.




III. THE NIGHT PROCESSION

AS soon as night had fallen Marie, still lying on her bed at the Hospital
of Our Lady of Dolours, became extremely impatient, for she had learnt
from Madame de Jonquiere that Baron Suire had obtained from Father
Fourcade the necessary permission for her to spend the night in front of
the Grotto. Thus she kept on questioning Sister Hyacinthe, asking her:
“Pray, Sister, is it not yet nine o’clock?”

“No, my child, it is scarcely half-past eight,” was the reply. “Here is a
nice woollen shawl for you to wrap round you at daybreak, for the Gave is
close by, and the mornings are very fresh, you know, in these mountainous
parts.”

“Oh! but the nights are so lovely, Sister, and besides, I sleep so little
here!” replied Marie; “I cannot be worse off out-of-doors. _Mon Dieu_,
how happy I am; how delightful it will be to spend the whole night with
the Blessed Virgin!”

The entire ward was jealous of her; for to remain in prayer before the
Grotto all night long was the most ineffable of joys, the supreme
beatitude. It was said that in the deep peacefulness of night the chosen
ones undoubtedly beheld the Virgin, but powerful protection was needed to
obtain such a favour as had been granted to Marie; for nowadays the
reverend Fathers scarcely liked to grant it, as several sufferers had
died during the long vigil, falling asleep, as it were, in the midst of
their ecstasy.

“You will take the Sacrament at the Grotto tomorrow morning, before you
are brought back here, won’t you, my child?” resumed Sister Hyacinthe.

However, nine o’clock at last struck, and, Pierre not arriving, the girl
wondered whether he, usually so punctual, could have forgotten her? The
others were now talking to her of the night procession, which she would
see from beginning to end if she only started at once. The ceremonies
concluded with a procession every night, but the Sunday one was always
the finest, and that evening, it was said, would be remarkably splendid,
such, indeed, as was seldom seen. Nearly thirty thousand pilgrims would
take part in it, each carrying a lighted taper: the nocturnal marvels of
the sky would be revealed; the stars would descend upon earth. At this
thought the sufferers began to bewail their fate; what a wretched lot was
theirs, to be tied to their beds, unable to see any of those wonders.

At last Madame de Jonquiere approached Marie’s bed. “My dear girl,” said
she, “here is your father with Monsieur l’Abbe.”

Radiant with delight, the girl at once forgot her weary waiting. “Oh!
pray let us make haste, Pierre,” she exclaimed; “pray let us make haste!”

They carried her down the stairs, and the young priest harnessed himself
to the little car, which gently rolled along, under the star-studded
heavens, whilst M. de Guersaint walked beside it. The night was moonless,
but extremely beautiful; the vault above looked like deep blue velvet,
spangled with diamonds, and the atmosphere was exquisitely mild and pure,
fragrant with the perfumes from the mountains. Many pilgrims were
hurrying along the street, all bending their steps towards the Grotto,
but they formed a discreet, pensive crowd, with naught of the fair-field,
lounging character of the daytime throng. And, as soon as the Plateau de
la Merlasse was reached, the darkness spread out, you entered into a
great lake of shadows formed by the stretching lawns and lofty trees, and
saw nothing rising on high save the black, tapering spire of the
Basilica.

Pierre grew rather anxious on finding that the crowd became more and more
compact as he advanced. Already on reaching the Place du Rosaire it was
difficult to take another forward step. “There is no hope of getting to
the Grotto yet awhile,” he said. “The best course would be to turn into
one of the pathways behind the pilgrims’ shelter-house and wait there.”

Marie, however, greatly desired to see the procession start. “Oh! pray
try to go as far as the Gave,” said she. “I shall then see everything
from a distance; I don’t want to go near.”

M. de Guersaint, who was equally inquisitive, seconded this proposal.
“Don’t be uneasy,” he said to Pierre. “I am here behind, and will take
care to let nobody jostle her.”

Pierre had to begin pulling the little vehicle again. It took him a
quarter of an hour to pass under one of the arches of the inclined way on
the left hand, so great was the crush of pilgrims at that point. Then,
taking a somewhat oblique course, he ended by reaching the quay beside
the Gave, where there were only some spectators standing on the sidewalk,
so that he was able to advance another fifty yards. At last he halted,
and backed the little car against the quay parapet, in full view of the
Grotto. “Will you be all right here?” he asked.

“Oh yes, thank you. Only you must sit me up; I shall then be able to see
much better.”

M. de Guersaint raised her into a sitting posture, and then for his part
climbed upon the stonework running from one to the other end of the quay.
A mob of inquisitive people had already scaled it in part, like
sight-seers waiting for a display of fireworks; and they were all raising
themselves on tiptoe, and craning their necks to get a better view.
Pierre himself at last grew interested, although there was, so far,
little to see.

Some thirty thousand people were assembled, and, every moment there were
fresh arrivals. All carried candles, the lower parts of which were
wrapped in white paper, on which a picture of Our Lady of Lourdes was
printed in blue ink. However, these candles were not yet lighted, and the
only illumination that you perceived above the billowy sea of heads was
the bright, forge-like glow of the taper-lighted Grotto. A great buzzing
arose, whiffs of human breath blew hither and thither, and these alone
enabled you to realise that thousands of serried, stifling creatures were
gathered together in the black depths, like a living sea that was ever
eddying and spreading. There were even people hidden away under the trees
beyond the Grotto, in distant recesses of the darkness of which one had
no suspicion.

At last a few tapers began to shine forth here and there, like sudden
sparks of light spangling the obscurity at random. Their number rapidly
increased, eyots of stars were formed, whilst at other points there were
meteoric trails, milky ways, so to say, flowing midst the constellations.
The thirty thousand tapers were being lighted one by one, their beams
gradually increasing in number till they obscured the bright glow of the
Grotto and spread, from one to the other end of the promenade, the small
yellow flames of a gigantic brasier.

“Oh! how beautiful it is, Pierre!” murmured Marie; “it is like the
resurrection of the humble, the bright awakening of the souls of the
poor.”

“It is superb, superb!” repeated M. de Guersaint, with impassioned
artistic satisfaction. “Do you see those two trails of light yonder,
which intersect one another and form a cross?”

Pierre’s feelings, however, had been touched by what Marie had just said.
He was reflecting upon her words. There was truth in them. Taken singly,
those slender flames, those mere specks of light, were modest and
unobtrusive, like the lowly; it was only their great number that supplied
the effulgence, the sun-like resplendency. Fresh ones were continually
appearing, farther and farther away, like waifs and strays. “Ah!”
 murmured the young priest, “do you see that one which has just begun to
flicker, all by itself, far away--do you see it, Marie? Do you see how it
floats and slowly approaches until it is merged in the great lake of
light?”

In the vicinity of the Grotto one could see now as clearly as in the
daytime. The trees, illumined from below, were intensely green, like the
painted trees in stage scenery. Above the moving brasier were some
motionless banners, whose embroidered saints and silken cords showed with
vivid distinctness. And the great reflection ascended to the rock, even
to the Basilica, whose spire now shone out, quite white, against the
black sky; whilst the hillsides across the Gave were likewise brightened,
and displayed the pale fronts of their convents amidst their sombre
foliage.

There came yet another moment of uncertainty. The flaming lake, in which
each burning wick was like a little wave, rolled its starry sparkling as
though it were about to burst from its bed and flow away in a river. Then
the banners began to oscillate, and soon a regular motion set in.

“Oh! so they won’t pass this way!” exclaimed M. de Guersaint in a tone of
disappointment.

Pierre, who had informed himself on the matter, thereupon explained that
the procession would first of all ascend the serpentine road--constructed
at great cost up the hillside--and that it would afterwards pass behind
the Basilica, descend by the inclined way on the right hand, and then
spread out through the gardens.

“Look!” said he; “you can see the foremost tapers ascending amidst the
greenery.”

Then came an enchanting spectacle. Little flickering lights detached
themselves from the great bed of fire, and began gently rising, without
it being possible for one to tell at that distance what connected them
with the earth. They moved upward, looking in the darkness like golden
particles of the sun. And soon they formed an oblique streak, a streak
which suddenly twisted, then extended again until it curved once more. At
last the whole hillside was streaked by a flaming zigzag, resembling
those lightning flashes which you see falling from black skies in cheap
engravings. But, unlike the lightning, the luminous trail did not fade
away; the little lights still went onward in the same slow, gentle,
gliding manner. Only for a moment, at rare intervals, was there a sudden
eclipse; the procession, no doubt, was then passing behind some clump of
trees. But, farther on, the tapers beamed forth afresh, rising heavenward
by an intricate path, which incessantly diverged and then started upward
again. At last, however, the time came when the lights no longer
ascended, for they had reached the summit of the hill and had begun to
disappear at the last turn of the road.

Exclamations were rising from the crowd. “They are passing behind the
Basilica,” said one. “Oh! it will take them twenty minutes before they
begin coming down on the other side,” remarked another. “Yes, madame,”
 said a third, “there are thirty thousand of them, and an hour will go by
before the last of them leaves the Grotto.”

Ever since the start a sound of chanting had risen above the low rumbling
of the crowd. The hymn of Bernadette was being sung, those sixty couplets
between which the Angelic Salutation, with its all-besetting rhythm, was
ever returning as a refrain. When the sixty couplets were finished they
were sung again; and that lullaby of “Ave, ave, ave Maria!” came back
incessantly, stupefying the mind, and gradually transporting those
thousands of beings into a kind of wide-awake dream, with a vision of
Paradise before their eyes. And, indeed, at night-time when they were
asleep, their beds would rock to the eternal tune, which they still and
ever continued singing.

“Are we going to stop here?” asked M. de Guersaint, who speedily got
tired of remaining in any one spot. “We see nothing but the same thing
over and over again.”

Marie, who had informed herself by listening to what was said in the
crowd, thereupon exclaimed: “You were quite right, Pierre; it would be
much better to go back yonder under the trees. I so much wish to see
everything.”

“Yes, certainly; we will seek a spot whence you may see it all,” replied
the priest. “The only difficulty lies in getting away from here.”

Indeed, they were now inclosed within the mob of sight-seers; and, in
order to secure a passage, Pierre with stubborn perseverance had to keep
on begging a little room for a suffering girl.

M. de Guersaint meantime brought up the rear, screening the little
conveyance so that it might not be upset by the jostling; whilst Marie
turned her head, still endeavouring to see the sheet of flame spread out
before the Grotto, that lake of little sparkling waves which never seemed
to diminish, although the procession continued to flow from it without a
pause.

At last they all three found themselves out of the crowd, near one of the
arches, on a deserted spot where they were able to breathe for a moment.
They now heard nothing but the distant canticle with its besetting
refrain, and they only saw the reflection of the tapers, hovering like a
luminous cloud in the neighbourhood of the Basilica.

“The best plan would be to climb to the Calvary,” said M. de Guersaint.
“The servant at the hotel told me so this morning. From up there, it
seems, the scene is fairy-like.”

But they could not think of making the ascent. Pierre at once enumerated
the difficulties. “How could we hoist ourselves to such a height with
Marie’s conveyance?” he asked. “Besides, we should have to come down
again, and that would be dangerous work in the darkness amidst all the
scrambling.”

Marie herself preferred to remain under the trees in the gardens, where
it was very mild. So they started off, and reached the esplanade in front
of the great crowned statue of the Virgin. It was illuminated by means of
blue and yellow globes which encompassed it with a gaudy splendour; and
despite all his piety M. de Guersaint could not help finding these
decorations in execrable taste.

“There!” exclaimed Marie, “a good place would be near those shrubs
yonder.”

She was pointing to a shrubbery near the pilgrims’ shelter-house; and the
spot was indeed an excellent one for their purpose, as it enabled them to
see the procession come down by the gradient way on the left, and watch
it as it passed between the lawns to the new bridge and back again.
Moreover, a delightful freshness prevailed there by reason of the
vicinity of the Gave. There was nobody there as yet, and one could enjoy
deep peacefulness in the dense shade which fell from the big plane-trees
bordering the path.

In his impatience to see the first tapers reappear as soon as they should
have passed behind the Basilica, M. de Guersaint had risen on tiptoe. “I
see nothing as yet,” he muttered, “so whatever the regulations may be I
shall sit on the grass for a moment. I’ve no strength left in my legs.”
 Then, growing anxious about his daughter, he inquired: “Shall I cover you
up? It is very cool here.”

“Oh, no! I’m not cold, father!” answered Marie; “I feel so happy. It is
long since I breathed such sweet air. There must be some roses
about--can’t you smell that delicious perfume?” And turning to Pierre she
asked: “Where are the roses, my friend? Can you see them?”

When M. de Guersaint had seated himself on the grass near the little
vehicle, it occurred to Pierre to see if there was not some bed of roses
near at hand. But is was in vain that he explored the dark lawns; he
could only distinguish sundry clumps of evergreens. And, as he passed in
front of the pilgrims’ shelter-house on his way back, curiosity prompted
him to enter it.

This building formed a long and lofty hall, lighted by large windows upon
two sides. With bare walls and a stone pavement, it contained no other
furniture than a number of benches, which stood here and there in
haphazard fashion. There was neither table nor shelf, so that the
homeless pilgrims who had sought refuge there had piled up their baskets,
parcels, and valises in the window embrasures. Moreover, the place was
apparently empty; the poor folk that it sheltered had no doubt joined the
procession. Nevertheless, although the door stood wide open, an almost
unbearable smell reigned inside. The very walls seemed impregnated with
an odour of poverty, and in spite of the bright sunshine which had
prevailed during the day, the flagstones were quite damp, soiled and
soaked with expectorations, spilt wine, and grease. This mess had been
made by the poorer pilgrims, who with their dirty skins and wretched rags
lived in the hall, eating and sleeping in heaps on the benches. Pierre
speedily came to the conclusion that the pleasant smell of roses must
emanate from some other spot; still, he was making the round of the hall,
which was lighted by four smoky lanterns, and which he believed to be
altogether unoccupied, when, against the left-hand wall, he was surprised
to espy the vague figure of a woman in black, with what seemed to be a
white parcel lying on her lap. She was all alone in that solitude, and
did not stir; however, her eyes were wide open.

He drew near and recognised Madame Vincent. She addressed him in a deep,
broken voice: “Rose has suffered so dreadfully to-day! Since daybreak she
has not ceased moaning. And so, as she fell asleep a couple of hours ago,
I haven’t dared to stir for fear lest she should awake and suffer again.”

Thus the poor woman remained motionless, martyr-mother that she was,
having for long months held her daughter in her arms in this fashion, in
the stubborn hope of curing her. In her arms, too, she had brought her to
Lourdes; in her arms she had carried her to the Grotto; in her arms she
had rocked her to sleep, having neither a room of her own, nor even a
hospital bed at her disposal.

“Isn’t the poor little thing any better?” asked Pierre, whose heart ached
at the sight.

“No, Monsieur l’Abbe; no, I think not.”

“But you are very badly off here on this bench. You should have made an
application to the pilgrimage managers instead of remaining like this, in
the street, as it were. Some accommodation would have been found for your
little girl, at any rate; that’s certain.”

“Oh! what would have been the use of it, Monsieur l’Abbe? She is all
right on my lap. And besides, should I have been allowed to stay with
her? No, no, I prefer to have her on my knees; it seems to me that it
will end by curing her.” Two big tears rolled down the poor woman’s
motionless cheeks, and in her stifled voice she continued: “I am not
penniless. I had thirty sous when I left Paris, and I still have ten
left. All I need is a little bread, and she, poor darling, can no longer
drink any milk even. I have enough to last me till we go back, and if she
gets well again, oh! we shall be rich, rich, rich!”

She had leant forward while speaking, and by the flickering light of a
lantern near by, gazed at Rose, who was breathing faintly, with parted
lips. “You see how soundly she is sleeping,” resumed the unhappy mother.
“Surely the Blessed Virgin will take pity on her and cure her, won’t she,
Monsieur l’Abbe? We only have one day left; still, I don’t despair; and I
shall again pray all night long without moving from here. She will be
cured to-morrow; we must live till then.”

Infinite pity was filling the heart of Pierre, who, fearing that he also
might weep, now went away. “Yes, yes, my poor woman, we must hope, still
hope,” said he, as he left her there among the scattered benches, in that
deserted, malodorous hall, so motionless in her painful maternal passion
as to hold her own breath, fearful lest the heaving of her bosom should
awaken the poor little sufferer. And in deepest grief, with closed lips,
she prayed ardently.

On Pierre returning to Marie’s side, the girl inquired of him: “Well, and
those roses? Are there any near here?”

He did not wish to sadden her by telling her what he had seen, so he
simply answered: “No, I have searched the lawns; there are none.”

“How singular!” she rejoined, in a thoughtful way. “The perfume is both
so sweet and penetrating. You can smell it, can’t you? At this moment it
is wonderfully strong, as though all the roses of Paradise were flowering
around us in the darkness.”

A low exclamation from her father interrupted her. M. de Guersaint had
risen to his feet again on seeing some specks of light shine out above
the gradient ways on the left side of the Basilica. “At last! Here they
come!” said he.

It was indeed the head of the procession again appearing; and at once the
specks of light began to swarm and extend in long, wavering double files.
The darkness submerged everything except these luminous points, which
seemed to be at a great elevation, and to emerge, as it were, from the
black depths of the Unknown. And at the same time the everlasting
canticle was again heard, but so lightly, for the procession was far
away, that it seemed as yet merely like the rustle of a coming storm,
stirring the leaves of the trees.

“Ah! I said so,” muttered M. de Guersaint; “one ought to be at the
Calvary to see everything.” With the obstinacy of a child he kept on
returning to his first idea, again and again complaining that they had
chosen “the worst possible place.”

“But why don’t you go up to the Calvary, papa?” at last said Marie.
“There is still time. Pierre will stay here with me.” And with a mournful
laugh she added: “Go; you know very well that nobody will run away with
me.”

He at first refused to act upon the suggestion, but, unable to resist his
desire, he all at once fell in with it. And he had to hasten his steps,
crossing the lawns at a run. “Don’t move,” he called; “wait for me under
the trees. I will tell you of all that I may see up there.”

Then Pierre and Marie remained alone in that dim, solitary nook, whence
came such a perfume of roses, albeit no roses could be found. And they
did not speak, but in silence watched the procession, which was now
coming down from the hill with a gentle, continuous, gliding motion.

A double file of quivering stars leapt into view on the left-hand side of
the Basilica, and then followed the monumental, gradient way, whose curve
is gradually described. At that distance you were still unable to see the
pilgrims themselves, and you beheld simply those well-disciplined
travelling lights tracing geometrical lines amidst the darkness. Under
the deep blue heavens, even the buildings at first remained vague,
forming but blacker patches against the sky. Little by little, however,
as the number of candles increased, the principal architectural
lines--the tapering spire of the Basilica, the cyclopean arches of the
gradient ways, the heavy, squat facade of the Rosary--became more
distinctly visible. And with that ceaseless torrent of bright sparks,
flowing slowly downward with the stubborn persistence of a stream which
has overflowed its banks and can be stopped by nothing, there came as it
were an aurora, a growing, invading mass of light, which would at last
spread its glory over the whole horizon.

“Look, look, Pierre!” cried Marie, in an access of childish joy. “There
is no end of them; fresh ones are ever shining out.”

Indeed, the sudden appearances of the little lights continued with
mechanical regularity, as though some inexhaustible celestial source were
pouring forth all those solar specks. The head of the procession had just
reached the gardens, near the crowned statue of the Virgin, so that as
yet the double file of flames merely outlined the curves of the Rosary
and the broad inclined way. However, the approach of the multitude was
foretokened by the perturbation of the atmosphere, by the gusts of human
breath coming from afar; and particularly did the voices swell, the
canticle of Bernadette surging with the clamour of a rising tide, through
which, with rhythmical persistence, the refrain of “Ave, ave, ave Maria!”
 rolled ever in a louder key.

“Ah, that refrain!” muttered Pierre; “it penetrates one’s very skin. It
seems to me as though my whole body were at last singing it.”

Again did Marie give vent to that childish laugh of hers. “It is true,”
 said she; “it follows me about everywhere. I heard it the other night
whilst I was asleep. And now it is again taking possession of me, rocking
me, wafting me above the ground.” Then she broke off to say: “Here they
come, just across the lawn, in front of us.”

The procession had entered one of the long, straight paths; and then,
turning round the lawn by way of the Breton’s Cross, it came back by a
parallel path. It took more than a quarter of an hour to execute this
movement, during which the double file of tapers resembled two long
parallel streams of flame. That which ever excited one’s admiration was
the ceaseless march of this serpent of fire, whose golden coils crept so
gently over the black earth, winding, stretching into the far distance,
without the immense body ever seeming to end. There must have been some
jostling and scrambling every now and then, for some of the luminous
lines shook and bent as though they were about to break; but order was
soon re-established, and then the slow, regular, gliding movement set in
afresh. There now seemed to be fewer stars in the heavens; it was as
though a milky way had fallen from on high, rolling its glittering dust
of worlds, and transferring the revolutions of the planets from the
empyrean to earth. A bluish light streamed all around; there was naught
but heaven left; the buildings and the trees assumed a visionary aspect
in the mysterious glow of those thousands of tapers, whose number still
and ever increased.

A faint sigh of admiration came from Marie. She was at a loss for words,
and could only repeat “How beautiful it is! _Mon Dieu_! how beautiful it
is! Look, Pierre, is it not beautiful?”

However, since the procession had been going by at so short a distance
from them it had ceased to be a rhythmic march of stars which no human
hand appeared to guide, for amidst the stream of light they could
distinguish the figures of the pilgrims carrying the tapers, and at times
even recognise them as they passed. First they espied La Grivotte, who,
exaggerating her cure, and repeating that she had never felt in better
health, had insisted upon taking part in the ceremony despite the
lateness of the hour; and she still retained her excited demeanour, her
dancing gait in that cool night air, which often made her shiver. Then
the Vignerons appeared; the father at the head of the party, raising his
taper on high, and followed by Madame Vigneron and Madame Chaise, who
dragged their weary legs; whilst little Gustave, quite worn out, kept on
tapping the sanded path with his crutch, his right hand covered meantime
with all the wax that had dripped upon it. Every sufferer who could walk
was there, among others Elise Rouquet, who, with her bare red face,
passed by like some apparition from among the damned. Others were
laughing; Sophie Couteau, the little girl who had been miraculously
healed the previous year, was quite forgetting herself, playing with her
taper as though it were a switch. Heads followed heads without a pause,
heads of women especially, more often with sordid, common features, but
at times wearing an exalted expression, which you saw for a second ere it
vanished amidst the fantastic illumination. And there was no end to that
terrible march past; fresh pilgrims were ever appearing. Among them
Pierre and Marie noticed yet another little black shadowy figure, gliding
along in a discreet, humble way; it was Madame Maze, whom they would not
have recognised if she had not for a moment raised her pale face, down
which the tears were streaming.

“Look!” exclaimed Pierre; “the first tapers in the procession are
reaching the Place du Rosaire, and I am sure that half of the pilgrims
are still in front of the Grotto.”

Marie had raised her eyes. Up yonder, on the left-hand side of the
Basilica, she could see other lights incessantly appearing with that
mechanical kind of movement which seemed as though it would never cease.
“Ah!” she said, “how many, how many distressed souls there are! For each
of those little flames is a suffering soul seeking deliverance, is it
not?”

Pierre had to lean over in order to hear her, for since the procession
had been streaming by, so near to them, they had been deafened by the
sound of the endless canticle, the hymn of Bernadette. The voices of the
pilgrims rang out more loudly than ever amidst the increasing vertigo;
the couplets became jumbled together--each batch of processionists
chanted a different one with the ecstatic voices of beings possessed, who
can no longer hear themselves. There was a huge indistinct clamour, the
distracted clamour of a multitude intoxicated by its ardent faith. And
meantime the refrain of “Ave, ave, ave Maria!” was ever returning,
rising, with its frantic, importunate rhythm, above everything else.

All at once Pierre and Marie, to their great surprise, saw M. de
Guersaint before them again. “Ah! my children,” he said, “I did not want
to linger too long up there, I cut through the procession twice in order
to get back to you. But what a sight, what a sight it is! It is certainly
the first beautiful thing that I have seen since I have been here!”
 Thereupon he began to describe the procession as he had beheld it from
the Calvary height. “Imagine,” said he, “another heaven, a heaven down
below reflecting that above, a heaven entirely filled by a single immense
constellation. The swarming stars seem to be lost, to lie in dim faraway
depths; and the trail of fire is in form like a monstrance--yes, a real
monstrance, the base of which is outlined by the inclined ways, the stem
by the two parallel paths, and the Host by the round lawn which crowns
them. It is a monstrance of burning gold, shining out in the depths of
the darkness with a perpetual sparkle of moving stars. Nothing else seems
to exist; it is gigantic, paramount. I really never saw anything so
extraordinary before!”

He was waving his arms, beside himself, overflowing with the emotion of
an artist.

“Father dear,” said Marie, tenderly, “since you have come back you ought
to go to bed. It is nearly eleven o’clock, and you know that you have to
start at two in the morning.” Then, to render him compliant, she added:
“I am so pleased that you are going to make that excursion! Only, come
back early to-morrow evening, because you’ll see, you’ll see--” She
stopped short, not daring to express her conviction that she would be
cured.

“You are right; I will go to bed,” replied M. de Guersaint, quite calmed.
“Since Pierre will be with you I sha’n’t feel anxious.”

“But I don’t wish Pierre to pass the night out here. He will join you
by-and-by after he has taken me to the Grotto. I sha’n’t have any further
need of anybody; the first bearer who passes can take me back to the
hospital to-morrow morning.”

Pierre had not interrupted her, and now he simply said: “No, no, Marie, I
shall stay. Like you, I shall spend the night at the Grotto.”

She opened her mouth to insist and express her displeasure. But he had
spoken those words so gently, and she had detected in them such a
dolorous thirst for happiness, that, stirred to the depths of her soul,
she stayed her tongue.

“Well, well, my children,” replied her father, “settle the matter between
you. I know that you are both very sensible. And now good-night, and
don’t be at all uneasy about me.”

He gave his daughter a long, loving kiss, pressed the young priest’s
hands, and then went off, disappearing among the serried ranks of the
procession, which he once more had to cross.

Then they remained alone in their dark, solitary nook under the spreading
trees, she still sitting up in her box, and he kneeling on the grass,
with his elbow resting on one of the wheels. And it was truly sweet to
linger there while the tapers continued marching past, and, after a
turning movement, assembled on the Place du Rosaire. What delighted
Pierre was that nothing of all the daytime junketing remained. It seemed
as though a purifying breeze had come down from the mountains, sweeping
away all the odour of strong meats, the greedy Sunday delights, the
scorching, pestilential, fair-field dust which, at an earlier hour, had
hovered above the town. Overhead there was now only the vast sky, studded
with pure stars, and the freshness of the Gave was delicious, whilst the
wandering breezes were laden with the perfumes of wild flowers. The
mysterious Infinite spread far around in the sovereign peacefulness of
night, and nothing of materiality remained save those little
candle-flames which the young priest’s companion had compared to
suffering souls seeking deliverance. All was now exquisitely restful,
instinct with unlimited hope. Since Pierre had been there all the
heart-rending memories of the afternoon, of the voracious appetites, the
impudent simony, and the poisoning of the old town, had gradually left
him, allowing him to savour the divine refreshment of that beautiful
night, in which his whole being was steeped as in some revivifying water.

A feeling of infinite sweetness had likewise come over Marie, who
murmured: “Ah! how happy Blanche would be to see all these marvels.”

She was thinking of her sister, who had been left in Paris to all the
worries of her hard profession as a teacher forced to run hither and
thither giving lessons. And that simple mention of her sister, of whom
Marie had not spoken since her arrival at Lourdes, but whose figure now
unexpectedly arose in her mind’s eye, sufficed to evoke a vision of all
the past.

Then, without exchanging a word, Marie and Pierre lived their childhood’s
days afresh, playing together once more in the neighbouring gardens
parted by the quickset hedge. But separation came on the day when he
entered the seminary and when she kissed him on the cheeks, vowing that
she would never forget him. Years went by, and they found themselves
forever parted: he a priest, she prostrated by illness, no longer with
any hope of ever being a woman. That was their whole story--an ardent
affection of which they had long been ignorant, then absolute severance,
as though they were dead, albeit they lived side by side. They again
beheld the sorry lodging whence they had started to come to Lourdes after
so much battling, so much discussion--his doubts and her passionate
faith, which last had conquered. And it seemed to them truly delightful
to find themselves once more quite alone together, in that dark nook on
that lovely night, when there were as many stars upon earth as there were
in heaven.

Marie had hitherto retained the soul of a child, a spotless soul, as her
father said, good and pure among the purest. Stricken low in her
thirteenth year, she had grown no older in mind. Although she was now
three-and-twenty, she was still a child, a child of thirteen, who had
retired within herself, absorbed in the bitter catastrophe which had
annihilated her. You could tell this by the frigidity of her glance, by
her absent expression, by the haunted air she ever wore, unable as she
was to bestow a thought on anything but her calamity. And never was
woman’s soul more pure and candid, arrested as it had been in its
development. She had had no other romance in life save that tearful
farewell to her friend, which for ten long years had sufficed to fill her
heart. During the endless days which she had spent on her couch of
wretchedness, she had never gone beyond this dream--that if she had grown
up in health, he doubtless would not have become a priest, in order to
live near her. She never read any novels. The pious works which she was
allowed to peruse maintained her in the excitement of a superhuman love.
Even the rumours of everyday life died away at the door of the room where
she lived in seclusion; and, in past years, when she had been taken from
one to the other end of France, from one inland spa to another, she had
passed through the crowds like a somnambulist who neither sees nor hears
anything, possessed, as she was, by the idea of the calamity that had
befallen her, the bond which made her a sexless thing. Hence her purity
and childishness; hence she was but an adorable daughter of suffering,
who, despite the growth of her sorry flesh, harboured nothing in her
heart save that distant awakening of passion, the unconscious love of her
thirteenth year.

Her hand sought Pierre’s in the darkness, and when she found it, coming
to meet her own, she, for a long time, continued pressing it. Ah! how
sweet it was! Never before, indeed, had they tasted such pure and perfect
joy in being together, far from the world, amidst the sovereign
enchantment of darkness and mystery. Around them nothing subsisted, save
the revolving stars. The lulling hymns were like the very vertigo that
bore them away. And she knew right well that after spending a night of
rapture at the Grotto, she would, on the morrow, be cured. Of this she
was, indeed, absolutely convinced; she would prevail upon the Blessed
Virgin to listen to her; she would soften her, as soon as she should be
alone, imploring her face to face. And she well understood what Pierre
had wished to say a short time previously, when expressing his desire to
spend the whole night outside the Grotto, like herself. Was it not that
he intended to make a supreme effort to believe, that he meant to fall
upon his knees like a little child, and beg the all-powerful Mother to
restore his lost faith? Without need of any further exchange of words,
their clasped hands repeated all those things. They mutually promised
that they would pray for each other, and so absorbed in each other did
they become that they forgot themselves, with such an ardent desire for
one another’s cure and happiness, that for a moment they attained to the
depths of the love which offers itself in sacrifice. It was divine
enjoyment.

“Ah!” murmured Pierre, “how beautiful is this blue night, this infinite
darkness, which has swept away all the hideousness of things and beings,
this deep, fresh peacefulness, in which I myself should like to bury my
doubts!”

His voice died away, and Marie, in her turn, said in a very low voice:
“And the roses, the perfume of the roses? Can’t you smell them, my
friend? Where can they be since you could not see them?”

“Yes, yes, I smell them, but there are none,” he replied. “I should
certainly have seen them, for I hunted everywhere.”

“How can you say that there are no roses when they perfume the air around
us, when we are steeped in their aroma? Why, there are moments when the
scent is so powerful that I almost faint with delight in inhaling it!
They must certainly be here, innumerable, under our very feet.”

“No, no,” said Pierre, “I swear to you I hunted everywhere, and there are
no roses. They must be invisible, or they may be the very grass we tread
and the spreading trees that are around us; their perfume may come from
the soil itself, from the torrent which flows along close by, from the
woods and the mountains that rise yonder.”

For a moment they remained silent. Then, in an undertone, she resumed:
“How sweet they smell, Pierre! And it seems to me that even our clasped
hands form a bouquet.”

“Yes, they smell delightfully sweet; but it is from you, Marie, that the
perfume now ascends, as though the roses were budding from your hair.”

Then they ceased speaking. The procession was still gliding along, and at
the corner of the Basilica bright sparks were still appearing, flashing
suddenly from out of the obscurity, as though spurting from some
invisible source. The vast train of little flames, marching in double
file, threw a riband of light across the darkness. But the great sight
was now on the Place du Rosaire, where the head of the procession, still
continuing its measured evolutions, was revolving and revolving in a
circle which ever grew smaller, with a stubborn whirl which increased the
dizziness of the weary pilgrims and the violence of their chants. And
soon the circle formed a nucleus, the nucleus of a nebula, so to say,
around which the endless riband of fire began to coil itself. And the
brasier grew larger and larger--there was first a pool, then a lake of
light. The whole vast Place du Rosaire changed at last into a burning
ocean, rolling its little sparkling wavelets with the dizzy motion of a
whirlpool that never rested. A reflection like that of dawn whitened the
Basilica; while the rest of the horizon faded into deep obscurity, amidst
which you only saw a few stray tapers journeying alone, like glowworms
seeking their way with the help of their little lights. However, a
straggling rear-guard of the procession must have climbed the Calvary
height, for up there, against the sky, some moving stars could also be
seen. Eventually the moment came when the last tapers appeared down
below, marched round the lawns, flowed away, and were merged in the sea
of flame. Thirty thousand tapers were burning there, still and ever
revolving, quickening their sparkles under the vast calm heavens where
the planets had grown pale. A luminous glow ascended in company with the
strains of the canticle which never ceased. And the roar of voices
incessantly repeating the refrain of “Ave, ave, ave Maria!” was like the
very crackling of those hearts of fire which were burning away in prayers
in order that souls might be saved.

The candles had just been extinguished, one by one, and the night was
falling again, paramount, densely black, and extremely mild, when Pierre
and Marie perceived that they were still there, hand in hand, hidden away
among the trees. In the dim streets of Lourdes, far off, there were now
only some stray, lost pilgrims inquiring their way, in order that they
might get to bed. Through the darkness there swept a rustling sound--the
rustling of those who prowl and fall asleep when days of festivity draw
to a close. But the young priest and the girl lingered in their nook
forgetfully, never stirring, but tasting delicious happiness amidst the
perfume of the invisible roses.




IV. THE VIGIL

WHEN Pierre dragged Marie in her box to the front of the Grotto, and
placed her as near as possible to the railing, it was past midnight, and
about a hundred persons were still there, some seated on the benches, but
the greater number kneeling as though prostrated in prayer. The Grotto
shone from afar, with its multitude of lighted tapers, similar to the
illumination round a coffin, though all that you could distinguish was a
star-like blaze, from the midst of which, with visionary whiteness,
emerged the statue of the Virgin in its niche. The hanging foliage
assumed an emerald sheen, the hundreds of crutches covering the vault
resembled an inextricable network of dead wood on the point of
reflowering. And the darkness was rendered more dense by so great a
brightness, the surroundings became lost in a deep shadow in which
nothing, neither walls nor trees, remained; whilst all alone ascended the
angry and continuous murmur of the Gave, rolling along beneath the
gloomy, boundless sky, now heavy with a gathering storm.

“Are you comfortable, Marie?” gently inquired Pierre. “Don’t you feel
chilly?”

She had just shivered. But it was only at a breath from the other world,
which had seemed to her to come from the Grotto.

“No, no, I am so comfortable! Only place the shawl over my knees.
And--thank you, Pierre--don’t be anxious about me. I no longer require
anyone now that I am with her.”

Her voice died away, she was already falling into an ecstasy, her hands
clasped, her eyes raised towards the white statue, in a beatific
transfiguration of the whole of her poor suffering face.

Yet Pierre remained a few minutes longer beside her. He would have liked
to wrap her in the shawl, for he perceived the trembling of her little
wasted hands. But he feared to annoy her, so confined himself to tucking
her in like a child; whilst she, slightly raised, with her elbows on the
edges of her box, and her eyes fixed on the Grotto, no longer beheld him.

A bench stood near, and he had just seated himself upon it, intending to
collect his thoughts, when his glance fell upon a woman kneeling in the
gloom. Dressed in black, she was so slim, so discreet, so unobtrusive, so
wrapt in darkness, that at first he had not noticed her. After a while,
however, he recognised her as Madame Maze. The thought of the letter
which she had received during the day then recurred to him. And the sight
of her filled him with pity; he could feel for the forlornness of this
solitary woman, who had no physical sore to heal, but only implored the
Blessed Virgin to relieve her heart-pain by converting her inconstant
husband. The letter had no doubt been some harsh reply, for, with bowed
head, she seemed almost annihilated, filled with the humility of some
poor beaten creature. It was only at night-time that she readily forgot
herself there, happy at disappearing, at being able to weep, suffer
martyrdom, and implore the return of the lost caresses, for hours
together, without anyone suspecting her grievous secret. Her lips did not
even move; it was her wounded heart which prayed, which desperately
begged for its share of love and happiness.

Ah! that inextinguishable thirst for happiness which brought them all
there, wounded either in body or in spirit; Pierre also felt it parching
his throat, in an ardent desire to be quenched. He longed to cast himself
upon his knees, to beg the divine aid with the same humble faith as that
woman. But his limbs were as though tied; he could not find the words he
wanted, and it was a relief when he at last felt someone touch him on the
arm. “Come with me, Monsieur l’Abbe, if you do not know the Grotto,” said
a voice. “I will find you a place. It is so pleasant there at this time!”

He raised his head, and recognised Baron Suire, the director of the
Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation. This benevolent and simple man no
doubt felt some affection for him. He therefore accepted his offer, and
followed him into the Grotto, which was quite empty. The Baron had a key,
with which he locked the railing behind them.

“You see, Monsieur l’Abbe,” said he, “this is the time when one can
really be comfortable here. For my part, whenever I come to spend a few
days at Lourdes, I seldom retire to rest before daybreak, as I have
fallen into the habit of finishing my night here. The place is deserted,
one is quite alone, and is it not pleasant? How well one feels oneself to
be in the abode of the Blessed Virgin!”

He smiled with a kindly air, doing the honours of the Grotto like an old
frequenter of the place, somewhat enfeebled by age, but full of genuine
affection for this delightful nook. Moreover, in spite of his great
piety, he was in no way ill at ease there, but talked on and explained
matters with the familiarity of a man who felt himself to be the friend
of Heaven.

“Ah! you are looking at the tapers,” he said. “There are about two
hundred of them which burn together night and day; and they end by making
the place warm. It is even warm here in winter.”

Indeed, Pierre was beginning to feel incommoded by the warm odour of the
wax. Dazzled by the brilliant light into which he was penetrating, he
gazed at the large, central, pyramidal holder, all bristling with little
tapers, and resembling a luminous clipped yew glistening with stars. In
the background, a straight holder, on a level with the ground, upheld the
large tapers, which, like the pipes of an organ, formed a row of uneven
height, some of them being as large as a man’s thigh. And yet other
holders, resembling massive candelabra, stood here and there on the
jutting parts of the rock. The vault of the Grotto sank towards the left,
where the stone seemed baked and blackened by the eternal flames which
had been heating it for years. And the wax was perpetually dripping like
fine snow; the trays of the holders were smothered with it, whitened by
its ever-thickening dust. In fact, it coated the whole rock, which had
become quite greasy to the touch; and to such a degree did it cover the
ground that accidents had occurred, and it had been necessary to spread
some mats about to prevent persons from slipping.

“You see those large ones there,” obligingly continued Baron Suire. “They
are the most expensive and cost sixty francs apiece; they will continue
burning for a month. The smallest ones, which cost but five sous each,
only last three hours. Oh! we don’t husband them; we never run short.
Look here! Here are two more hampers full, which there has not yet been
time to remove to the storehouse.”

Then he pointed to the furniture, which comprised a harmonium covered
with a cloth, a substantial dresser with several large drawers in which
the sacred vestments were kept, some benches and chairs reserved for the
privileged few who were admitted during the ceremonies, and finally a
very handsome movable altar, which was adorned with engraved silver
plates, the gift of a great lady, and--for fear of injury from
dampness--was only brought out on the occasions of remunerative
pilgrimages.

Pierre was disturbed by all this well-meant chatter. His religious
emotion lost some of its charm. In spite of his lack of faith, he had, on
entering, experienced a feeling of agitation, a heaving of the soul, as
though the mystery were about to be revealed to him. It was at the same
time both an anxious and a delicious feeling. And he beheld things which
deeply stirred him: bunches of flowers, lying in a heap at the Virgin’s
feet, with the votive offerings of children--little faded shoes, a tiny
iron corselet, and a doll-like crutch which almost seemed to be a toy.
Beneath the natural ogival cavity in which the apparition had appeared,
at the spot where the pilgrims rubbed the chaplets and medals they wished
to consecrate, the rock was quite worn away and polished. Millions of
ardent lips had pressed kisses on the wall with such intensity of love
that the stone was as though calcined, streaked with black veins, shining
like marble.

However, he stopped short at last opposite a cavity in which lay a
considerable pile of letters and papers of every description.

“Ah! I was forgetting,” hastily resumed Baron Suire; “this is the most
interesting part of it. These are the letters which the faithful throw
into the Grotto through the railing every day. We gather them up and
place them there; and in the winter I amuse myself by glancing through
them. You see, we cannot burn them without opening them, for they often
contain money--francs, half-francs, and especially postage-stamps.”

He stirred up the letters, and, selecting a few at random, showed the
addresses, and opened them to read. Nearly all of them were letters from
illiterate persons, with the superscription, “To Our Lady of Lourdes,”
 scrawled on the envelopes in big, irregular handwriting. Many of them
contained requests or thanks, incorrectly worded and wondrously spelt;
and nothing was more affecting than the nature of some of the petitions:
a little brother to be saved, a lawsuit to be gained, a lover to be
preserved, a marriage to be effected. Other letters, however, were angry
ones, taking the Blessed Virgin to task for not having had the politeness
to acknowledge a former communication by granting the writer’s prayers.
Then there were still others, written in a finer hand, with carefully
worded phrases containing confessions and fervent entreaties; and these
were from women who confided to the Queen of Heaven things which they
dared not even say to a priest in the shadow of the confessional.
Finally, one envelope, selected at random, merely contained a photograph;
a young girl had sent her portrait to Our Lady of Lourdes, with this
dedication: “To my good Mother.” In short, they every day received the
correspondence of a most powerful Queen, to whom both prayers and secrets
were addressed, and who was expected to reply with favours and kindnesses
of every kind. The franc and half-franc pieces were simple tokens of love
to propitiate her; while, as for the postage-stamps, these could only be
sent for convenience’ sake, in lieu of coined money; unless, indeed, they
were sent guilelessly, as in the case of a peasant woman who had added a
postscript to her letter to say that she enclosed a stamp for the reply.

“I can assure you,” concluded the Baron, “that there are some very nice
ones among them, much less foolish than you might imagine. During a
period of three years I constantly found some very interesting letters
from a lady who did nothing without relating it to the Blessed Virgin.
She was a married woman, and entertained a most dangerous passion for a
friend of her husband’s. Well, Monsieur l’Abbe, she overcame it; the
Blessed Virgin answered her by sending her an armour for her chastity, an
all-divine power to resist the promptings of her heart.” Then he broke
off to say: “But come and seat yourself here, Monsieur l’Abbe. You will
see how comfortable you will be.”

Pierre went and placed himself beside him on a bench on the left hand, at
the spot where the rock sloped down. This was a deliciously reposeful
corner, and neither the one nor the other spoke; a profound silence had
ensued, when, behind him, Pierre heard an indistinct murmur, a light
crystalline voice, which seemed to come from the Invisible. He gave a
start, which Baron Suire understood.

“That is the spring which you hear,” said he; “it is there, underground,
below this grating. Would you like to see it?”

And without waiting for Pierre’s reply, he at once bent down to open one
of the iron plates protecting the spring, mentioning that it was thus
closed up in order to prevent freethinkers from throwing poison into it.
For a moment this extraordinary idea quite amazed the priest; but he
ended by attributing it entirely to the Baron, who was, indeed, very
childish. The latter, meantime, was vainly struggling with the padlock,
which opened by a combination of letters, and refused to yield to his
endeavours. “It is singular,” he muttered; “the word is _Rome_, and I am
positive that it hasn’t been changed. The damp destroys everything. Every
two years or so we are obliged to replace those crutches up there,
otherwise they would all rot away. Be good enough to bring me a taper.”

By the light of the candle which Pierre then took from one of the
holders, he at last succeeded in unfastening the brass padlock, which was
covered with _vert-de-gris_. Then, the plate having been raised, the
spring appeared to view. Upon a bed of muddy gravel, in a fissure of the
rock, there was a limpid stream, quite tranquil, but seemingly spreading
over a rather large surface. The Baron explained that it had been
necessary to conduct it to the fountains through pipes coated with
cement; and he even admitted that, behind the piscinas, a large cistern
had been dug in which the water was collected during the night, as
otherwise the small output of the source would not suffice for the daily
requirements.

“Will you taste it?” he suddenly asked. “It is much better here, fresh
from the earth.”

Pierre did not answer; he was gazing at that tranquil, innocent water,
which assumed a moire-like golden sheen in the dancing light of the
taper. The falling drops of wax now and again ruffled its surface. And,
as he gazed at it, the young priest pondered upon all the mystery it
brought with it from the distant mountain slopes.

“Come, drink some!” said the Baron, who had already dipped and filled a
glass which was kept there handy. The priest had no choice but to empty
it; it was good pure, water, fresh and transparent, like that which flows
from all the lofty uplands of the Pyrenees.

After refastening the padlock, they both returned to the bench. Now and
again Pierre could still hear the spring flowing behind him, with a music
resembling the gentle warble of some unseen bird. And now the Baron again
raised his voice, giving him the history of the Grotto at all times and
seasons, in a pathetic babble, replete with puerile details.

The summer was the roughest season, for then came the great itinerant
pilgrimage crowds, with the uproarious fervour of thousands of eager
beings, all praying and vociferating together. But with the autumn came
the rain, those diluvial rains which beat against the Grotto entrance for
days together; and with them arrived the pilgrims from remote countries,
small, silent, and ecstatic bands of Indians, Malays, and even Chinese,
who fell upon their knees in the mud at the sign from the missionaries
accompanying them. Of all the old provinces of France, it was Brittany
that sent the most devout pilgrims, whole parishes arriving together, the
men as numerous as the women, and all displaying a pious deportment, a
simple and unostentatious faith, such as might edify the world. Then came
the winter, December with its terrible cold, its dense snow-drifts
blocking the mountain ways. But even then families put up at the hotels,
and, despite everything, faithful worshippers--all those who, fleeing the
noise of the world, wished to speak to the Virgin in the tender intimacy
of solitude--still came every morning to the Grotto. Among them were some
whom no one knew, who appeared directly they felt certain they would be
alone there to kneel and love like jealous lovers; and who departed,
frightened away by the first suspicion of a crowd. And how warm and
pleasant the place was throughout the foul winter weather! In spite of
rain and wind and snow, the Grotto still continued flaring. Even during
nights of howling tempest, when not a soul was there, it lighted up the
empty darkness, blazing like a brasier of love that nothing could
extinguish. The Baron related that, at the time of the heavy snowfall of
the previous winter, he had spent whole afternoons there, on the bench
where they were then seated. A gentle warmth prevailed, although the spot
faced the north and was never reached by a ray of sunshine. No doubt the
circumstance of the burning tapers continually heating the rock explained
this generous warmth; but might one not also believe in some charming
kindness on the part of the Virgin, who endowed the spot with perpetual
springtide? And the little birds were well aware of it; when the snow on
the ground froze their feet, all the finches of the neighbourhood sought
shelter there, fluttering about in the ivy around the holy statue. At
length came the awakening of the real spring: the Gave, swollen with
melted snow, and rolling on with a voice of thunder: the trees, under the
action of their sap, arraying themselves in a mantle of greenery, whilst
the crowds, once more returning, noisily invaded the sparkling Grotto,
whence they drove the little birds of heaven.

“Yes, yes,” repeated Baron Suire, in a declining voice, “I spent some
most delightful winter days here all alone. I saw no one but a woman, who
leant against the railing to avoid kneeling in the snow. She was quite
young, twenty-five perhaps, and very pretty--dark, with magnificent blue
eyes. She never spoke, and did not even seem to pray, but remained there
for hours together, looking intensely sad. I do not know who she was, nor
have I ever seen her since.”

He ceased speaking; and when, a couple of minutes later, Pierre,
surprised at his silence, looked at him, he perceived that he had fallen
asleep. With his hands clasped upon his belly, his chin resting on his
chest, he slept as peacefully as a child, a smile hovering the while
about his mouth. Doubtless, when he said that he spent the night there,
he meant that he came thither to indulge in the early nap of a happy old
man, whose dreams are of the angels. And now Pierre tasted all the charms
of the solitude. It was indeed true that a feeling of peacefulness and
comfort permeated the soul in this rocky nook. It was occasioned by the
somewhat stifling fumes of the burning wax, by the transplendent ecstasy
into which one sank amidst the glare of the tapers. The young priest
could no longer distinctly see the crutches on the roof, the votive
offerings hanging from the sides, the altar of engraved silver, and the
harmonium in its wrapper, for a slow intoxication seemed to be stealing
over him, a gradual prostration of his whole being. And he particularly
experienced the divine sensation of having left the living world, of
having attained to the far realms of the marvellous and the superhuman,
as though that simple iron railing yonder had become the very barrier of
the Infinite.

However, a slight noise on his left again disturbed him. It was the
spring flowing, ever flowing on, with its bird-like warble. Ah! how he
would have liked to fall upon his knees and believe in the miracle, to
acquire a certain conviction that that divine water had gushed from the
rock solely for the healing of suffering humanity. Had he not come there
to prostrate himself and implore the Virgin to restore the faith of his
childhood? Why, then, did he not pray, why did he not beseech her to
bring him back to grace? His feeling of suffocation increased, the
burning tapers dazzled him almost to the point of giddiness. And, all at
once, the recollection came to him that for two days past, amidst the
great freedom which priests enjoyed at Lourdes, he had neglected to say
his mass. He was in a state of sin, and perhaps it was the weight of this
transgression which was oppressing his heart. He suffered so much that he
was at last compelled to rise from his seat and walk away. He gently
closed the gate behind him, leaving Baron Suire still asleep do the
bench. Marie, he found, had not stirred, but was still raised on her
elbows, with her ecstatic eyes uplifted towards the figure of the Virgin.

“How are you, Marie?” asked Pierre. “Don’t you feel cold?”

She did not reply. He felt her hands and found them warm and soft, albeit
slightly trembling. “It is not the cold which makes you tremble, is it,
Marie?” he asked.

In a voice as gentle as a zephyr she replied: “No, no! let me be; I am so
happy! I shall see her, I feel it. Ah! what joy!”

So, after slightly pulling up her shawl, he went forth into the night, a
prey to indescribable agitation. Beyond the bright glow of the Grotto was
a night as black as ink, a region of darkness, into which he plunged at
random. Then, as his eyes became accustomed to this gloom, he found
himself near the Gave, and skirted it, following a path shaded by tall
trees, where he again came upon a refreshing obscurity. This shade and
coolness, both so soothing, now brought him relief. And his only surprise
was that he had not fallen on his knees in the Grotto, and prayed, even
as Marie was praying, with all the power of his soul. What could be the
obstacle within him? Whence came the irresistible revolt which prevented
him from surrendering himself to faith even when his overtaxed, tortured
being longed to yield? He understood well enough that it was his reason
alone which protested, and the time had come when he would gladly have
killed that voracious reason, which was devouring his life and preventing
him from enjoying the happiness allowed to the ignorant and the simple.
Perhaps, had he beheld a miracle, he might have acquired enough strength
of will to believe. For instance, would he not have bowed himself down,
vanquished at last, if Marie had suddenly risen up and walked before him.
The scene which he conjured up of Marie saved, Marie cured, affected him
so deeply that he stopped short, his trembling arms uplifted towards the
star-spangled vault of heaven. What a lovely night it was!--so deep and
mysterious, so airy and fragrant; and what joy rained down at the hope
that eternal health might be restored, that eternal love might ever
revive, even as spring returns! Then he continued his walk, following the
path to the end. But his doubts were again coming back to him; when you
need a miracle to gain belief, it means that you are incapable of
believing. There is no need for the Almighty to prove His existence.
Pierre also felt uneasy at the thought that, so long as he had not
discharged his priestly duties by saying his mass, his prayers would not
be answered. Why did he not go at once to the church of the Rosary, whose
altars, from midnight till noon, are placed at the disposal of the
priests who come from a distance? Thus thinking, he descended by another
path, again finding himself beneath the trees, near the leafy spot whence
he and Marie had watched the procession of tapers. Not a light now
remained, there was but a boundless expanse of gloom.

Here Pierre experienced a fresh attack of faintness, and as though to
gain time, he turned mechanically into the pilgrims’ shelter-house. Its
door had remained wide open; still this failed to sufficiently ventilate
the spacious hall, which was now full of people. On the very threshold
Pierre felt oppressed by the stifling heat emanating from the multitude
of bodies, the dense pestilential smell of human breath and perspiration.
The smoking lanterns gave out so bad a light that he had to pick his way
with extreme care in order to avoid treading upon outstretched limbs; for
the overcrowding was extraordinary, and many persons, unable to find room
on the benches, had stretched themselves on the pavement, on the damp
stone slabs fouled by all the refuse of the day. And on all sides
indescribable promiscuousness prevailed: prostrated by overpowering
weariness, men, women, and priests were lying there, pell-mell, at
random, open-mouthed and utterly exhausted. A large number were snoring,
seated on the slabs, with their backs against the walls and their heads
drooping on their chests. Others had slipped down, with limbs
intermingled, and one young girl lay prostrate across an old country
priest, who in his calm, childlike slumber was smiling at the angels. It
was like a cattle-shed sheltering poor wanderers of the roads, all those
who were homeless on that beautiful holiday night, and who had dropped in
there and fallen fraternally asleep. Still, there were some who found no
repose in their feverish excitement, but turned and twisted, or rose up
to finish eating the food which remained in their baskets. Others could
be seen lying perfectly motionless, their eyes wide open and fixed upon
the gloom. The cries of dreamers, the wailing of sufferers, arose amidst
general snoring. And pity came to the heart, a pity full of anguish, at
sight of this flock of wretches lying there in heaps in loathsome rags,
whilst their poor spotless souls no doubt were far away in the blue realm
of some mystical dream. Pierre was on the point of withdrawing, feeling
sick at heart, when a low continuous moan attracted his attention. He
looked, and recognised Madame Vincent, on the same spot and in the same
position as before, still nursing little Rose upon her lap. “Ah! Monsieur
l’Abbe,” the poor woman murmured, “you hear her; she woke up nearly an
hour ago, and has been sobbing ever since. Yet I assure you I have not
moved even a finger, I felt so happy at seeing her sleep.”

The priest bent down, examining the little one, who had not even the
strength to raise her eyelids. A plaintive cry no stronger than a breath
was coming from her lips; and she was so white that he shuddered, for he
felt that death was hovering near.

“Dear me! what shall I do?” continued the poor mother, utterly worn out.
“This cannot last; I can no longer bear to hear her cry. And if you knew
all that I have been saying to her: ‘My jewel, my treasure, my angel, I
beseech you cry no more. Be good; the Blessed Virgin will cure you!’ And
yet she still cries on.”

With these words the poor creature burst out sobbing, her big tears
falling on the face of the child, whose rattle still continued. “Had it
been daylight,” she resumed, “I would long ago have left this hall, the
more especially as she disturbs the others. There is an old lady yonder
who has already complained. But I fear it may be chilly outside; and
besides, where could I go in the middle of the night? Ah! Blessed Virgin,
Blessed Virgin, take pity upon us!”

Overcome by emotion, Pierre kissed the child’s fair head, and then
hastened away to avoid bursting into tears like the sorrowing mother. And
he went straight to the Rosary, as though he were determined to conquer
death.

He had already beheld the Rosary in broad daylight, and had been
displeased by the aspect of this church, which the architect, fettered by
the rockbound site, had been obliged to make circular and low, so that it
seemed crushed beneath its great cupola, which square pillars supported.
The worst was that, despite its archaic Byzantine style, it altogether
lacked any religious appearance, and suggested neither mystery nor
meditation. Indeed, with the glaring light admitted by the cupola and the
broad glazed doors it was more like some brand-new corn-market. And then,
too, it was not yet completed: the decorations were lacking, the bare
walls against which the altars stood had no other embellishment than some
artificial roses of coloured paper and a few insignificant votive
offerings; and this bareness heightened the resemblance to some vast
public hall. Moreover, in time of rain the paved floor became as muddy as
that of a general waiting-room at a railway station. The high altar was a
temporary structure of painted wood. Innumerable rows of benches filled
the central rotunda, benches free to the public, on which people could
come and rest at all hours, for night and day alike the Rosary remained
open to the swarming pilgrims. Like the shelter-house, it was a cow-shed
in which the Almighty received the poor ones of the earth.

On entering, Pierre felt himself to be in some common hall trod by the
footsteps of an ever-changing crowd. But the brilliant sunlight no longer
streamed on the pallid walls, the tapers burning at every altar simply
gleamed like stars amidst the uncertain gloom which filled the building.
A solemn high mass had been celebrated at midnight with extraordinary
pomp, amidst all the splendour of candles, chants, golden vestments, and
swinging, steaming censers; but of all this glorious display there now
remained only the regulation number of tapers necessary for the
celebration of the masses at each of the fifteen altars ranged around the
edifice. These masses began at midnight and did not cease till noon.
Nearly four hundred were said during those twelve hours at the Rosary
alone. Taking the whole of Lourdes, where there were altogether some
fifty altars, more than two thousand masses were celebrated daily. And so
great was the abundance of priests, that many had extreme difficulty in
fulfilling their duties, having to wait for hours together before they
could find an altar unoccupied. What particularly struck Pierre that
evening, was the sight of all the altars besieged by rows of priests
patiently awaiting their turn in the dim light at the foot of the steps;
whilst the officiating minister galloped through the Latin phrases,
hastily punctuating them with the prescribed signs of the cross. And the
weariness of all the waiting ones was so great, that most of them were
seated on the flagstones, some even dozing on the altar steps in heaps,
quite overpowered, relying on the beadle to come and rouse them.

For a moment Pierre walked about undecided. Was he going to wait like the
others? However, the scene determined him against doing so. At every
altar, at every mass, a crowd of pilgrims was gathered, communicating in
all haste with a sort of voracious fervour. Each pyx was filled and
emptied incessantly; the priests’ hands grew tired in thus distributing
the bread of life; and Pierre’s surprise increased at the sight. Never
before had he beheld a corner of this earth so watered by the divine
blood, whence faith took wing in such a flight of souls. It was like a
return to the heroic days of the Church, when all nations prostrated
themselves beneath the same blast of credulity in their terrified
ignorance which led them to place their hope of eternal happiness in an
Almighty God. He could fancy himself carried back some eight or nine
centuries, to the time of great public piety, when people believed in the
approaching end of the world; and this he could fancy the more readily as
the crowd of simple folk, the whole host that had attended high mass, was
still seated on the benches, as much at ease in God’s house as at home.
Many had no place of refuge. Was not the church their home, the asylum
where consolation awaited them both by day and by night? Those who knew
not where to sleep, who had not found room even at the shelter place,
came to the Rosary, where sometimes they succeeded in finding a vacant
seat on a bench, at others sufficient space to lie down on the
flagstones. And others who had beds awaiting them lingered there for the
joy of passing a whole night in that divine abode, so full of beautiful
dreams. Until daylight the concourse and promiscuity were extraordinary;
every row of benches was occupied, sleeping persons were scattered in
every corner and behind every pillar; men, women, children were leaning
against each other, their heads on one another’s shoulders, their breath
mingling in calm unconsciousness. It was the break-up of a religious
gathering overwhelmed by sleep, a church transformed into a chance
hospital, its doors wide open to the lovely August night, giving access
to all who were wandering in the darkness, the good and the bad, the
weary and the lost. And all over the place, from each of the fifteen
altars, the bells announcing the elevation of the Host incessantly
sounded, whilst from among the mob of sleepers bands of believers now and
again arose, went and received the sacrament, and then returned to mingle
once more with the nameless, shepherdless flock which the semi-obscurity
enveloped like a veil.

With an air of restless indecision, Pierre was still wandering through
the shadowy groups, when an old priest, seated on the step of an altar,
beckoned to him. For two hours he had been waiting there, and now that
his turn was at length arriving he felt so faint that he feared he might
not have strength to say the whole of his mass, and preferred, therefore,
to surrender his place to another. No doubt the sight of Pierre,
wandering so distressfully in the gloom, had moved him. He pointed the
vestry out to him, waited until he returned with chasuble and chalice,
and then went off and fell into a sound sleep on one of the neighbouring
benches. Pierre thereupon said his mass in the same way as he said it at
Paris, like a worthy man fulfilling a professional duty. He outwardly
maintained an air of sincere faith. But, contrary to what he had expected
from the two feverish days through which he had just gone, from the
extraordinary and agitating surroundings amidst which he had spent the
last few hours, nothing moved him nor touched his heart. He had hoped
that a great commotion would overpower him at the moment of the
communion, when the divine mystery is accomplished; that he would find
himself in view of Paradise, steeped in grace, in the very presence of
the Almighty; but there was no manifestation, his chilled heart did not
even throb, he went on to the end pronouncing the usual words, making the
regulation gestures, with the mechanical accuracy of the profession. In
spite of his effort to be fervent, one single idea kept obstinately
returning to his mind--that the vestry was far too small, since such an
enormous number of masses had to be said. How could the sacristans manage
to distribute the holy vestments and the cloths? It puzzled him, and
engaged his thoughts with absurd persistency.

At length, to his surprise, he once more found himself outside. Again he
wandered through the night, a night which seemed to him utterly void,
darker and stiller than before. The town was lifeless, not a light was
gleaming. There only remained the growl of the Gave, which his accustomed
ears no longer heard. And suddenly, similar to a miraculous apparition,
the Grotto blazed before him, illumining the darkness with its
everlasting brasier, which burnt with a flame of inextinguishable love.
He had returned thither unconsciously, attracted no doubt by thoughts of
Marie. Three o’clock was about to strike, the benches before the Grotto
were emptying, and only some twenty persons remained there, dark,
indistinct forms, kneeling in slumberous ecstasy, wrapped in divine
torpor. It seemed as though the night in progressing had increased the
gloom, and imparted a remote visionary aspect to the Grotto. All faded
away amidst delicious lassitude, sleep reigned supreme over the dim,
far-spreading country side; whilst the voice of the invisible waters
seemed to be merely the breathing of this pure slumber, upon which the
Blessed Virgin, all white with her aureola of tapers, was smiling. And
among the few unconscious women was Madame Maze, still kneeling, with
clasped hands and bowed head, but so indistinct that she seemed to have
melted away amidst her ardent prayer.

Pierre, however, had immediately gone up to Marie. He was shivering, and
fancied that she must be chilled by the early morning air. “I beseech
you, Marie, cover yourself up,” said he. “Do you want to suffer still
more?” And thereupon he drew up the shawl which had slipped off her, and
endeavoured to fasten it about her neck. “You are cold, Marie,” he added;
“your hands are like ice.”

She did not answer, she was still in the same attitude as when he had
left her a couple of hours previously. With her elbows resting on the
edges of her box, she kept herself raised, her soul still lifted towards
the Blessed Virgin and her face transfigured, beaming with a celestial
joy. Her lips moved, though no sound came from them. Perhaps she was
still carrying on some mysterious conversation in the world of
enchantments, dreaming wide awake, as she had been doing ever since he
had placed her there. He spoke to her again, but still she answered not.
At last, however, of her own accord, she murmured in a far-away voice:
“Oh! I am so happy, Pierre! I have seen her; I prayed to her for you, and
she smiled at me, slightly nodding her head to let me know that she heard
me and would grant my prayers. And though she did not speak to me,
Pierre, I understood what she wished me to know. ‘Tis to-day, at four
o’clock in the afternoon, when the Blessed Sacrament passes by, that I
shall be cured!”

He listened to her in deep agitation. Had she been sleeping with her eyes
wide open? Was it in a dream that she had seen the marble figure of the
Blessed Virgin bend its head and smile? A great tremor passed through him
at the thought that this poor child had prayed for him. And he walked up
to the railing, and dropped upon his knees, stammering: “O Marie! O
Marie!” without knowing whether this heart-cry were intended for the
Virgin or for the beloved friend of his childhood. And he remained there,
utterly overwhelmed, waiting for grace to come to him.

Endless minutes went by. This was indeed the superhuman effort, the
waiting for the miracle which he had come to seek for himself, the sudden
revelation, the thunderclap which was to sweep away his unbelief and
restore him, rejuvenated and triumphant, to the faith of the
simple-minded. He surrendered himself, he wished that some mighty power
might ravage his being and transform it. But, even as before whilst
saying his mass, he heard naught within him but an endless silence, felt
nothing but a boundless vacuum. There was no divine intervention, his
despairing heart almost seemed to cease beating. And although he strove
to pray, to fix his mind wholly upon that powerful Virgin, so
compassionate to poor humanity, his thoughts none the less wandered, won
back by the outside world, and again turning to puerile trifles. Within
the Grotto, on the other side of the railing, he had once more caught
sight of Baron Suire, still asleep, still continuing his pleasant nap
with his hands clasped in front of him. Other things also attracted his
attention: the flowers deposited at the feet of the Virgin, the letters
cast there as though into a heavenly letter-box, the delicate lace-like
work of wax which remained erect around the flames of the larger tapers,
looking like some rich silver ornamentation. Then, without any apparent
reason, his thoughts flew away to the days of his childhood, and his
brother Guillaume’s face rose before him with extreme distinctness. He
had not seen him since their mother’s death. He merely knew that he led a
very secluded life, occupying himself with scientific matters, in a
little house in which he had buried himself with a mistress and two big
dogs; and he would have known nothing more about him, but for having
recently read his name in a newspaper in connection with some
revolutionary attempt. It was stated that he was passionately devoting
himself to the study of explosives, and in constant intercourse with the
leaders of the most advanced parties. Why, however, should Guillaume
appear to him in this wise, in this ecstatic spot, amidst the mystical
light of the tapers,--appear to him, moreover, such as he had formerly
known him, so good, affectionate, and brotherly, overflowing with charity
for every affliction! The thought haunted him for a moment, and filled
him with painful regret for that brotherliness now dead and gone. Then,
with hardly a moment’s pause, his mind reverted to himself, and he
realised that he might stubbornly remain there for hours without
regaining faith. Nevertheless, he felt a sort of tremor pass through him,
a final hope, a feeling that if the Blessed Virgin should perform the
great miracle of curing Marie, he would at last believe. It was like a
final delay which he allowed himself, an appointment with Faith for that
very day, at four o’clock in the afternoon, when, according to what the
girl had told him, the Blessed Sacrament would pass by. And at this
thought his anguish at once ceased, he remained kneeling, worn out with
fatigue and overcome by invincible drowsiness.

The hours passed by, the resplendent illumination of the Grotto was still
projected into the night, its reflection stretching to the neighbouring
hillsides and whitening the walls of the convents there. However, Pierre
noticed it grow paler and paler, which surprised him, and he roused
himself, feeling thoroughly chilled; it was the day breaking, beneath a
leaden sky overcast with clouds. He perceived that one of those storms,
so sudden in mountainous regions, was rapidly rising from the south. The
thunder could already be heard rumbling in the distance, whilst gusts of
wind swept along the roads. Perhaps he also had been sleeping, for he no
longer beheld Baron Suire, whose departure he did not remember having
witnessed. There were scarcely ten persons left before the Grotto, though
among them he again recognised Madame Maze with her face hidden in her
hands. However, when she noticed that it was daylight and that she could
be seen, she rose up, and vanished at a turn of the narrow path leading
to the convent of the Blue Sisters.

Feeling anxious, Pierre went up to Marie to tell her she must not remain
there any longer, unless she wished to get wet through. “I will take you
back to the hospital,” said he.

She refused and then entreated: “No, no! I am waiting for mass; I
promised to communicate here. Don’t trouble about me, return to the hotel
at once, and go to bed, I implore you. You know very well that covered
vehicles are sent here for the sick whenever it rains.”

And she persisted in refusing to leave, whilst on his side he kept on
repeating that he did not wish to go to bed. A mass, it should be
mentioned, was said at the Grotto early every morning, and it was a
divine joy for the pilgrims to be able to communicate, amidst the glory
of the rising sun, after a long night of ecstasy. And now, just as some
large drops of rain were beginning to fall, there came the priest,
wearing a chasuble and accompanied by two acolytes, one of whom, in order
to protect the chalice, held a large white silk umbrella, embroidered
with gold, over him.

Pierre, after pushing Marie’s little conveyance close to the railing, so
that the girl might be sheltered by the overhanging rock, under which the
few other worshippers had also sought refuge, had just seen her receive
the sacrament with ardent fervour, when his attention was attracted by a
pitiful spectacle which quite wrung his heart.

Beneath a dense, heavy deluge of rain, he caught sight of Madame Vincent,
still with that precious, woeful burden, her little Rose, whom with
outstretched arms she was offering to the Blessed Virgin. Unable to stay
any longer at the shelter-house owing to the complaints caused by the
child’s constant moaning, she had carried her off into the night, and
during two hours had roamed about in the darkness, lost, distracted,
bearing this poor flesh of her flesh, which she pressed to her bosom,
unable to give it any relief. She knew not what road she had taken,
beneath what trees she had strayed, so absorbed had she been in her
revolt against the unjust sufferings which had so sorely stricken this
poor little being, so feeble and so pure, and as yet quite incapable of
sin. Was it not abominable that the grip of disease should for weeks have
been incessantly torturing her child, whose cry she knew not how to
quiet? She carried her about, rocking her in her arms as she went wildly
along the paths, obstinately hoping that she would at last get her to
sleep, and so hush that wail which was rending her heart. And suddenly,
utterly worn-out, sharing each of her daughter’s death pangs, she found
herself opposite the Grotto, at the feet of the miracle-working Virgin,
she who forgave and who healed.

“O Virgin, Mother most admirable, heal her! O Virgin, Mother of Divine
Grace, heal her!”

She had fallen on her knees, and with quivering, outstretched arms was
still offering her expiring daughter, in a paroxysm of hope and desire
which seemed to raise her from the ground. And the rain, which she never
noticed, beat down behind her with the fury of an escaped torrent, whilst
violent claps of thunder shook the mountains. For one moment she thought
her prayer was granted, for Rose had slightly shivered as though visited
by the archangel, her face becoming quite white, her eyes and mouth
opening wide; and with one last little gasp she ceased to cry.

“O Virgin, Mother of Our Redeemer, heal her! O Virgin, All-powerful
Mother, heal her!”

But the poor woman felt her child become even lighter in her extended
arms. And now she became afraid at no longer hearing her moan, at seeing
her so white, with staring eyes and open mouth, without a sign of life.
How was it that she did not smile if she were cured? Suddenly a loud
heart-rending cry rang out, the cry of the mother, surpassing even the
din of the thunder in the storm, whose violence was increasing. Her child
was dead. And she rose up erect, turned her back on that deaf Virgin who
let little children die, and started off like a madwoman beneath the
lashing downpour, going straight before her without knowing whither, and
still and ever carrying and nursing that poor little body which she had
held in her arms during so many days and nights. A thunderbolt fell,
shivering one of the neighbouring trees, as though with the stroke of a
giant axe, amidst a great crash of twisted and broken branches.

Pierre had rushed after Madame Vincent, eager to guide and help her. But
he was unable to follow her, for he at once lost sight of her behind the
blurring curtain of rain. When he returned, the mass was drawing to an
end, and, as soon as the rain fell less violently, the officiating priest
went off under the white silk umbrella embroidered with gold. Meantime a
kind of omnibus awaited the few patients to take them back to the
hospital.

Marie pressed Pierre’s hands. “Oh! how happy I am!” she said. “Do not
come for me before three o’clock this afternoon.”

On being left amidst the rain, which had now become an obstinate fine
drizzle, Pierre re-entered the Grotto and seated himself on the bench
near the spring. He would not go to bed, for in spite of his weariness he
dreaded sleep in the state of nervous excitement in which he had been
plunged ever since the day before. Little Rose’s death had increased his
fever; he could not banish from his mind the thought of that heart-broken
mother, wandering along the muddy paths with the dead body of her child.
What could be the reasons which influenced the Virgin? He was amazed that
she could make a choice. Divine Mother as she was, he wondered how her
heart could decide upon healing only ten out of a hundred sufferers--that
ten per cent. of miracles which Doctor Bonamy had proved by statistics.
He, Pierre, had already asked himself the day before which ones he would
have chosen had he possessed the power of saving ten. A terrible power in
all truth, a formidable selection, which he would never have had the
courage to make. Why this one, and not that other? Where was the justice,
where the compassion? To be all-powerful and heal every one of them, was
not that the desire which rose from each heart? And the Virgin seemed to
him to be cruel, badly informed, as harsh and indifferent as even
impassible nature, distributing life and death at random, or in
accordance with laws which mankind knew nothing of.

The rain was at last leaving off, and Pierre had been there a couple of
hours when he felt that his feet were damp. He looked down, and was
greatly surprised, for the spring was overflowing through the gratings.
The soil of the Grotto was already covered; whilst outside a sheet of
water was flowing under the benches, as far as the parapet against the
Gave. The late storms had swollen the waters in the neighbourhood. Pierre
thereupon reflected that this spring, in spite of its miraculous origin,
was subject to the laws that governed other springs, for it certainly
communicated with some natural reservoirs, wherein the rain penetrated
and accumulated. And then, to keep his ankles dry, he left the place.




V. THE TWO VICTIMS


PIERRE walked along thirsting for fresh air, his head so heavy that he
took off his hat to relieve his burning brow. Despite all the fatigue of
that terrible night of vigil, he did not think of sleeping. He was kept
erect by that rebellion of his whole being which he could not quiet.
Eight o’clock was striking, and he walked at random under the glorious
morning sun, now shining forth in a spotless sky, which the storm seemed
to have cleansed of all the Sunday dust.

All at once, however, he raised his head, anxious to know where he was;
and he was quite astonished, for he found that he had already covered a
deal of ground, and was now below the station, near the municipal
hospital. He was hesitating at a point where the road forked, not knowing
which direction to take, when a friendly hand was laid on his shoulder,
and a voice inquired: “Where are you going at this early hour?”

It was Doctor Chassaigne who addressed him, drawing up his lofty figure,
clad in black from head to foot. “Have you lost yourself?” he added; “do
you want to know your way?”

“No, thanks, no,” replied Pierre, somewhat disturbed. “I spent the night
at the Grotto with that young patient to whom I am so much attached, and
my heart was so upset that I have been walking about in the hope it would
do me good, before returning to the hotel to take a little sleep.”

The doctor continued looking at him, clearly detecting the frightful
struggle which was raging within him, the despair which he felt at being
unable to sink asleep in faith, the suffering which the futility of all
his efforts brought him. “Ah, my poor child!” murmured M. Chassaigne; and
in a fatherly way he added: “Well, since you are walking, suppose we take
a walk together? I was just going down yonder, to the bank of the Gave.
Come along, and on our way back you will see what a lovely view we shall
have.”

For his part, the doctor took a walk of a couple of hours’ duration each
morning, ever alone, seeking, as it were, to tire and exhaust his grief.
First of all, as soon as he had risen, he repaired to the cemetery, and
knelt on the tomb of his wife and daughter, which, at all seasons, he
decked with flowers. And afterwards he would roam along the roads, with
tearful eyes, never returning home until fatigue compelled him.

With a wave of the hand, Pierre accepted his proposal, and in perfect
silence they went, side by side, down the sloping road. They remained for
a long time without speaking; the doctor seemed more overcome than was
his wont that morning; it was as though his chat with his dear lost ones
had made his heart bleed yet more copiously. He walked along with his
head bowed; his face, round which his white hair streamed, was very pale,
and tears still blurred his eyes. And yet it was so pleasant, so warm in
the sunlight on that lovely morning. The road now followed the Gave on
its right bank, on the other side of the new town; and you could see the
gardens, the inclined ways, and the Basilica. And, all at once, the
Grotto appeared, with the everlasting flare of its tapers, now paling in
the broad light.

Doctor Chassaigne, who had turned his head, made the sign of the cross,
which Pierre did not at first understand. And when, in his turn, he had
perceived the Grotto, he glanced in surprise at his old friend, and once
more relapsed into the astonishment which had come over him a couple of
days previously on finding this man of science, this whilom atheist and
materialist, so overwhelmed by grief that he was now a believer, longing
for the one delight of meeting his dear ones in another life. His heart
had swept his reason away; old and lonely as he was, it was only the
illusion that he would live once more in Paradise, where loving souls
meet again, that prolonged his life on earth. This thought increased the
young priest’s discomfort. Must he also wait until he had grown old and
endured equal sufferings in order to find a refuge in faith?

Still walking beside the Gave, leaving the town farther and farther
behind them, they were lulled as it were by the noise of those clear
waters rolling over the pebbles between banks shaded by trees. And they
still remained silent, walking on with an equal step, each, on his own
side, absorbed in his sorrows.

“And Bernadette,” Pierre suddenly inquired; “did you know her?”

The doctor raised his head. “Bernadette? Yes, yes,” said he. “I saw her
once--afterwards.” He relapsed into silence for a moment, and then began
chatting: “In 1858, you know, at the time of the apparitions, I was
thirty years of age. I was in Paris, still young in my profession, and
opposed to all supernatural notions, so that I had no idea of returning
to my native mountains to see a girl suffering from hallucinations. Five
or six years later, however, some time about 1864, I passed through
Lourdes, and was inquisitive enough to pay Bernadette a visit. She was
then still at the asylum with the Sisters of Nevers.”

Pierre remembered that one of the reasons of his journey had been his
desire to complete his inquiry respecting Bernadette. And who could tell
if grace might not come to him from that humble, lovable girl, on the day
when he should be convinced that she had indeed fulfilled a mission of
divine love and forgiveness? For this consummation to ensue it would
perhaps suffice that he should know her better and learn to feel that she
was really the saint, the chosen one, as others believed her to have
been.

“Tell me about her, I pray you,” he said; “tell me all you know of her.”

A faint smile curved the doctor’s lips. He understood, and would have
greatly liked to calm and comfort the young priest whose soul was so
grievously tortured by doubt. “Oh! willingly, my poor child!” he
answered. “I should be so happy to help you on the path to light. You do
well to love Bernadette--that may save you; for since all those old-time
things I have deeply reflected on her case, and I declare to you that I
never met a more charming creature, or one with a better heart.”

Then, to the slow rhythm of their footsteps along the well-kept, sunlit
road, in the delightful freshness of morning, the doctor began to relate
his visit to Bernadette in 1864. She had then just attained her twentieth
birthday, the apparitions had taken place six years previously, and she
had astonished him by her candid and sensible air, her perfect modesty.
The Sisters of Nevers, who had taught her to read, kept her with them at
the asylum in order to shield her from public inquisitiveness. She found
an occupation there, helping them in sundry petty duties; but she was
very often taken ill, and would spend weeks at a time in her bed. The
doctor had been particularly struck by her beautiful eyes, pure, candid,
and frank, like those of a child. The rest of her face, said he, had
become somewhat spoilt; her complexion was losing its clearness, her
features had grown less delicate, and her general appearance was that of
an ordinary servant-girl, short, puny, and unobtrusive. Her piety was
still keen, but she had not seemed to him to be the ecstatical, excitable
creature that many might have supposed; indeed, she appeared to have a
rather positive mind which did not indulge in flights of fancy; and she
invariably had some little piece of needlework, some knitting, some
embroidery in her hand. In a word, she appeared to have entered the
common path, and in nowise resembled the intensely passionate female
worshippers of the Christ. She had no further visions, and never of her
own accord spoke of the eighteen apparitions which had decided her life.
To learn anything it was necessary to interrogate her, to address precise
questions to her. These she would briefly answer, and then seek to change
the conversation, as though she did not like to talk of such mysterious
things. If wishing to probe the matter further, you asked her the nature
of the three secrets which the Virgin had confided to her, she would
remain silent, simply averting her eyes. And it was impossible to make
her contradict herself; the particulars she gave invariably agreed with
her original narrative, and, indeed, she always seemed to repeat the same
words, with the same inflections of the voice.

“I had her in hand during the whole of one afternoon,” continued Doctor
Chassaigne, “and there was not the variation of a syllable in her story.
It was disconcerting. Still, I am prepared to swear that she was not
lying, that she never lied, that she was altogether incapable of
falsehood.”

Pierre boldly ventured to discuss this point. “But won’t you admit,
doctor, the possibility of some disorder of the will?” he asked. “Has it
not been proved, is it not admitted nowadays, that when certain
degenerate creatures with childish minds fall into an hallucination, a
fancy of some kind or other, they are often unable to free themselves
from it, especially when they remain in the same environment in which the
phenomenon occurred? Cloistered, living alone with her fixed idea,
Bernadette, naturally enough, obstinately clung to it.”

The doctor’s faint smile returned to his lips, and vaguely waving his
arm, he replied: “Ah! my child, you ask me too much. You know very well
that I am now only a poor old man, who prides himself but little on his
science, and no longer claims to be able to explain anything. However, I
do of course know of that famous medical-school example of the young girl
who allowed herself to waste away with hunger at home, because she
imagined that she was suffering from a serious complaint of the digestive
organs, but who nevertheless began to eat when she was taken elsewhere.
However, that is but one circumstance, and there are so many
contradictory cases.”

For a moment they became silent, and only the rhythmical sound of their
steps was heard along the road. Then the doctor resumed: “Moreover, it is
quite true that Bernadette shunned the world, and was only happy in her
solitary corner. She was never known to have a single intimate female
friend, any particular human love for anybody. She was kind and gentle
towards all, but it was only for children that she showed any lively
affection. And as, after all, the medical man is not quite dead within
me, I will confess to you that I have sometimes wondered if she remained
as pure in mind, as, most undoubtedly, she did remain in body. However, I
think it quite possible, given her sluggish, poor-blooded temperament,
not to speak of the innocent sphere in which she grew up, first Bartres,
and then the convent. Still, a doubt came to me when I heard of the
tender interest which she took in the orphan asylum built by the Sisters
of Nevers, farther along this very road. Poor little girls are received
into it, and shielded from the perils of the highways. And if Bernadette
wished it to be extremely large, so as to lodge all the little lambs in
danger, was it not because she herself remembered having roamed the roads
with bare feet, and still trembled at the idea of what might have become
of her but for the help of the Blessed Virgin?”

Then, resuming his narrative, he went on telling Pierre of the crowds
that flocked to see Bernadette and pay her reverence in her asylum at
Lourdes. This had proved a source of considerable fatigue to her. Not a
day went by without a stream of visitors appearing before her. They came
from all parts of France, some even from abroad; and it soon proved
necessary to refuse the applications of those who were actuated by mere
inquisitiveness, and to grant admittance only to the genuine believers,
the members of the clergy, and the people of mark on whom the doors could
not well have been shut. A Sister was always present to protect
Bernadette against the excessive indiscretion of some of her visitors,
for questions literally rained upon her, and she often grew faint through
having to repeat her story so many times. Ladies of high position fell on
their knees, kissed her gown, and would have liked to carry a piece of it
away as a relic. She also had to defend her chaplet, which in their
excitement they all begged her to sell to them for a fabulous amount. One
day a certain marchioness endeavoured to secure it by giving her another
one which she had brought with her--a chaplet with a golden cross and
beads of real pearls. Many hoped that she would consent to work a miracle
in their presence; children were brought to her in order that she might
lay her hands upon them; she was also consulted in cases of illness, and
attempts were made to purchase her influence with the Virgin. Large sums
were offered to her. At the slightest sign, the slightest expression of a
desire to be a queen, decked with jewels and crowned with gold, she would
have been overwhelmed with regal presents. And while the humble remained
on their knees on her threshold, the great ones of the earth pressed
round her, and would have counted it a glory to act as her escort. It was
even related that one among them, the handsomest and wealthiest of
princes, came one clear sunny April day to ask her hand in marriage.

“But what always struck and displeased me,” said Pierre, “was her
departure from Lourdes when she was two-and-twenty, her sudden
disappearance and sequestration in the convent of Saint Gildard at
Nevers, whence she never emerged. Didn’t that give a semblance of truth
to those spurious rumours of insanity which were circulated? Didn’t it
help people to suppose that she was being shut up, whisked away for fear
of some indiscretion on her part, some naive remark or other which might
have revealed the secret of a prolonged fraud? Indeed, to speak plainly,
I will confess to you that for my own part I still believe that she was
spirited away.”

Doctor Chassaigne gently shook his head. “No, no,” said he, “there was no
story prepared in advance in this affair, no big melodrama secretly
staged and afterwards performed by more or less unconscious actors. The
developments came of themselves, by the sole force of circumstances; and
they were always very intricate, very difficult to analyse. Moreover, it
is certain that it was Bernadette herself who wished to leave Lourdes.
Those incessant visits wearied her, she felt ill at ease amidst all that
noisy worship. All that _she_ desired was a dim nook where she might live
in peace, and so fierce was she at times in her disinterestedness, that
when money was handed to her, even with the pious intent of having a mass
said or a taper burnt, she would fling it upon the floor. She never
accepted anything for herself or for her family, which remained in
poverty. And with such pride as she possessed, such natural simplicity,
such a desire to remain in the background, one can very well understand
that she should have wished to disappear and cloister herself in some
lonely spot so as to prepare herself to make a good death. Her work was
accomplished; she had initiated this great movement scarcely knowing how
or why; and she could really be of no further utility. Others were about
to conduct matters to an issue and insure the triumph of the Grotto.”

“Let us admit, then, that she went off of her own accord,” said Pierre;
“still, what a relief it must have been for the people you speak of, who
thenceforth became the real masters, whilst millions of money were
raining down on Lourdes from the whole world.”

“Oh! certainly; I don’t pretend that any attempt was made to detain her
here!” exclaimed the doctor. “Frankly, I even believe that she was in
some degree urged into the course she took. She ended by becoming
somewhat of an incumbrance. It was not that any annoying revelations were
feared from her; but remember that with her extreme timidity and frequent
illnesses she was scarcely ornamental. Besides, however small the room
which she took up at Lourdes, however obedient she showed herself, she
was none the less a power, and attracted the multitude, which made her,
so to say, a competitor of the Grotto. For the Grotto to remain alone,
resplendent in its glory, it was advisable that Bernadette should
withdraw into the background, become as it were a simple legend. Such,
indeed, must have been the reasons which induced Monseigneur Laurence,
the Bishop of Tarbes, to hasten her departure. The only mistake that was
made was in saying that it was a question of screening her from the
enterprises of the world, as though it were feared that she might fall
into the sin of pride, by growing vain of the saintly fame with which the
whole of Christendom re-echoed. And this was doing her a grave injury,
for she was as incapable of pride as she was of falsehood. Never, indeed,
was there a more candid or more modest child.”

The doctor was growing impassioned, excited. But all at once he became
calm again, and a pale smile returned to his lips. “‘Tis true,” said he,
“I love her; the more I have thought of her, the more have I learned to
love her. But you must not think, Pierre, that I am completely brutified
by belief. If I nowadays acknowledge the existence of an unseen power, if
I feel a need of believing in another, better, and more just life, I
nevertheless know right well that there are men remaining in this world
of ours; and at times, even when they wear the cowl or the cassock, the
work they do is vile.”

There came another interval of silence. Each was continuing his dream
apart from the other. Then the doctor resumed: “I will tell you of a
fancy which has often haunted me. Suppose we admit that Bernadette was
not the shy, simple child we knew her to be; let us endow her with a
spirit of intrigue and domination, transform her into a conqueress, a
leader of nations, and try to picture what, in that case, would have
happened. It is evident that the Grotto would be hers, the Basilica also.
We should see her lording it at all the ceremonies, under a dais, with a
gold mitre on her head. She would distribute the miracles; with a
sovereign gesture her little hand would lead the multitudes to heaven.
All the lustre and glory would come from her, she being the saint, the
chosen one, the only one that had been privileged to see the Divinity
face to face. And indeed nothing would seem more just, for she would
triumph after toiling, enjoy the fruit of her labour in all glory. But
you see, as it happens, she is defrauded, robbed. The marvellous harvests
sown by her are reaped by others. During the twelve years which she lived
at Saint Gildard, kneeling in the gloom, Lourdes was full of victors,
priests in golden vestments chanting thanksgivings, and blessing churches
and monuments erected at a cost of millions. She alone did not behold the
triumph of the new faith, whose author she had been. You say that she
dreamt it all. Well, at all events, what a beautiful dream it was, a
dream which has stirred the whole world, and from which she, dear girl,
never awakened!”

They halted and sat down for a moment on a rock beside the road, before
returning to the town. In front of them the Gave, deep at this point of
its course, was rolling blue waters tinged with dark moire-like
reflections, whilst, farther on, rushing hurriedly over a bed of large
stones, the stream became so much foam, a white froth, light like snow.
Amidst the gold raining from the sun, a fresh breeze came down from the
mountains.

Whilst listening to that story of how Bernadette had been exploited and
suppressed, Pierre had simply found in it all a fresh motive for revolt;
and, with his eyes fixed on the ground, he began to think of the
injustice of nature, of that law which wills that the strong should
devour the weak. Then, all at once raising his head, he inquired: “And
did you also know Abbe Peyramale?”

The doctor’s eyes brightened once more, and he eagerly replied:
“Certainly I did! He was an upright, energetic man, a saint, an apostle.
He and Bernadette were the great makers of Our Lady of Lourdes. Like her,
he endured frightful sufferings, and, like her, he died from them. Those
who do not know his story can know nothing, understand nothing, of the
drama enacted here.”

Thereupon he related that story at length. Abbe Peyramale was the parish
priest of Lourdes at the time of the apparitions. A native of the region,
tall, broad-shouldered, with a powerful leonine head, he was extremely
intelligent, very honest and goodhearted, though at times violent and
domineering. He seemed built for combat. An enemy of all pious
exaggerations, discharging the duties of his ministry in a broad, liberal
spirit, he regarded the apparitions with distrust when he first heard of
them, refused to believe in Bernadette’s stories, questioned her, and
demanded proofs. It was only at a later stage, when the blast of faith
became irresistible, upsetting the most rebellious minds and mastering
the multitude, that he ended, in his turn, by bowing his head; and when
he was finally conquered, it was more particularly by his love for the
humble and the oppressed which he could not restrain when he beheld
Bernadette threatened with imprisonment. The civil authorities were
persecuting one of his flock; at this his shepherd’s heart awoke, and, in
her defence, he gave full reign to his ardent passion for justice.
Moreover, the charm which the child diffused had worked upon him; he felt
her to be so candid, so truthful, that he began to place a blind faith in
her and love her even as everybody else loved her. Moreover, why should
he have curtly dismissed all questions of miracles, when miracles abound
in the pages of Holy Writ? It was not for a minister of religion,
whatever his prudence, to set himself up as a sceptic when entire
populations were falling on their knees and the Church seemed to be on
the eve of another great triumph. Then, too, he had the nature of one who
leads men, who stirs up crowds, who builds, and in this affair he had
really found his vocation, the vast field in which he might exercise his
energy, the great cause to which he might wholly devote himself with all
his passionate ardour and determination to succeed.

From that moment, then, Abbe Peyramale had but one thought, to execute
the orders which the Virgin had commissioned Bernadette to transmit to
him. He caused improvements to be carried out at the Grotto. A railing
was placed in front of it; pipes were laid for the conveyance of the
water from the source, and a variety of work was accomplished in order to
clear the approaches. However, the Virgin had particularly requested that
a chapel might be built; and he wished to have a church, quite a
triumphal Basilica. He pictured everything on a grand scale, and, full of
confidence in the enthusiastic help of Christendom, he worried the
architects, requiring them to design real palaces worthy of the Queen of
Heaven. As a matter of fact, offerings already abounded, gold poured from
the most distant dioceses, a rain of gold destined to increase and never
end. Then came his happy years: he was to be met among the workmen at all
hours, instilling activity into them like the jovial, good-natured fellow
he was, constantly on the point of taking a pick or trowel in hand
himself, such was his eagerness to behold the realisation of his dream.
But days of trial were in store for him: he fell ill, and lay in danger
of death on the fourth of April, 1864, when the first procession started
from his parish church to the Grotto, a procession of sixty thousand
pilgrims, which wound along the streets amidst an immense concourse of
spectators.

On the day when Abbe Peyramale rose from his bed, saved, a first time,
from death, he found himself despoiled. To second him in his heavy task,
Monseigneur Laurence, the Bishop, had already given him as assistant a
former episcopal secretary, Father Sempe, whom he had appointed warden of
the Missionaries of Geraison, a community founded by himself. Father
Sempe was a sly, spare little man, to all appearance most disinterested
and humble, but in reality consumed by all the thirst of ambition. At the
outset he kept in his place, serving the parish priest of Lourdes like a
faithful subordinate, attending to matters of all kinds in order to
lighten the other’s work, and acquiring information on every possible
subject in his desire to render himself indispensable. He must soon have
realised what a rich farm the Grotto was destined to become, and what a
colossal revenue might be derived from it, if only a little skill were
exercised. And thenceforth he no longer stirred from the episcopal
residence, but ended by acquiring great influence over the calm,
practical Bishop, who was in great need of money for the charities of his
diocese. And thus it was that during Abbe Peyramale’s illness Father
Sempe succeeded in effecting a separation between the parish of Lourdes
and the domain of the Grotto, which last he was commissioned to manage at
the head of a few Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, over whom the
Bishop placed him as Father Superior.

The struggle soon began, one of those covert, desperate, mortal struggles
which are waged under the cloak of ecclesiastical discipline. There was a
pretext for rupture all ready, a field of battle on which the longer
purse would necessarily end by conquering. It was proposed to build a new
parish church, larger and more worthy of Lourdes than the old one already
in existence, which was admitted to have become too small since the
faithful had been flocking into the town in larger and larger numbers.
Moreover, it was an old idea of Abbe Peyramale, who desired to carry out
the Virgin’s orders with all possible precision. Speaking of the Grotto,
she had said that people would go “thither in procession”; and the Abbe
had always seen the pilgrims start in procession from the town, whither
they were expected to return in the same fashion, as indeed had been the
practice on the first occasions after the apparitions. A central point, a
rallying spot, was therefore required, and the Abbe’s dream was to erect
a magnificent church, a cathedral of gigantic proportions, which would
accommodate a vast multitude. Builder as he was by temperament,
impassioned artisan working for the glory of Heaven, he already pictured
this cathedral springing from the soil, and rearing its clanging belfry
in the sunlight. And it was also his own house that he wished to build,
the edifice which would be his act of faith and adoration, the temple
where he would be the pontiff, and triumph in company with the sweet
memory of Bernadette, in full view of the spot of which both he and she
had been so cruelly dispossessed. Naturally enough, bitterly as he felt
that act of spoliation, the building of this new parish church was in
some degree his revenge, his share of all the glory, besides being a task
which would enable him to utilise both his militant activity and the
fever that had been consuming him ever since he had ceased going to the
Grotto, by reason of his soreness of heart.

At the outset of the new enterprise there was again a flash of
enthusiasm. At the prospect of seeing all the life and all the money flow
into the new city which was springing from the ground around the
Basilica, the old town, which felt itself thrust upon one side, espoused
the cause of its priest. The municipal council voted a sum of one hundred
thousand francs, which, unfortunately, was not to be paid until the new
church should be roofed in. Abbe Peyramale had already accepted the plans
of his architect--plans which, he had insisted, should be on a grand
scale--and had also treated with a contractor of Chartres, who engaged to
complete the church in three or four years if the promised supplies of
funds should be regularly forthcoming. The Abbe believed that offerings
would assuredly continue raining down from all parts, and so he launched
into this big enterprise without any anxiety, overflowing with a careless
bravery, and fully expecting that Heaven would not abandon him on the
road. He even fancied that he could rely upon the support of Monseigneur
Jourdan, who had now succeeded Monseigneur Laurence as Bishop of Tarbes,
for this prelate, after blessing the foundation-stone of the new church,
had delivered an address in which he admitted that the enterprise was
necessary and meritorious. And it seemed, too, as though Father Sempe,
with his customary humility, had bowed to the inevitable and accepted
this vexatious competition, which would compel him to relinquish a share
of the plunder; for he now pretended to devote himself entirely to the
management of the Grotto, and even allowed a collection-box for
contributions to the building of the new parish church to be placed
inside the Basilica.

Then, however, the secret, rageful struggle began afresh. Abbe Peyramale,
who was a wretched manager, exulted on seeing his new church so rapidly
take shape. The work was being carried on at a fast pace, and he troubled
about nothing else, being still under the delusion that the Blessed
Virgin would find whatever money might be needed. Thus he was quite
stupefied when he at last perceived that the offerings were falling off,
that the money of the faithful no longer reached him, as though, indeed,
someone had secretly diverted its flow. And eventually the day came when
he was unable to make the stipulated payments. In all this there had been
so much skilfully combined strangulation, of which he only became aware
later on. Father Sempe, however, had once more prevailed on the Bishop to
grant his favour exclusively to the Grotto. There was even a talk of some
confidential circulars distributed through the various dioceses, so that
the many sums of money offered by the faithful should no longer be sent
to the parish. The voracious, insatiable Grotto was bent upon securing
everything, and to such a point were things carried that five hundred
franc notes slipped into the collection-box at the Basilica were kept
back; the box was rifled and the parish robbed. Abbe Peyramale, however,
in his passion for the rising church, his child, continued fighting most
desperately, ready if need were to give his blood. He had at first
treated with the contractor in the name of the vestry; then, when he was
at a loss how to pay, he treated in his own name. His life was bound up
in the enterprise, he wore himself out in the heroic efforts which he
made. Of the four hundred thousand francs that he had promised, he had
only been able to pay two hundred thousand; and the municipal council
still obstinately refused to hand over the hundred thousand francs which
it had voted, until the new church should be covered in. This was acting
against the town’s real interests. However, it was said that Father Sempe
was trying to bring influence to bear on the contractor. And, all at
once, the work was stopped.

From that moment the death agony began. Wounded in the heart, the Abbe
Peyramale, the broad-shouldered mountaineer with the leonine face,
staggered and fell like an oak struck down by a thunderbolt. He took to
his bed, and never left it alive. Strange stories circulated: it was said
that Father Sempe had sought to secure admission to the parsonage under
some pious pretext, but in reality to see if his much-dreaded adversary
were really mortally stricken; and it was added, that it had been
necessary to drive him from the sick-room, where his presence was an
outrageous scandal. Then, when the unhappy priest, vanquished and steeped
in bitterness, was dead, Father Sempe was seen triumphing at the funeral,
from which the others had not dared to keep him away. It was affirmed
that he openly displayed his abominable delight, that his face was
radiant that day with the joy of victory. He was at last rid of the only
man who had been an obstacle to his designs, whose legitimate authority
he had feared. He would no longer be forced to share anything with
anybody now that both the founders of Our Lady of Lourdes had been
suppressed--Bernadette placed in a convent, and Abbe Peyramale lowered
into the ground. The Grotto was now his own property, the alms would come
to him alone, and he could do what he pleased with the eight hundred
thousand francs* or so which were at his disposal every year. He would
complete the gigantic works destined to make the Basilica a
self-supporting centre, and assist in embellishing the new town in order
to increase the isolation of the old one and seclude it behind its rock,
like an insignificant parish submerged beneath the splendour of its
all-powerful neighbour. All the money, all the sovereignty, would be his;
he henceforth would reign.

  * About 145,000 dollars.

However, although the works had been stopped, and the new parish church
was slumbering inside its wooden fence, it was none the less more than
half built. The vaulted aisles were already erected. And the imperfect
pile remained there like a threat, for the town might some day attempt to
finish it. Like Abbe Peyramale, therefore, it must be killed for good,
turned into an irreparable ruin. The secret labour therefore continued, a
work of refined cruelty and slow destruction. To begin with, the new
parish priest, a simple-minded creature, was cowed to such a point that
he no longer opened the envelopes containing remittances for the parish;
all the registered letters were at once taken to the Fathers. Then the
site selected for the new parish church was criticised, and the diocesan
architect was induced to draw up a report stating that the old church was
still in good condition and of ample size for the requirements of the
community. Moreover, influence was brought to bear on the Bishop, and
representations were made to him respecting the annoying features of the
pecuniary difficulties which had arisen with the contractor. With a
little imagination poor Peyramale was transformed into a violent,
obstinate madman, through whose undisciplined zeal the Church had almost
been compromised. And, at last, the Bishop, forgetting that he himself
had blessed the foundation-stone, issued a pastoral letter laying the
unfinished church under interdict, and prohibiting all religious services
in it. This was the supreme blow. Endless lawsuits had already begun; the
contractor, who had only received two hundred thousand francs for the
five hundred thousand francs’ worth of work which had been executed, had
taken proceedings against Abbe Peyramale’s heir-at-law, the vestry, and
the town, for the last still refused to pay over the amount which it had
voted. At first the Prefect’s Council declared itself incompetent to deal
with the case, and when it was sent back to it by the Council of State,
it rendered a judgment by which the town was condemned to pay the hundred
thousand francs and the heir-at-law to finish the church. At the same
time the vestry was put out of court. However, there was a fresh appeal
to the Council of State, which quashed this judgment, and condemned the
vestry, and, in default, the heir-at-law, to pay the contractor. Neither
party being solvent, matters remained in this position. The lawsuits had
lasted fifteen years. The town had now resignedly paid over the hundred
thousand francs, and only two hundred thousand remained owing to the
contractor. However, the costs and the accumulated interest had so
increased the amount of indebtedness that it had risen to six hundred
thousand francs; and as, on the other hand, it was estimated that four
hundred thousand francs would be required to finish the church, a million
was needed to save this young ruin from certain destruction. The Fathers
of the Grotto were thenceforth able to sleep in peace; they had
assassinated the poor church; it was as dead as Abbe Peyramale himself.

The bells of the Basilica rang out triumphantly, and Father Sempe reigned
as a victor at the conclusion of that great struggle, that dagger warfare
in which not only a man but stones also had been done to death in the
shrouding gloom of intriguing sacristies. And old Lourdes, obstinate and
unintelligent, paid a hard penalty for its mistake in not giving more
support to its minister, who had died struggling, killed by his love for
his parish, for now the new town did not cease to grow and prosper at the
expense of the old one. All the wealth flowed to the former: the Fathers
of the Grotto coined money, financed hotels and candle shops, and sold
the water of the source, although a clause of their agreement with the
municipality expressly prohibited them from carrying on any commercial
pursuits.

The whole region began to rot and fester; the triumph of the Grotto had
brought about such a passion for lucre, such a burning, feverish desire
to possess and enjoy, that extraordinary perversion set in, growing worse
and worse each day, and changing Bernadette’s peaceful Bethlehem into a
perfect Sodom or Gomorrah. Father Sempe had ensured the triumph of his
Divinity by spreading human abominations all around and wrecking
thousands of souls. Gigantic buildings rose from the ground, five or six
millions of francs had already been expended, everything being sacrificed
to the stern determination to leave the poor parish out in the cold and
keep the entire plunder for self and friends. Those costly, colossal
gradient ways had only been erected in order to avoid compliance with the
Virgin’s express desire that the faithful should come to the Grotto in
procession. For to go down from the Basilica by the incline on the left,
and climb up to it again by the incline on the right, could certainly not
be called going to the Grotto in procession: it was simply so much
revolving in a circle. However, the Fathers cared little about that; they
had succeeded in compelling people to start from their premises and
return to them, in order that they might be the sole proprietors of the
affair, the opulent farmers who garnered the whole harvest. Abbe
Peyramale lay buried in the crypt of his unfinished, ruined church, and
Bernadette, who had long since dragged out her life of suffering in the
depths of a convent far away, was now likewise sleeping the eternal sleep
under a flagstone in a chapel.

Deep silence fell when Doctor Chassaigne had finished this long
narrative. Then, with a painful effort, he rose to his feet again: “It
will soon be ten o’clock, my dear child,” said he, “and I want you to
take a little rest. Let us go back.”

Pierre followed him without speaking; and they retraced their steps
toward the town at a more rapid pace.

“Ah! yes,” resumed the doctor, “there were great iniquities and great
sufferings in it all. But what else could you expect? Man spoils and
corrupts the most beautiful things. And you cannot yet understand all the
woeful sadness of the things of which I have been talking to you. You
must see them, lay your hand on them. Would you like me to show you
Bernadette’s room and Abbe Peyramale’s unfinished church this evening?”

“Yes, I should indeed,” replied Pierre.

“Well, I will meet you in front of the Basilica after the four-o’clock
procession, and you can come with me.”

Then they spoke no further, each becoming absorbed in his reverie once
more.

The Gave, now upon their right hand, was flowing through a deep gorge, a
kind of cleft into which it plunged, vanishing from sight among the
bushes. But at intervals a clear stretch of it, looking like unburnished
silver, would appear to view; and, farther on, after a sudden turn in the
road, they found it flowing in increased volume across a plain, where it
spread at times into glassy sheets which must often have changed their
beds, for the gravelly soil was ravined on all sides. The sun was now
becoming very hot, and was already high in the heavens, whose limpid
azure assumed a deeper tinge above the vast circle of mountains.

And it was at this turn of the road that Lourdes, still some distance
away, reappeared to the eyes of Pierre and Doctor Chassaigne. In the
splendid morning atmosphere, amid a flying dust of gold and purple rays,
the town shone whitely on the horizon, its houses and monuments becoming
more and more distinct at each step which brought them nearer. And the
doctor, still silent, at last waved his arm with a broad, mournful
gesture in order to call his companion’s attention to this growing town,
as though to a proof of all that he had been telling him. There, indeed,
rising up in the dazzling daylight, was the evidence which confirmed his
words.

The flare of the Grotto, fainter now that the sun was shining, could
already be espied amidst the greenery. And soon afterwards the gigantic
monumental works spread out: the quay with its freestone parapet skirting
the Gave, whose course had been diverted; the new bridge connecting the
new gardens with the recently opened boulevard; the colossal gradient
ways, the massive church of the Rosary, and, finally, the slim, tapering
Basilica, rising above all else with graceful pride. Of the new town
spread all around the monuments, the wealthy city which had sprung, as
though by enchantment, from the ancient impoverished soil, the great
convents and the great hotels, you could, at this distance, merely
distinguish a swarming of white facades and a scintillation of new
slates; whilst, in confusion, far away, beyond the rocky mass on which
the crumbling castle walls were profiled against the sky, appeared the
humble roofs of the old town, a jumble of little time-worn roofs,
pressing timorously against one another. And as a background to this
vision of the life of yesterday and to-day, the little and the big Gers
rose up beneath the splendour of the everlasting sun, and barred the
horizon with their bare slopes, which the oblique rays were tingeing with
streaks of pink and yellow.

Doctor Chassaigne insisted on accompanying Pierre to the Hotel of the
Apparitions, and only parted from him at its door, after reminding him of
their appointment for the afternoon. It was not yet eleven o’clock.
Pierre, whom fatigue had suddenly mastered, forced himself to eat before
going to bed, for he realised that want of food was one of the chief
causes of the weakness which had come over him. He fortunately found a
vacant seat at the _table d’hote_, and made some kind of a _dejeuner_,
half asleep all the time, and scarcely knowing what was served to him.
Then he went up-stairs and flung himself on his bed, after taking care to
tell the servant to awake him at three o’clock.

However, on lying down, the fever that consumed him at first prevented
him from closing his eyes. A pair of gloves, forgotten in the next room,
had reminded him of M. de Guersaint, who had left for Gavarnie before
daybreak, and would only return in the evening. What a delightful gift
was thoughtlessness, thought Pierre. For his own part, with his limbs
worn out by weariness and his mind distracted, he was sad unto death.
Everything seemed to conspire against his willing desire to regain the
faith of his childhood. The tale of Abbe Peyramale’s tragic adventures
had simply aggravated the feeling of revolt which the story of
Bernadette, chosen and martyred, had implanted in his breast. And thus he
asked himself whether his search after the truth, instead of restoring
his faith, would not rather lead him to yet greater hatred of ignorance
and credulity, and to the bitter conviction that man is indeed all alone
in the world, with naught to guide him save his reason.

At last he fell asleep, but visions continued hovering around him in his
painful slumber. He beheld Lourdes, contaminated by Mammon, turned into a
spot of abomination and perdition, transformed into a huge bazaar, where
everything was sold, masses and souls alike! He beheld also Abbe
Peyramale, dead and slumbering under the ruins of his church, among the
nettles which ingratitude had sown there. And he only grew calm again,
only tasted the delights of forgetfulness when a last pale, woeful vision
had faded from his gaze--a vision of Bernadette upon her knees in a
gloomy corner at Nevers, dreaming of her far-away work, which she was
never, never to behold.





THE FOURTH DAY




I. THE BITTERNESS OP DEATH

AT the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours, that morning, Marie remained
seated on her bed, propped up by pillows. Having spent the whole night at
the Grotto, she had refused to let them take her back there. And, as
Madame de Jonquiere approached her, to raise one of the pillows which was
slipping from its place, she asked: “What day is it, madame?”

“Monday, my dear child.”

“Ah! true. One so soon loses count of time. And, besides, I am so happy!
It is to-day that the Blessed Virgin will cure me!”

She smiled divinely, with the air of a day-dreamer, her eyes gazing into
vacancy, her thoughts so far away, so absorbed in her one fixed idea,
that she beheld nothing save the certainty of her hope. Round about her,
the Sainte-Honorine Ward was now quite deserted, all the patients,
excepting Madame Vetu, who lay at the last extremity in the next bed,
having already started for the Grotto. But Marie did not even notice her
neighbour; she was delighted with the sudden stillness which had fallen.
One of the windows overlooking the courtyard had been opened, and the
glorious morning sunshine entered in one broad beam, whose golden dust
was dancing over her bed and streaming upon her pale hands. It was indeed
pleasant to find this room, so dismal at nighttime with its many beds of
sickness, its unhealthy atmosphere, and its nightmare groans, thus
suddenly filled with sunlight, purified by the morning air, and wrapped
in such delicious silence! “Why don’t you try to sleep a little?”
 maternally inquired Madame de Jonquiere. “You must be quite worn out by
your vigil.”

Marie, who felt so light and cheerful that she no longer experienced any
pain, seemed surprised.

“But I am not at all tired, and I don’t feel a bit sleepy. Go to sleep?
Oh! no, that would be too sad. I should no longer know that I was going
to be cured!”

At this the superintendent laughed. “Then why didn’t you let them take
you to the Grotto?” she asked. “You won’t know what to do with yourself
all alone here.”

“I am not alone, madame, I am with her,” replied Marie; and thereupon,
her vision returning to her, she clasped her hands in ecstasy. “Last
night, you know, I saw her bend her head towards me and smile. I quite
understood her, I could hear her voice, although she never opened her
lips. When the Blessed Sacrament passes at four o’clock I shall be
cured.”

Madame de Jonquiere tried to calm her, feeling rather anxious at the
species of somnambulism in which she beheld her. However, the sick girl
went on: “No, no, I am no worse, I am waiting. Only, you must surely see,
madame, that there is no need for me to go to the Grotto this morning,
since the appointment which she gave me is for four o’clock.” And then the
girl added in a lower tone: “Pierre will come for me at half-past three.
At four o’clock I shall be cured.”

The sunbeam slowly made its way up her bare arms, which were now almost
transparent, so wasted had they become through illness; whilst her
glorious fair hair, which had fallen over her shoulders, seemed like the
very effulgence of the great luminary enveloping her. The trill of a bird
came in from the courtyard, and quite enlivened the tremulous silence of
the ward. Some child who could not be seen must also have been playing
close by, for now and again a soft laugh could be heard ascending in the
warm air which was so delightfully calm.

“Well,” said Madame de Jonquiere by way of conclusion, “don’t sleep then,
as you don’t wish to. But keep quite quiet, and it will rest you all the
same.”

Meantime Madame Vetu was expiring in the adjoining bed. They had not
dared to take her to the Grotto, for fear they should see her die on the
way. For some little time she had lain there with her eyes closed; and
Sister Hyacinthe, who was watching, had beckoned to Madame Desagneaux in
order to acquaint her with the bad opinion she had formed of the case.
Both of them were now leaning over the dying woman, observing her with
increasing anxiety. The mask upon her face had turned more yellow than
ever, and now looked like a coating of mud; her eyes too had become more
sunken, her lips seemed to have grown thinner, and the death rattle had
begun, a slow, pestilential wheezing, polluted by the cancer which was
finishing its destructive work. All at once she raised her eyelids, and
was seized with fear on beholding those two faces bent over her own.
Could her death be near, that they should thus be gazing at her? Immense
sadness showed itself in her eyes, a despairing regret of life. It was
not a vehement revolt, for she no longer had the strength to struggle;
but what a frightful fate it was to have left her shop, her surroundings,
and her husband, merely to come and die so far away; to have braved the
abominable torture of such a journey, to have prayed both day and night,
and then, instead of having her prayer granted, to die when others
recovered!

However, she could do no more than murmur “Oh! how I suffer; oh! how I
suffer. Do something, anything, to relieve this pain, I beseech you.”

Little Madame Desagneaux, with her pretty milk-white face showing amidst
her mass of fair, frizzy hair, was quite upset. She was not used to
deathbed scenes, she would have given half her heart, as she expressed
it, to see that poor woman recover. And she rose up and began to question
Sister Hyacinthe, who was also in tears but already resigned, knowing as
she did that salvation was assured when one died well. Could nothing
really be done, however? Could not something be tried to ease the dying
woman? Abbe Judaine had come and administered the last sacrament to her a
couple of hours earlier that very morning. She now only had Heaven to
look to; it was her only hope, for she had long since given up expecting
aid from the skill of man.

“No, no! we must do something,” exclaimed Madame Desagneaux. And
thereupon she went and fetched Madame de Jonquiere from beside Marie’s
bed. “Look how this poor creature is suffering, madame!” she exclaimed.
“Sister Hyacinthe says that she can only last a few hours longer. But we
cannot leave her moaning like this. There are things which give relief.
Why not call that young doctor who is here?”

“Of course we will,” replied the superintendent. “We will send for him at
once.”

They seldom thought of the doctor in the wards. It only occurred to the
ladies to send for him when a case was at its very worst, when one of
their patients was howling with pain. Sister Hyacinthe, who herself felt
surprised at not having thought of Ferrand, whom she believed to be in an
adjoining room, inquired if she should fetch him.

“Certainly,” was the reply. “Bring him as quickly as possible.”

When the Sister had gone off, Madame de Jonquiere made Madame Desagneaux
help her in slightly raising the dying woman’s head, thinking that this
might relieve her. The two ladies happened to be alone there that
morning, all the other lady-hospitallers having gone to their devotions
or their private affairs. However, from the end of the large deserted
ward, where, amidst the warm quiver of the sunlight such sweet
tranquillity prevailed, there still came at intervals the light laughter
of the unseen child.

“Can it be Sophie who is making such a noise?” suddenly asked the
lady-superintendent, whose nerves were somewhat upset by all the worry of
the death which she foresaw. Then quickly walking to the end of the ward,
she found that it was indeed Sophie Couteau--the young girl so
miraculously healed the previous year--who, seated on the floor behind a
bed, had been amusing herself, despite her fourteen years, in making a
doll out of a few rags. She was now talking to it, so happy, so absorbed
in her play, that she laughed quite heartily. “Hold yourself up,
mademoiselle,” said she. “Dance the polka, that I may see how you can do
it! One! two! dance, turn, kiss the one you like best!”

Madame de Jonquiere, however, was now coming up. “Little girl,” she said,
“we have one of our patients here in great pain, and not expected to
recover. You must not laugh so loud.”

“Ah! madame, I didn’t know,” replied Sophie, rising up, and becoming
quite serious, although still holding the doll in her hand. “Is she going
to die, madame?”

“I fear so, my poor child.”

Thereupon Sophie became quite silent. She followed the superintendent,
and seated herself on an adjoining bed; whence, without the slightest
sign of fear, but with her large eyes burning with curiosity, she began
to watch Madame Vetu’s death agony. In her nervous state, Madame
Desagneaux was growing impatient at the delay in the doctor’s arrival;
whilst Marie, still enraptured, and resplendent in the sunlight, seemed
unconscious of what was taking place about her, wrapt as she was in
delightful expectancy of the miracle.

Not having found Ferrand in the small apartment near the linen-room which
he usually occupied, Sister Hyacinthe was now searching for him all over
the building. During the past two days the young doctor had become more
bewildered than ever in that extraordinary hospital, where his assistance
was only sought for the relief of death pangs. The small medicine-chest
which he had brought with him proved quite useless; for there could be no
thought of trying any course of treatment, as the sick were not there to
be doctored, but simply to be cured by the lightning stroke of a miracle.
And so he mainly confined himself to administering a few opium pills, in
order to deaden the severer sufferings. He had been fairly amazed when
accompanying Doctor Bonamy on a round through the wards. It had resolved
itself into a mere stroll, the doctor, who had only come out of
curiosity, taking no interest in the patients, whom he neither questioned
nor examined. He solely concerned himself with the pretended cases of
cure, stopping opposite those women whom he recognised from having seen
them at his office where the miracles were verified. One of them had
suffered from three complaints, only one of which the Blessed Virgin had
so far deigned to cure; but great hopes were entertained respecting the
other two. Sometimes, when a wretched woman, who the day before had
claimed to be cured, was questioned with reference to her health, she
would reply that her pains had returned to her. However, this never
disturbed the doctor’s serenity; ever conciliatory, the good man declared
that Heaven would surely complete what Heaven had begun. Whenever there
was an improvement in health, he would ask if it were not something to be
thankful for. And, indeed, his constant saying was: “There’s an
improvement already; be patient!” What he most dreaded were the
importunities of the lady-superintendents, who all wished to detain him
to show him sundry extraordinary cases. Each prided herself on having the
most serious illnesses, the most frightful, exceptional cases in her
ward; so that she was eager to have them medically authenticated, in
order that she might share in the triumph should cure supervene. One
caught the doctor by the arm and assured him that she felt confident she
had a leper in her charge; another entreated him to come and look at a
young girl whose back, she said, was covered with fish’s scales; whilst a
third, whispering in his ear, gave him some terrible details about a
married lady of the best society. He hastened away, however, refusing to
see even one of them, or else simply promising to come back later on when
he was not so busy. As he himself said, if he listened to all those
ladies, the day would pass in useless consultations. However, he at last
suddenly stopped opposite one of the miraculously cured inmates, and,
beckoning Ferrand to his side, exclaimed: “Ah! now here is an interesting
cure!” and Ferrand, utterly bewildered, had to listen to him whilst he
described all the features of the illness, which had totally disappeared
at the first immersion in the piscina.

At last Sister Hyacinthe, still wandering about, encountered Abbe
Judaine, who informed her that the young doctor had just been summoned to
the Family Ward. It was the fourth time he had gone thither to attend to
Brother Isidore, whose sufferings were as acute as ever, and whom he
could only fill with opium. In his agony, the Brother merely asked to be
soothed a little, in order that he might gather together sufficient
strength to return to the Grotto in the afternoon, as he had not been
able to do so in the morning. However, his pains increased, and at last
he swooned away.

When the Sister entered the ward she found the doctor seated at the
missionary’s bedside. “Monsieur Ferrand,” she said, “come up-stairs with
me to the Sainte-Honorine Ward at once. We have a patient there at the
point of death.”

He smiled at her; indeed, he never beheld her without feeling brighter
and comforted. “I will come with you, Sister,” he replied. “But you’ll
wait a minute, won’t you? I must try to restore this poor man.”

She waited patiently and made herself useful. The Family Ward, situated
on the ground-floor, was also full of sunshine and fresh air which
entered through three large windows opening on to a narrow strip of
garden. In addition to Brother Isidore, only Monsieur Sabathier had
remained in bed that morning, with the view of obtaining a little rest;
whilst Madame Sabathier, taking advantage of the opportunity, had gone to
purchase a few medals and pictures, which she intended for presents.
Comfortably seated on his bed, his back supported by some pillows, the
ex-professor was rolling the beads of a chaplet between his fingers. He
was no longer praying, however, but merely continuing the operation in a
mechanical manner, his eyes, meantime, fixed upon his neighbour, whose
attack he was following with painful interest.

“Ah! Sister,” said he to Sister Hyacinthe, who had drawn near, “that poor
Brother fills me with admiration. Yesterday I doubted the Blessed Virgin
for a moment, seeing that she did not deign to hear me, though I have
been coming here for seven years past; but the example set me by that
poor martyr, so resigned amidst his torments, has quite shamed me for my
want of faith. You can have no idea how grievously he suffers, and you
should see him at the Grotto, with his eyes glowing with divine hope! It
is really sublime! I only know of one picture at the Louvre--a picture by
some unknown Italian master--in which there is the head of a monk
beatified by a similar faith.”

The man of intellect, the ex-university-professor, reared on literature
and art, was reappearing in this poor old fellow, whose life had been
blasted, and who had desired to become a free patient, one of the poor of
the earth, in order to move the pity of Heaven. He again began thinking
of his own case, and with tenacious hopefulness, which the futility of
seven journeys to Lourdes had failed to destroy, he added: “Well, I still
have this afternoon, since we sha’n’t leave till to-morrow. The water is
certainly very cold, but I shall let them dip me a last time; and all the
morning I have been praying and asking pardon for my revolt of yesterday.
When the Blessed Virgin chooses to cure one of her children, it only
takes her a second to do so; is that not so, Sister? May her will be
done, and blessed be her name!”

Passing the beads of the chaplet more slowly between his fingers, he
again began saying his “Aves” and “Paters,” whilst his eyelids drooped on
his flabby face, to which a childish expression had been returning during
the many years that he had been virtually cut off from the world.

Meantime Ferrand had signalled to Brother Isidore’s sister, Marthe, to
come to him. She had been standing at the foot of the bed with her arms
hanging down beside her, showing the tearless resignation of a poor,
narrow-minded girl whilst she watched that dying man whom she worshipped.
She was no more than a faithful dog; she had accompanied her brother and
spent her scanty savings, without being of any use save to watch him
suffer. Accordingly, when the doctor told her to take the invalid in her
arms and raise him up a little, she felt quite happy at being of some
service at last. Her heavy, freckled, mournful face actually grew bright.

“Hold him,” said the doctor, “whilst I try to give him this.”

When she had raised him, Ferrand, with the aid of a small spoon,
succeeded in introducing a few drops of liquid between his set teeth.
Almost immediately the sick man opened his eyes and heaved a deep sigh.
He was calmer already; the opium was taking effect and dulling the pain
which he felt burning his right side, as though a red-hot iron were being
applied to it. However, he remained so weak that, when he wished to
speak, it became necessary to place one’s ear close to his mouth in order
to catch what he said. With a slight sign he had begged Ferrand to bend
over him. “You are the doctor, monsieur, are you not?” he faltered. “Give
me sufficient strength that I may go once more to the Grotto, this
afternoon. I am certain that, if I am able to go, the Blessed Virgin will
cure me.”

“Why, of course you shall go,” replied the young man. “Don’t you feel
ever so much better?”

“Oh! ever so much better--no! I know very well what my condition is,
because I saw many of our Brothers die, out there in Senegal. When the
liver is attacked and the abscess has worked its way outside, it means
the end. Sweating, fever, and delirium follow. But the Blessed Virgin
will touch the sore with her little finger and it will be healed. Oh! I
implore you all, take me to the Grotto, even if I should be unconscious!”

Sister Hyacinthe had also approached, and leant over him. “Be easy, dear
Brother,” said she. “You shall go to the Grotto after _dejeuner_, and we
will all pray for you.”

At length, in despair at these delays and extremely anxious about Madame
Vetu, she was able to get Ferrand away. Still, the Brother’s state filled
her with pity; and, as they ascended the stairs, she questioned the
doctor, asking him if there were really no more hope. The other made a
gesture expressive of absolute hopelessness. It was madness to come to
Lourdes when one was in such a condition. However, he hastened to add,
with a smile: “I beg your pardon, Sister. You know that I am unfortunate
enough not to be a believer.”

But she smiled in her turn, like an indulgent friend who tolerates the
shortcomings of those she loves. “Oh! that doesn’t matter,” she replied.
“I know you; you’re all the same a good fellow. Besides, we see so many
people, we go amongst such pagans that it would be difficult to shock
us.”

Up above, in the Sainte-Honorine Ward, they found Madame Vetu still
moaning, a prey to most intolerable suffering. Madame de Jonquiere and
Madame Desagneaux had remained beside the bed, their faces turning pale,
their hearts distracted by that death-cry, which never ceased. And when
they consulted Ferrand in a whisper, he merely replied, with a slight
shrug of the shoulders, that she was a lost woman, that it was only a
question of hours, perhaps merely of minutes. All he could do was to
stupefy her also, in order to ease the atrocious death agony which he
foresaw. She was watching him, still conscious, and also very obedient,
never refusing the medicine offered her. Like the others, she now had but
one ardent desire--to go back to the Grotto--and she gave expression to
it in the stammering accents of a child who fears that its prayer may not
be granted: “To the Grotto--will you? To the Grotto!”

“You shall be taken there by-and-by, I promise you,” said Sister
Hyacinthe. “But you must be good. Try to sleep a little to gain some
strength.”

The sick woman appeared to sink into a doze, and Madame de Jonquiere then
thought that she might take Madame Desagneaux with her to the other end
of the ward to count the linen, a troublesome business, in which they
became quite bewildered, as some of the articles were missing. Meantime
Sophie, seated on the bed opposite Madame Vetu, had not stirred. She had
laid her doll on her lap, and was waiting for the lady’s death, since
they had told her that she was about to die. Sister Hyacinthe, moreover,
had remained beside the dying woman, and, unwilling to waste her time,
had taken a needle and cotton to mend some patient’s bodice which had a
hole in the sleeve.

“You’ll stay a little while with us, won’t you?” she asked Ferrand.

The latter, who was still watching Madame Vetu, replied: “Yes, yes. She
may go off at any moment. I fear hemorrhage.” Then, catching sight of
Marie on the neighbouring bed, he added in a lower voice: “How is she?
Has she experienced any relief?”

“No, not yet. Ah, dear child! we all pray for her very sincerely. She is
so young, so sweet, and so sorely afflicted. Just look at her now! Isn’t
she pretty? One might think her a saint amid all this sunshine, with her
large, ecstatic eyes, and her golden hair shining like an aureola!”

Ferrand watched Marie for a moment with interest. Her absent air, her
indifference to all about her, the ardent faith, the internal joy which
so completely absorbed her, surprised him. “She will recover,” he
murmured, as though giving utterance to a prognostic. “She will recover.”

Then he rejoined Sister Hyacinthe, who had seated herself in the
embrasure of the lofty window, which stood wide open, admitting the warm
air of the courtyard. The sun was now creeping round, and only a narrow
golden ray fell upon her white coif and wimple. Ferrand stood opposite to
her, leaning against the window bar and watching her while she sewed. “Do
you know, Sister,” said he, “this journey to Lourdes, which I undertook
to oblige a friend, will be one of the few delights of my life.”

She did not understand him, but innocently asked: “Why so?”

“Because I have found you again, because I am here with you, assisting
you in your admirable work. And if you only knew how grateful I am to
you, what sincere affection and reverence I feel for you!”

She raised her head to look him straight in the face, and began jesting
without the least constraint. She was really delicious, with her pure
lily-white complexion, her small laughing mouth, and adorable blue eyes
which ever smiled. And you could realise that she had grown up in all
innocence and devotion, slender and supple, with all the appearance of a
girl hardly in her teens.

“What! You are so fond of me as all that!” she exclaimed. “Why?”

“Why I’m fond of you? Because you are the best, the most consoling, the
most sisterly of beings. You are the sweetest memory in my life, the
memory I evoke whenever I need to be encouraged and sustained. Do you no
longer remember the month we spent together, in my poor room, when I was
so ill and you so affectionately nursed me?”

“Of course, of course I remember it! Why, I never had so good a patient
as you. You took all I offered you; and when I tucked you in, after
changing your linen, you remained as still as a little child.”

So speaking, she continued looking at him, smiling ingenuously the while.
He was very handsome and robust, in the very prime of youth, with a
rather pronounced nose, superb eyes, and red lips showing under his black
moustache. But she seemed to be simply pleased at seeing him there before
her moved almost to tears.

“Ah! Sister, I should have died if it hadn’t been for you,” he said. “It
was through having you that I was cured.”

Then, as they gazed at one another, with tender gaiety of heart, the
memory of that adorable month recurred to them. They no longer heard
Madame Vetu’s death moans, nor beheld the ward littered with beds, and,
with all its disorder, resembling some infirmary improvised after a
public catastrophe. They once more found themselves in a small attic at
the top of a dingy house in old Paris, where air and light only reached
them through a tiny window opening on to a sea of roofs. And how charming
it was to be alone there together--he who had been prostrated by fever,
she who had appeared there like a good angel, who had quietly come from
her convent like a comrade who fears nothing! It was thus that she nursed
women, children, and men, as chance ordained, feeling perfectly happy so
long as she had something to do, some sufferer to relieve. She never
displayed any consciousness of her sex; and he, on his side, never seemed
to have suspected that she might be a woman, except it were for the
extreme softness of her hands, the caressing accents of her voice, the
beneficent gentleness of her manner; and yet all the tender love of a
mother, all the affection of a sister, radiated from her person. During
three weeks, as she had said, she had nursed him like a child, helping
him in and out of bed, and rendering him every necessary attention,
without the slightest embarrassment or repugnance, the holy purity born
of suffering and charity shielding them both the while. They were indeed
far removed from the frailties of life. And when he became convalescent,
what a happy existence began, how joyously they laughed, like two old
friends! She still watched over him, scolding him and gently slapping his
arms when he persisted in keeping them uncovered. He would watch her
standing at the basin, washing him a shirt in order to save him the
trifling expense of employing a laundress. No one ever came up there;
they were quite alone, thousands of miles away from the world, delighted
with this solitude, in which their youth displayed such fraternal gaiety.

“Do you remember, Sister, the morning when I was first able to walk
about?” asked Ferrand. “You helped me to get up, and supported me whilst
I awkwardly stumbled about, no longer knowing how to use my legs. We did
laugh so.”

“Yes, yes, you were saved, and I was very pleased.”

“And the day when you brought me some cherries--I can see it all again:
myself reclining on my pillows, and you seated at the edge of the bed,
with the cherries lying between us in a large piece of white paper. I
refused to touch them unless you ate some with me. And then we took them
in turn, one at a time, until the paper was emptied; and they were very
nice.”

“Yes, yes, very nice. It was the same with the currant syrup: you would
only drink it when I took some also.”

Thereupon they laughed yet louder; these recollections quite delighted
them. But a painful sigh from Madame Vetu brought them back to the
present. Ferrand leant over and cast a glance at the sick woman, who had
not stirred. The ward was still full of a quivering peacefulness, which
was only broken by the clear voice of Madame Desagneaux counting the
linen. Stifling with emotion, the young man resumed in a lower tone: “Ah!
Sister, were I to live a hundred years, to know every joy, every
pleasure, I should never love another woman as I love you!”

Then Sister Hyacinthe, without, however, showing any confusion, bowed her
head and resumed her sewing. An almost imperceptible blush tinged her
lily-white skin with pink.

“I also love you well, Monsieur Ferrand,” she said, “but you must not
make me vain. I only did for you what I do for so many others. It is my
business, you see. And there was really only one pleasant thing about it
all, that the Almighty cured you.”

They were now again interrupted. La Grivotte and Elise Rouquet had
returned from the Grotto before the others. La Grivotte at once squatted
down on her mattress on the floor, at the foot of Madame Vetu’s bed, and,
taking a piece of bread from her pocket, proceeded to devour it. Ferrand,
since the day before, had felt some interest in this consumptive patient,
who was traversing such a curious phase of agitation, a prey to an
inordinate appetite and a feverish need of motion. For the moment,
however, Elise Rouquet’s case interested him still more; for it had now
become evident that the lupus, the sore which was eating away her face,
was showing signs of cure. She had continued bathing her face at the
miraculous fountain, and had just come from the Verification Office,
where Doctor Bonamy had triumphed. Ferrand, quite surprised, went and
examined the sore, which, although still far from healed, was already
paler in colour and slightly desiccated, displaying all the symptoms of
gradual cure. And the case seemed to him so curious, that he resolved to
make some notes upon it for one of his old masters at the medical
college, who was studying the nervous origin of certain skin diseases due
to faulty nutrition.

“Have you felt any pricking sensation?” he asked.

“Not at all, monsieur,” she replied. “I bathe my face and tell my beads
with my whole soul, and that is all.”

La Grivotte, who was vain and jealous, and ever since the day before had
been going in triumph among the crowds, thereupon called to the doctor.
“I say, monsieur, I am cured, cured, cured completely!”

He waved his hand to her in a friendly way, but refused to examine her.
“I know, my girl. There is nothing more the matter with you.”

Just then Sister Hyacinthe called to him. She had put her sewing down on
seeing Madame Vetu raise herself in a frightful fit of nausea. In spite
of her haste, however, she was too late with the basin; the sick woman
had brought up another discharge of black matter, similar to soot; but,
this time, some blood was mixed with it, little specks of violet-coloured
blood. It was the hemorrhage coming, the near end which Ferrand had been
dreading.

“Send for the superintendent,” he said in a low voice, seating himself at
the bedside.

Sister Hyacinthe ran for Madame de Jonquiere. The linen having been
counted, she found her deep in conversation with her daughter Raymonde,
at some distance from Madame Desagneaux, who was washing her hands.

Raymonde had just escaped for a few minutes from the refectory, where she
was on duty. This was the roughest of her labours. The long narrow room,
with its double row of greasy tables, its sickening smell of food and
misery, quite disgusted her. And taking advantage of the half-hour still
remaining before the return of the patients, she had hurried up-stairs,
where, out of breath, with a rosy face and shining eyes, she had thrown
her arms around her mother’s neck.

“Ah! mamma,” she cried, “what happiness! It’s settled!”

Amazed, her head buzzing, busy with the superintendence of her ward,
Madame de Jonquiere did not understand. “What’s settled, my child?” she
asked.

Then Raymonde lowered her voice, and, with a faint blush, replied: “My
marriage!”

It was now the mother’s turn to rejoice. Lively satisfaction appeared
upon her face, the fat face of a ripe, handsome, and still agreeable
woman. She at once beheld in her mind’s eye their little lodging in the
Rue Vaneau, where, since her husband’s death, she had reared her daughter
with great difficulty upon the few thousand francs he had left her. This
marriage, however, meant a return to life, to society, the good old times
come back once more.

“Ah! my child, how happy you make me!” she exclaimed.

But a feeling of uneasiness suddenly restrained her. God was her witness
that for three years past she had been coming to Lourdes through pure
motives of charity, for the one great joy of nursing His beloved
invalids. Perhaps, had she closely examined her conscience, she might,
behind her devotion, have found some trace of her fondness for authority,
which rendered her present managerial duties extremely pleasant to her.
However, the hope of finding a husband for her daughter among the
suitable young men who swarmed at the Grotto was certainly her last
thought. It was a thought which came to her, of course, but merely as
something that was possible, though she never mentioned it. However, her
happiness, wrung an avowal from her:

“Ah! my child, your success doesn’t surprise me. I prayed to the Blessed
Virgin for it this morning.”

Then she wished to be quite sure, and asked for further information.
Raymonde had not yet told her of her long walk leaning on Gerard’s arm
the day before, for she did not wish to speak of such things until she
was triumphant, certain of having at last secured a husband. And now it
was indeed settled, as she had exclaimed so gaily: that very morning she
had again seen the young man at the Grotto, and he had formally become
engaged to her. M. Berthaud would undoubtedly ask for her hand on his
cousin’s behalf before they took their departure from Lourdes.

“Well,” declared Madame de Jonquiere, who was now convinced, smiling, and
delighted at heart, “I hope you will be happy, since you are so sensible
and do not need my aid to bring your affairs to a successful issue. Kiss
me.”

It was at this moment that Sister Hyacinthe arrived to announce Madame
Vetu’s imminent death. Raymonde at once ran off. And Madame Desagneaux,
who was wiping her hands, began to complain of the lady-assistants, who
had all disappeared precisely on the morning when they were most wanted.
“For instance,” said she, “there’s Madame Volmar. I should like to know
where she can have got to. She has not been seen, even for an hour, ever
since our arrival.”

“Pray leave Madame Volmar alone!” replied Madame de Jonquiere with some
asperity. “I have already told you that she is ill.”

They both hastened to Madame Vetu. Ferrand stood there waiting; and
Sister Hyacinthe having asked him if there were indeed nothing to be
done, he shook his head. The dying woman, relieved by her first emesis,
now lay inert, with closed eyes. But, a second time, the frightful nausea
returned to her, and she brought up another discharge of black matter
mingled with violet-coloured blood. Then she had another short interval
of calm, during which she noticed La Grivotte, who was greedily devouring
her hunk of bread on the mattress on the floor.

“She is cured, isn’t she?” the poor woman asked, feeling that she herself
was dying.

La Grivotte heard her, and exclaimed triumphantly: “Oh, yes, madame,
cured, cured, cured completely!”

For a moment Madame Vetu seemed overcome by a miserable feeling of grief,
the revolt of one who will not succumb while others continue to live. But
almost immediately she became resigned, and they heard her add very
faintly, “It is the young ones who ought to remain.”

Then her eyes, which remained wide open, looked round, as though bidding
farewell to all those persons, whom she seemed surprised to see about
her. She attempted to smile as she encountered the eager gaze of
curiosity which little Sophie Couteau still fixed upon her: the charming
child had come to kiss her that very morning, in her bed. Elise Rouquet,
who troubled herself about nobody, was meantime holding her hand-glass,
absorbed in the contemplation of her face, which seemed to her to be
growing beautiful, now that the sore was healing. But what especially
charmed the dying woman was the sight of Marie, so lovely in her ecstasy.
She watched her for a long time, constantly attracted towards her, as
towards a vision of light and joy. Perhaps she fancied that she already
beheld one of the saints of Paradise amid the glory of the sun.

Suddenly, however, the fits of vomiting returned, and now she solely
brought up blood, vitiated blood, the colour of claret. The rush was so
great that it bespattered the sheet, and ran all over the bed. In vain
did Madame de Jonquiere and Madame Desagneaux bring cloths; they were
both very pale and scarce able to remain standing. Ferrand, knowing how
powerless he was, had withdrawn to the window, to the very spot where he
had so lately experienced such delicious emotion; and with an instinctive
movement, of which she was surely unconscious, Sister Hyacinthe had
likewise returned to that happy window, as though to be near him.

“Really, can you do nothing?” she inquired.

“No, nothing! She will go off like that, in the same way as a lamp that
has burnt out.”

Madame Vetu, who was now utterly exhausted, with a thin red stream still
flowing from her mouth, looked fixedly at Madame de Jonquiere whilst
faintly moving her lips. The lady-superintendent thereupon bent over her
and heard these slowly uttered words:

“About my husband, madame--the shop is in the Rue Mouffetard--oh! it’s
quite a tiny one, not far from the Gobelins.--He’s a clockmaker, he is;
he couldn’t come with me, of course, having to attend to the business;
and he will be very much put out when he finds I don’t come back.--Yes, I
cleaned the jewelry and did the errands--” Then her voice grew fainter,
her words disjointed by the death rattle, which began. “Therefore,
madame, I beg you will write to him, because I haven’t done so, and now
here’s the end.--Tell him my body had better remain here at Lourdes, on
account of the expense.--And he must marry again; it’s necessary for one
in trade--his cousin--tell him his cousin--”

The rest became a confused murmur. Her weakness was too great, her breath
was halting. Yet her eyes continued open and full of life, amid her pale,
yellow, waxy mask. And those eyes seemed to fix themselves despairingly
on the past, on all that which soon would be no more: the little
clockmaker’s shop hidden away in a populous neighbourhood; the gentle
humdrum existence, with a toiling husband who was ever bending over his
watches; the great pleasures of Sunday, such as watching children fly
their kites upon the fortifications. And at last these staring eyes gazed
vainly into the frightful night which was gathering.

A last time did Madame de Jonquiere lean over her, seeing that her lips
were again moving. There came but a faint breath, a voice from far away,
which distantly murmured in an accent of intense grief: “She did not cure
me.”

And then Madame Vetu expired, very gently.

As though this were all that she had been waiting for, little Sophie
Couteau jumped from the bed quite satisfied, and went off to play with
her doll again at the far end of the ward. Neither La Grivotte, who was
finishing her bread, nor Elise Rouquet, busy with her mirror, noticed the
catastrophe. However, amidst the cold breath which seemingly swept by,
while Madame de Jonquiere and Madame Desagneaux--the latter of whom was
unaccustomed to the sight of death--were whispering together in
agitation, Marie emerged from the expectant rapture in which the
continuous, unspoken prayer of her whole being had plunged her so long.
And when she understood what had happened, a feeling of sisterly
compassion--the compassion of a suffering companion, on her side certain
of cure--brought tears to her eyes.

“Ah! the poor woman!” she murmured; “to think that she has died so far
from home, in such loneliness, at the hour when others are being born
anew!”

Ferrand, who, in spite of professional indifference, had also been
stirred by the scene, stepped forward to verify the death; and it was on
a sign from him that Sister Hyacinthe turned up the sheet, and threw it
over the dead woman’s face, for there could be no question of removing
the corpse at that moment. The patients were now returning from the
Grotto in bands, and the ward, hitherto so calm, so full of sunshine, was
again filling with the tumult of wretchedness and pain--deep coughing and
feeble shuffling, mingled with a noisome smell--a pitiful display, in
fact, of well-nigh every human infirmity.




II. THE SERVICE AT THE GROTTO

ON that day, Monday, the crowd at the Grotto, was enormous. It was the
last day that the national pilgrimage would spend at Lourdes, and Father
Fourcade, in his morning address, had said that it would be necessary to
make a supreme effort of fervour and faith to obtain from Heaven all that
it might be willing to grant in the way of grace and prodigious cure. So,
from two o’clock in the afternoon, twenty thousand pilgrims were
assembled there, feverish, and agitated by the most ardent hopes. From
minute to minute the throng continued increasing, to such a point,
indeed, that Baron Suire became alarmed, and came out of the Grotto to
say to Berthaud: “My friend, we shall be overwhelmed, that’s certain.
Double your squads, bring your men closer together.”

The Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation was alone entrusted with the
task of keeping order, for there were neither guardians nor policemen, of
any sort present; and it was for this reason that the President of the
Association was so alarmed. However, Berthaud, under grave circumstances,
was a leader whose words commanded attention, and who was endowed with
energy that could be relied on.

“Be easy,” said he; “I will be answerable for everything. I shall not
move from here until the four-o’clock procession has passed by.”

Nevertheless, he signalled to Gerard to approach.

“Give your men the strictest instructions,” he said to him. “Only those
persons who have cards should be allowed to pass. And place your men
nearer each other; tell them to hold the cord tight.”

Yonder, beneath the ivy which draped the rock, the Grotto opened, with
the eternal flaring of its candles. From a distance it looked rather
squat and misshapen, a very narrow and modest aperture for the breath of
the Infinite which issued from it, turning all faces pale and bowing
every head. The statue of the Virgin had become a mere white spot, which
seemed to move amid the quiver of the atmosphere, heated by the small
yellow flames. To see everything it was necessary to raise oneself; for
the silver altar, the harmonium divested of its housing, the heap of
bouquets flung there, and the votive offerings streaking the smoky walls
were scarcely distinguishable from behind the railing. And the day was
lovely; never yet had a purer sky expanded above the immense crowd; the
softness of the breeze in particular seemed delicious after the storm of
the night, which had brought down the over-oppressive heat of the two
first days.

Gerard had to fight his way with his elbows in order to repeat the orders
to his men. The crowd had already begun pushing. “Two more men here!” he
called. “Come, four together, if necessary, and hold the rope well!”

The general impulse was instinctive and invincible; the twenty thousand
persons assembled there were drawn towards the Grotto by an irresistible
attraction, in which burning curiosity mingled with the thirst for
mystery. All eyes converged, every mouth, hand, and body was borne
towards the pale glitter of the candles and the white moving speck of the
marble Virgin. And, in order that the large space reserved to the sick,
in front of the railings, might not be invaded by the swelling mob, it
had been necessary to inclose it with a stout rope which the bearers at
intervals of two or three yards grasped with both hands. Their orders
were to let nobody pass excepting the sick provided with hospital cards
and the few persons to whom special authorisations had been granted. They
limited themselves, therefore, to raising the cords and then letting them
fall behind the chosen ones, without heeding the supplications of the
others. In fact they even showed themselves somewhat rough, taking a
certain pleasure in exercising the authority with which they were
invested for a day. In truth, however, they were very much pushed about,
and had to support each other and resist with all the strength of their
loins to avoid being swept away.

While the benches before the Grotto and the vast reserved space were
filling with sick people, handcarts, and stretchers, the crowd, the
immense crowd, swayed about on the outskirts. Starting from the Place du
Rosaire, it extended to the bottom of the promenade along the Gave, where
the pavement throughout its entire length was black with people, so dense
a human sea that all circulation was prevented. On the parapet was an
interminable line of women--most of them seated, but some few standing so
as to see the better--and almost all carrying silk parasols, which, with
holiday-like gaiety, shimmered in the sunlight. The managers had wished
to keep a path open in order that the sick might be brought along; but it
was ever being invaded and obstructed, so that the carts and stretchers
remained on the road, submerged and lost until a bearer freed them.
Nevertheless, the great tramping was that of a docile flock, an innocent,
lamb-like crowd; and it was only the involuntary pushing, the blind
rolling towards the light of the candles that had to be contended
against. No accident had ever happened there, notwithstanding the
excitement, which gradually increased and threw the people into the
unruly delirium of faith.

However, Baron Suire again forced his way through the throng. “Berthaud!
Berthaud!” he called, “see that the _defile_ is conducted less rapidly.
There are women and children stifling.”

This time Berthaud gave a sign of impatience. “Ah! hang it, I can’t be
everywhere! Close the gate for a moment if it’s necessary.”

It was a question of the march through the Grotto which went on
throughout the afternoon. The faithful were permitted to enter by the
door on the left, and made their exit by that on the right.

“Close the gate!” exclaimed the Baron. “But that would be worse; they
would all get crushed against it!”

As it happened Gerard was there, thoughtlessly talking for an instant
with Raymonde, who was standing on the other side of the cord, holding a
bowl of milk which she was about to carry to a paralysed old woman; and
Berthaud ordered the young fellow to post two men at the entrance gate of
the iron railing, with instructions only to allow the pilgrims to enter
by tens. When Gerard had executed this order, and returned, he found
Berthaud laughing and joking with Raymonde. She went off on her errand,
however, and the two men stood watching her while she made the paralysed
woman drink.

“She is charming, and it’s settled, eh?” said Berthaud. “You are going to
marry her, aren’t you?”

“I shall ask her mother to-night. I rely upon you to accompany me.”

“Why, certainly. You know what I told you. Nothing could be more
sensible. The uncle will find you a berth before six months are over.”

A push of the crowd separated them, and Berthaud went off to make sure
whether the march through the Grotto was now being accomplished in a
methodical manner, without any crushing. For hours the same unbroken tide
rolled in--women, men, and children from all parts of the world, all who
chose, all who passed that way. As a result, the crowd was singularly
mixed: there were beggars in rags beside neat _bourgeois_, peasants of
either sex, well dressed ladies, servants with bare hair, young girls
with bare feet, and others with pomatumed hair and foreheads bound with
ribbons. Admission was free; the mystery was open to all, to unbelievers
as well as to the faithful, to those who were solely influenced by
curiosity as well as to those who entered with their hearts faint with
love. And it was a sight to see them, all almost equally affected by the
tepid odour of the wax, half stifling in the heavy tabernacle air which
gathered beneath the rocky vault, and lowering their eyes for fear of
slipping on the gratings. Many stood there bewildered, not even bowing,
examining the things around with the covert uneasiness of indifferent
folks astray amidst the redoubtable mysteries of a sanctuary. But the
devout crossed themselves, threw letters, deposited candles and bouquets,
kissed the rock below the Virgin’s statue, or else rubbed their chaplets,
medals, and other small objects of piety against it, as the contact
sufficed to bless them. And the _defile_ continued, continued without end
during days and months as it had done for years; and it seemed as if the
whole world, all the miseries and sufferings of humanity, came in turn
and passed in the same hypnotic, contagious kind of round, through that
rocky nook, ever in search of happiness.

When Berthaud had satisfied himself that everything was working well, he
walked about like a mere spectator, superintending his men. Only one
matter remained to trouble him: the procession of the Blessed Sacrament,
during which such frenzy burst forth that accidents were always to be
feared.

This last day seemed likely to be a very fervent one, for he already felt
a tremor of exalted faith rising among the crowd. The treatment needed
for miraculous care was drawing to an end; there had been the fever of
the journey, the besetting influence of the same endlessly repeated
hymns, and the stubborn continuation of the same religious exercises; and
ever and ever the conversation had been turned on miracles, and the mind
fixed on the divine illumination of the Grotto. Many, not having slept
for three nights, had reached a state of hallucination, and walked about
in a rageful dream. No repose was granted them, the continual prayers
were like whips lashing their souls. The appeals to the Blessed Virgin
never ceased; priest followed priest in the pulpit, proclaiming the
universal dolour and directing the despairing supplications of the
throng, during the whole time that the sick remained with hands clasped
and eyes raised to heaven before the pale, smiling, marble statue.

At that moment the white stone pulpit against the rock on the right of
the Grotto was occupied by a priest from Toulouse, whom Berthaud knew,
and to whom he listened for a moment with an air of approval. He was a
stout man with an unctuous diction, famous for his rhetorical successes.
However, all eloquence here consisted in displaying the strength of one’s
lungs in a violent delivery of the phrase or cry which the whole crowd
had to repeat; for the addresses were nothing more than so much
vociferation interspersed with “Ayes” and “Paters.”

The priest, who had just finished the Rosary, strove to increase his
stature by stretching his short legs, whilst shouting the first appeal of
the litanies which he improvised, and led in his own way, according to
the inspiration which possessed him.

“Mary, we love thee!” he called.

And thereupon the crowd repeated in a lower, confused, and broken tone:
“Mary, we love thee!”

From that moment there was no stopping. The voice of the priest rang out
at full swing, and the voices of the crowd responded in a dolorous
murmur:

“Mary, thou art our only hope!”

“Mary, thou art our only hope!”

“Pure Virgin, make us purer, among the pure!”

“Pure Virgin, make us purer, among the pure!”

“Powerful Virgin, save our sick!”

“Powerful Virgin, save our sick!”

Often, when the priest’s imagination failed him, or he wished to thrust a
cry home with greater force, he would repeat it thrice; while the docile
crowd would do the same, quivering under the enervating effect of the
persistent lamentation, which increased the fever.

The litanies continued, and Berthaud went back towards the Grotto. Those
who defiled through it beheld an extraordinary sight when they turned and
faced the sick. The whole of the large space between the cords was
occupied by the thousand or twelve hundred patients whom the national
pilgrimage had brought with it; and beneath the vast, spotless sky on
that radiant day there was the most heart-rending jumble of sufferers
that one could behold. The three hospitals of Lourdes had emptied their
chambers of horror. To begin with, those who were still able to remain
seated had been piled upon the benches. Many of them, however, were
propped up with cushions, whilst others kept shoulder to shoulder, the
strong ones supporting the weak. Then, in front of the benches, before
the Grotto itself, were the more grievously afflicted sufferers lying at
full length; the flagstones disappearing from view beneath this woeful
assemblage, which was like a large, stagnant pool of horror. There was an
indescribable block of vehicles, stretchers, and mattresses. Some of the
invalids in little boxes not unlike coffins had raised themselves up and
showed above the others, but the majority lay almost on a level with the
ground. There were some lying fully dressed on the check-patterned ticks
of mattresses; whilst others had been brought with their bedding, so that
only their heads and pale hands were seen outside the sheets. Few of
these pallets were clean. Some pillows of dazzling whiteness, which by a
last feeling of coquetry had been trimmed with embroidery, alone shone
out among all the filthy wretchedness of all the rest--a fearful
collection of rags, worn-out blankets, and linen splashed with stains.
And all were pushed, squeezed, piled up by chance as they came, women,
men, children, and priests, people in nightgowns beside people who were
fully attired being jumbled together in the blinding light of day.

And all forms of disease were there, the whole frightful procession
which, twice a day, left the hospitals to wend its way through horrified
Lourdes. There were the heads eaten away by eczema, the foreheads crowned
with roseola, and the noses and mouths which elephantiasis had
transformed into shapeless snouts. Next, the dropsical ones, swollen out
like leathern bottles; the rheumatic ones with twisted hands and swollen
feet, like bags stuffed full of rags; and a sufferer from hydrocephalus,
whose huge and weighty skull fell backwards. Then the consumptive ones,
with livid skins, trembling with fever, exhausted by dysentery, wasted to
skeletons. Then the deformities, the contractions, the twisted trunks,
the twisted arms, the necks all awry; all the poor broken, pounded
creatures, motionless in their tragic, marionette-like postures. Then the
poor rachitic girls displaying their waxen complexions and slender necks
eaten into by sores; the yellow-faced, besotted-looking women in the
painful stupor which falls on unfortunate creatures devoured by cancer;
and the others who turned pale, and dared not move, fearing as they did
the shock of the tumours whose weighty pain was stifling them. On the
benches sat bewildered deaf women, who heard nothing, but sang on all the
same, and blind ones with heads erect, who remained for hours turned
toward the statue of the Virgin which they could not see. And there was
also the woman stricken with imbecility, whose nose was eaten away, and
who laughed with a terrifying laugh, displaying the black, empty cavern
of her mouth; and then the epileptic woman, whom a recent attack had left
as pale as death, with froth still at the corners of her lips.

But sickness and suffering were no longer of consequence, since they were
all there, seated or stretched with their eyes upon the Grotto. The poor,
fleshless, earthy-looking faces became transfigured, and began to glow
with hope. Anchylosed hands were joined, heavy eyelids found the strength
to rise, exhausted voices revived as the priest shouted the appeals. At
first there was nothing but indistinct stuttering, similar to slight
puffs of air rising, here and there above the multitude. Then the cry
ascended and spread through the crowd itself from one to the other end of
the immense square.

“Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us!” cried the priest in his
thundering voice.

And the sick and the pilgrims repeated louder and louder: “Mary,
conceived without sin, pray for us!”

Then the flow of the litany set in, and continued with increasing speed:

“Most pure Mother, most chaste Mother, thy children are at thy feet!”

“Most pure Mother, most chaste Mother, thy children are at thy feet!”

“Queen of the Angels, say but a word, and our sick shall be healed!”

“Queen of the Angels, say but a word, and our sick shall be healed!”

In the second row of sufferers, near the pulpit, was M. Sabathier, who
had asked to be brought there early, wishing to choose his place like an
old _habitue_ who knew the cosy corners. Moreover, it seemed to him that
it was of paramount importance that he should be as near as possible,
under the very eyes of the Virgin, as though she required to see her
faithful in order not to forget them. However, for the seven years that
he had been coming there he had nursed this one hope of being some day
noticed by her, of touching her, and of obtaining his cure, if not by
selection, at least by seniority. This merely needed patience on his part
without the firmness of his faith being in the least shaken by his way of
thinking. Only, like a poor, resigned man just a little weary of being
always put off, he sometimes allowed himself diversions. For instance, he
had obtained permission to keep his wife near him, seated on a
camp-stool, and he liked to talk to her, and acquaint her with his
reflections.

“Raise me a little, my dear,” said he. “I am slipping. I am very
uncomfortable.”

Attired in trousers and a coarse woollen jacket, he was sitting upon his
mattress, with his back leaning against a tilted chair.

“Are you better?” asked his wife, when she had raised him.

“Yes, yes,” he answered; and then began to take an interest in Brother
Isidore, whom they had succeeded in bringing in spite of everything, and
who was lying upon a neighbouring mattress, with a sheet drawn up to his
chin, and nothing protruding but his wasted hands, which lay clasped upon
the blanket.

“Ah! the poor man,” said M. Sabathier. “It’s very imprudent, but the
Blessed Virgin is so powerful when she chooses!”

He took up his chaplet again, but once more broke off from his devotions
on perceiving Madame Maze, who had just glided into the reserved
space--so slender and unobtrusive that she had doubtless slipped under
the ropes without being noticed. She had seated herself at the end of a
bench and, very quiet and motionless, did not occupy more room there than
a child. And her long face, with its weary features, the face of a woman
of two-and-thirty faded before her time, wore an expression of unlimited
sadness, infinite abandonment.

“And so,” resumed M. Sabathier in a low voice, again addressing his wife
after attracting her attention by a slight movement of the chin, “it’s
for the conversion of her husband that this lady prays. You came across
her this morning in a shop, didn’t you?”

“Yes, yes,” replied Madame Sabathier. “And, besides, I had some talk
about her with another lady who knows her. Her husband is a
commercial-traveller. He leaves her for six months at a time, and goes
about with other people. Oh! he’s a very gay fellow, it seems, very nice,
and he doesn’t let her want for money; only she adores him, she cannot
accustom herself to his neglect, and comes to pray the Blessed Virgin to
give him back to her. At this moment, it appears, he is close by, at
Luchon, with two ladies--two sisters.”

M. Sabathier signed to his wife to stop. He was now looking at the
Grotto, again becoming a man of intellect, a professor whom questions of
art had formerly impassioned. “You see, my dear,” he said, “they have
spoilt the Grotto by endeavouring to make it too beautiful. I am certain
it looked much better in its original wildness. It has lost its
characteristic features--and what a frightful shop they have stuck there,
on the left!”

However, he now experienced sudden remorse for his thoughtlessness.
Whilst he was chatting away, might not the Blessed Virgin be noticing one
of his neighbours, more fervent, more sedate than himself? Feeling
anxious on the point, he reverted to his customary modesty and patience,
and with dull, expressionless eyes again began waiting for the good
pleasure of Heaven.

Moreover, the sound of a fresh voice helped to bring him back to this
annihilation, in which nothing was left of the cultured reasoner that he
had formerly been. It was another preacher who had just entered the
pulpit, a Capuchin this time, whose guttural call, persistently repeated,
sent a tremor through the crowd.

“Holy Virgin of virgins, be blessed!”

“Holy Virgin of virgins, be blessed!”

“Holy Virgin of virgins, turn not thy face from thy children!”

“Holy Virgin of virgins, turn not thy face from thy children!”

“Holy Virgin of virgins, breathe upon our sores, and our sores shall
heal!”

“Holy Virgin of virgins, breathe upon our sores, and our sores shall
heal!”

At the end of the first bench, skirting the central path, which was
becoming crowded, the Vigneron family had succeeded in finding room for
themselves. They were all there: little Gustave, seated in a sinking
posture, with his crutch between his legs; his mother, beside him,
following the prayers like a punctilious _bourgeoise_; his aunt, Madame
Chaise, on the other side, so inconvenienced by the crowd that she was
stifling; and M. Vigneron, who remained silent and, for a moment, had
been examining Madame Chaise attentively.

“What is the matter with you, my dear?” he inquired. “Do you feel
unwell?”

She was breathing with difficulty. “Well, I don’t know,” she answered;
“but I can’t feel my limbs, and my breath fails me.”

At that very moment the thought had occurred to him that all the
agitation, fever, and scramble of a pilgrimage could not be very good for
heart-disease. Of course he did not desire anybody’s death, he had never
asked the Blessed Virgin for any such thing. If his prayer for
advancement had already been granted through the sudden death of his
chief, it must certainly be because Heaven had already ordained the
latter’s death. And, in the same way, if Madame Chaise should die first,
leaving her fortune to Gustave, he would only have to bow before the will
of God, which generally requires that the aged should go off before the
young. Nevertheless, his hope unconsciously became so keen that he could
not help exchanging a glance with his wife, to whom had come the same
involuntary thought.

“Gustave, draw back,” he exclaimed; “you are inconveniencing your aunt.”
 And then, as Raymonde passed, he asked; “Do you happen to have a glass of
water, mademoiselle? One of our relatives here is losing consciousness.”

But Madame Chaise refused the offer with a gesture. She was getting
better, recovering her breath with an effort. “No, I want nothing, thank
you,” she gasped. “There, I’m better--still, I really thought this time
that I should stifle!”

Her fright left her trembling, with haggard eyes in her pale face. She
again joined her hands, and begged the Blessed Virgin to save her from
other attacks and cure her; while the Vignerons, man and wife, honest
folk both of them, reverted to the covert prayer for happiness that they
had come to offer up at Lourdes: a pleasant old age, deservedly gained by
twenty years of honesty, with a respectable fortune which in later years
they would go and enjoy in the country, cultivating flowers. On the other
hand, little Gustave, who had seen and noted everything with his bright
eyes and intelligence sharpened by suffering, was not praying, but
smiling at space, with his vague enigmatical smile. What could be the use
of his praying? He knew that the Blessed Virgin would not cure him, and
that he would die.

However, M. Vigneron could not remain long without busying himself about
his neighbours. Madame Dieulafay, who had come late, had been deposited
in the crowded central pathway; and he marvelled at the luxury about the
young woman, that sort of coffin quilted with white silk, in which she
was lying, attired in a pink dressing-gown trimmed with Valenciennes
lace. The husband in a frock-coat, and the sister in a black gown of
simple but marvellous elegance, were standing by; while Abbe Judaine,
kneeling near the sufferer, finished offering up a fervent prayer.

When the priest had risen, M. Vigneron made him a little room on the
bench beside him; and he then took the liberty of questioning him. “Well,
Monsieur le Cure, does that poor young woman feel a little better?”

Abbe Judaine made a gesture of infinite sadness.

“Alas! no. I was full of so much hope! It was I who persuaded the family
to come. Two years ago the Blessed Virgin showed me such extraordinary
grace by curing my poor lost eyes, that I hoped to obtain another favour
from her. However, I will not despair. We still have until to-morrow.”

M. Vigneron again looked towards Madame Dieulafay and examined her face,
still of a perfect oval and with admirable eyes; but it was
expressionless, with ashen hue, similar to a mask of death, amidst the
lace. “It’s really very sad,” he murmured.

“And if you had seen her last summer!” resumed the priest. “They have
their country seat at Saligny, my parish, and I often dined with them. I
cannot help feeling sad when I look at her elder sister, Madame Jousseur,
that lady in black who stands there, for she bears a strong resemblance
to her; and the poor sufferer was even prettier, one of the beauties of
Paris. And now compare them together--observe that brilliancy, that
sovereign grace, beside that poor, pitiful creature--it oppresses one’s
heart--ah! what a frightful lesson!”

He became silent for an instant. Saintly man that he was naturally,
altogether devoid of passions, with no keen intelligence to disturb him
in his faith, he displayed a naive admiration for beauty, wealth, and
power, which he had never envied. Nevertheless, he ventured to express a
doubt, a scruple, which troubled his usual serenity. “For my part, I
should have liked her to come here with more simplicity, without all
that surrounding of luxury, because the Blessed Virgin prefers the
humble--But I understand very well that there are certain social
exigencies. And, then, her husband and sister love her so! Remember that
he has forsaken his business and she her pleasures in order to come here
with her; and so overcome are they at the idea of losing her that their
eyes are never dry, they always have that bewildered look which you can
notice. So they must be excused for trying to procure her the comfort of
looking beautiful until the last hour.”

M. Vigneron nodded his head approvingly. Ah! it was certainly not the
wealthy who had the most luck at the Grotto! Servants, country folk, poor
beggars, were cured, while ladies returned home with their ailments
unrelieved, notwithstanding their gifts and the big candles they had
burnt. And, in spite of himself, Vigneron then looked at Madame Chaise,
who, having recovered from her attack, was now reposing with a
comfortable air.

But a tremor passed through the crowd and Abbe Judaine spoke again: “Here
is Father Massias coming towards the pulpit. He is a saint; listen to
him.”

They knew him, and were aware that he could not make his appearance
without every soul being stirred by sudden hope, for it was reported that
the miracles were often brought to pass by his great fervour. His voice,
full of tenderness and strength, was said to be appreciated by the
Virgin.

All heads were therefore uplifted and the emotion yet further increased
when Father Fourcade was seen coming to the foot of the pulpit, leaning
on the shoulder of his well-beloved brother, the preferred of all; and he
stayed there, so that he also might hear him. His gouty foot had been
paining him more acutely since the morning, so that it required great
courage on his part to remain thus standing and smiling. The increasing
exaltation of the crowd made him happy, however; he foresaw prodigies and
dazzling cures which would redound to the glory of Mary and Jesus.

Having ascended the pulpit, Father Massias did not at once speak. He
seemed, very tall, thin, and pale, with an ascetic face, elongated the
more by his discoloured beard. His eyes sparkled, and his large eloquent
mouth protruded passionately.

“Lord, save us, for we perish!” he suddenly cried; and in a fever, which
increased minute by minute, the transported crowd repeated: “Lord, save
us, for we perish!”

Then he opened his arms and again launched forth his flaming cry, as if
he had torn it from his glowing heart: “Lord, if it be Thy will, Thou
canst heal me!”

“Lord, if it be Thy will, Thou canst heal me!”

“Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof, but only
say the word, and I shall be healed!”

“Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof, but only
say the word, and I shall be healed!”

Marthe, Brother Isidore’s sister, had now begun to talk in a whisper to
Madame Sabathier, near whom she had at last seated herself. They had
formed an acquaintance at the hospital; and, drawn together by so much
suffering, the servant had familiarly confided to the _bourgeoise_ how
anxious she felt about her brother; for she could plainly see that he had
very little breath left in him. The Blessed Virgin must be quick indeed
if she desired to save him. It was already a miracle that they had been
able to bring him alive as far as the Grotto.

In her resignation, poor, simple creature that she was, she did not weep;
but her heart was so swollen that her infrequent words came faintly from
her lips. Then a flood of past memories suddenly returned to her; and
with her utterance thickened by prolonged silence, she began to relieve
her heart: “We were fourteen at home, at Saint Jacut, near Vannes. He,
big as he was, has always been delicate, and that was why he remained
with our priest, who ended by placing him among the Christian Brothers.
The elder ones took over the property, and, for my part, I preferred
going out to service. Yes, it was a lady who took me with her to Paris,
five years ago already. Ah! what a lot of trouble there is in life!
Everyone has so much trouble!”

“You are quite right, my girl,” replied Madame Sabathier, looking the
while at her husband, who was devoutly repeating each of Father Massias’s
appeals.

“And then,” continued Marthe, “there I learned last month that Isidore,
who had returned from a hot climate where he had been on a mission, had
brought a bad sickness back with him. And, when I ran to see him, he told
me he should die if he did not leave for Lourdes, but that he couldn’t
make the journey, because he had nobody to accompany him. Then, as I had
eighty francs saved up, I gave up my place, and we set out together. You
see, madame, if I am so fond of him, it’s because he used to bring me
gooseberries from the parsonage, whereas all the others beat me.”

She relapsed into silence for a moment, her countenance swollen by grief,
and her poor eyes so scorched by watching that no tears could come from
them. Then she began to stutter disjointed words: “Look at him, madame.
It fills one with pity. Ah! my God, his poor cheeks, his poor chin, his
poor face--”

It was, in fact, a lamentable spectacle. Madame Sabathier’s heart was
quite upset when she observed Brother Isidore so yellow, cadaverous,
steeped in a cold sweat of agony. Above the sheet he still only showed
his clasped hands and his face encircled with long scanty hair; but if
those wax-like hands seemed lifeless, if there was not a feature of that
long-suffering face that stirred, its eyes were still alive,
inextinguishable eyes of love, whose flame sufficed to illumine the whole
of his expiring visage--the visage of a Christ upon the cross. And never
had the contrast been so clearly marked between his low forehead and
unintelligent, loutish, peasant air, and the divine splendour which came
from his poor human mask, ravaged and sanctified by suffering, sublime at
this last hour in the passionate radiance of his faith. His flesh had
melted, as it were; he was no longer a breath, nothing but a look, a
light.

Since he had been set down there his eyes had not strayed from the statue
of the Virgin. Nothing else existed around him. He did not see the
enormous multitude, he did not even hear the wild cries of the priests,
the incessant cries which shook this quivering crowd. His eyes alone
remained to him, his eyes burning with infinite tenderness, and they were
fixed upon the Virgin, never more to turn from her. They drank her in,
even unto death; they made a last effort of will to disappear, die out in
her. For an instant, however, his mouth half opened and his drawn visage
relaxed as an expression of celestial beatitude came over it. Then
nothing more stirred, his eyes remained wide open, still obstinately
fixed upon the white statue.

A few seconds elapsed. Marthe had felt a cold breath, chilling the roots
of her hair. “I say, madame, look!” she stammered.

Madame Sabathier, who felt anxious, pretended that she did not
understand. “What is it, my girl?”

“My brother! look! He no longer moves. He opened his mouth, and has not
stirred since.” Then they both shuddered, feeling certain he was dead. He
had, indeed, just passed away, without a rattle, without a breath, as if
life had escaped in his glance, through his large, loving eyes, ravenous
with passion. He had expired gazing upon the Virgin, and nothing could
have been so sweet; and he still continued to gaze upon her with his dead
eyes, as though with ineffable delight.

“Try to close his eyes,” murmured Madame Sabathier. “We shall soon know
then.”

Marthe had already risen, and, leaning forward, so as not to be observed,
she endeavoured to close the eyes with a trembling finger. But each time
they reopened, and again looked at the Virgin with invincible obstinacy.
He was dead, and Marthe had to leave his eyes wide open, steeped in
unbounded ecstasy.

“Ah! it’s finished, it’s quite finished, madame!” she stuttered.

Two tears then burst from her heavy eyelids and ran down her cheeks;
while Madame Sabathier caught hold of her hand to keep her quiet. There
had been whisperings, and uneasiness was already spreading. But what
course could be adopted? It was impossible to carry off the corpse amidst
such a mob, during the prayers, without incurring the risk of creating a
disastrous effect. The best plan would be to leave it there, pending a
favourable moment. The poor fellow scandalised no one, he did not seem
any more dead now than he had seemed ten minutes previously, and
everybody would think that his flaming eyes were still alive, ardently
appealing to the divine compassion of the Blessed Virgin.

Only a few persons among those around knew the truth. M. Sabathier, quite
scared, had made a questioning sign to his wife, and on being answered by
a prolonged affirmative nod, he had returned to his prayers without any
rebellion, though he could not help turning pale at the thought of the
mysterious almighty power which sent death when life was asked for. The
Vignerons, who were very much interested, leaned forward, and whispered
as though in presence of some street accident, one of those petty
incidents which in Paris the father sometimes related on returning home
from the Ministry, and which sufficed to occupy them all, throughout the
evening. Madame Jousseur, for her part, had simply turned round and
whispered a word or two in M. Dieulafay’s ear, and then they had both
reverted to the heart-rending contemplation of their own dear invalid;
whilst Abbe Judaine, informed by M. Vigneron, knelt down, and in a low,
agitated voice recited the prayers for the dead. Was he not a Saint, that
missionary who had returned from a deadly climate, with a mortal wound in
his side, to die there, beneath the smiling gaze of the Blessed Virgin?
And Madame Maze, who also knew what had happened, suddenly felt a taste
for death, and resolved that she would implore Heaven to suppress her
also, in unobtrusive fashion, if it would not listen to her prayer and
give her back her husband.

But the cry of Father Massias rose into a still higher key, burst forth
with a strength of terrible despair, with a rending like that of a sob:
“Jesus, son of David, I am perishing, save me!”

And the crowd sobbed after him in unison “Jesus, son of David, I am
perishing, save me!”

Then, in quick succession, and in higher and higher keys, the appeals
went on proclaiming the intolerable misery of the world:

“Jesus, son of David, take pity on Thy sick children!”

“Jesus, son of David, take pity on Thy sick children!”

“Jesus, son of David, come, heal them, that they may live!”

“Jesus, son of David, come, heal them, that they may live!”

It was delirium. At the foot of the pulpit Father Fourcade, succumbing to
the extraordinary passion which overflowed from all hearts, had likewise
raised his arms, and was shouting the appeals in his thundering voice as
though to compel the intervention of Heaven. And the exaltation was still
increasing beneath this blast of desire, whose powerful breath bowed
every head in turn, spreading even to the young women who, in a spirit of
mere curiosity, sat watching the scene from the parapet of the Gave; for
these also turned pale under their sunshades.

Miserable humanity was clamouring from the depths of its abyss of
suffering, and the clamour swept along, sending a shudder down every
spine, for one and all were plunged in agony, refusing to die, longing to
compel God to grant them eternal life. Ah! life, life! that was what all
those unfortunates, who had come so far, amid so many obstacles,
wanted--that was the one boon they asked for in their wild desire to live
it over again, to live it always! O Lord, whatever our misery, whatever
the torment of our life may be, cure us, grant that we may begin to live
again and suffer once more what we have suffered already. However unhappy
we may be, to be is what we wish. It is not heaven that we ask Thee for,
it is earth; and grant that we may leave it at the latest possible
moment, never leave it, indeed, if such be Thy good pleasure. And even
when we no longer implore a physical cure, but a moral favour, it is
still happiness that we ask Thee for; happiness, the thirst for which
alone consumes us. O Lord, grant that we may be happy and healthy; let us
live, ay, let us live forever!

This wild cry, the cry of man’s furious desire for life, came in broken
accents, mingled with tears, from every breast.

“O Lord, son of David, heal our sick!”

“O Lord, son of David, heal our sick!”

Berthaud had twice been obliged to dash forward to prevent the cords from
giving way under the unconscious pressure of the crowd. Baron Suire, in
despair, kept on making signs, begging someone to come to his assistance;
for the Grotto was now invaded, and the march past had become the mere
trampling of a flock rushing to its passion. In vain did Gerard again
leave Raymonde and post himself at the entrance gate of the iron railing,
so as to carry out the orders, which were to admit the pilgrims by tens.
He was hustled and swept aside, while with feverish excitement everybody
rushed in, passing like a torrent between the flaring candles, throwing
bouquets and letters to the Virgin, and kissing the rock, which the
pressure of millions of inflamed lips had polished. It was faith run
wild, the great power that nothing henceforth could stop.

And now, whilst Gerard stood there, hemmed in against the iron railing,
he heard two countrywomen, whom the advance was bearing onward, raise
loud exclamations at sight of the sufferers lying on the stretchers
before them. One of them was so greatly impressed by the pallid face of
Brother Isidore, whose large dilated eyes were still fixed on the statue
of the Virgin, that she crossed herself, and, overcome by devout
admiration, murmured: “Oh! look at that one; see how he is praying with
his whole heart, and how he gazes on Our Lady of Lourdes!”

The other peasant woman thereupon replied “Oh! she will certainly cure
him, he is so beautiful!”

Indeed, as the dead man lay there, his eyes still fixedly staring whilst
he continued his prayer of love and faith, his appearance touched every
heart. No one in that endless, streaming throng could behold him without
feeling edified.




III. MARIE’S CURE

IT was good Abbe Judaine who was to carry the Blessed Sacrament in the
four-o’clock procession. Since the Blessed Virgin had cured him of a
disease of the eyes, a miracle with which the Catholic press still
resounded, he had become one of the glories of Lourdes, was given the
first place, and honoured with all sorts of attentions.

At half-past three he rose, wishing to leave the Grotto, but the
extraordinary concourse of people quite frightened him, and he feared he
would be late if he did not succeed in getting out of it. Fortunately
help came to him in the person of Berthaud. “Monsieur le Cure,” exclaimed
the superintendent of the bearers, “don’t attempt to pass out by way of
the Rosary; you would never arrive in time. The best course is to ascend
by the winding paths--and come! follow me; I will go before you.”

By means of his elbows, he thereupon parted the dense throng and opened a
path for the priest, who overwhelmed him with thanks. “You are too kind.
It’s my fault; I had forgotten myself. But, good heavens! how shall we
manage to pass with the procession presently?”

This procession was Berthaud’s remaining anxiety. Even on ordinary days
it provoked wild excitement, which forced him to take special measures;
and what would now happen, as it wended its way through this dense
multitude of thirty thousand persons, consumed by such a fever of faith,
already on the verge of divine frenzy? Accordingly, in a sensible way, he
took advantage of this opportunity to give Abbe Judaine the best advice.

“Ah! Monsieur le Cure, pray impress upon your colleagues of the clergy
that they must not leave any space between their ranks; they should come
on slowly, one close behind the other. And, above all, the banners should
be firmly grasped, so that they may not be overthrown. As for yourself,
Monsieur le Cure, see that the canopy-bearers are strong, tighten the
cloth around the monstrance, and don’t be afraid to carry it in both
hands with all your strength.”

A little frightened by this advice, the priest went on expressing his
thanks. “Of course, of course; you are very good,” said he. “Ah!
monsieur, how much I am indebted to you for having helped me to escape
from all those people!”

Then, free at last, he hastened towards the Basilica by the narrow
serpentine path which climbs the hill; while his companion again plunged
into the mob, to return to his post of inspection.

At that same moment Pierre, who was bringing Marie to the Grotto in her
little cart, encountered on the other side, that of the Place du Rosaire,
the impenetrable wall formed by the crowd. The servant at the hotel had
awakened him at three o’clock, so that he might go and fetch the young
girl at the hospital. There seemed to be no hurry; they apparently had
plenty of time to reach the Grotto before the procession. However, that
immense throng, that resisting, living wall, through which he did not
know how to break, began to cause him some uneasiness. He would never
succeed in passing with the little car if the people did not evince some
obligingness. “Come, ladies, come!” he appealed. “I beg of you! You see,
it’s for a patient!”

The ladies, hypnotised as they were by the spectacle of the Grotto
sparkling in the distance, and standing on tiptoe so as to lose nothing
of the sight, did not move, however. Besides, the clamour of the litanies
was so loud at this moment that they did not even hear the young priest’s
entreaties.

Then Pierre began again: “Pray stand on one side, gentlemen; allow me to
pass. A little room for a sick person. Come, please, listen to what I am
saying!”

But the men, beside themselves, in a blind, deaf rapture, would stir no
more than the women.

Marie, however, smiled serenely, as if ignorant of the impediments, and
convinced that nothing in the world could prevent her from going to her
cure. However, when Pierre had found an aperture, and begun to work his
way through the moving mass, the situation became more serious. From all
parts the swelling human waves beat against the frail chariot, and at
times threatened to submerge it. At each step it became necessary to
stop, wait, and again entreat the people. Pierre had never before felt
such an anxious sensation in a crowd. True, it was not a threatening mob,
it was as innocent as a flock of sheep; but he found a troubling thrill
in its midst, a peculiar atmosphere that upset him. And, in spite of his
affection for the humble, the ugliness of the features around him, the
common, sweating faces, the evil breath, and the old clothes, smelling of
poverty, made him suffer even to nausea.

“Now, ladies, now, gentlemen, it’s for a patient,” he repeated. “A little
room, I beg of you!”

Buffeted about in this vast ocean, the little vehicle continued to
advance by fits and starts, taking long minutes to get over a few yards
of ground. At one moment you might have thought it swamped, for no sign
of it could be detected. Then, however, it reappeared near the piscinas.
Tender sympathy had at length been awakened for this sick girl, so wasted
by suffering, but still so beautiful. When people had been compelled to
give way before the priest’s stubborn pushing, they turned round, but did
not dare to get angry, for pity penetrated them at sight of that thin,
suffering face, shining out amidst a halo of fair hair. Words of
compassion and admiration were heard on all sides: “Ah, the poor
child!”--“Was it not cruel to be infirm at her age?”--“Might the Blessed
Virgin be merciful to her!” Others, however, expressed surprise, struck
as they were by the ecstasy in which they saw her, with her clear eyes
open to the spheres beyond, where she had placed her hope. She beheld
Heaven, she would assuredly be cured. And thus the little car left, as it
were, a feeling of wonder and fraternal charity behind it, as it made its
way with so much difficulty through that human ocean.

Pierre, however, was in despair and at the end of his strength, when some
of the stretcher-bearers came to his aid by forming a path for the
passage of the procession--a path which Berthaud had ordered them to keep
clear by means of cords, which they were to hold at intervals of a couple
of yards. From that moment the young priest was able to drag Marie along
in a fairly easy manner, and at last place her within the reserved space,
where he halted, facing the Grotto on the left side. You could no longer
move in this reserved space, where the crowd seemed to increase every
minute. And, quite exhausted by the painful journey he had just
accomplished, Pierre reflected what a prodigious concourse of people
there was; it had seemed to him as if he were in the midst of an ocean,
whose waves he had heard heaving around him without a pause.

Since leaving the hospital Marie had not opened her lips. He now
realised, however, that she wished to speak to him, and accordingly bent
over her. “And my father,” she inquired, “is he here? Hasn’t he returned
from his excursion?”

Pierre had to answer that M. de Guersaint had not returned, and that he
had doubtless been delayed against his will. And thereupon she merely
added with a smile: “Ah I poor father, won’t he be pleased when he finds
me cured!”

Pierre looked at her with tender admiration. He did not remember having
ever seen her looking so adorable since the slow wasting of sickness had
begun. Her hair, which alone disease had respected, clothed her in gold.
Her thin, delicate face had assumed a dreamy expression, her eyes
wandering away to the haunting thought of her sufferings, her features
motionless, as if she had fallen asleep in a fixed thought until the
expected shock of happiness should waken her. She was absent from
herself, ready, however, to return to consciousness whenever God might
will it. And, indeed, this delicious infantile creature, this little girl
of three-and-twenty, still a child as when an accident had struck her,
delaying her growth, preventing her from becoming a woman, was at last
ready to receive the visit of the angel, the miraculous shock which would
draw her out of her torpor and set her upright once more. Her morning
ecstasy continued; she had clasped her hands, and a leap of her whole
being had ravished her from earth as soon as she had perceived the image
of the Blessed Virgin yonder. And now she prayed and offered herself
divinely.

It was an hour of great mental trouble for Pierre. He felt that the drama
of his priestly life was about to be enacted, and that if he did not
recover faith in this crisis, it would never return to him. And he was
without bad thoughts, without resistance, hoping with fervour, he also,
that they might both be healed! Oh! that he might be convinced by her
cure, that he might believe like her, that they might be saved together!
He wished to pray, ardently, as she herself did. But in spite of himself
he was preoccupied by the crowd, that limitless crowd, among which he
found it so difficult to drown himself, disappear, become nothing more
than a leaf in the forest, lost amidst the rustle of all the leaves. He
could not prevent himself from analysing and judging it. He knew that for
four days past it had been undergoing all the training of suggestion;
there had been the fever of the long journey, the excitement of the new
landscapes, the days spent before the splendour of the Grotto, the
sleepless nights, and all the exasperating suffering, ravenous for
illusion. Then, again, there had been the all-besetting prayers, those
hymns, those litanies, which agitated it without a pause. Another priest
had followed Father Massias in the pulpit, a little thin, dark Abbe, whom
Pierre heard hurling appeals to the Virgin and Jesus in a lashing voice
which resounded like a whip. Father Massias and Father Fourcade had
remained at the foot of the pulpit, and were now directing the cries of
the crowd, whose lamentations rose in louder and louder tones beneath the
limpid sunlight. The general exaltation had yet increased; it was the
hour when the violence done to Heaven at last produced the miracles.

All at once a paralytic rose up and walked towards the Grotto, holding
his crutch in the air; and this crutch, waving like a flag above the
swaying heads, wrung loud applause from the faithful. They were all on
the look-out for prodigies, they awaited them with the certainty that
they would take place, innumerable and wonderful. Some eyes seemed to
behold them, and feverish voices pointed them out. Another woman had been
cured! Another! Yet another! A deaf person had heard, a mute had spoken,
a consumptive had revived! What, a consumptive? Certainly, that was a
daily occurrence! Surprise was no longer possible; you might have
certified that an amputated leg was growing again without astonishing
anyone. Miracle-working became the actual state of nature, the usual
thing, quite commonplace, such was its abundance. The most incredible
stories seemed quite simple to those overheated imaginations, given what
they expected from the Blessed Virgin. And you should have heard the
tales that went about, the quiet affirmations, the expressions of
absolute certainty which were exchanged whenever a delirious patient
cried out that she was cured. Another! Yet another! However, a piteous
voice would at times exclaim: “Ah! she’s cured; that one; she’s lucky,
she is!”

Already, at the Verification Office, Pierre had suffered from this
credulity of the folk among whom he lived. But here it surpassed
everything he could have imagined; and he was exasperated by the
extravagant things he heard people say in such a placid fashion, with the
open smiles of children. Accordingly he tried to absorb himself in his
thoughts and listen to nothing. “O God!” he prayed, “grant that my reason
may be annihilated, that I may no longer desire to understand, that I may
accept the unreal and impossible.” For a moment he thought the spirit of
inquiry dead within him, and allowed the cry of supplication to carry him
away: “Lord, heal our sick! Lord, heal our sick!” He repeated this appeal
with all his charity, clasped his hands, and gazed fixedly at the statue
of the Virgin, until he became quite giddy, and imagined that the figure
moved. Why should he not return to a state of childhood like the others,
since happiness lay in ignorance and falsehood? Contagion would surely
end by acting; he would become nothing more than a grain of sand among
innumerable other grains, one of the humblest among the humble ones under
the millstone, who trouble not about the power that crushes them. But
just at that second, when he hoped that he had killed the old man in him,
that he had annihilated himself along with his will and intelligence, the
stubborn work of thought, incessant and invincible, began afresh in the
depths of his brain. Little by little, notwithstanding his efforts to the
contrary, he returned to his inquiries, doubted, and sought the truth.
What was the unknown force thrown off by this crowd, the vital fluid
powerful enough to work the few cures that really occurred? There was
here a phenomenon that no physiologist had yet studied. Ought one to
believe that a multitude became a single being, as it were, able to
increase the power of auto-suggestion tenfold upon itself? Might one
admit that, under certain circumstances of extreme exaltation, a
multitude became an agent of sovereign will compelling the obedience of
matter? That would have explained how sudden cure fell at times upon the
most sincerely excited of the throng. The breaths of all of them united
in one breath, and the power that acted was a power of consolation, hope,
and life.

This thought, the outcome of his human charity, filled Pierre with
emotion. For another moment he was able to regain possession of himself,
and prayed for the cure of all, deeply touched by the belief that he
himself might in some degree contribute towards the cure of Marie. But
all at once, without knowing what transition of ideas led to it, a
recollection returned to him of the medical consultation which he had
insisted upon prior to the young girl’s departure for Lourdes. The scene
rose before him with extraordinary clearness and precision; he saw the
room with its grey, blue-flowered wall-paper, and he heard the three
doctors discuss and decide. The two who had given certificates
diagnosticating paralysis of the marrow spoke discreetly, slowly, like
esteemed, well-known, perfectly honourable practitioners; but Pierre
still heard the warm, vivacious voice of his cousin Beauclair, the third
doctor, a young man of vast and daring intelligence, who was treated
coldly by his colleagues as being of an adventurous turn of mind. And at
this supreme moment Pierre was surprised to find in his memory things
which he did not know were there; but it was only an instance of that
singular phenomenon by which it sometimes happens that words scarce
listened to, words but imperfectly heard, words stored away in the brain
almost in spite of self, will awaken, burst forth, and impose themselves
on the mind after they have long been forgotten. And thus it now seemed
to him that the very approach of the miracle was bringing him a vision of
the conditions under which--according to Beauclair’s predictions--the
miracle would be accomplished.

In vain did Pierre endeavour to drive away this recollection by praying
with an increase of fervour. The scene again appeared to him, and the old
words rang out, filling his ears like a trumpet-blast. He was now again
in the dining-room, where Beauclair and he had shut themselves up after
the departure of the two others, and Beauclair recapitulated the history
of the malady: the fall from a horse at the age of fourteen; the
dislocation and displacement of the organ, with doubtless a slight
laceration of the ligaments, whence the weight which the sufferer had
felt, and the weakness of the legs leading to paralysis. Then, a slow
healing of the disorder, everything returning to its place of itself, but
without the pain ceasing. In fact this big, nervous child, whose mind had
been so grievously impressed by her accident, was unable to forget it;
her attention remained fixed on the part where she suffered, and she
could not divert it, so that, even after cure, her sufferings had
continued--a neuropathic state, a consecutive nervous exhaustion,
doubtless aggravated by accidents due to faulty nutrition as yet
imperfectly understood. And further, Beauclair easily explained the
contrary and erroneous diagnosis of the numerous doctors who had attended
her, and who, as she would not submit to examination, had groped in the
dark, some believing in a tumour, and the others, the more numerous,
convinced of some lesion of the marrow. He alone, after inquiring into
the girl’s parentage, had just begun to suspect a simple state of
auto-suggestion, in which she had obstinately remained ever since the
first violent shock of pain; and among the reasons which he gave for this
belief were the contraction of her visual field, the fixity of her eyes,
the absorbed, inattentive expression of her face, and above all the
nature of the pain she felt, which, leaving the organ, had borne to the
left, where it continued in the form of a crushing, intolerable weight,
which sometimes rose to the breast in frightful fits of stifling. A
sudden determination to throw off the false notion she had formed of her
complaint, the will to rise, breathe freely, and suffer no more, could
alone place her on her feet again, cured, transfigured, beneath the lash
of some intense emotion.

A last time did Pierre endeavour to see and hear no more, for he felt
that the irreparable ruin of all belief in the miraculous was in him.
And, in spite of his efforts, in spite of the ardour with which he began
to cry, “Jesus, son of David, heal our sick!” he still saw, he still
heard Beauclair telling him, in his calm, smiling manner how the miracle
would take place, like a lightning flash, at the moment of extreme
emotion, under the decisive circumstance which would complete the
loosening of the muscles. The patient would rise and walk in a wild
transport of joy, her legs would all at once be light again, relieved of
the weight which had so long made them like lead, as though this weight
had melted, fallen to the ground. But above all, the weight which bore
upon the lower part of the trunk, which rose, ravaged the breast, and
strangled the throat, would this time depart in a prodigious soaring
flight, a tempest blast bearing all the evil away with it. And was it not
thus that, in the Middle Ages, possessed women had by the mouth cast up
the Devil, by whom their flesh had so long been tortured? And Beauclair
had added that Marie would at last become a woman, that in that moment of
supreme joy she would cease to be a child, that although seemingly worn
out by her prolonged dream of suffering, she would all at once be
restored to resplendent health, with beaming face, and eyes full of life.

Pierre looked at her, and his trouble increased still more on seeing her
so wretched in her little cart, so distractedly imploring health, her
whole being soaring towards Our Lady of Lourdes, who gave life. Ah! might
she be saved, at the cost even of his own damnation! But she was too ill;
science lied like faith; he could not believe that this child, whose
limbs had been dead for so many years, would indeed return to life. And,
in the bewildered doubt into which he again relapsed, his bleeding heart
clamoured yet more loudly, ever and ever repeating with the delirious
crowd: “Lord, son of David, heal our sick!--Lord, son of David, heal our
sick!”

At that moment a tumult arose agitating one and all. People shuddered,
faces were turned and raised. It was the cross of the four-o’clock
procession, a little behind time that day, appearing from beneath one of
the arches of the monumental gradient way. There was such applause and
such violent, instinctive pushing that Berthaud, waving his arms,
commanded the bearers to thrust the crowd back by pulling strongly on the
cords. Overpowered for a moment, the bearers had to throw themselves
backward with sore hands; however, they ended by somewhat enlarging the
reserved path, along which the procession was then able to slowly wend
its way. At the head came a superb beadle, all blue and gold, followed by
the processional cross, a tall cross shining like a star. Then followed
the delegations of the different pilgrimages with their banners,
standards of velvet and satin, embroidered with metal and bright silk,
adorned with painted figures, and bearing the names of towns: Versailles,
Rheims, Orleans, Poitiers, and Toulouse. One, which was quite white,
magnificently rich, displayed in red letters the inscription “Association
of Catholic Working Men’s Clubs.” Then came the clergy, two or three
hundred priests in simple cassocks, about a hundred in surplices, and
some fifty clothed in golden chasubles, effulgent like stars. They all
carried lighted candles, and sang the “Laudate Sion Salvatorem” in full
voices. And then the canopy appeared in royal pomp, a canopy of purple
silk, braided with gold, and upheld by four ecclesiastics, who, it could
be seen, had been selected from among the most robust. Beneath it,
between two other priests who assisted him, was Abbe Judaine, vigorously
clasping the Blessed Sacrament with both hands, as Berthaud had
recommended him to do; and the somewhat uneasy glances that he cast on
the encroaching crowd right and left showed how anxious he was that no
injury should befall the heavy divine monstrance, whose weight was
already straining his wrists. When the slanting sun fell upon him in
front, the monstrance itself looked like another sun. Choir-boys meantime
were swinging censers in the blinding glow which gave splendour to the
entire procession; and, finally, in the rear, there was a confused mass
of pilgrims, a flock-like tramping of believers and sightseers all
aflame, hurrying along, and blocking the track with their ever-rolling
waves.

Father Massias had returned to the pulpit a moment previously; and this
time he had devised another pious exercise. After the burning cries of
faith, hope, and love that he threw forth, he all at once commanded
absolute silence, in order that one and all might, with closed lips,
speak to God in secret for a few minutes. These sudden spells of silence
falling upon the vast crowd, these minutes of mute prayer, in which all
souls unbosomed their secrets, were deeply, wonderfully impressive. Their
solemnity became formidable; you heard desire, the immense desire for
life, winging its flight on high. Then Father Massias invited the sick
alone to speak, to implore God to grant them what they asked of His
almighty power. And, in response, came a pitiful lamentation, hundreds of
tremulous, broken voices rising amidst a concert of sobs. “Lord Jesus, if
it please Thee, Thou canst cure me!”--“Lord Jesus take pity on Thy child,
who is dying of love!”--“Lord Jesus, grant that I may see, grant that I
may hear, grant that I may walk!” And, all at once, the shrill voice of a
little girl, light and vivacious as the notes of a flute, rose above the
universal sob, repeating in the distance: “Save the others, save the
others, Lord Jesus!” Tears streamed from every eye; these supplications
upset all hearts, threw the hardest into the frenzy of charity, into a
sublime disorder which would have impelled them to open their breasts
with both hands, if by doing so they could have given their neighbours
their health and youth. And then Father Massias, not letting this
enthusiasm abate, resumed his cries, and again lashed the delirious crowd
with them; while Father Fourcade himself sobbed on one of the steps of
the pulpit, raising his streaming face to heaven as though to command God
to descend on earth.

But the procession had arrived; the delegations, the priests, had ranged
themselves on the right and left; and, when the canopy entered the space
reserved to the sick in front of the Grotto, when the sufferers perceived
Jesus the Host, the Blessed Sacrament, shining like a sun, in the hands
of Abbe Judaine, it became impossible to direct the prayers, all voices
mingled together, and all will was borne away by vertigo. The cries,
calls, entreaties broke, lapsing into groans. Human forms rose from
pallets of suffering; trembling arms were stretched forth; clenched hands
seemingly desired to clutch at the miracle on the way. “Lord Jesus, save
us, for we perish!”--“Lord Jesus, we worship Thee; heal us!”--“Lord
Jesus, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God; heal us!” Thrice
did the despairing, exasperated voices give vent to the supreme
lamentation in a clamour which rushed up to Heaven; and the tears
redoubled, flooding all the burning faces which desire transformed. At
one moment, the delirium became so great, the instinctive leap toward the
Blessed Sacrament seemed so irresistible, that Berthaud placed the
bearers who were there in a chain about it. This was the extreme
protective manoeuvre, a hedge of bearers drawn up on either side of the
canopy, each placing an arm firmly round his neighbour’s neck, so as to
establish a sort of living wall. Not the smallest aperture was left in
it; nothing whatever could pass. Still, these human barriers staggered
under the pressure of the unfortunate creatures who hungered for life,
who wished to touch, to kiss Jesus; and, oscillating and recoiling, the
bearers were at last thrust against the canopy they were defending, and
the canopy itself began swaying among the crowd, ever in danger of being
swept away like some holy bark in peril of being wrecked.

Then, at the very climax of this holy frenzy, the miracles began amidst
supplications and sobs, as when the heavens open during a storm, and a
thunderbolt falls on earth. A paralytic woman rose and cast aside her
crutches. There was a piercing yell, and another woman appeared erect on
her mattress, wrapped in a white blanket as in a winding sheet; and
people said it was a half-dead consumptive who had thus been
resuscitated. Then grace fell upon two others in quick succession: a
blind woman suddenly perceived the Grotto in a flame; a dumb woman fell
on both her knees, thanking the Blessed Virgin in a loud, clear voice.
And all in a like way prostrated themselves at the feet of Our Lady of
Lourdes, distracted with joy and gratitude.

But Pierre had not taken his eyes off Marie, and he was overcome with
tender emotion at what he saw. The sufferer’s eyes were still
expressionless, but they had dilated, while her poor, pale face, with its
heavy mask, was contracted as if she were suffering frightfully. She did
not speak in her despair; she undoubtedly thought that she was again in
the clutches of her ailment. But all at once, when the Blessed Sacrament
passed by, and she saw the star-like monstrance sparkling in the sun, a
sensation of dizziness came over her. She imagined herself struck by
lightning. Her eyes caught fire from the glare which flashed upon her,
and at last regained their flame of life, shining out like stars. And
under the influence of a wave of blood her face became animated, suffused
with colour, beaming with a smile of joy and health. And, suddenly,
Pierre saw her rise, stand upright in her little car, staggering,
stuttering, and finding in her mind only these caressing words: “Oh, my
friend! Oh, my friend!”

He hurriedly drew near in order to support her. But she drove him back
with a gesture. She was regaining strength, looking so touching, so
beautiful, in the little black woollen gown and slippers which she always
wore; tall and slender, too, and crowned as with a halo of gold by her
beautiful flaxen hair, which was covered with a simple piece of lace. The
whole of her virgin form was quivering as if some powerful fermentation
had regenerated her. First of all, it was her legs that were relieved of
the chains that bound them; and then, while she felt the spirit of
life--the life of woman, wife, and mother--within her, there came a final
agony, an enormous weight that rose to her very throat. Only, this time,
it did not linger there, did not stifle her, but burst from her open
mouth, and flew away in a cry of sublime joy.

“I am cured!--I am cured!”

Then there was an extraordinary sight. The blanket lay at her feet, she
was triumphant, she had a superb, glowing face. And her cry of cure had
resounded with such rapturous delight that the entire crowd was
distracted by it. She had become the sole point of interest, the others
saw none but her, erect, grown so radiant and so divine.

“I am cured!--I am cured!”

Pierre, at the violent shock his heart had received, had begun to weep.
Indeed, tears glistened again in every eye. Amidst exclamations of
gratitude and praise, frantic enthusiasm passed from one to another,
throwing the thousands of pilgrims who pressed forward to see into a
state of violent emotion. Applause broke out, a fury of applause, whose
thunder rolled from one to the other end of the valley.

However, Father Fourcade began waving his arms, and Father Massias was at
last able to make himself heard from the pulpit: “God has visited us, my
dear brothers, my dear sisters!” said he. “_Magnificat anima mea
Dominum_, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in
God my Saviour.”

And then all the voices, the thousands of voices, began the chant of
adoration and gratitude. The procession found itself at a stand-still.
Abbe Judaine had been able to reach the Grotto with the monstrance, but
he patiently remained there before giving the Benediction. The canopy was
awaiting him outside the railings, surrounded by priests in surplices and
chasubles, all a glitter of white and gold in the rays of the setting
sun.

Marie, however, had knelt down, sobbing; and, whilst the canticle lasted,
a burning prayer of faith and love ascended from her whole being. But the
crowd wanted to see her walk, delighted women called to her, a group
surrounded her, and swept her towards the Verification Office, so that
the miracle might be proved true, as patent as the very light of the sun.
Her box was forgotten, Pierre followed her, while she, stammering and
hesitating, she who for seven years had not used her legs, advanced with
adorable awkwardness, the uneasy, charming gait of a little child making
its first steps; and it was so affecting, so delicious, that the young
priest thought of nothing but the immense happiness of seeing her thus
return to her childhood. Ah! the dear friend of infancy, the dear
tenderness of long ago, so she would at last be the beautiful and
charming woman that she had promised to be as a young girl when, in the
little garden at Neuilly, she had looked so gay and pretty beneath the
tall trees flecked with sunlight!

The crowd continued to applaud her furiously, a huge wave of people
accompanied her; and all remained awaiting her egress, swarming in a
fever before the door, when she had entered the office, whither Pierre
only was admitted with her.

That particular afternoon there were few people at the Verification
Office. The small square room, with its hot wooden walls and rudimentary
furniture, its rush-bottomed chairs, and its two tables of unequal
height, contained, apart from the usual staff only some five or six
doctors, seated and silent. At the tables were the inspector of the
piscinas and two young Abbes making entries in the registers, and
consulting the sets of documents; while Father Dargeles, at one end,
wrote a paragraph for his newspaper. And, as it happened, Doctor Bonamy
was just then examining Elise Rouquet, who, for the third time, had come
to have the increasing cicatrisation of her sore certified.

“Anyhow, gentlemen,” exclaimed the doctor, “have you ever seen a lupus
heal in this way so rapidly? I am aware that a new work has appeared on
faith healing in which it is stated that certain sores may have a nervous
origin. Only that is by no means proved in the case of lupus, and I defy
a committee of doctors to assemble and explain mademoiselle’s cure by
ordinary means.”

He paused, and turning towards Father Dargeles, inquired: “Have you
noted, Father, that the suppuration has completely disappeared, and that
the skin is resuming its natural colour?”

However, he did not wait for the reply, for just then Marie entered,
followed by Pierre; and by her beaming radiance he immediately guessed
what good-fortune was befalling him. She looked superb, admirably fitted
to transport and convert the multitude. He therefore promptly dismissed
Elise Rouquet, inquired the new arrival’s name, and asked one of the
young priests to look for her papers. Then, as she slightly staggered, he
wished to seat her in the arm-chair.

“Oh no! oh no!” she exclaimed. “I am so happy to be able to use my legs!”

Pierre, with a glance, had sought for Doctor Chassaigne, whom he was
sorry not to see there. He remained on one side, waiting while they
rummaged in the untidy drawers without being able to place their hands on
the required papers. “Let’s see,” repeated Dr. Bonamy; “Marie de
Guersaint, Marie de Guersaint. I have certainly seen that name before.”

At last Raboin discovered the documents classified under a wrong letter;
and when the doctor had perused the two medical certificates he became
quite enthusiastic. “Here is something very interesting, gentlemen,” said
he. “I beg you to listen attentively. This young lady, whom you see
standing here, was afflicted with a very serious lesion of the marrow.
And, if one had the least doubt of it, these two certificates would
suffice to convince the most incredulous, for they are signed by two
doctors of the Paris faculty, whose names are well known to us all.”

Then he passed the certificates to the doctors present, who read them,
wagging their heads the while. It was beyond dispute; the medical men who
had drawn up these documents enjoyed the reputation of being honest and
clever practitioners.

“Well, gentlemen, if the diagnosis is not disputed--and it cannot be when
a patient brings us documents of this value--we will now see what change
has taken place in the young lady’s condition.”

However, before questioning her he turned towards Pierre. “Monsieur
l’Abbe,” said he, “you came from Paris with Mademoiselle de Guersaint, I
think. Did you converse with the doctors before your departure?”

The priest shuddered amidst all his great delight.

“I was present at the consultation, monsieur,” he replied.

And again the scene rose up before him. He once more saw the two doctors,
so serious and rational, and he once more saw Beauclair smiling, while
his colleagues drew up their certificates, which were identical. And was
he, Pierre, to reduce these certificates to nothing, reveal the other
diagnosis, the one that allowed of the cure being explained
scientifically? The miracle had been predicted, shattered beforehand.

“You will observe, gentlemen,” now resumed Dr. Bonamy, “that the presence
of the Abbe gives these proofs additional weight. However, mademoiselle
will now tell us exactly what she felt.”

He had leant over Father Dargeles’s shoulder to impress upon him that he
must not forget to make Pierre play the part of a witness in the
narrative.

“_Mon Dieu_! gentlemen, how can I tell you?” exclaimed Marie in a halting
voice, broken by her surging happiness. “Since yesterday I had felt
certain that I should be cured. And yet, a little while ago, when the
pins and needles seized me in the legs again, I was afraid it might only
be another attack. For an instant I doubted. Then the feeling stopped.
But it began again as soon as I recommenced praying. Oh! I prayed, I
prayed with all my soul! I ended by surrendering myself like a child.
‘Blessed Virgin, Our Lady of Lourdes, do with me as thou wilt,’ I said.
But the feeling did not cease, it seemed as if my blood were boiling; a
voice cried to me: ‘Rise! Rise!’ And I felt the miracle fall on me in a
cracking of all my bones, of all my flesh, as if I had been struck by
lightning.”

Pierre, very pale, listened to her. Beauclair had positively told him
that the cure would come like a lightning flash, that under the influence
of extreme excitement a sudden awakening of will so long somnolent would
take place within her.

“It was my legs which the Holy Virgin first of all delivered,” she
continued. “I could well feel that the iron bands which bound them were
gliding along my skin like broken chains. Then the weight which still
suffocated me, there, in the left side, began to ascend; and I thought I
was going to die, it hurt me so. But it passed my chest, it passed my
throat, and I felt it there in my mouth, and spat it out violently. It
was all over, I no longer had any pain, it had flown away!”

She had made a gesture expressive of the motion of a night bird beating
its wings, and, lapsing into silence, stood smiling at Pierre, who was
bewildered. Beauclair had told him all that beforehand, using almost the
same words and the same imagery. Point by point, his prognostics were
realised, there was nothing more in the case than natural phenomena,
which had been foreseen.

Raboin, however, had followed Marie’s narrative with dilated eyes and the
passion of a pietist of limited intelligence, ever haunted by the idea of
hell. “It was the devil,” he cried; “it was the devil that she spat out!”

Doctor Bonamy, who was more wary, made him hold his tongue. And turning
towards the doctors he said: “Gentlemen, you know that we always avoid
pronouncing the big word of miracle here. Only here is a fact, and I am
curious to know how any of you can explain it by natural means. Seven
years ago this young lady was struck with serious paralysis, evidently
due to a lesion of the marrow. And that cannot be denied; the
certificates are there, irrefutable. She could no longer walk, she could
no longer make a movement without a cry of pain, she had reached that
extreme state of exhaustion which precedes but by little an unfortunate
issue. All at once, however, here she rises, walks, laughs, and beams on
us. The paralysis has completely disappeared, no pain remains, she is as
well as you and I. Come, gentlemen, approach, examine her, and tell me
what has happened.”

He triumphed. Not one of the doctors spoke. Two, who were doubtless true
Catholics, had shown their approval of his speech by their vigorous nods,
while the others remained motionless, with a constrained air, not caring
to mix themselves up in the business. However, a little thin man, whose
eyes shone behind the glasses he was wearing, ended by rising to take a
closer look at Marie. He caught hold of her hand, examined the pupils of
her eyes, and merely seemed preoccupied by the air of transfiguration
which she wore. Then, in a very courteous manner, without even showing a
desire to discuss the matter, he came back and sat down again.

“The case is beyond science, that is all I can assume,” concluded Doctor
Bonamy, victoriously. “I will add that we have no convalescence here;
health is at once restored, full, entire. Observe the young lady. Her
eyes are bright, her colour is rosy, her physiognomy has recovered its
lively gaiety. Without doubt, the healing of the tissues will proceed
somewhat slowly, but one can already say that mademoiselle has been born
again. Is it not so, Monsieur l’Abbe, you who have seen her so
frequently; you no longer recognise her, eh?”

“That’s true, that’s true,” stammered Pierre.

And, in fact, she already appeared strong to him, her cheeks full and
fresh, gaily blooming. But Beauclair had also foreseen this sudden joyful
change, this straightening and resplendency of her invalid frame, when
life should re-enter it, with the will to be cured and be happy. Once
again, however, had Doctor Bonamy leant over Father Dargeles, who was
finishing his note, a brief but fairly complete account of the affair.
They exchanged a few words in low tones, consulting together, and the
doctor ended by saying: “You have witnessed these marvels, Monsieur
l’Abbe, so you will not refuse to sign the careful report which the
reverend Father has drawn up for publication in the ‘Journal de la
Grotte.’”

He--Pierre--sign that page of error and falsehood! A revolt roused him,
and he was on the point of shouting out the truth. But he felt the weight
of his cassock on his shoulders; and, above all, Marie’s divine joy
filled his heart. He was penetrated with deep happiness at seeing her
saved. Since they had ceased questioning her she had come and leant on
his arm, and remained smiling at him with eyes full of enthusiasm.

“Oh, my, friend, thank the Blessed Virgin!” she murmured in a low voice.
“She has been so good to me; I am now so well, so beautiful, so young!
And how pleased my father, my poor father, will be!”

Then Pierre signed. Everything was collapsing within him, but it was
enough that she should be saved; he would have thought it sacrilegious to
interfere with the faith of that child, the great pure faith which had
healed her.

When Marie reappeared outside the office, the applause began afresh, the
crowd clapped their hands. It now seemed that the miracle was official.
However, certain charitable persons, fearing that she might again fatigue
herself and again require her little car, which she had abandoned before
the Grotto, had brought it to the office, and when she found it there she
felt deeply moved. Ah! that box in which she had lived so many years,
that rolling coffin in which she had sometimes imagined herself buried
alive, how many tears, how much despair, how many bad days it had
witnessed! And, all at once, the idea occurred to her that it had so long
been linked with her sufferings, it ought also to share her triumph. It
was a sudden inspiration, a kind of holy folly, that made her seize the
handle.

At that moment the procession passed by, returning from the Grotto, where
Abbe Judaine had pronounced the Benediction. And thereupon Marie,
dragging the little car, placed herself behind the canopy. And, in her
slippers, her head covered with a strip of lace, her bosom heaving, her
face erect, glowing, and superb, she walked on behind the clergy,
dragging after her that car of misery, that rolling coffin, in which she
had endured so much agony. And the crowd which acclaimed her, the frantic
crowd, followed in her wake.




IV. TRIUMPH--DESPAIR

PIERRE also had followed Marie, and like her was behind the canopy,
carried along as it were by the blast of glory which made her drag her
little car along in triumph. Every moment, however, there was so much
tempestuous pushing that the young priest would assuredly have fallen if
a rough hand had not upheld him.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said a voice; “give me your arm, otherwise you won’t
be able to remain on your feet.”

Pierre turned round, and was surprised to recognise Father Massias, who
had left Father Fourcade in the pulpit in order to accompany the
procession. An extraordinary fever was sustaining him, throwing him
forward, as solid as a rock, with eyes glowing like live coals, and an
excited face covered with perspiration.

“Take care, then!” he again exclaimed; “give me your arm.”

A fresh human wave had almost swept them away. And Pierre now yielded to
the support of this terrible enthusiast, whom he remembered as a
fellow-student at the seminary. What a singular meeting it was, and how
greatly he would have liked to possess that violent faith, that mad
faith, which was making Massias pant, with his throat full of sobs,
whilst he continued giving vent to the ardent entreaty “Lord Jesus, heal
our sick! Lord Jesus, heal our sick!”

There was no cessation of this cry behind the canopy, where there was
always a crier whose duty it was to accord no respite to the slow
clemency of Heaven. At times a thick voice full of anguish, and at others
a shrill and piercing voice, would arise. The Father’s, which was an
imperious one, was now at last breaking through sheer emotion.

“Lord Jesus, heal our sick! Lord Jesus, heal our sick!”

The rumour of Marie’s wondrous cure, of the miracle whose fame would
speedily fill all Christendom, had already spread from one to the other
end of Lourdes; and from this had come the increased vertigo of the
multitude, the attack of contagious delirium which now caused it to whirl
and rush toward the Blessed Sacrament like the resistless flux of a
rising tide. One and all yielded to the desire of beholding the Sacrament
and touching it, of being cured and becoming happy. The Divinity was
passing; and now it was not merely a question of ailing beings glowing
with a desire for life, but a longing for happiness which consumed all
present and raised them up with bleeding, open hearts and eager hands.

Berthaud, who feared the excesses of this religious adoration, had
decided to accompany his men. He commanded them, carefully watching over
the double chain of bearers beside the canopy in order that it might not
be broken.

“Close your ranks--closer--closer!” he called, “and keep your arms firmly
linked!”

These young men, chosen from among the most vigorous of the bearers, had
an extremely difficult duty to discharge. The wall which they formed,
shoulder to shoulder, with arms linked at the waist and the neck, kept on
giving way under the involuntary assaults of the throng. Nobody,
certainly, fancied that he was pushing, but there was constant eddying,
and deep waves of people rolled towards the procession from afar and
threatened to submerge it.

When the canopy had reached the middle of the Place du Rosaire, Abbe
Judaine really thought that he would be unable to go any farther.
Numerous conflicting currents had set in over the vast expanse, and were
whirling, assailing him from all sides, so that he had to halt under the
swaying canopy, which shook like a sail in a sudden squall on the open
sea. He held the Blessed Sacrament aloft with his numbed hands, each
moment fearing that a final push would throw him over; for he fully
realised that the golden monstrance, radiant like a sun, was the one
passion of all that multitude, the Divinity they demanded to kiss, in
order that they might lose themselves in it, even though they should
annihilate it in doing so. Accordingly, while standing there, the priest
anxiously turned his eyes on Berthaud.

“Let nobody pass!” called the latter to the bearers--“nobody! The orders
are precise; you hear me?”

Voices, however, were rising in supplication on all sides, wretched
beings were sobbing with arms outstretched and lips protruding, in the
wild desire that they might be allowed to approach and kneel at the
priest’s feet. What divine grace it would be to be thrown upon the ground
and trampled under foot by the whole procession!* An infirm old man
displayed his withered hand in the conviction that it would be made sound
again were he only allowed to touch the monstrance. A dumb woman wildly
pushed her way through the throng with her broad shoulders, in order that
she might loosen her tongue by a kiss. Others were shouting, imploring,
and even clenching their fists in their rage with those cruel men who
denied cure to their bodily sufferings and their mental wretchedness. The
orders to keep them back were rigidly enforced, however, for the most
serious accidents were feared.

  * One is here irresistibly reminded of the car of Juggernaut, and
    of the Hindoo fanatics throwing themselves beneath its wheels
    in the belief that they would thus obtain an entrance into
    Paradise.--Trans.

“Nobody, nobody!” repeated Berthaud; “let nobody whatever pass!”

There was a woman there, however, who touched every heart with
compassion. Clad in wretched garments, bareheaded, her face wet with
tears, she was holding in her arms a little boy of ten years or so, whose
limp, paralysed legs hung down inertly. The lad’s weight was too great
for one so weak as herself, still she did not seem to feel it. She had
brought the boy there, and was now entreating the bearers with an
invincible obstinacy which neither words nor hustling could conquer.

At last, as Abbe Judaine, who felt deeply moved, beckoned to her to
approach, two of the bearers, in deference to his compassion, drew apart,
despite all the danger of opening a breach, and the woman then rushed
forward with her burden, and fell in a heap before the priest. For a
moment he rested the foot of the monstrance on the child’s head, and the
mother herself pressed her eager, longing lips to it; and, as they
started off again, she wished to remain behind the canopy, and followed
the procession, with streaming hair and panting breast, staggering the
while under the heavy burden, which was fast exhausting her strength.

They managed, with great difficulty, to cross the remainder of the Place
du Rosaire, and then the ascent began, the glorious ascent by way of the
monumental incline; whilst upon high, on the fringe of heaven, the
Basilica reared its slim spire, whence pealing bells were winging their
flight, sounding the triumphs of Our Lady of Lourdes. And now it was
towards an apotheosis that the canopy slowly climbed, towards the lofty
portal of the high-perched sanctuary which stood open, face to face with
the Infinite, high above the huge multitude whose waves continued soaring
across the valley’s squares and avenues. Preceding the processional
cross, the magnificent beadle, all blue and silver, was already rearing
the level of the Rosary cupola, the spacious esplanade formed by the roof
of the lower church, across which the pilgrimage deputations began to
wind, with their bright-coloured silk and velvet banners waving in the
ruddy glow of the sunset. Then came the clergy, the priests in snowy
surplices, and the priests in golden chasubles, likewise shining out like
a procession of stars. And the censers swung, and the canopy continued
climbing, without anything of its bearers being seen, so that it seemed
as though a mysterious power, some troop of invisible angels, were
carrying it off in this glorious ascension towards the open portal of
heaven.

A sound of chanting had burst forth; the voices in the procession no
longer called for the healing of the sick, now that the _cortege_ had
extricated itself from amidst the crowd. The miracle had been worked, and
they were celebrating it with the full power of their lungs, amidst the
pealing of the bells and the quivering gaiety of the atmosphere.

“_Magnificat anima mea Dominum_”--they began. “My soul doth magnify the
Lord.”

‘Twas the song of gratitude, already chanted at the Grotto, and again
springing from every heart: “_Et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari
meo_.” “And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”

Meantime it was with increasing, overflowing joy that Marie took part in
that radiant ascent, by the colossal gradient way, towards the glowing
Basilica. It seemed to her, as she continued climbing, that she was
growing stronger and stronger, that her legs, so long lifeless, became
firmer at each step. The little car which she victoriously dragged behind
her was like the earthly tenement of her illness, the _inferno_ whence
the Blessed Virgin had extricated her, and although its handle was making
her hands sore, she nevertheless wished to pull it up yonder with her, in
order that she might cast it at last at the feet of the Almighty. No
obstacle could stay her course, she laughed through the big tears which
were falling on her cheeks, her bosom was swelling, her demeanour
becoming warlike. One of her slippers had become unfastened, and the
strip of lace had fallen from her head to her shoulders. Nevertheless,
with her lovely fair hair crowning her like a helmet and her face beaming
brightly, she still marched on and on with such an awakening of will and
strength that, behind her, you could hear her car leap and rattle over
the rough slope of the flagstones, as though it had been a mere toy.

Near Marie was Pierre, still leaning on the arm of Father Massias, who
had not relinquished his hold. Lost amidst the far-spreading emotion, the
young priest was unable to reflect. Moreover his companion’s sonorous
voice quite deafened him.

“_Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles_.” “He hath put down the
mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.”

On Pierre’s other side, the right, Berthaud, who no longer had any cause
for anxiety, was now also following the canopy. He had given his bearers
orders to break their chain, and was gazing with an expression of delight
on the human sea through which the procession had lately passed. The
higher they the incline, the more did the Place du Rosaire and the
avenues and paths of the gardens expand below them, black with the
swarming multitude. It was a bird’s-eye view of a whole nation, an
ant-hill which ever increased in size, spreading farther and farther
away. “Look!” Berthaud at last exclaimed to Pierre. “How vast and how
beautiful it is! Ah! well, the year won’t have been a bad one after all.”

Looking upon Lourdes as a centre of propaganda, where his political
rancour found satisfaction, he always rejoiced when there was a numerous
pilgrimage, as in his mind it was bound to prove unpleasant to the
Government. Ah! thought he, if they had only been able to bring the
working classes of the towns thither, and create a Catholic democracy.
“Last year we scarcely reached the figure of two hundred thousand
pilgrims,” he continued, “but we shall exceed it this year, I hope.” And
then, with the gay air of the jolly fellow that he was, despite his
sectarian passions, he added: “Well, ‘pon my word, I was really pleased
just now when there was such a crush. Things are looking up, I thought,
things are looking up.”

Pierre, however, was not listening to him; his mind had been struck by
the grandeur of the spectacle. That multitude, which spread out more and
more as the procession rose higher and higher above it, that magnificent
valley which was hollowed out below and ever became more and more
extensive, displaying afar off its gorgeous horizon of mountains, filled
him with quivering admiration. His mental trouble was increased by it
all, and seeking Marie’s glance, he waved his arm to draw her attention
to the vast circular expanse of country. And his gesture deceived her,
for in the purely spiritual excitement that possessed her she did not
behold the material spectacle he pointed at, but thought that he was
calling earth to witness the prodigious favours which the Blessed Virgin
had heaped upon them both; for she imagined that he had had his share of
the miracle, and that in the stroke of grace which had set her erect with
her flesh healed, he, so near to her that their hearts mingled, had felt
himself enveloped and raised by the same divine power, his soul saved
from doubt, conquered by faith once more. How could he have witnessed her
wondrous cure, indeed, without being convinced? Moreover, she had prayed
so fervently for him outside the Grotto on the previous night. And now,
therefore, to her excessive delight, she espied him transfigured like
herself, weeping and laughing, restored to God again. And this lent
increased force to her blissful fever; she dragged her little car along
with unwearying hands, and--as though it were their double cross, her own
redemption and her friend’s redemption which she was carrying up that
incline with its resounding flagstones--she would have liked to drag it
yet farther, for leagues and leagues, ever higher and higher, to the most
inaccessible summits, to the transplendent threshold of Paradise itself.

“O Pierre, Pierre!” she stammered, “how sweet it is that this great
happiness should have fallen on us together--yes, together! I prayed for
it so fervently, and she granted my prayer, and saved you even in saving
me. Yes, I felt your soul mingling with my own. Tell me that our mutual
prayers have been granted, tell me that I have won your salvation even as
you have won mine!”

He understood her mistake and shuddered.

“If you only knew,” she continued, “how great would have been my grief
had I thus ascended into light alone. Oh! to be chosen without you, to
soar yonder without you! But with you, Pierre, it is rapturous delight!
We have been saved together, we shall be happy forever! I feel all
needful strength for happiness, yes, strength enough to raise the world!”

And in spite of everything, he was obliged to answer her and lie,
revolting at the idea of spoiling, dimming that great and pure felicity.
“Yes, yes, be happy, Marie,” he said, “for I am very happy myself, and
all our sufferings are redeemed.”

But even while he spoke he felt a deep rending within him, as though a
brutal hatchet-stroke were parting them forever. Amidst their common
sufferings, she had hitherto remained the little friend of childhood’s
days, the first artlessly loved woman, whom he knew to be still his own,
since she could belong to none. But now she was cured, and he remained
alone in his hell, repeating to himself that she would never more be his!
This sudden thought so upset him that he averted his eyes, in despair at
reaping such suffering from the prodigious felicity with which she
exulted.

However the chant went on, and Father Massias, hearing nothing and seeing
nothing, absorbed as he was in his glowing gratitude to God, shouted the
final verse in a thundering voice: “_Sicut locutus est ad patres nostros,
Abraham, et semini ejus in saecula_.” “As He spake to our fathers, to
Abraham, and to his seed for ever!”

Yet another incline had to be climbed, yet another effort had to be made
up that rough acclivity, with its large slippery flagstones. And the
procession rose yet higher, and the ascent still went on in the full,
bright light. There came a last turn, and the wheels of Marie’s car
grated against a granite curb. Then, still higher, still and ever higher,
did it roll until it finally reached what seemed to be the very fringe of
heaven.

And all at once the canopy appeared on the summit of the gigantic
inclined ways, on the stone balcony overlooking the stretch of country
outside the portal of the Basilica. Abbe Judaine stepped forward holding
the Blessed Sacrament aloft with both hands. Marie, who had pulled her
car up the balcony steps, was near him, her heart beating from her
exertion, her face all aglow amidst the gold of her loosened hair. Then
all the clergy, the snowy surplices, and the dazzling chasubles ranged
themselves behind, whilst the banners waved like bunting decking the
white balustrades. And a solemn minute followed.

From on high there could have been no grander spectacle. First,
immediately below, there was the multitude, the human sea with its dark
waves, its heaving billows, now for a moment stilled, amidst which you
only distinguished the small pale specks of the faces uplifted towards
the Basilica, in expectation of the Benediction; and as far as the eye
could reach, from the place du Rosaire to the Gave, along the paths and
avenues and across the open spaces, even to the old town in the distance;
those little pale faces multiplied and multiplied, all with lips parted,
and eyes fixed upon the august heaven was about to open to their gaze.

Then the vast amphitheatre of slopes and hills and mountains surged
aloft, ascended upon all sides, crests following crests, until they faded
away in the far blue atmosphere. The numerous convents among the trees on
the first of the northern slopes, beyond the torrent--those of the
Carmelites, the Dominicans, the Assumptionists, and the Sisters of
Nevers--were coloured by a rosy reflection from the fire-like glow of the
sunset. Then wooded masses rose one above the other, until they reached
the heights of Le Buala, which were surmounted by the Serre de Julos, in
its turn capped by the Miramont.

Deep valleys opened on the south, narrow gorges between piles of gigantic
rocks whose bases were already steeped in lakes of bluish shadow, whilst
the summits sparkled with the smiling farewell of the sun. The hills of
Visens upon this side were empurpled, and shewed like a promontory of
coral, in front of the stagnant lake of the ether, which was bright with
a sapphire-like transparency. But, on the east, in front of you, the
horizon again spread out to the very point of intersection of the seven
valleys. The castle which had formerly guarded them still stood with its
keep, its lofty walls, its black outlines--the outlines of a fierce
fortress of feudal time,--upon the rock whose base was watered by the
Gave; and upon this side of the stern old pile was the new town, looking
quite gay amidst its gardens, with its swarm of white house-fronts, its
large hotels, its lodging-houses, and its fine shops, whose windows were
glowing like live embers; whilst, behind the castle, the discoloured
roofs of old Lourdes spread out in confusion, in a ruddy light which
hovered over them like a cloud of dust. At this late hour, when the
declining luminary was sinking in royal splendour behind the little Gers
and the big Gers, those two huge ridges of bare rock, spotted with
patches of short herbage, formed nothing but a neutral, somewhat violet,
background, as though, indeed, they were two curtains of sober hue drawn
across the margin of the horizon.

And higher and still higher, in front of this immensity, did Abbe Judaine
with both hands raise the Blessed Sacrament. He moved it slowly from one
to the other horizon, causing it to describe a huge sign of the cross
against the vault of heaven. He saluted the convents, the heights of Le
Buala, the Serre de Julos, and the Miramont, upon his left; he saluted
the huge fallen rocks of the dim valleys, and the empurpled hills of
Visens, on his right; he saluted the new and the old town, the castle
bathed by the Gave, the big and the little Gers, already drowsy, in front
of him; and he saluted the woods, the torrents, the mountains, the faint
chains linking the distant peaks, the whole earth, even beyond the
visible horizon: Peace upon earth, hope and consolation to mankind! The
multitude below had quivered beneath that great sign of the cross which
enveloped it. It seemed as though a divine breath were passing, rolling
those billows of little pale faces which were as numerous as the waves of
an ocean. A loud murmur of adoration ascended; all those parted lips
proclaimed the glory of God when, in the rays of the setting sun, the
illumined monstrance again shone forth like another sun, a sun of pure
gold, describing the sign of the cross in streaks of flame upon the
threshold of the Infinite.

The banners, the clergy, with Abbe Judaine under the canopy, were already
returning to the Basilica, when Marie, who was also entering it, still
dragging her car by the handle, was stopped by two ladies, who kissed
her, weeping. They were Madame de Jonquiere and her daughter Raymonde,
who had come thither to witness the Benediction, and had been told of the
miracle.

“Ah! my dear child, what happiness!” repeated the lady-hospitaller; “and
how proud I am to have you in my ward! It is so precious a favour for all
of us that the Blessed Virgin should have been pleased to select you.”

Raymonde, meanwhile, had kept one of the young girl’s hands in her own.
“Will you allow me to call you my friend, mademoiselle?” said she. “I
felt so much pity for you, and I am now so pleased to see you walking, so
strong and beautiful already. Let me kiss you again. It will bring me
happiness.”

“Thank you, thank you with all my heart,” Marie stammered amidst her
rapture. “I am so happy, so very happy!”

“Oh! we will not leave you,” resumed Madame de Jonquiere. “You hear me,
Raymonde? We must follow her, and kneel beside her, and we will take her
back after the ceremony.”

Thereupon the two ladies joined the _cortege_, and, following the canopy,
walked beside Pierre and Father Massias, between the rows of chairs which
the deputations already occupied, to the very centre of the choir. The
banners alone were allowed on either side of the high altar; but Marie
advanced to its steps, still dragging her car, whose wheels resounded
over the flagstones. She had at last brought it to the spot whither the
sacred madness of her desire had longingly impelled her to drag it. She
had brought it, indeed, woeful, wretched-looking as it was, into the
splendour of God’s house, so that it might there testify to the truth of
the miracle. The threshold had scarcely been crossed when the organs
burst into a hymn of triumph, the sonorous acclamation of a happy people,
from amidst which there soon arose a celestial, angelic voice, of joyful
shrillness and crystalline purity. Abbe Judaine had placed the Blessed
Sacrament upon the altar, and the crowd was streaming into the nave, each
taking a seat, installing him or herself in a corner, pending the
commencement of the ceremony. Marie had at once fallen on her knees
between Madame de Jonquiere and Raymonde, whose eyes were moist with
tender emotion; whilst Father Massias, exhausted by the extraordinary
tension of the nerves which had been sustaining him ever since his
departure from the Grotto, had sunk upon the ground, sobbing, with his
head between his hands. Behind him Pierre and Berthaud remained standing,
the latter still busy with his superintendence, his eyes ever on the
watch, seeing that good order was preserved even during the most violent
outbursts of emotion.

Then, amidst all his mental confusion, increased by the deafening strains
of the organ, Pierre raised his head and examined the interior of the
Basilica. The nave was narrow and lofty, and streaked with bright
colours, which numerous windows flooded with light. There were scarcely
any aisles; they were reduced to the proportions of a mere passage
running between the side-chapels and the clustering columns, and this
circumstance seemed to increase the slim loftiness of the nave, the
soaring of the stonework in perpendicular lines of infantile, graceful
slenderness. A gilded railing, as transparent as lace, closed the choir,
where the high altar, of white marble richly sculptured, arose in all its
lavish chasteness. But the feature of the building which astonished you
was the mass of extraordinary ornamentation which transformed the whole
of it into an overflowing exhibition of embroidery and jewellery. What
with all the banners and votive offerings, the perfect river of gifts
which had flowed into it and remained clinging to its walls in a stream
of gold and silver, velvet and silk, covering it from top to bottom, it
was, so to say, the ever-glowing sanctuary of gratitude, whose thousand
rich adornments seemed to be chanting a perpetual canticle of faith and
thankfulness.

The banners, in particular, abounded, as innumerable as the leaves of
trees. Some thirty hung from the vaulted roof, whilst others were
suspended, like pictures, between the little columns around the
triforium. And others, again, displayed themselves on the walls, waved in
the depths of the side-chapels, and encompassed the choir with a heaven
of silk, satin, and velvet. You could count them by hundreds, and your
eyes grew weary of admiring them. Many of them were quite celebrated, so
renowned for their skilful workmanship that talented embroideresses took
the trouble to come to Lourdes on purpose to examine them. Among these
were the banner of our Lady of Fourvieres, bearing the arms of the city
of Lyons; the banner of Alsace, of black velvet embroidered with gold;
the banner of Lorraine, on which you beheld the Virgin casting her cloak
around two children; and the white and blue banner of Brittany, on which
bled the sacred heart of Jesus in the midst of a halo. All empires and
kingdoms of the earth were represented; the most distant lands--Canada,
Brazil, Chili, Haiti--here had their flags, which, in all piety, were
being offered as a tribute of homage to the Queen of Heaven.

Then, after the banners, there were other marvels, the thousands and
thousands of gold and silver hearts which were hanging everywhere,
glittering on the walls like stars in the heavens. Some were grouped
together in the form of mystical roses, others described festoons and
garlands, others, again, climbed up the pillars, surrounded the windows,
and constellated the deep, dim chapels. Below the triforium somebody had
had the ingenious idea of employing these hearts to trace in tall letters
the various words which the Blessed Virgin had addressed to Bernadette;
and thus, around the nave, there extended a long frieze of words, the
delight of the infantile minds which busied themselves with spelling
them. It was a swarming, a prodigious resplendency of hearts, whose
infinite number deeply impressed you when you thought of all the hands,
trembling with gratitude, which had offered them. Moreover, the
adornments comprised many other votive offerings, and some of quite an
unexpected description. There were bridal wreaths and crosses of honour,
jewels and photographs, chaplets, and even spurs, in glass cases or
frames. There were also the epaulets and swords of officers, together
with a superb sabre, left there in memory of a miraculous conversion.

But all this was not sufficient; other riches, riches of every kind,
shone out on all sides--marble statues, diadems enriched with brilliants,
a marvellous carpet designed at Blois and embroidered by ladies of all
parts of France, and a golden palm with ornaments of enamel, the gift of
the sovereign pontiff. The lamps suspended from the vaulted roof, some of
them of massive gold and the most delicate workmanship, were also gifts.
They were too numerous to be counted, they studded the nave with stars of
great price. Immediately in front of the tabernacle there was one, a
masterpiece of chasing, offered by Ireland. Others--one from Lille, one
from Valence, one from Macao in far-off China--were veritable jewels,
sparkling with precious stones. And how great was the resplendency when
the choir’s score of chandeliers was illumined, when the hundreds of
lamps and the hundreds of candles burned all together, at the great
evening ceremonies! The whole church then became a conflagration, the
thousands of gold and silver hearts reflecting all the little flames with
thousands of fiery scintillations. It was like a huge and wondrous
brasier; the walls streamed with live flakes of light; you seemed to be
entering into the blinding glory of Paradise itself; whilst on all sides
the innumerable banners spread out their silk, their satin, and their
velvet, embroidered with sanguifluous sacred hearts, victorious saints,
and Virgins whose kindly smiles engendered miracles.

Ah! how many ceremonies had already displayed their pomp in that
Basilica! Worship, prayer, chanting, never ceased there. From one end of
the year to the other incense smoked, organs roared, and kneeling
multitudes prayed there with their whole souls. Masses, vespers, sermons,
were continually following one upon another; day by day the religious
exercises began afresh, and each festival of the Church was celebrated
with unparalleled magnificence. The least noteworthy anniversary supplied
a pretext for pompous solemnities. Each pilgrimage was granted its share
of the dazzling resplendency. It was necessary that those suffering ones
and those humble ones who had come from such long distances should be
sent home consoled and enraptured, carrying with them a vision of
Paradise espied through its opening portals. They beheld the luxurious
surroundings of the Divinity, and would forever remain enraptured by the
sight. In the depths of bare, wretched rooms, indeed, by the side of
humble pallets of suffering throughout all Christendom, a vision of the
Basilica with its blazing riches continually arose like a vision of
fortune itself, like a vision of the wealth of that life to be, into
which the poor would surely some day enter after their long, long misery
in this terrestrial sphere.

Pierre, however, felt no delight; no consolation, no hope, came to him as
he gazed upon all the splendour. His frightful feeling of discomfort was
increasing, all was becoming black within him, with that blackness of the
tempest which gathers when men’s thoughts and feelings pant and shriek.
He had felt immense desolation rising in his soul ever since Marie,
crying that she was healed, had risen from her little car and walked
along with such strength and fulness of life. Yet he loved her like a
passionately attached brother, and had experienced unlimited happiness on
seeing that she no longer suffered. Why, therefore, should her felicity
bring him such agony? He could now no longer gaze at her, kneeling there,
radiant amidst her tears, with beauty recovered and increased, without
his poor heart bleeding as from some mortal wound. Still he wished to
remain there, and so, averting his eyes, he tried to interest himself in
Father Massias, who was still shaking with violent sobbing on the
flagstones, and whose prostration and annihilation, amidst the consuming
illusion of divine love, he sorely envied. For a moment, moreover, he
questioned Berthaud, feigning to admire some banner and requesting
information respecting it.

“Which one?” asked the superintendent of the bearers; “that lace banner
over there?”

“Yes, that one on the left.”

“Oh! it is a banner offered by Le Puy. The arms are those of Le Puy and
Lourdes linked together by the Rosary. The lace is so fine that if you
crumpled the banner up, you could hold it in the hollow of your hand.”

However, Abbe Judaine was now stepping forward; the ceremony was about to
begin. Again did the organs resound, and again was a canticle chanted,
whilst, on the altar, the Blessed Sacrament looked like the sovereign
planet amidst the scintillations of the gold and silver hearts, as
innumerable as stars. And then Pierre lacked the strength to remain there
any longer. Since Marie had Madame de Jonquiere and Raymonde with her,
and they would accompany her back, he might surely go off by himself,
vanish into some shadowy corner, and there, at last, vent his grief. In a
few words he excused himself, giving his appointment with Doctor
Chassaigne as a pretext for his departure. However, another fear suddenly
came to him, that of being unable to leave the building, so densely did
the serried throng of believers bar the open doorway. But immediately
afterwards he had an inspiration, and, crossing the sacristy, descended
into the crypt by the narrow interior stairway.

Deep silence and sepulchral gloom suddenly succeeded to the joyous chants
and prodigious radiance of the Basilica above. Cut in the rock, the crypt
formed two narrow passages, parted by a massive block of stone which
upheld the nave, and conducting to a subterranean chapel under the apse,
where some little lamps remained burning both day and night. A dim forest
of pillars rose up there, a mystic terror reigned in that semi-obscurity
where the mystery ever quivered. The chapel walls remained bare, like the
very stones of the tomb, in which all men must some day sleep the last
sleep. And along the passages, against their sides, covered from top to
bottom with marble votive offerings, you only saw a double row of
confessionals; for it was here, in the lifeless tranquillity of the
bowels of the earth, that sins were confessed; and there were priests,
speaking all languages, to absolve the sinners who came thither from the
four corners of the world.

At that hour, however, when the multitude was thronging the Basilica
above, the crypt had become quite deserted. Not a soul, save Pierre’s,
throbbed there ever so faintly; and he, amidst that deep silence, that
darkness, that coolness of the grave, fell upon his knees. It was not,
however, through any need of prayer and worship, but because his whole
being was giving way beneath his crushing mental torment. He felt a
torturing longing to be able to see clearly within himself. Ah! why could
he not plunge even more deeply into the heart of things, reflect,
understand, and at last calm himself.

And it was a fearful agony that he experienced. He tried to remember all
the minutes that had gone by since Marie, suddenly springing from her
pallet of wretchedness, had raised her cry of resurrection. Why had he
even then, despite his fraternal joy in seeing her erect, felt such an
awful sensation of discomfort, as though, indeed, the greatest of all
possible misfortunes had fallen upon him? Was he jealous of the divine
grace? Did he suffer because the Virgin, whilst healing her, had
forgotten him, whose soul was so afflicted? He remembered how he had
granted himself a last delay, fixed a supreme appointment with Faith for
the moment when the Blessed Sacrament should pass by, were Marie only
cured; and she was cured, and still he did not believe, and henceforth
there was no hope, for never, never would he be able to believe. Therein
lay the bare, bleeding sore. The truth burst upon him with blinding
cruelty and certainty--she was saved, he was lost. That pretended miracle
which had restored her to life had, in him, completed the ruin of all
belief in the supernatural. That which he had, for a moment, dreamed of
seeking, and perhaps finding, at Lourdes,--naive faith, the happy faith
of a little child,--was no longer possible, would never bloom again after
that collapse of the miraculous, that cure which Beauclair had foretold,
and which had afterwards come to pass, exactly as had been predicted.
Jealous! No--he was not jealous; but he was ravaged, full of mortal
sadness at thus remaining all alone in the icy desert of his
intelligence, regretting the illusion, the lie, the divine love of the
simpleminded, for which henceforth there was no room in his heart.

A flood of bitterness stifled him, and tears started from his eyes. He
had slipped on to the flagstones, prostrated by his anguish. And, by
degrees, he remembered the whole delightful story, from the day when
Marie, guessing how he was tortured by doubt, had become so passionately
eager for his conversion, taking hold of his hand in the gloom, retaining
it in her own, and stammering that she would pray for him--oh! pray for
him with her whole soul. She forgot herself, she entreated the Blessed
Virgin to save her friend rather than herself if there were but one grace
that she could obtain from her Divine Son. Then came another memory, the
memory of the delightful hours which they had spent together amid the
dense darkness of the trees during the night procession. There, again,
they had prayed for one another, mingled one in the other with so ardent
a desire for mutual happiness that, for a moment, they had attained to
the very depths of the love which gives and immolates itself. And now
their long, tear-drenched tenderness, their pure idyl of suffering, was
ending in this brutal separation; she on her side saved, radiant amidst
the hosannas of the triumphant Basilica; and he lost, sobbing with
wretchedness, bowed down in the depths of the dark crypt in an icy,
grave-like solitude. It was as though he had just lost her again, and
this time forever and forever.

All at once Pierre felt the sharp stab which this thought dealt his
heart. He at last understood his pain--a sudden light illumined the
terrible crisis of woe amidst which he was struggling. He had lost Marie
for the first time on the day when he had become a priest, saying to
himself that he might well renounce his manhood since she, stricken in
her sex by incurable illness, would never be a woman. But behold! she
_was_ cured. Behold! she _had_ become a woman. She had all at once
appeared to him very strong, very beautiful, living, and desirable. He,
who was dead, however, could not become a man again. Never more would he
be able to raise the tombstone which crushed and imprisoned his flesh.
She fled away alone, leaving him in the cold grave. The whole wide world
was opening before her with smiling happiness, with the love which laughs
in the sunlit paths, with the husband, with children, no doubt. Whereas
he, buried, as it were to his shoulders, had naught of his body free,
save his brain, and that remained free, no doubt, in order that he might
suffer the more. She had still been his so long as she had not belonged
to another; and if he had been enduring such agony during the past hour,
it was only through this final rending which, this time, parted her from
him forever and forever.

Then rage shook Pierre from head to foot. He was tempted to return to the
Basilica, and cry the truth aloud to Marie. The miracle was a lie! The
helpful beneficence of an all-powerful Divinity was but so much illusion!
Nature alone had acted, life had conquered once again. And he would have
given proofs: he would have shown how life, the only sovereign, worked
for health amid all the sufferings of this terrestrial sphere. And then
they would have gone off together; they would have fled far, far away,
that they might be happy. But a sudden terror took possession of him.
What! lay hands upon that little spotless soul, kill all belief in it,
fill it with the ruins which worked such havoc in his own soul? It all at
once occurred to him that this would be odious sacrilege. He would
afterwards become horrified with himself, he would look upon himself as
her murderer were he some day to realise that he was unable to give her a
happiness equal to that which she would have lost. Perhaps, too, she
would not believe him. And, moreover, would she ever consent to marry a
priest who had broken his vows? She who would always retain the sweet and
never-to be-forgotten memory of how she had been healed in ecstasy! His
design then appeared to him insane, monstrous, polluting. And his revolt
rapidly subsided, until he only retained a feeling of infinite weariness,
a sensation of a burning, incurable wound--the wound of his poor,
bruised, lacerated heart.

Then, however, amidst his abandonment, the void in which he was whirling,
a supreme struggle began, filling him again with agony. What should he
do? His sufferings made a coward of him, and he would have liked to flee,
so that he might never see Marie again. For he understood very well that
he would now have to lie to her, since she thought that he was saved like
herself, converted, healed in soul, even as she had been healed in body.
She had told him of her joy while dragging her car up the colossal
gradient way. Oh! to have had that great happiness together, together; to
have felt their hearts melt and mingle one in the other! And even then he
had already lied, as he would always be obliged to lie in order that he
might not spoil her pure and blissful illusion. He let the last
throbbings of his veins subside, and vowed that he would find sufficient
strength for the sublime charity of feigning peacefulness of soul, the
rapture of one who is redeemed. For he wished her to be wholly
happy--without a regret, without a doubt--in the full serenity of faith,
convinced that the blessed Virgin had indeed given her consent to their
purely mystical union. What did his torments matter? Later on, perhaps,
he might recover possession of himself. Amidst his desolate solitude of
mind would there not always be a little joy to sustain him, all that joy
whose consoling falsity he would leave to her?

Several minutes again elapsed, and Pierre, still overwhelmed, remained on
the flagstones, seeking to calm his fever. He no longer thought, he no
longer lived; he was a prey to that prostration of the entire being which
follows upon great crises. But, all at once, he fancied he could hear a
sound of footsteps, and thereupon he painfully rose to his feet, and
feigned to be reading the inscriptions graven in the marble votive slabs
along the walls. He had been mistaken--nobody was there; nevertheless,
seeking to divert his mind, he continued perusing the inscriptions, at
first in a mechanical kind of way, and then, little by little, feeling a
fresh emotion steal over him.

The sight was almost beyond imagination. Faith, love, and gratitude
displayed themselves in a hundred, a thousand ways on these marble slabs
with gilded lettering. Some of the inscriptions were so artless as to
provoke a smile. A colonel had sent a sculptured representation of his
foot with the words: “Thou hast preserved it; grant that it may serve
Thee.” Farther on you read the line: “May Her protection extend to the
glass trade.” And then, by the frankness of certain expressions of
thanks, you realised of what a strange character the appeals had been.
“To Mary the Immaculate,” ran one inscription, “from a father of a
family, in recognition of health restored, a lawsuit won, and advancement
gained.” However, the memory of these instances faded away amidst the
chorus of soaring, fervent cries. There was the cry of the lovers: “Paul
and Anna entreat Our Lady of Lourdes to bless their union.” There was the
cry of the mothers in various forms: “Gratitude to Mary, who has thrice
healed my child.”--“Gratitude to Mary for the birth of Antoinette, whom I
dedicate, like myself and all my kin, to Her.”--“P. D., three years old,
has been preserved to the love of his parents.” And then came the cry of
the wives, the cry, too, of the sick restored to health, and of the souls
restored to happiness: “Protect my husband; grant that my husband may
enjoy good health.”--“I was crippled in both legs, and now I am
healed.”--“We came, and now we hope.”--“I prayed, I wept, and She heard
me.” And there were yet other cries, cries whose veiled glow conjured up
thoughts of long romances: “Thou didst join us together; protect us, we
pray Thee.”--“To Mary, for the greatest of all blessings.” And the same
cries, the same words--gratitude, thankfulness, homage,
acknowledgment,--occurred again and again, ever with the same passionate
fervour. All! those hundreds, those thousands of cries which were forever
graven on that marble, and from the depths of the crypt rose clamorously
to the Virgin, proclaiming the everlasting devotion of the unhappy beings
whom she had succoured.

Pierre did not weary of reading them, albeit his mouth was bitter and
increasing desolation was filling him. So it was only he who had no
succour to hope for! When so many sufferers were listened to, he alone
had been unable to make himself heard! And he now began to think of the
extraordinary number of prayers which must be said at Lourdes from one
end of the year to the other. He tried to cast them up; those said during
the days spent at the Grotto and during the nights spent at the Rosary,
those said at the ceremonies at the Basilica, and those said at the
sunlight and the starlight processions. But this continual entreaty of
every second was beyond computation. It seemed as if the faithful were
determined to weary the ears of the Divinity, determined to extort
favours and forgiveness by the very multitude, the vast multitude of
their prayers. The priests said that it was necessary to offer to God the
acts of expiation which the sins of France required, and that when the
number of these acts of expiation should be large enough, God would smite
France no more. What a harsh belief in the necessity of chastisement!
What a ferocious idea born of the gloomiest pessimism! How evil life must
be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of
physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to Heaven!

In the midst of all his sadness, Pierre felt deep compassion penetrate
his heart. He was upset by the thought that mankind should be so
wretched, reduced to such a state of woe, so bare, so weak, so utterly
forsaken, that it renounced its own reason to place the one sole
possibility of happiness in the hallucinatory intoxication of dreams.
Tears once more filled his eyes; he wept for himself and for others, for
all the poor tortured beings who feel a need of stupefying and numbing
their pains in order to escape from the realities of the world. He again
seemed to hear the swarming, kneeling crowd of the Grotto, raising the
glowing entreaty of its prayer to Heaven, the multitude of twenty and
thirty thousand souls from whose midst ascended such a fervour of desire
that you seemed to see it smoking in the sunlight like incense. Then
another form of the exaltation of faith glowed, beneath the crypt, in the
Church of the Rosary, where nights were spent in a paradise of rapture,
amidst the silent delights of the communion, the mute appeals in which
the whole being pines, burns, and soars aloft. And as though the cries
raised before the Grotto and the perpetual adoration of the Rosary were
not sufficient, that clamour of ardent entreaty burst forth afresh on the
walls of the crypt around him; and here it was eternised in marble, here
it would continue shrieking the sufferings of humanity even into the
far-away ages. It was the marble, it was the walls themselves praying,
seized by that shudder of universal woe which penetrated even the world’s
stones. And, at last, the prayers ascended yet higher, still higher,
soared aloft from the radiant Basilica, which was humming and buzzing
above him, full as it now was of a frantic multitude, whose mighty voice,
bursting into a canticle of hope, he fancied he could hear through the
flagstones of the nave. And it finally seemed to him that he was being
whirled away, transported, as though he were indeed amidst the very
vibrations of that huge wave of prayer, which, starting from the dust of
the earth, ascended the tier of superposed churches, spreading from
tabernacle to tabernacle, and filling even the walls with such pity that
they sobbed aloud, and that the supreme cry of wretchedness pierced its
way into heaven with the white spire, the lofty golden cross, above the
steeple. O Almighty God, O Divinity, Helpful Power, whoever, whatever
Thou mayst be, take pity upon poor mankind and make human suffering
cease!

All at once Pierre was dazzled. He had followed the left-hand passage,
and was coming out into broad daylight, above the inclined ways, and two
affectionate arms at once caught hold of him and clasped him. It was
Doctor Chassaigne, whose appointment he had forgotten, and who had been
waiting there to take him to visit Bernadette’s room and Abbe Peyramale’s
church. “Oh! what joy must be yours, my child!” exclaimed the good old
man. “I have just learnt the great news, the extraordinary favour which
Our Lady of Lourdes has granted to your young friend. Recollect what I
told you the day before yesterday. I am now at ease--you are saved!”

A last bitterness came to the young priest who was very pale. However, he
was able to smile, and he gently answered: “Yes, we are saved, we are
very happy.”

It was the lie beginning; the divine illusion which in a spirit of
charity he wished to give to others.

And then one more spectacle met Pierre’s eyes. The principal door of the
Basilica stood wide open, and a red sheet of light from the setting sun
was enfilading the nave from one to the other end. Everything was flaring
with the splendour of a conflagration--the gilt railings of the choir,
the votive offerings of gold and silver, the lamps enriched with precious
stones, the banners with their bright embroideries, and the swinging
censers, which seemed like flying jewels. And yonder, in the depths of
this burning splendour, amidst the snowy surplices and the golden
chasubles, he recognised Marie, with hair unbound, hair of gold like all
else, enveloping her in a golden mantle. And the organs burst into a hymn
of triumph; and the delirious people acclaimed God; and Abbe Judaine, who
had again just taken the Blessed Sacrament from off the altar, raised it
aloft and presented it to their gaze for the last time; and radiantly
magnificent it shone out like a glory amidst the streaming gold of the
Basilica, whose prodigious triumph all the bells proclaimed in clanging,
flying peals.




V. CRADLE AND GRAVE

IMMEDIATELY afterwards, as they descended the steps, Doctor Chassaigne
said to Pierre: “You have just seen the triumph; I will now show you two
great injustices.”

And he conducted him into the Rue des Petits-Fosses to visit Bernadette’s
room, that low, dark chamber whence she set out on the day the Blessed
Virgin appeared to her.

The Rue des Petits-Fosses starts from the former Rue des Bois, now the
Rue de la Grotte, and crosses the Rue du Tribunal. It is a winding lane,
slightly sloping and very gloomy. The passers-by are few; it is skirted
by long walls, wretched-looking houses, with mournful facades in which
never a window opens. All its gaiety consists in an occasional tree in a
courtyard.

“Here we are,” at last said the doctor.

At the part where he had halted, the street contracted, becoming very
narrow, and the house faced the high, grey wall of a barn. Raising their
heads, both men looked up at the little dwelling, which seemed quite
lifeless, with its narrow casements and its coarse, violet pargeting,
displaying the shameful ugliness of poverty. The entrance passage down
below was quite black; an old light iron gate was all that closed it; and
there was a step to mount, which in rainy weather was immersed in the
water of the gutter.

“Go in, my friend, go in,” said the doctor. “You have only to push the
gate.”

The passage was long, and Pierre kept on feeling the damp wall with his
hand, for fear of making a false step. It seemed to him as if he were
descending into a cellar, in deep obscurity, and he could feel a slippery
soil impregnated with water beneath his feet. Then at the end, in
obedience to the doctor’s direction, he turned to the right.

“Stoop, or you may hurt yourself,” said M. Chassaigne; “the door is very
low. There, here we are.”

The door of the room, like the gate in the street, stood wide open, as if
the place had been carelessly abandoned; and Pierre, who had stopped in
the middle of the chamber, hesitating, his eyes still full of the bright
daylight outside, could distinguish absolutely nothing. He had fallen
into complete darkness, and felt an icy chill about the shoulders similar
to the sensation that might be caused by a wet towel.

But, little by little, his eyes became accustomed to the dimness. Two
windows of unequal size opened on to a narrow, interior courtyard, where
only a greenish light descended, as at the bottom of a well; and to read
there, in the middle of the day, it would be necessary to have a candle.
Measuring about fifteen feet by twelve, the room was flagged with large
uneven stones; while the principal beam and the rafters of the roof,
which were visible, had darkened with time and assumed a dirty, sooty
hue. Opposite the door was the chimney, a miserable plaster chimney, with
a mantelpiece formed of a rotten old plank. There was a sink between this
chimney and one of the windows. The walls, with their decaying,
damp-stained plaster falling off by bits, were full of cracks, and
turning a dirty black like the ceiling. There was no longer any furniture
there; the room seemed abandoned; you could only catch a glimpse of some
confused, strange objects, unrecognisable in the heavy obscurity that
hung about the corners.

After a spell of silence, the doctor exclaimed “Yes, this is the room;
all came from here. Nothing has been changed, with the exception that the
furniture has gone. I have tried to picture how it was placed: the beds
certainly stood against this wall, opposite the windows; there must have
been three of them at least, for the Soubirouses were seven--the father,
mother, two boys, and three girls. Think of that! Three beds filling this
room! Seven persons living in this small space! All of them buried alive,
without air, without light, almost without bread! What frightful misery!
What lowly, pity-awaking poverty!”

But he was interrupted. A shadowy form, which Pierre at first took for an
old woman, entered. It was a priest, however, the curate of the parish,
who now occupied the house. He was acquainted with the doctor.

“I heard your voice, Monsieur Chassaigne, and came down,” said he. “So
there you are, showing the room again?”

“Just so, Monsieur l’ Abbe; I took the liberty. It does not inconvenience
you?”

“Oh! not at all, not at all! Come as often as you please, and bring other
people.”

He laughed in an engaging manner, and bowed to Pierre, who, astonished by
this quiet carelessness, observed: “The people who come, however, must
sometimes plague you?”

The curate in his turn seemed surprised. “Indeed, no! Nobody comes. You
see the place is scarcely known. Every one remains over there at the
Grotto. I leave the door open so as not to be worried. But days and days
often pass without my hearing even the sound of a mouse.”

Pierre’s eyes were becoming more and more accustomed to the obscurity;
and among the vague, perplexing objects which filled the corners, he
ended by distinguishing some old barrels, remnants of fowl cages, and
broken tools, a lot of rubbish such as is swept away and thrown to the
bottom of cellars. Hanging from the rafters, moreover, were some
provisions, a salad basket full of eggs, and several bunches of big pink
onions.

“And, from what I see,” resumed Pierre, with a slight shudder, “you have
thought that you might make use of the room?”

The curate was beginning to feel uncomfortable. “Of course, that’s it,”
 said he. “What can one do? The house is so small, I have so little space.
And then you can’t imagine how damp it is here; it is altogether
impossible to occupy the room. And so, _mon Dieu_, little by little all
this has accumulated here by itself, contrary to one’s own desire.”

“It has become a lumber-room,” concluded Pierre.

“Oh no! hardly that. An unoccupied room, and yet in truth, if you insist
on it, it is a lumber-room!”

His uneasiness was increasing, mingled with a little shame. Doctor
Chassaigne remained silent and did not interfere; but he smiled, and was
visibly delighted at his companion’s revolt against human ingratitude.
Pierre, unable to restrain himself, now continued: “You must excuse me,
Monsieur l’Abbe, if I insist. But just reflect that you owe everything to
Bernadette; but for her Lourdes would still be one of the least known
towns of France. And really it seems to me that out of mere gratitude the
parish ought to have transformed this wretched room into a chapel.”

“Oh! a chapel!” interrupted the curate. “It is only a question of a human
creature: the Church could not make her an object of worship.”

“Well, we won’t say a chapel, then; but at all events there ought to be
some lights and flowers--bouquets of roses constantly renewed by the
piety of the inhabitants and the pilgrims. In a word, I should like some
little show of affection--a touching souvenir, a picture of
Bernadette--something that would delicately indicate that she deserves to
have a place in all hearts. This forgetfulness and desertion are
shocking. It is monstrous that so much dirt should have been allowed to
accumulate!”

The curate, a poor, thoughtless, nervous man, at once adopted Pierre’s
views: “In reality, you are a thousand times right,” said he; “but I
myself have no power, I can do nothing. Whenever they ask me for the
room, to set it to rights, I will give it up and remove my barrels,
although I really don’t know where else to put them. Only, I repeat, it
does not depend on me. I can do nothing, nothing at all!” Then, under the
pretext that he had to go out, he hastened to take leave and run away
again, saying to Doctor Chassaigne: “Remain, remain as long as you
please; you are never in my way.”

When the doctor once more found himself alone with Pierre he caught hold
of both his hands with effusive delight. “Ah, my dear child,” said he,
“how pleased you have made me! How admirably you expressed to him all
that has been boiling in my own heart so long! Like you, I thought of
bringing some roses here every morning. I should have simply had the room
cleaned, and would have contented myself with placing two large bunches
of roses on the mantelpiece; for you know that I have long felt deep
affection for Bernadette, and it seemed to me that those roses would be
like the very flowering and perfume of her memory. Only--only--” and so
saying he made a despairing gesture, “only courage failed me. Yes, I say
courage, no one having yet dared to declare himself openly against the
Fathers of the Grotto. One hesitates and recoils in the fear of stirring
up a religious scandal. Fancy what a deplorable racket all this would
create. And so those who are as indignant as I am are reduced to the
necessity of holding their tongues--preferring a continuance of silence
to anything else.” Then, by way of conclusion, he added: “The ingratitude
and rapacity of man, my dear child, are sad things to see. Each time I
come into this dim wretchedness, my heart swells and I cannot restrain my
tears.”

He ceased speaking, and neither of them said another word, both being
overcome by the extreme melancholy which the surroundings fostered. They
were steeped in gloom. The dampness made them shudder as they stood there
amidst the dilapidated walls and the dust of the old rubbish piled upon
either side. And the idea returned to them that without Bernadette none
of the prodigies which had made Lourdes a town unique in the world would
have existed. It was at her voice that the miraculous spring had gushed
forth, that the Grotto, bright with candles, had opened. Immense works
were executed, new churches rose from the ground, giant-like causeways
led up to God. An entire new city was built, as if by enchantment, with
gardens, walks, quays, bridges, shops, and hotels. And people from the
uttermost parts of the earth flocked thither in crowds, and the rain of
millions fell with such force and so abundantly that the young city
seemed likely to increase indefinitely--to fill the whole valley, from
one to the other end of the mountains. If Bernadette had been suppressed
none of those things would have existed, the extraordinary story would
have relapsed into nothingness, old unknown Lourdes would still have been
plunged in the sleep of ages at the foot of its castle. Bernadette was
the sole labourer and creatress; and yet this room, whence she had set
out on the day she beheld the Virgin, this cradle, indeed, of the miracle
and of all the marvellous fortune of the town, was disdained, left a prey
to vermin, good only for a lumber-room, where onions and empty barrels
were put away.

Then the other side of the question vividly appeared in Pierre’s mind,
and he again seemed to see the triumph which he had just witnessed, the
exaltation of the Grotto and Basilica, while Marie, dragging her little
car, ascended behind the Blessed Sacrament, amidst the clamour of the
multitude. But the Grotto especially shone out before him. It was no
longer the wild, rocky cavity before which the child had formerly knelt
on the deserted bank of the torrent; it was a chapel, transformed and
enriched, a chapel illumined by a vast number of candles, where nations
marched past in procession. All the noise, all the brightness, all the
adoration, all the money, burst forth there in a splendour of constant
victory. Here, at the cradle, in this dark, icy hole, there was not a
soul, not a taper, not a hymn, not a flower. Of the infrequent visitors
who came thither, none knelt or prayed. All that a few tender-hearted
pilgrims had done in their desire to carry away a souvenir had been to
reduce to dust, between their fingers, the half-rotten plank serving as a
mantelshelf. The clergy ignored the existence of this spot of misery,
which the processions ought to have visited as they might visit a station
of glory. It was there that the poor child had begun her dream, one cold
night, lying in bed between her two sisters, and seized with a fit of her
ailment while the whole family was fast asleep. It was thence, too, that
she had set out, unconsciously carrying along with her that dream, which
was again to be born within her in the broad daylight and to flower so
prettily in a vision such as those of the legends. And no one now
followed in her footsteps. The manger was forgotten, and left in
darkness--that manger where had germed the little humble seed which over
yonder was now yielding such prodigious harvests, reaped by the workmen
of the last hour amidst the sovereign pomp of ceremonies.

Pierre, whom the great human emotion of the story moved to tears, at last
summed up his thoughts in three words, saying in a low voice, “It is
Bethlehem.”

“Yes,” remarked Doctor Chassaigne, in his turn, “it is the wretched
lodging, the chance refuge, where new religions are born of suffering and
pity. And at times I ask myself if all is not better thus: if it is not
better that this room should remain in its actual state of wretchedness
and abandonment. It seems to me that Bernadette has nothing to lose by
it, for I love her all the more when I come to spend an hour here.”

He again became silent, and then made a gesture of revolt: “But no, no! I
cannot forgive it--this ingratitude sets me beside myself. I told you I
was convinced that Bernadette had freely gone to cloister herself at
Nevers. But although no one smuggled her away, what a relief it was for
those whom she had begun to inconvenience here! And they are the same
men, so anxious to be the absolute masters, who at the present time
endeavour by all possible means to wrap her memory in silence. Ah! my
dear child, if I were to tell you all!”

Little by little he spoke out and relieved himself. Those Fathers of the
Grotto, who showed such greed in trading on the work of Bernadette,
dreaded her still more now that she was dead than they had done whilst
she was alive. So long as she had lived, their great terror had assuredly
been that she might return to Lourdes to claim a portion of the spoil;
and her humility alone reassured them, for she was in nowise of a
domineering disposition, and had herself chosen the dim abode of
renunciation where she was destined to pass away. But at present their
fears had increased at the idea that a will other than theirs might bring
the relics of the visionary back to Lourdes; that, thought had, indeed,
occurred to the municipal council immediately after her death; the town
had wished to raise a tomb, and there had been talk of opening a
subscription. The Sisters of Nevers, however, formally refused to give up
the body, which they said belonged to them. Everyone felt that the
Sisters were acting under the influence of the Fathers, who were very
uneasy, and energetically bestirred themselves to prevent by all means in
their power the return of those venerated ashes, in whose presence at
Lourdes they foresaw a possible competition with the Grotto itself. Could
they have imagined some such threatening occurrence as this--a monumental
tomb in the cemetery, pilgrims proceeding thither in procession, the sick
feverishly kissing the marble, and miracles being worked there amidst a
holy fervour? This would have been disastrous rivalry, a certain
displacement of all the present devotion and prodigies. And the great,
the sole fear, still and ever returned to them, that of having to divide
the spoils, of seeing the money go elsewhere should the town, now taught
by experience, know how to turn the tomb to account.

The Fathers were even credited with a scheme of profound craftiness. They
were supposed to have the secret idea of reserving Bernadette’s remains
for themselves; the Sisters of Nevers having simply undertaken to keep it
for them within the peaceful precincts of their chapel. Only, they were
waiting, and would not bring it back until the affluence of the pilgrims
should decrease. What was the use of a solemn return at present, when
crowds flocked to the place without interruption and in increasing
numbers? Whereas, when the extraordinary success of Our Lady of Lourdes
should decline, like everything else in this world, one could imagine
what a reawakening of faith would attend the solemn, resounding ceremony
at which Christendom would behold the relics of the chosen one take
possession of the soil whence she had made so many marvels spring. And
the miracles would then begin again on the marble of her tomb before the
Grotto or in the choir of the Basilica.

“You may search,” continued Doctor Chassaigne, “but you won’t find a
single official picture of Bernadette at Lourdes. Her portrait is sold,
but it is hung no where, in no sanctuary. It is systematic forgetfulness,
the same sentiment of covert uneasiness as that which has wrought silence
and abandonment in this sad chamber where we are. In the same way as they
are afraid of worship at her tomb, so are they afraid of crowds coming
and kneeling here, should two candles burn or a couple of bouquets of
roses bloom upon this chimney. And if a paralytic woman were to rise
shouting that she was cured, what a scandal would arise, how disturbed
would be those good traders of the Grotto on seeing their monopoly
seriously threatened! They are the masters, and the masters they intend
to remain; they will not part with any portion of the magnificent farm
that they have acquired and are working. Nevertheless they tremble--yes,
they tremble at the memory of the workers of the first hour, of that
little girl who is still so great in death, and for whose huge
inheritance they burn with such greed that after having sent her to live
at Nevers, they dare not even bring back her corpse, but leave it
imprisoned beneath the flagstones of a convent!”

Ah! how wretched was the fate of that poor creature, who had been cut off
from among the living, and whose corpse in its turn was condemned to
exile! And how Pierre pitied her, that daughter of misery, who seemed to
have been chosen only that she might suffer in her life and in her death!
Even admitting that an unique, persistent will had not compelled her to
disappear, still guarding her even in her tomb, what a strange succession
of circumstances there had been--how it seemed as if someone, uneasy at
the idea of the immense power she might grasp, had jealously sought to
keep her out of the way! In Pierre’s eyes she remained the chosen one,
the martyr; and if he could no longer believe, if the history of this
unfortunate girl sufficed to complete within him the ruin of his faith,
it none the less upset him in all his brotherly love for mankind by
revealing a new religion to him, the only one which might still fill his
heart, the religion of life, of human sorrow.

Just then, before leaving the room, Doctor Chassaigne exclaimed: “And
it’s here that one must believe, my dear child. Do you see this obscure
hole, do you think of the resplendent Grotto, of the triumphant Basilica,
of the town built, of the world created, the crowds that flock to
Lourdes! And if Bernadette was only hallucinated, only an idiot, would
not the outcome be more astonishing, more inexplicable still? What! An
idiot’s dream would have sufficed to stir up nations like this! No! no!
The Divine breath which alone can explain prodigies passed here.”

Pierre was on the point of hastily replying “Yes!” It was true, a breath
had passed there, the sob of sorrow, the inextinguishable yearning
towards the Infinite of hope. If the dream of a suffering child had
sufficed to attract multitudes, to bring about a rain of millions and
raise a new city from the soil, was it not because this dream in a
measure appeased the hunger of poor mankind, its insatiable need of being
deceived and consoled? She had once more opened the Unknown, doubtless at
a favourable moment both socially and historically; and the crowds had
rushed towards it. Oh! to take refuge in mystery, when reality is so
hard, to abandon oneself to the miraculous, since cruel nature seems
merely one long injustice! But although you may organise the Unknown,
reduce it to dogmas, make revealed religions of it, there is never
anything at the bottom of it beyond the appeal of suffering, the cry of
life, demanding health, joy, and fraternal happiness, and ready to accept
them in another world if they cannot be obtained on earth. What use is it
to believe in dogmas? Does it not suffice to weep and love?

Pierre, however, did not discuss the question. He withheld the answer
that was on his lips, convinced, moreover, that the eternal need of the
supernatural would cause eternal faith to abide among sorrowing mankind.
The miraculous, which could not be verified, must be a food necessary to
human despair. Besides, had he not vowed in all charity that he would not
wound anyone with his doubts?

“What a prodigy, isn’t it?” repeated the doctor.

“Certainly,” Pierre ended by answering. “The whole human drama has been
played, all the unknown forces have acted in this poor room, so damp and
dark.”

They remained there a few minutes more in silence; they walked round the
walls, raised their eyes toward the smoky ceiling, and cast a final
glance at the narrow, greenish yard. Truly it was a heart-rending sight,
this poverty of the cobweb level, with its dirty old barrels, its
worn-out tools, its refuse of all kinds rotting in the corners in heaps.
And without adding a word they at last slowly retired, feeling extremely
sad.

It was only in the street that Doctor Chassaigne seemed to awaken. He
gave a slight shudder and hastened his steps, saying: “It is not
finished, my dear child; follow me. We are now going to look at the other
great iniquity.” He referred to Abbe Peyramale and his church.

They crossed the Place du Porche and turned into the Rue Saint Pierre; a
few minutes would suffice them. But their conversation had again fallen
on the Fathers of the Grotto, on the terrible, merciless war waged by
Father Sempe against the former Cure of Lourdes. The latter had been
vanquished, and had died in consequence, overcome by feelings of
frightful bitterness; and, after thus killing him by grief, they had
completed the destruction of his church, which he had left unfinished,
without a roof, open to the wind and to the rain. With what a glorious
dream had that monumental edifice filled the last year of the Cure’s
life! Since he had been dispossessed of the Grotto, driven from the work
of Our Lady of Lourdes, of which he, with Bernadette, had been the first
artisan, his church had become his revenge, his protestation, his own
share of the glory, the House of the Lord where he would triumph in his
sacred vestments, and whence he would conduct endless processions in
compliance with the formal desire of the Blessed Virgin. Man of authority
and domination as he was at bottom, a pastor of the multitude, a builder
of temples, he experienced a restless delight in hurrying on the work,
with the lack of foresight of an eager man who did not allow indebtedness
to trouble him, but was perfectly contented so long as he always had a
swarm of workmen busy on the scaffoldings. And thus he saw his church
rise up, and pictured it finished, one bright summer morning, all new in
the rising sun.

Ah! that vision constantly evoked gave him courage for the struggle,
amidst the underhand, murderous designs by which he felt himself to be
enveloped. His church, towering above the vast square, at last rose in
all its colossal majesty. He had decided that it should be in the
Romanesque style, very large, very simple, its nave nearly three hundred
feet long, its steeple four hundred and sixty feet high. It shone out
resplendently in the clear sunlight, freed on the previous day of the
last scaffolding, and looking quite smart in its newness, with its broad
courses of stone disposed with perfect regularity. And, in thought, he
sauntered around it, charmed with its nudity, its stupendous candour, its
chasteness recalling that of a virgin child, for there was not a piece of
sculpture, not an ornament that would have uselessly loaded it. The roofs
of the nave, transept, and apse were of equal height above the
entablature, which was decorated with simple mouldings. In the same way
the apertures in the aisles and nave had no other adornments than
archivaults with mouldings, rising above the piers. He stopped in thought
before the great coloured glass windows of the transept, whose roses were
sparkling; and passing round the building he skirted the semicircular
apse against which stood the vestry building with its two rows of little
windows; and then he returned, never tiring of his contemplation of that
regal ordonnance, those great lines standing out against the blue sky,
those superposed roofs, that enormous mass of stone, whose solidity
promised to defy centuries. But, when he closed his eyes he, above all
else, conjured up, with rapturous pride, a vision of the facade and
steeple; down below, the three portals, the roofs of the two lateral ones
forming terraces, while from the central one, in the very middle of the
facade, the steeple boldly sprang. Here again columns resting on piers
supported archivaults with simple mouldings. Against the gable, at a
point where there was a pinnacle, and between the two lofty windows
lighting the nave, was a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes under a canopy. Up
above, were other bays with freshly painted luffer-boards. Buttresses
started from the ground at the four corners of the steeple-base, becoming
less and less massive from storey to storey, till they reached the spire,
a bold, tapering spire in stone, flanked by four turrets and adorned with
pinnacles, and soaring upward till it vanished in the sky. And to the
parish priest of Lourdes it seemed as if it were his own fervent soul
which had grown and flown aloft with this spire, to testify to his faith
throughout the ages, there on high, quite close to God.

At other times another vision delighted him still more. He thought he
could see the inside of his church on the day of the first solemn mass he
would perform there. The coloured windows threw flashes of fire brilliant
like precious stones; the twelve chapels, the aisles, were beaming with
lighted candles. And he was at the high altar of marble and gold; and the
fourteen columns of the nave in single blocks of Pyrenean marble,
magnificent marble purchased with money that had come from the four
corners of Christendom, rose up supporting the vaulted roof, while the
sonorous voices of the organs filled the whole building with a hymn of
joy. A multitude of the faithful was gathered there, kneeling on the
flags in front of the choir, which was screened by ironwork as delicate
as lace, and covered with admirably carved wood. The pulpit, the regal
present of a great lady, was a marvel of art cut in massive oak. The
baptismal fonts had been hewn out of hard stone by an artist of great
talent. Pictures by masters ornamented the walls. Crosses, pyxes,
precious monstrances, sacred vestments, similar to suns, were piled up in
the vestry cupboards. And what a dream it was to be the pontiff of such a
temple, to reign there after having erected it with passion, to bless the
crowds who hastened to it from the entire earth, while the flying peals
from the steeple told the Grotto and Basilica that they had over there,
in old Lourdes, a rival, a victorious sister, in whose great nave God
triumphed also!

After following the Rue Saint Pierre for a moment, Doctor Chassaigne and
his companion turned into the little Rue de Langelle.

“We are coming to it,” said the doctor. But though Pierre looked around
him he could see no church. There were merely some wretched hovels, a
whole district of poverty, littered with foul buildings. At length,
however, at the bottom of a blind alley, he perceived a remnant of the
half-rotten palings which still surrounded the vast square site bordered
by the Rue Saint Pierre, the Rue de Bagneres, the Rue de Langelle, and
the Rue des Jardins.

“We must turn to the left,” continued the doctor, who had entered a
narrow passage among the rubbish. “Here we are!”

And the ruin suddenly appeared amidst the ugliness and wretchedness that
masked it.

The whole great carcase of the nave and the aisles, the transept and the
apse was standing. The walls rose on all sides to the point where the
vaulting would have begun. You entered as into a real church, you could
walk about at ease, identifying all the usual parts of an edifice of this
description. Only when you raised your eyes you saw the sky; the roofs
were wanting, the rain could fall and the wind blow there freely. Some
fifteen years previously the works had been abandoned, and things had
remained in the same state as the last workman had left them. What struck
you first of all were the ten pillars of the nave and the four pillars of
the choir, those magnificent columns of Pyrenean marble, each of a single
block, which had been covered with a casing of planks in order to protect
them from damage. The bases and capitals were still in the rough,
awaiting the sculptors. And these isolated columns, thus cased in wood,
had a mournful aspect indeed. Moreover, a dismal sensation filled you at
sight of the whole gaping enclosure, where grass had sprung up all over
the ravaged, bumpy soil of the aisles and the nave, a thick cemetery
grass, through which the women of the neighbourhood had ended by making
paths. They came in to spread out their washing there. And even now a
collection of poor people’s washing--thick sheets, shirts in shreds, and
babies’ swaddling clothes--was fast drying in the last rays of the sun,
which glided in through the broad, empty bays.

Slowly, without speaking, Pierre and Doctor Chassaigne walked round the
inside of the church. The ten chapels of the aisles formed a species of
compartments full of rubbish and remnants. The ground of the choir had
been cemented, doubtless to protect the crypt below against
infiltrations; but unfortunately the vaults must be sinking; there was a
hollow there which the storm of the previous night had transformed into a
little lake. However, it was these portions of the transept and the apse
which had the least suffered. Not a stone had moved; the great central
rose windows above the triforium seemed to be awaiting their coloured
glass, while some thick planks, forgotten atop of the walls of the apse,
might have made anyone think that the workmen would begin covering it the
next day. But, when Pierre and the doctor had retraced their steps, and
went out to look at the facade, the lamentable woefulness of the young
ruin was displayed to their gaze. On this side, indeed, the works had not
been carried forward to anything like the same extent: the porch with its
three portals alone was built, and fifteen years of abandonment had
sufficed for the winter weather to eat into the sculptures, the small
columns and the archivaults, with a really singular destructive effect,
as though the stones, deeply penetrated, destroyed, had melted away
beneath tears. The heart grieved at the sight of the decay which had
attacked the work before it was even finished. Not yet to be, and
nevertheless to crumble away in this fashion under the sky! To be
arrested in one’s colossal growth, and simply strew the weeds with ruins!

They returned to the nave, and were overcome by the frightful sadness
which this assassination of a monument provoked. The spacious plot of
waste ground inside was littered with the remains of scaffoldings, which
had been pulled down when half rotten, in fear lest their fall might
crush people; and everywhere amidst the tall grass were boards, put-logs,
moulds for arches, mingled with bundles of old cord eaten away by damp.
There was also the long narrow carcase of a crane rising up like a
gibbet. Spade-handles, pieces of broken wheelbarrows, and heaps of
greenish bricks, speckled with moss and wild convolvuli in bloom, were
still lying among the forgotten materials. In the beds of nettles you
here and there distinguished the rails of a little railway laid down for
the trucks, one of which was lying overturned in a corner. But the
saddest sight in all this death of things was certainly the portable
engine which had remained in the shed that sheltered it. For fifteen
years it had been standing there cold and lifeless. A part of the roof of
the shed had ended by falling in upon it, and now the rain drenched it at
every shower. A bit of the leather harness by which the crane was worked
hung down, and seemed to bind the engine like a thread of some gigantic
spider’s web. And its metal-work, its steel and copper, was also
decaying, as if rusted by lichens, covered with the vegetation of old
age, whose yellowish patches made it look like a very ancient,
grass-grown machine which the winters had preyed upon. This lifeless
engine, this cold engine with its empty firebox and its silent boiler,
was like the very soul of the departed labour vainly awaiting the advent
of some great charitable heart, whose coming through the eglantine and
the brambles would awaken this sleeping church in the wood from its heavy
slumber of ruin.

At last Doctor Chassaigne spoke: “Ah!” he said, “when one thinks that
fifty thousand francs would have sufficed to prevent such a disaster!
With fifty thousand francs the roof could have been put on, the heavy
work would have been saved, and one could have waited patiently. But they
wanted to kill the work just as they had killed the man.” With a gesture
he designated the Fathers of the Grotto, whom he avoided naming. “And to
think,” he continued, “that their annual receipts are eight hundred
thousand francs. However, they prefer to send presents to Rome to
propitiate powerful friends there.”

In spite of himself, he was again opening hostilities against the
adversaries of Cure Peyramale. The whole story caused a holy anger of
justice to haunt him. Face to face with those lamentable ruins, he
returned to the facts--the enthusiastic Cure starting on the building of
his beloved church, and getting deeper and deeper into debt, whilst
Father Sempe, ever on the lookout, took advantage of each of his
mistakes, discrediting him with the Bishop, arresting the flow of
offerings, and finally stopping the works. Then, after the conquered man
was dead, had come interminable lawsuits, lawsuits lasting fifteen years,
which gave the winters time to devour the building. And now it was in
such a woeful state, and the debt had risen to such an enormous figure,
that all seemed over. The slow death, the death of the stones, was
becoming irrevocable. The portable engine beneath its tumbling shed would
fall to pieces, pounded by the rain and eaten away by the moss.

“I know very well that they chant victory,” resumed the doctor; “that
they alone remain. It is just what they wanted--to be the absolute
masters, to have all the power, all the money for themselves alone. I may
tell you that their terror of competition has even made them intrigue
against the religious Orders that have attempted to come to Lourdes.
Jesuits, Dominicans, Benedictines, Capuchins, and Carmelites have made
applications at various times, and the Fathers of the Grotto have always
succeeded in keeping them away. They only tolerate the female Orders, and
will only have one flock. And the town belongs to them; they have opened
shop there, and sell God there wholesale and retail!”

Walking slowly, he had while speaking returned to the middle of the nave,
amidst the ruins, and with a sweeping wave of the arm he pointed to all
the devastation surrounding him. “Look at this sadness, this frightful
wretchedness! Over yonder the Rosary and Basilica cost them three
millions of francs.” *

  * About 580,000 dollars.

Then, as in Bernadette’s cold, dark room, Pierre saw the Basilica rise
before him, radiant in its triumph. It was not here that you found the
realisation of the dream of Cure Peyramale, officiating and blessing
kneeling multitudes while the organs resounded joyfully. The Basilica,
over yonder, appeared, vibrating with the pealing of its bells, clamorous
with the superhuman joy of an accomplished miracle, all sparkling with
its countless lights, its banners, its lamps, its hearts of silver and
gold, its clergy attired in gold, and its monstrance akin to a golden
star. It flamed in the setting sun, it touched the heavens with its
spire, amidst the soaring of the milliards of prayers which caused its
walls to quiver. Here, however, was the church that had died before being
born, the church placed under interdict by a mandamus of the Bishop, the
church falling into dust, and open to the four winds of heaven. Each
storm carried away a little more of the stones, big flies buzzed all
alone among the nettles which had invaded the nave; and there were no
other devotees than the poor women of the neighbourhood, who came thither
to turn their sorry linen, spread upon the grass.

It seemed amidst the mournful silence as though a low voice were sobbing,
perhaps the voice of the marble columns weeping over their useless beauty
under their wooden shirts. At times birds would fly across the deserted
apse uttering a shrill cry. Bands of enormous rats which had taken refuge
under bits of the lowered scaffoldings would fight, and bite, and bound
out of their holes in a gallop of terror. And nothing could have been more
heart-rending than the sight of this pre-determined ruin, face to face
with its triumphant rival, the Basilica, which beamed with gold.

Again Doctor Chassaigne curtly said, “Come.”

They left the church, and following the left aisle, reached a door,
roughly fashioned out of a few planks nailed together; and, when they had
passed down a half-demolished wooden staircase, the steps of which shook
beneath their feet, they found themselves in the crypt.

It was a low vault, with squat arches, on exactly the same plan as the
choir. The thick, stunted columns, left in the rough, also awaited their
sculptors. Materials were lying about, pieces of wood were rotting on the
beaten ground, the whole vast hall was white with plaster in the
abandonment in which unfinished buildings are left. At the far end, three
bays, formerly glazed, but in which not a pane of glass remained, threw a
clear, cold light upon the desolate bareness of the walls.

And there, in the middle, lay Cure Peyramale’s corpse. Some pious friends
had conceived the touching idea of thus burying him in the crypt of his
unfinished church. The tomb stood on a broad step and was all marble. The
inscriptions, in letters of gold, expressed the feelings of the
subscribers, the cry of truth and reparation that came from the monument
itself. You read on the face: “This tomb has been erected by the aid of
pious offerings from the entire universe to the blessed memory of the
great servant of Our Lady of Lourdes.” On the right side were these words
from a Brief of Pope Pius IX.: “You have entirely devoted yourself to
erecting a temple to the Mother of God.” And on the left were these words
from the New Testament: “Happy are they who suffer persecution for
justice’ sake.” Did not these inscriptions embody the true plaint, the
legitimate hope of the vanquished man who had fought so long in the sole
desire of strictly executing the commands of the Virgin as transmitted to
him by Bernadette? She, Our Lady of Lourdes, was there personified by a
slender statuette, standing above the commemorative inscription, against
the naked wall whose only decorations were a few bead wreaths hanging
from nails. And before the tomb, as before the Grotto, were five or six
benches in rows, for the faithful who desired to sit down.

But with another gesture of sorrowful compassion, Doctor Chassaigne had
silently pointed out to Pierre a huge damp spot which was turning the
wall at the far end quite green. Pierre remembered the little lake which
he had noticed up above on the cracked cement flooring of the
choir--quite a quantity of water left by the storm of the previous night.
Infiltration had evidently commenced, a perfect stream ran down, invading
the crypt, whenever there was heavy rain. And they both felt a pang at
their hearts when they perceived that the water was trickling along the
vaulted roof in narrow threads, and thence falling in large, regular
rhythmical drops upon the tomb. The doctor could not restrain a groan.
“Now it rains,” he said; “it rains on him!”

Pierre remained motionless, in a kind of awe. In the presence of that
falling water, at the thought of the blasts which must rush at winter
time through the glassless windows, that corpse appeared to him both
woeful and tragic. It acquired a fierce grandeur, lying there alone in
its splendid marble tomb, amidst all the rubbish, at the bottom of the
crumbling ruins of its own church. It was the solitary guardian, the dead
sleeper and dreamer watching over the empty spaces, open to all the birds
of night. It was the mute, obstinate, eternal protest, and it was
expectation also. Cure Peyramale, stretched in his coffin, having all
eternity before him to acquire patience, there, without weariness,
awaited the workmen who would perhaps return thither some fine April
morning. If they should take ten years to do so, he would be there, and
if it should take them a century, he would be there still. He was waiting
for the rotten scaffoldings up above, among the grass of the nave, to be
resuscitated like the dead, and by the force of some miracle to stand
upright once more, along the walls. He was waiting, too, for the
moss-covered engine to become all at once burning hot, recover its
breath, and raise the timbers for the roof. His beloved enterprise, his
gigantic building, was crumbling about his head, and yet with joined
hands and closed eyes he was watching over its ruins, watching and
waiting too.

In a low voice, the doctor finished the cruel story, telling how, after
persecuting Cure Peyramale and his work, they persecuted his tomb. There
had formerly been a bust of the Cure there, and pious hands had kept a
little lamp burning before it. But a woman had one day fallen with her
face to the earth, saying that she had perceived the soul of the
deceased, and thereupon the Fathers of the Grotto were in a flutter. Were
miracles about to take place there? The sick already passed entire days
there, seated on the benches before the tomb. Others knelt down, kissed
the marble, and prayed to be cured. And at this a feeling of terror
arose: supposing they should be cured, supposing the Grotto should find a
competitor in this martyr, lying all alone, amidst the old tools left
there by the masons! The Bishop of Tarbes, informed and influenced,
thereupon published the mandamus which placed the church under interdict,
forbidding all worship there and all pilgrimages and processions to the
tomb of the former priest of Lourdes. As in the case of Bernadette, his
memory was proscribed, his portrait could be found, officially, nowhere.
In the same manner as they had shown themselves merciless against the
living man, so did the Fathers prove merciless to his memory. They
pursued him even in his tomb. They alone, again nowadays, prevented the
works of the church from being proceeded with, by raising continual
obstacles, and absolutely refusing to share their rich harvest of alms.
And they seemed to be waiting for the winter rains to fall and complete
the work of destruction, for the vaulted roof of the crypt, the walls,
the whole gigantic pile to crumble down upon the tomb of the martyr, upon
the body of the defeated man, so that he might be buried beneath them and
at last pounded to dust!

“Ah!” murmured the doctor, “I, who knew him so valiant, so enthusiastic
in all noble labour! Now, you see it, it rains, it rains on him!”

Painfully, he set himself on his knees and found relief in a long prayer.

Pierre, who could not pray, remained standing. Compassionate sorrow was
overflowing from his heart. He listened to the heavy drops from the roof
as one by one they broke on the tomb with a slow rhythmical pit-a-pat,
which seemed to be numbering the seconds of eternity, amidst the profound
silence. And he reflected on the eternal misery of this world, on the
choice which suffering makes in always falling on the best. The two great
makers of Our Lady of Lourdes, Bernadette and Cure Peyramale, rose up in
the flesh again before him, like woeful victims, tortured during their
lives and exiled after their deaths. That alone, indeed, would have
completed within him the destruction of his faith; for the Bernadette,
whom he had just found at the end of his researches, was but a human
sister, loaded with every dolour. But none the less he preserved a tender
brotherly veneration for her, and two tears slowly trickled down his
cheeks.





THE FIFTH DAY




I. EGOTISM AND LOVE

AGAIN that night Pierre, at the Hotel of the Apparitions, was unable to
obtain a wink of sleep. After calling at the hospital to inquire after
Marie, who, since her return from the procession, had been soundly
enjoying the delicious, restoring sleep of a child, he had gone to bed
himself feeling anxious at the prolonged absence of M. de Guersaint. He
had expected him at latest at dinner-time, but probably some mischance
had detained him at Gavarnie; and he thought how disappointed Marie would
be if her father were not there to embrace her the first thing in the
morning. With a man like M. de Guersaint, so pleasantly heedless and so
hare-brained, everything was possible, every fear might be realised.

Perhaps this anxiety had at first sufficed to keep Pierre awake in spite
of his great fatigue; but afterwards the nocturnal noises of the hotel
had really assumed unbearable proportions. The morrow, Tuesday, was the
day of departure, the last day which the national pilgrimage would spend
at Lourdes, and the pilgrims no doubt were making the most of their time,
coming from the Grotto and returning thither in the middle of the night,
endeavouring as it were to force the grace of Heaven by their commotion,
and apparently never feeling the slightest need of repose. The doors
slammed, the floors shook, the entire building vibrated beneath the
disorderly gallop of a crowd. Never before had the walls reverberated
with such obstinate coughs, such thick, husky voices. Thus Pierre, a prey
to insomnia, tossed about on his bed and continually rose up, beset with
the idea that the noise he heard must have been made by M. de Guersaint
who had returned. For some minutes he would listen feverishly; but he
could only hear the extraordinary sounds of the passage, amid which he
could distinguish nothing precisely. Was it the priest, the mother and
her three daughters, or the old married couple on his left, who were
fighting with the furniture? or was it rather the larger family, or the
single gentleman, or the young single woman on his right, whom some
incomprehensible occurrences were leading into adventures? At one moment
he jumped from his bed, wishing to explore his absent friend’s empty
room, as he felt certain that some deeds of violence were taking place in
it. But although he listened very attentively when he got there, the only
sound he could distinguish was the tender caressing murmur of two voices.
Then a sudden recollection of Madame Volmar came to him, and he returned
shuddering to bed.

At length, when it was broad daylight and Pierre had just fallen asleep,
a loud knocking at his door awoke him with a start. This time there could
be no mistake, a loud voice broken by sobs was calling “Monsieur l’Abbe!
Monsieur l’Abbe! for Heaven’s sake wake up!”

Surely it must be M. de Guersaint who had been brought back dead, at
least. Quite scared, Pierre ran and opened the door, in his night-shirt,
and found himself in the presence of his neighbour, M. Vigneron.

“Oh! for Heaven’s sake, Monsieur l’Abbe, dress yourself at once!”
 exclaimed the assistant head-clerk. “Your holy ministry is required.”
 And he began to relate that he had just got up to see the time by his
watch on the mantelpiece, when he had heard some most frightful sighs
issuing from the adjoining room, where Madame Chaise slept. She had left
the communicating door open in order to be more with them, as she
pleasantly expressed it. Accordingly he had hastened in, and flung the
shutters open so as to admit both light and air. “And what a sight,
Monsieur l’Abbe!” he continued. “Our poor aunt lying on her bed, nearly
purple in the face already, her mouth wide open in a vain effort to
breathe, and her hands fumbling with the sheet. It’s her heart complaint,
you know. Come, come at once, Monsieur l’Abbe, and help her, I implore
you!”

Pierre, utterly bewildered, could find neither his breeches nor his
cassock. “Of course, of course I’ll come with you,” said he. “But I have
not what is necessary for administering the last sacraments.”

M. Vigneron had assisted him to dress, and was now stooping down looking
for his slippers. “Never mind,” he said, “the mere sight of you will
assist her in her last moments, if Heaven has this affliction in store
for us. Here! put these on your feet, and follow me at once--oh! at
once!”

He went off like a gust of wind and plunged into the adjoining room. All
the doors remained wide open. The young priest, who followed him, noticed
nothing in the first room, which was in an incredible state of disorder,
beyond the half-naked figure of little Gustave, who sat on the sofa
serving him as a bed, motionless, very pale, forgotten, and shivering
amid this drama of inexorable death. Open bags littered the floor, the
greasy remains of supper soiled the table, the parents’ bed seemed
devastated by the catastrophe, its coverlets torn off and lying on the
floor. And almost immediately afterwards he caught sight of the mother,
who had hastily enveloped herself in an old yellow dressing-gown,
standing with a terrified look in the inner room.

“Well, my love, well, my love?” repeated M. Vigneron, in stammering
accents.

With a wave of her hand and without uttering a word Madame Vigneron drew
their attention to Madame Chaise, who lay motionless, with her head sunk
in the pillow and her hands stiffened and twisted. She was blue in the
face, and her mouth gaped, as though with the last great gasp that had
come from her.

Pierre bent over her. Then in a low voice he said: “She is dead!”

Dead! The word rang through the room where a heavy silence reigned, and
the husband and wife looked at each other in amazement, bewilderment. So
it was over? The aunt had died before Gustave, and the youngster
inherited her five hundred thousand francs. How many times had they dwelt
on that dream; whose sudden realisation dumfounded them? How many times
had despair overcome them when they feared that the poor child might
depart before her? Dead! Good heavens! was it their fault? Had they
really prayed to the Blessed Virgin for this? She had shown herself so
good to them that they trembled at the thought that they had not been
able to express a wish without its being granted. In the death of the
chief clerk, so suddenly carried off so that they might have his place,
they had already recognised the powerful hand of Our Lady of Lourdes. Had
she again loaded them with favours, listening even to the unconscious
dreams of their desire? Yet they had never desired anyone’s death; they
were worthy people incapable of any bad action, loving their relations,
fulfilling their religious duties, going to confession, partaking of the
communion like other people without any ostentation. Whenever they
thought of those five hundred thousand francs, of their son who might be
the first to go, and of the annoyance it would be to them to see another
and far less worthy nephew inherit that fortune, it was merely in the
innermost recesses of their hearts, in short, quite innocently and
naturally. Certainly they _had_ thought of it when they were at the
Grotto, but was not the Blessed Virgin wisdom itself? Did she not know
far better than ourselves what she ought to do for the happiness of both
the living and the dead?

Then Madame Vigneron in all sincerity burst into tears and wept for the
sister whom she loved so much. “Ah! Monsieur l’Abbe,” she said, “I saw
her expire; she passed away before my eyes. What a misfortune that you
were not here sooner to receive her soul! She died without a priest; your
presence would have consoled her so much.”

A prey also to emotion, his eyes full of tears, Vigneron sought to
console his wife. “Your sister was a saint,” said he; “she communicated
again yesterday morning, and you need have no anxiety concerning her; her
soul has gone straight to heaven. No doubt, if Monsieur l’Abbe had been
here in time she would have been glad to see him. But what would you?
Death was quicker. I went at once, and really there is nothing for us to
reproach ourselves with.”

Then, turning towards the priest, he added “Monsieur l’Abbe, it was her
excessive piety which certainly hastened her end. Yesterday, at the
Grotto, she had a bad attack, which was a warning. And in spite of her
fatigue she obstinately followed the procession afterwards. I thought
then that she could not last long. Yet, out of delicacy, one did not like
to say anything to her, for fear of frightening her.”

Pierre gently knelt down and said the customary prayers, with that human
emotion which was his nearest approach to faith in the presence of
eternal life and eternal death, both so pitiful. Then, as he remained
kneeling a little longer, he overheard snatches of the conversation
around him.

Little Gustave, forgotten on his couch amid the disorder of the other
room, must have lost patience, for he had begun to cry and call out,
“Mamma! mamma! mamma!”

At length Madame Vigneron went to quiet him, and it occurred to her to
carry him in her arms to kiss his poor aunt for the last time. But at
first he struggled and refused, crying so much that M. Vigneron was
obliged to interfere and try to make him ashamed of himself. What! he who
was never frightened of anything! who bore suffering with the courage of
a grown-up man! And to think it was a question of kissing his poor aunt,
who had always been so kind, whose last thought must most certainly have
been for him!

“Give him to me,” said he to his wife; “he’s going to be good.”

Gustave ended by clinging to his father’s neck. He came shivering in his
night-shirt, displaying his wretched little body devoured by scrofula. It
seemed indeed as though the miraculous water of the piscinas, far from
curing him, had freshened the sore on his back; whilst his scraggy leg
hung down inertly like a dry stick.

“Kiss her,” resumed M. Vigneron.

The child leant forward and kissed his aunt on the forehead. It was not
death which upset him and caused him to struggle. Since he had been in
the room he had been looking at the dead woman with an air of quiet
curiosity. He did not love her, he had suffered on her account so long.
He had the ideas and feelings of a man, and the weight of them was
stifling him as, like his complaint, they developed and became more
acute. He felt full well that he was too little, that children ought not
to understand what only concerns their elders.

However, his father, seating himself out of the way, kept him on his
knee, whilst his mother closed the window and lit the two candles on the
mantelpiece. “Ah! my poor dear,” murmured M. Vigneron, feeling that he
must say something, “it’s a cruel loss for all of us. Our trip is now
completely spoilt; this is our last day, for we start this afternoon. And
the Blessed Virgin, too, was showing herself so kind to us.”

However, seeing his son’s surprised look, a look of infinite sadness and
reproach, he hastened to add: “Yes, of course, I know that she hasn’t yet
quite cured you. But we must not despair of her kindness. She loves us so
well, she shows us so many favours that she will certainly end by curing
you, since that is now the only favour that remains for her to grant us.”

Madame Vigneron, who was listening, drew near and said: “How happy we
should have been to have returned to Paris all three hale and hearty!
Nothing is ever perfect!”

“I say!” suddenly observed Monsieur Vigneron, “I sha’n’t be able to leave
with you this afternoon, on account of the formalities which have to be
gone through. I hope that my return ticket will still be available
to-morrow!”

They were both getting over the frightful shock, feeling a sense of
relief in spite of their affection for Madame Chaise; and, in fact, they
were already forgetting her, anxious above all things to leave Lourdes as
soon as possible, as though the principal object of their journey had
been attained. A decorous, unavowed delight was slowly penetrating them.

“When I get back to Paris there will be so much for me to do,” continued
M. Vigneron. “I, who now only long for repose! All the same I shall
remain my three years at the Ministry, until I can retire, especially now
that I am certain of the retiring pension of chief clerk. But
afterwards--oh! afterwards I certainly hope to enjoy life a bit. Since
this money has come to us I shall purchase the estate of Les Billottes,
that superb property down at my native place which I have always been
dreaming of. And I promise you that I sha’n’t find time hanging heavy on
my hands in the midst of my horses, my dogs, and my flowers!”

Little Gustave was still on his father’s knee, his night-shirt tucked up,
his whole wretched misshapen body shivering, and displaying the
scragginess of a slowly dying child. When he perceived that his father,
now full of his dream of an opulent life, no longer seemed to notice that
he was there, he gave one of his enigmatical smiles, in which melancholy
was tinged with malice. “But what about me, father?” he asked.

M. Vigneron started, like one aroused from sleep, and did not at first
seem to understand. “You, little one? You’ll be with us, of course!”

But Gustave gave him a long, straight look, without ceasing to smile with
his artful, though woeful lips. “Oh! do you think so?” he asked.

“Of course I think so! You’ll be with us, and it will be very nice to be
with us.”

Uneasy, stammering, unable to find the proper words, M. Vigneron felt a
chill come over him when his son shrugged his skinny shoulders with an
air of philosophical disdain and answered: “Oh, no! I shall be dead.”

And then the terrified father was suddenly able to detect in the child’s
deep glance the glance of a man who was very aged, very knowing in all
things, acquainted with all the abominations of life through having gone
through them. What especially alarmed him was the abrupt conviction that
this child had always seen into the innermost recesses of his heart, even
farther than the things he dared to acknowledge to himself. He could
recall that when the little sufferer had been but a baby in his cradle
his eyes would frequently be fixed upon his own--and even then those eyes
had been rendered so sharp by suffering, endowed, too, with such an
extraordinary power of divination, that they had seemed able to dive into
the unconscious thoughts buried in the depths of his brain. And by a
singular counter-effect all the things that he had never owned to himself
he now found in his child’s eyes--he beheld them, read them there,
against his will. The story of his cupidity lay unfolded before him, his
anger at having such a sorry son, his anguish at the idea that Madame
Chaise’s fortune depended upon such a fragile existence, his eager desire
that she might make haste and die whilst the youngster was still there,
in order that he might finger the legacy. It was simply a question of
days, this duel as to which should go off first. And then, at the end, it
still meant death--the youngster must in his turn disappear, whilst he,
the father, alone pocketed the cash, and lived joyfully to a good old
age. And these frightful things shone forth so clearly from the keen,
melancholy, smiling eyes of the poor condemned child, passed from son to
father with such evident distinctness, that for a moment it seemed to
them that they were shouting them aloud.

However, M. Vigneron struggled against it all, and, averting his head,
began energetically protesting: “How! You’ll be dead? What an idea! It’s
absurd to have such ideas as that!”

Meantime, Madame Vigneron was sobbing. “You wicked child,” she gasped;
“how can you make us so unhappy, when we already have such a cruel loss
to deplore?”

Gustave had to kiss them, and to promise them that he would live for
their sakes. Yet he did not cease smiling, conscious as he was that a lie
is necessary when one does not wish to be too miserable, and quite
prepared, moreover, to leave his parents happy behind him, since even the
Blessed Virgin herself was powerless to grant him in this world the
little happy lot to which each creature should be born.

His mother took him back to bed, and Pierre at length rose up, just as M.
Vigneron had finished arranging the chamber of death in a suitable
manner. “You’ll excuse me, won’t you, Monsieur l’Abbe?” said he,
accompanying the young priest to the door. “I’m not quite myself. Well,
it’s an unpleasant time to go through. I must get over it somehow,
however.”

When Pierre got into the passage he stopped for a moment, listening to a
sound of voices which was ascending the stairs. He had just been thinking
of M. de Guersaint again, and imagined that he could recognise his voice.
However, whilst he stood there waiting, an incident occurred which caused
him intense discomfort. The door of the room next to M. de Guersaint’s
softly opened and a woman, clad in black, slipped into the passage. As
she turned, she found herself face to face with Pierre, in such a fashion
that it was impossible for them to pretend not to recognise each other.

The woman was Madame Volmar. Six o’clock had not yet struck, and she was
going off, hoping that nobody would notice her, with the intention of
showing herself at the hospital, and there spending this last morning, in
order, in some measure, to justify her journey to Lourdes. When she
perceived Pierre, she began to tremble, and, at first, could only
stammer: “Oh, Monsieur l’Abbe, Monsieur l’Abbe!”

Then, noticing that the priest had left his door wide open, she seemed to
give way to the fever consuming her, to a need of speaking out,
explaining things and justifying herself. With her face suffused by a
rush of blood she entered the young man’s room, whither he had to follow
her, greatly disturbed by this strange adventure. And, as he still left
the door open, it was she who, in her desire to confide her sorrow and
her sin to him, begged that he would close it.

“Oh! I pray you, Monsieur l’Abbe,” said she, “do not judge me too
harshly.”

He made a gesture as though to reply that he did not allow himself the
right to pass judgment upon her.

“But yes, but yes,” she responded; “I know very well that you are
acquainted with my misfortune. You saw me once in Paris behind the church
of La Trinite, and the other day you recognised me on the balcony here!
You were aware that I was there--in that room. But if you only knew--ah,
if you only knew!”

Her lips were quivering, and tears were welling into her eyes. As he
looked at her he was surprised by the extraordinary beauty transfiguring
her face. This woman, invariably clad in black, extremely simple, with
never a jewel, now appeared to him in all the brilliancy of her passion;
no longer drawing back into the gloom, no longer seeking to bedim the
lustre of her eyes, as was her wont. She, who at first sight did not seem
pretty, but too dark and slender, with drawn features, a large mouth and
long nose, assumed, as he now examined her, a troubling charm, a
powerful, irresistible beauty. Her eyes especially--her large,
magnificent eyes, whose brasiers she usually sought to cover with a veil
of indifference--were flaring like torches; and he understood that she
should be loved, adored, to madness.

“If you only knew, Monsieur l’Abbe,” she continued. “If I were only to
tell you all that I have suffered. Doubtless you have suspected something
of it, since you are acquainted with my mother-in-law and my husband. On
the few occasions when you have called on us you cannot but have
understood some of the abominable things which go on in my home, though I
have always striven to appear happy in my silent little corner. But to
live like that for ten years, to have no existence--never to love, never
to be loved--no, no, it was beyond my power!”

And then she related the whole painful story: her marriage with the
diamond merchant, a disastrous, though it seemed an advantageous one; her
mother-in-law, with the stern soul of a jailer or an executioner, and her
husband, a monster of physical ugliness and mental villainy. They
imprisoned her, they did not even allow her to look out of a window. They
had beaten her, they had pitilessly assailed her in her tastes, her
inclinations, in all her feminine weaknesses. She knew that her husband
wandered in his affections, and yet if she smiled to a relative, if she
had a flower in her corsage on some rare day of gaiety, he would tear it
from her, enter into the most jealous rage, and seize and bruise her
wrists whilst shouting the most fearful threats. For years and years she
had lived in that hell, hoping, hoping still, having within her such a
power of life, such an ardent need of affection, that she continued
waiting for happiness, ever thinking, at the faintest breath, that it was
about to enter.

“I swear to you, Monsieur l’Abbe,” said she, “that I could not do
otherwise than I have done. I was too unhappy: my whole being longed for
someone who would care for me. And when my friend the first time told me
that he loved me it was all over--I was his forever. Ah! to be loved, to
be spoken to gently, to have someone near you who is always solicitous
and amiable; to know that in absence he thinks of you, that there is a
heart somewhere in which you live... Ah! if it be a crime, Monsieur
l’Abbe, I cannot, cannot feel remorse for it. I will not even say that I
was urged to it; I simply say that it came to me as naturally as my
breath, because it was as necessary to my life!”

She had carried her hand to her lips as though to throw a kiss to the
world, and Pierre felt deeply disturbed in presence of this lovely woman,
who personified all the ardour of human passion, and at the same time a
feeling of deep pity began to arise within him.

“Poor woman!” he murmured.

“It is not to the priest that I am confessing,” she resumed; “it is to
the man that I am speaking, to a man by whom I should greatly like to be
understood. No, I am not a believer: religion has not sufficed me. It is
said that some women find contentment in it, a firm protection even
against all transgressions. But I have ever felt cold in church, weary
unto death. Oh! I know very well that it is wrong to feign piety, to
mingle religion with my heart affairs. But what would you? I am forced to
it. If you saw me in Paris behind La Trinite it was because that church
is the only place to which I am allowed to go alone; and if you find me
here at Lourdes it is because, in the whole long year, I have but these
three days of happiness and freedom.”

Again she began to tremble. Hot tears were coursing down her cheeks. A
vision of it all arose in Pierre’s mind, and, distracted by the thought
of the ardent earthly love which possessed this unhappy creature, he
again murmured: “Poor woman!”

“And, Monsieur l’Abbe,” she continued, “think of the hell to which I am
about to return! For weeks and months I live my life of martyrdom without
complaint. Another year, another year must go by without a day, an hour
of happiness! Ah! I am indeed very unhappy, Monsieur l’Abbe, yet do you
not think all the same that I am a good woman?”

He had been deeply moved by her sincere display of mingled grief and
passion. He felt in her the breath of universal desire--a sovereign
flame. And his compassion overflowed from his heart, and his words were
words of pardon. “Madame,” he said, “I pity you and respect you
infinitely.”

Then she spoke no further, but looked at him with her large tear-blurred
eyes. And suddenly catching hold of both his hands, she grasped them
tightly with her burning fingers. And then she went off, vanishing down
the passage as light, as ethereal, as a shadow.

However, Pierre suffered from her presence in that room even more acutely
after she had departed. He opened the window wide that the fresh air
might carry off the breath of passion which she had left there. Already
on the Sunday when he had seen her on the balcony he had been seized with
terror at the thought that she personified the revenge of the world and
the flesh amidst all the mystical exaltation of immaculate Lourdes. And
now his terror was returning to him. Love seemed stronger than faith, and
perhaps it was only love that was divine. To love, to belong to one
another, to create and continue life--was not that the one sole object of
nature outside of all social and religious policies? For a moment he was
conscious of the abyss before him: his chastity was his last prop, the
very dignity of his spoilt life; and he realised that, if after yielding
to his reason he also yielded to his flesh, he would be utterly lost. All
his pride of purity, all his strength which he had placed in professional
rectitude, thereupon returned to him, and he again vowed that he would
never be a man, since he had voluntarily cut himself off from among men.

Seven o’clock was striking, and Pierre did not go back to bed, but began
to wash himself, thoroughly enjoying the cool water, which ended by
calming his fever. As he finished dressing, the anxious thought of M. de
Guersaint recurred to him on hearing a sound of footsteps in the passage.
These steps stopped outside his room and someone knocked. With a feeling
of relief he went to open the door, but on doing so exclaimed in great
surprise “What, it’s you! How is it that you’re already up, running about
to see people?”

Marie stood on the threshold smiling, whilst behind her was Sister
Hyacinthe, who had come with her, and who also was smiling, with her
lovely, candid eyes.

“Ah! my friend,” said the girl, “I could not remain in bed. I sprang out
directly I saw the sunshine. I had such a longing to walk, to run and
jump about like a child, and I begged and implored so much that Sister
was good enough to come with me. I think I should have got out through
the window if the door had been closed against me.”

Pierre ushered them in, and an indescribable emotion oppressed him as he
heard her jest so gaily and saw her move about so freely with such grace
and liveliness. She, good heavens! she whom he had seen for years with
lifeless legs and colourless face! Since he had left her the day before
at the Basilica she had blossomed into full youth and beauty. One night
had sufficed for him to find again, developed it is true, the sweet
creature whom he had loved so tenderly, the superb, radiant child whom he
had embraced so wildly in the by-gone days behind the flowering hedge,
beneath the sun-flecked trees.

“How tall and lovely you are, Marie!” said he, in spite of himself.

Then Sister Hyacinthe interposed: “Hasn’t the Blessed Virgin done things
well, Monsieur l’Abbe? When she takes us in hand, you see, she turns us
out as fresh as roses and smelling quite as sweet.”

“Ah!” resumed Marie, “I’m so happy; I feel quite strong and well and
spotless, as though I had just been born!”

All this was very delicious to Pierre. It seemed to him that the
atmosphere was now truly purified of Madame Volmar’s presence. Marie
filled the room with her candour, with the perfume and brightness of her
innocent youth. And yet the joy he felt at the sight of pure beauty and
life reflowering was not exempt from sadness. For, after all, the revolt
which he had felt in the crypt, the wound of his wrecked life, must
forever leave him a bleeding heart. As he gazed upon all that
resuscitated grace, as the woman he loved thus reappeared before him in
the flower of her youth, he could not but remember that she would never
be his, that he belonged no longer to the world, but to the grave.
However, he no longer lamented; he experienced a boundless melancholy--a
sensation of utter nothingness as he told himself that he was dead, that
this dawn of beauty was rising on the tomb in which his manhood slept. It
was renunciation, accepted, resolved upon amidst all the desolate
grandeur attaching to those lives which are led contrary to nature’s law.
Then, like the other woman, the impassioned one, Marie took hold of
Pierre’s hands. But hers were so soft, so fresh, so soothing! She looked
at him with so little confusion and a great longing which she dared not
express. After a while, however, she summoned up her courage and said:
“Will you kiss me, Pierre? It would please me so much.”

He shuddered, his heart crushed by this last torture. Ah! the kisses of
other days--those kisses which had ever lingered on his lips! Never since
had he kissed her, and to-day she was like a sister flinging her arms
around his neck. She kissed him with a loud smack on both his cheeks, and
offering her own, insisted on his doing likewise to her. So twice, in his
turn, he embraced her.

“I, too, Marie,” said he, “am pleased, very pleased, I assure you.” And
then, overcome by emotion, his courage exhausted, whilst at the same time
filled with delight and bitterness, he burst into sobs, weeping with his
face buried in his hands, like a child seeking to hide its tears.

“Come, come, we must not give way,” said Sister Hyacinthe, gaily.
“Monsieur l’Abbe would feel too proud if he fancied that we had merely
come on his account. M. de Guersaint is about, isn’t he?”

Marie raised a cry of deep affection. “Ah! my dear father! After all,
it’s he who’ll be most pleased!”

Thereupon Pierre had to relate that M. de Guersaint had not returned from
his excursion to Gavarnie. His increasing anxiety showed itself while he
spoke, although he sought to explain his friend’s absence, surmising all
sorts of obstacles and unforeseen complications. Marie, however, did not
seem afraid, but again laughed, saying that her father never could be
punctual. Still she was extremely eager for him to see her walking, to
find her on her legs again, resuscitated, in the fresh blossoming of her
youth.

All at once Sister Hyacinthe, who had gone to lean over the balcony,
returned to the room, saying “Here he comes! He’s down below, just
alighting from his carriage.”

“Ah!” cried Marie, with the eager playfulness of a school-girl, “let’s
give him a surprise. Yes, we must hide, and when he’s here we’ll show
ourselves all of a sudden.”

With these words, she hastily dragged Sister Hyacinthe into the adjoining
room.

Almost immediately afterwards, M. de Guersaint entered like a whirlwind
from the passage, the door communicating with which had been quickly
opened by Pierre, and, shaking the young priest’s hand, the belated
excursionist exclaimed: “Here I am at last! Ah! my friend, you can’t have
known what to think since four o’clock yesterday, when you expected me
back, eh? But you have no idea of the adventures we have had. To begin
with, one of the wheels of our landau came off just as we reached
Gavarnie; then, yesterday evening--though we managed to start off
again--a frightful storm detained us all night long at Saint-Sauveur. I
wasn’t able to sleep a wink.” Then, breaking off, he inquired, “And you,
are you all right?”

“I wasn’t able to sleep either,” said the priest; “they made such a noise
in the hotel.”

But M. de Guersaint had already started off again: “All the same, it was
delightful. I must tell you; you can’t imagine it. I was with three
delightful churchmen. Abbe des Hermoises is certainly the most charming
man I know. Oh! we did laugh--we did laugh!”

Then he again stopped, to inquire, “And how’s my daughter?”

Thereupon a clear laugh behind him caused him to turn round, and he
remained with his mouth wide open. Marie was there, and was walking, with
a look of rapturous delight upon her face, which was beaming with health.
He had never for a moment doubted the miracle, and was not in the least
surprised that it had taken place, for he had returned with the
conviction that everything would end well, and that he would surely find
her cured. But what so utterly astounded him was the prodigious spectacle
which he had not foreseen: his daughter, looking so beautiful, so divine,
in her little black gown!--his daughter, who had not even brought a hat
with her, and merely had a piece of lace tied over her lovely fair
hair!--his daughter, full of life, blooming, triumphant, similar to all
the daughters of all the fathers whom he had envied for so many years!

“O my child! O my child!” he exclaimed.

And, as she had flown into his arms, he pressed her to his heart, and
then they fell upon their knees together. Everything disappeared from
before them in a radiant effusion of faith and love. This heedless,
hare-brained man, who fell asleep instead of accompanying his daughter to
the Grotto, who went off to Gavarnie on the day the Blessed Virgin was to
cure her, overflowed with such paternal affection, with such Christian
faith so exalted by thankfulness, that for a moment he appeared sublime.

“O Jesus! O Mary! let me thank you for having restored my child to me! O
my child, we shall never have breath enough, soul enough, to render
thanks to Mary and Jesus for the great happiness they have vouchsafed us!
O my child, whom they have resuscitated, O my child, whom they have made
so beautiful again, take my heart to offer it to them with your own! I am
yours, I am theirs eternally, O my beloved child, my adored child!”

Kneeling before the open window they both, with uplifted eyes, gazed
ardently on heaven. The daughter had rested her head on her father’s
shoulder; whilst he had passed an arm round her waist. They had become
one. Tears slowly trickled down their enraptured faces, which were
smiling with superhuman felicity, whilst they stammered together
disconnected expressions of gratitude.

“O Jesus, we give Thee thanks! O Holy Mother of Jesus, we give thee
thanks! We love you, we adore you both. You have rejuvenated the best
blood in our veins; it is yours, it circulates only for you. O
All-powerful Mother, O Divine and Well-beloved Son, behold a daughter and
a father who bless you, who prostrate themselves with joy at your feet.”

So affecting was this mingling of two beings, happy at last after so many
dark days, this happiness, which could but stammer as though still tinged
with suffering, that Pierre was again moved to tears. But this time they
were soothing tears which relieved his heart. Ah! poor pitiable humanity!
how pleasant it was to see it somewhat consoled and enraptured! and what
did it matter, after all, if its great joys of a few seconds’ duration
sprang from the eternal illusion! Was not the whole of humanity, pitiable
humanity, saved by love, personified by that poor childish man who
suddenly became sublime because he found his daughter resuscitated?

Standing a little aside, Sister Hyacinthe was also weeping, her heart
very full, full of human emotion which she had never before experienced,
she who had known no other parents than the Almighty and the Blessed
Virgin. Silence had now fallen in this room full of so much tearful
fraternity. And it was she who spoke the first, when the father and the
daughter, overcome with emotion, at length rose up.

“Now, mademoiselle,” she said, “we must be quick and get back to the
hospital.”

But they all protested. M. de Guersaint wished to keep his daughter with
him, and Marie’s eyes expressed an eager desire, a longing to enjoy life,
to walk and ramble through the whole vast world.

“Oh! no, no!” said the father, “I won’t give her back to you. We’ll each
have a cup of milk, for I’m dying of thirst; then we’ll go out and walk
about. Yes, yes, both of us! She shall take my arm, like a little woman!”

Sister Hyacinthe laughed again. “Very well!” said she, “I’ll leave her
with you, and tell the ladies that you’ve stolen her from me. But for my
own part I must be off. You’ve no idea what an amount of work we have to
get through at the hospital if we are to be ready in time to leave: there
are all the patients and things to be seen to; and all is in the greatest
confusion!”

“So to-day’s really Tuesday, and we leave this afternoon?” asked Monsieur
de Guersaint, already absent-minded again.

“Of course we do, and don’t forget! The white train starts at 3.40. And
if you’re sensible you’ll bring your daughter back early so that she may
have a little rest.”

Marie walked with the Sister to the door, saying “Be easy, I will be very
good. Besides, I want to go back to the Grotto, to thank the Blessed
Virgin once more.”

When they found themselves all three alone in the little room full of
sunshine, it was delicious. Pierre called the servant and told her to
bring them some milk, some chocolate, and cakes, in fact the nicest
things he could think of. And although Marie had already broken her fast,
she ate again, so great an appetite had come upon her since the night
before. They drew the table to the window and made quite a feast amidst
the keen air from the mountains, whilst the hundred bells of Lourdes,
proclaimed with flying peals the glory of that radiant day. They
chattered and laughed, and the young woman told her father the story of
the miracle, with all the oft-repeated details. She related, too, how she
had left her box at the Basilica, and how she had slept twelve hours
without stirring. Then M. de Guersaint on his side wished to relate his
excursion, but got mixed and kept coming back to the miracle. Finally, it
appeared that the Cirque de Gavarnie was something colossal. Only, when
you looked at it from a distance it seemed small, for you lost all sense
of proportion. The gigantic snow-covered tiers of cliffs, the topmost
ridge standing out against the sky with the outlines of some cyclopean
fortress with razed keep and jagged ramparts, the great cascade, whose
ceaseless jet seemed so slow when in reality it must have rushed down
with a noise like thunder, the whole immensity, the forests on right and
left, the torrents and the landslips, looked as though they might have
been held in the palm of one’s hand, when one gazed upon them from the
village market-place. And what had impressed him most, what he repeatedly
alluded to, were the strange figures described by the snow, which had
remained up there amongst the rocks. Amongst others was a huge crucifix,
a white cross, several thousand yards in length, which you might have
thought had been thrown across the amphitheatre from one end to the
other.

However, all at once M. de Guersaint broke off to inquire: “By the way,
what’s happening at our neighbour’s? As I came up-stairs a little while
ago I met Monsieur Vigneron running about like a madman; and, through the
open doorway of their room, I fancied I saw Madame Vigneron looking very
red. Has their son Gustave had another attack?”

Pierre had quite forgotten Madame Chaise lying dead on the other side of
the partition. He seemed to feel a cold breath pass over him. “No, no,”
 he answered, “the child is all right.” And he said no more, preferring to
remain silent. Why spoil this happy hour of new life and reconquered
youth by mingling with it the image of death? However, from that moment
he himself could not cease thinking of the proximity of nothingness. And
he thought, too, of that other room where Madame Volmar’s friend was now
alone, stifling his sobs with his lips pressed upon a pair of gloves
which he had stolen from her. All the sounds of the hotel were now
becoming audible again--the coughs, the sighs, the indistinct voices, the
continual slamming of doors, the creaking of the floors beneath the great
accumulation of travellers, and all the stir in the passages, along which
flying skirts were sweeping, and families galloping distractedly amidst
the hurry-scurry of departure.

“On my word! you’ll do yourself an injury,” all at once cried Monsieur de
Guersaint, on seeing his daughter take up another cake.

Marie was quite merry too. But at a sudden thought tears came into her
eyes, and she exclaimed: “Ah! how glad I am! but also how sorry when I
think that everybody is not as pleased as myself.”




II. PLEASANT HOURS

IT was eight o’clock, and Marie was so impatient that she could not keep
still, but continued going to the window, as if she wished to inhale all
the air of the vast, expanse and the immense sky. Ah! what a pleasure to
be able to run about the streets, across the squares, to go everywhere as
far as she might wish. And to show how strong she was, to have the pride
of walking leagues in the presence of everyone, now that the Blessed
Virgin had cured her! It was an irresistible impulsion, a flight of her
entire being, her blood, and her heart.

However, just as she was setting out she made up her mind that her first
visit with her father ought to be to the Grotto, where both of them had
to thank Our Lady of Lourdes. Then they would be free; they would have
two long hours before them, and might walk wherever they chose, before
she returned to lunch and pack up her few things at the hospital.

“Well, is everyone ready?” repeated M. de Guersaint. “Shall we make a
move?”

Pierre took his hat, and all three went down-stairs, talking very loud
and laughing on the staircase, like boisterous school-boys going for
their holidays. They had almost reached the street, when at the doorway
Madame Majeste rushed forward. She had evidently been waiting for them to
go out.

“Ah! mademoiselle; ah! gentlemen, allow me to congratulate you,” she
said. “We have heard of the extraordinary favour that has been granted
you; we are so happy, so much flattered, when the Blessed Virgin is
pleased to select one of our customers!”

Her dry, harsh face was melting with amiability, and she observed the
miraculously healed girl with the fondest of eyes. Then she impulsively
called her husband, who was passing: “Look, my dear! It’s mademoiselle;
it’s mademoiselle.”

Majeste’s clean-shaven face, puffed out with yellow fat, assumed a happy
and grateful expression. “Really, mademoiselle, I cannot tell you how
honoured we feel,” said he. “We shall never forget that your papa put up
at our place. It has already excited the envy of many people.”

While he spoke Madame Majeste stopped the other travellers who were going
out, and with a sign summoned the families already seated in the
dining-room; indeed, she would have called in the whole street if they
had given her time, to show that she had in her house the miracle at
which all Lourdes had been marvelling since the previous day. People
ended by collecting there, a crowd gathered little by little, while she
whispered in the ear of each “Look! that’s she; the young party, you
know, the young party who--”

But all at once she exclaimed: “I’ll go and fetch Apolline from the shop;
I must show mademoiselle to Apolline.”

Thereupon, however, Majeste, in a very dignified way, restrained her.
“No,” he said, “leave Apolline; she has three ladies to serve already.
Mademoiselle and these gentlemen will certainly not leave Lourdes without
making a few purchases. The little souvenirs that one carries away with
one are so pleasant to look at later on! And our customers make a point
of never buying elsewhere than here, in the shop which we have annexed to
the hotel.”

“I have already offered my services,” added Madame Majeste, “and I renew
them. Apolline will be so happy to show mademoiselle all our prettiest
articles, at prices, too, which are incredibly low! Oh! there are some
delightful things, delightful!”

Marie was becoming impatient at being detained in this manner, and Pierre
was suffering from the increasing curiosity which they were arousing. As
for M. de Guersaint, he enjoyed this popularity and triumph of his
daughter immensely, and promised to return.

“Certainly,” said he, “we will purchase a few little knick-knacks. Some
souvenirs for ourselves, and some presents that we shall have to make,
but later on, when we come back.”

At last they escaped and descended the Avenue de la Grotte. The weather
was again superb after the storms of the two preceding nights. Cooled by
the rain, the morning air was delicious amidst the gaiety which the
bright sun shed around. A busy crowd, well pleased with life, was already
hurrying along the pavements. And what pleasure it all was for Marie, to
whom everything seemed new, charming, inappreciable! In the morning she
had had to allow Raymonde to lend her a pair of boots, for she had taken
good care not to put any in her portmanteau, superstitiously fearing that
they might bring her bad luck. However, Raymonde’s boots fitted her
admirably, and she listened with childish delight to the little heels
tapping merrily on the flagstones. And she did not remember having ever
seen houses so white, trees so green, and passers-by so happy. All her
senses seemed holiday-making, endowed with a marvellously delicate
sensibility; she heard music, smelt distant perfumes, savoured the air
greedily, as though it were some delicious fruit. But what she
considered, above all, so nice, so charming, was to walk along in this
wise on her father’s arm. She had never done so before, although she had
felt the desire for years, as for one of those impossible pleasures with
which people occupy their minds when invalided. And now her dream was
realised and her heart beat with joy. She pressed against her father, and
strove to walk very upright and look very handsome, so as to do him
honour. And he was quite proud, as happy as she was, showing, exhibiting
her, overcome with joy at the thought that she belonged to him, that she
was his blood, his flesh, his daughter, henceforth beaming with youth and
health.

As they were all three crossing the Plateau de la Merlasse, already
obstructed by a band of candle and bouquet sellers running after the
pilgrims, M. de Guersaint exclaimed, “We are surely not going to the
Grotto empty-handed!”

Pierre, who was walking on the other side of Marie, himself brightened by
her merry humour, thereupon stopped, and they were at once surrounded by
a crowd of female hawkers, who with eager fingers thrust their goods into
their faces. “My beautiful young lady! My good gentleman! Buy of me, of
me, of me!” Such was the onslaught that it became necessary to struggle
in order to extricate oneself. M. de Guersaint ended by purchasing the
largest nosegay he could see--a bouquet of white marguerites, as round
and hard as a cabbage--from a handsome, fair-haired, well developed girl
of twenty, who was extremely bold both in look and manner. It only cost
twenty sons, and he insisted on paying for it out of his own little
purse, somewhat abashed meantime by the girl’s unblushing effrontery.
Then Pierre in his turn settled for the three candles which Marie had
taken from an old woman, candles at two francs each, a very reasonable
price, as she repeatedly said. And on being paid, the old creature, who
had an angular face, covetous eyes, and a nose like the beak of a bird of
prey, returned profuse and mellifluous thanks: “May Our Lady of Lourdes
bless you, my beautiful young lady! May she cure you of your complaints,
you and yours!” This enlivened them again, and they set out once more,
all three laughing, amused like children at the idea that the good
woman’s wish had already been accomplished.

At the Grotto Marie wished to file off at once, in order to offer the
bouquet and candles herself before even kneeling down. There were not
many people there as yet, and having gone to the end of the line their
turn came after waiting some three or four minutes. And with what
enraptured glances did she then examine everything--the altar of engraved
silver, the harmonium-organ, the votive offerings, the candle-holders,
streaming with wax blazing in broad daylight. She was now inside that
Grotto which she had hitherto only seen from her box of misery; she
breathed there as in Paradise itself, steeped rapturously in a pleasant
warmth and odour, which slightly oppressed her. When she had placed the
tapers at the bottom of the large basket, and had raised herself on
tiptoe to fix the bouquet on one of the spears of the iron railing, she
imprinted a long kiss upon the rock, below the statue of the Blessed
Virgin, at the very spot, indeed, which millions of lips had already
polished. And the stone received a kiss of love in which she put forth
all the strength of her gratitude, a kiss with which her heart melted.

When she was once more outside, Marie prostrated and humbled herself in
an almost endless act of thanksgiving. Her father also had knelt down
near her, and mingled the fervour of his gratitude with hers. But he
could not remain doing the same thing for long. Little by little he
became uneasy, and ended by bending down to his daughter’s ear to tell
her that he had a call to make which he had previously forgotten.
Assuredly the best course would be for her to remain where she was,
praying, and waiting for him. While she completed her devotions he would
hurry along and get his troublesome errand over; and then they might walk
about at ease wheresoever they liked. She did not understand him, did not
even hear him, but simply nodded her head, promising that she would not
move, and then such tender faith again took possession of her that her
eyes, fixed on the white statue of the Virgin, filled with tears.

When M. de Guersaint had joined Pierre, who had remained a short distance
off, he gave him the following explanation. “My dear fellow,” he said,
“it’s a matter of conscience; I formally promised the coachman who drove
us to Gavarnie that I would see his master and tell him the real cause of
our delay. You know whom I mean--the hairdresser on the Place du
Marcadal. And, besides, I want to get shaved.”

Pierre, who felt uneasy at this proposal, had to give way in face of the
promise that they would be back within a quarter of an hour. Only, as the
distance seemed long, he on his side insisted on taking a trap which was
standing at the bottom of the Plateau de la Merlasse. It was a sort of
greenish cabriolet, and its driver, a fat fellow of about thirty, with
the usual Basque cap on his head, was smoking a cigarette whilst waiting
to be hired. Perched sideways on the seat with his knees wide apart, he
drove them on with the tranquil indifference of a well-fed man who
considers himself the master of the street.

“We will keep you,” said Pierre as he alighted, when they had reached the
Place du Marcadal.

“Very well, very well, Monsieur l’Abbe! I’ll wait for you!” And then,
leaving his lean horse in the hot sun, the driver went to chat and laugh
with a strong, dishevelled servant-girl who was washing a dog in the
basin of the neighbouring fountain.

Cazaban, as it happened, was just then on the threshold of his shop, the
lofty windows and pale green painting of which enlivened the dull Place,
which was so deserted on week-days. When he was not pressed with work he
delighted to parade in this manner, standing between his two windows,
which pots of pomatum and bottles of perfumery decorated with bright
shades of colour.

He at once recognised the gentlemen. “Very flattered, very much honoured.
Pray walk in, I beg of you,” he said.

Then, at the first words which M. de Guersaint said to him to excuse the
man who had driven him to Gavarnie, he showed himself well disposed. Of
course it was not the man’s fault; he could not prevent wheels coming to
pieces, or storms falling. So long as the travellers did not complain all
was well.

“Oh!” thereupon exclaimed M. de Guersaint, “it’s a magnificent country,
never to be forgotten.”

“Well, monsieur, as our neighbourhood pleases you, you must come and see
us again; we don’t ask anything better,” said Cazaban; and, on the
architect seating himself in one of the arm-chairs and asking to be
shaved, he began to bustle about.

His assistant was still absent, running errands for the pilgrims whom he
lodged, a whole family, who were taking a case of chaplets, plaster
Virgins, and framed engravings away with them. You heard a confused
tramping of feet and violent bursts of conversation coming from the first
floor, all the helter-skelter of people whom the approaching departure
and the packing of purchases lying hither and thither drove almost crazy.
In the adjoining dining-room, the door of which had remained open, two
children were draining the dregs of some cups of chocolate which stood
about amidst the disorder of the breakfast service. The whole of the
house had been let, entirely given over, and now had come the last hours
of this invasion which compelled the hairdresser and his wife to seek
refuge in the narrow cellar, where they slept on a small camp-bed.

While Cazaban was rubbing M. de Guersaint’s cheeks with soap-suds, the
architect questioned him. “Well, are you satisfied with the season?”

“Certainly, monsieur, I can’t complain. As you hear, my travellers are
leaving to-day, but I am expecting others to-morrow morning; barely
sufficient time for a sweep out. It will be the same up to October.”

Then, as Pierre remained standing, walking about the shop and looking at
the walls with an air of impatience, he turned round politely and said:
“Pray be seated, Monsieur l’Abbe; take a newspaper. It will not be long.”

The priest having thanked him with a nod, and refusing to sit down, the
hairdresser, whose tongue was ever itching to talk, continued: “Oh! as
for myself, I am always busy, my house is renowned for the cleanliness of
the beds and the excellence of the fare. Only the town is not satisfied.
Ah, no! I may even say that I have never known so much discontent here.”

He became silent for a moment, and shaved his customer’s left cheek; then
again pausing in his work he suddenly declared with a cry, wrung from him
by conviction, “The Fathers of the Grotto are playing with fire,
monsieur, that is all I have to say.”

From that moment, however, the vent-plug was withdrawn, and he talked and
talked and talked again. His big eyes rolled in his long face with
prominent cheek-bones and sunburnt complexion sprinkled with red, while
the whole of his nervous little body continued on the jump, agitated by
his growing exuberance of speech and gesture. He returned to his former
indictment, and enumerated all the many grievances that the old town had
against the Fathers. The hotel-keepers complained; the dealers in
religious fancy articles did not take half the amount they ought to have
realised; and, finally, the new town monopolised both the pilgrims and
the cash; there was now no possibility for anyone but the keepers of the
lodging-houses, hotels, and shops open in the neighbourhood of the Grotto
to make any money whatever. It was a merciless struggle, a deadly
hostility increasing from day to day, the old city losing a little of its
life each season, and assuredly destined to disappear,--to be choked,
assassinated, by the young town. Ah! their dirty Grotto! He would rather
have his feet cut off than tread there. Wasn’t it heart-rending, that
knick-knack shop which they had stuck beside it? A shameful thing, at
which a bishop had shown himself so indignant that it was said he had
written to the Pope! He, Cazaban, who flattered himself with being a
freethinker and a Republican of the old days, who already under the
Empire had voted for the Opposition candidates, assuredly had the right
to declare that he did not believe in their dirty Grotto, and that he did
not care a fig for it!

“Look here, monsieur,” he continued; “I am going to tell you a fact. My
brother belongs to the municipal council, and it’s through him that I
know it. I must tell you first of all that we now have a Republican
municipal council, which is much worried by the demoralisation of the
town. You can no longer go out at night without meeting girls in the
streets--you know, those candle hawkers! They gad about with the drivers
who come here when the season commences, and swell the suspicious
floating population which comes no one knows whence. And I must also
explain to you the position of the Fathers towards the town. When they
purchased the land at the Grotto they signed an agreement by which they
undertook not to engage in any business there. Well, they have opened a
shop in spite of their signature. Is not that an unfair rivalry, unworthy
of honest people? So the new council decided on sending them a deputation
to insist on the agreement being respected, and enjoining them to close
their shop at once. What do you think they answered, monsieur? Oh! what
they have replied twenty times before, what they will always answer, when
they are reminded of their engagements: ‘Very well, we consent to keep
them, but we are masters at our own place, and we’ll close the Grotto!’”

He raised himself up, his razor in the air, and, repeating his words, his
eyes dilated by the enormity of the thing, he said, “‘We’ll close the
Grotto.’”

Pierre, who was continuing his slow walk, suddenly stopped and said in
his face, “Well! the municipal council had only to answer, ‘Close it.’”

At this Cazaban almost choked; the blood rushed to his face, he was
beside himself, and stammered out “Close the Grotto?--Close the Grotto?”

“Certainly! As the Grotto irritates you and rends your heart; as it’s a
cause of continual warfare, injustice, and corruption. Everything would
be over, we should hear no more about it. That would really be a capital
solution, and if the council had the power it would render you a service
by forcing the Fathers to carry out their threat.”

As Pierre went on speaking, Cazaban’s anger subsided. He became very calm
and somewhat pale, and in the depths of his big eyes the priest detected
an expression of increasing uneasiness. Had he not gone too far in his
passion against the Fathers? Many ecclesiastics did not like them;
perhaps this young priest was simply at Lourdes for the purpose of
stirring-up an agitation against them. Then who knows?--it might possibly
result in the Grotto being closed later on. But it was by the Grotto that
they all lived. If the old city screeched with rage at only picking up
the crumbs, it was well pleased to secure even that windfall; and the
freethinkers themselves, who coined money with the pilgrims, like
everyone else, held their tongues, ill at ease, and even frightened, when
they found people too much of their opinion with regard to the
objectionable features of new Lourdes. It was necessary to be prudent.

Cazaban thereupon returned to M. de Guersaint, whose other cheek he began
shaving, murmuring the while in an off-hand manner: “Oh! what I say about
the Grotto is not because it troubles me much in reality, and, besides,
everyone must live.”

In the dining-room, the children, amidst deafening shouts, had just
broken one of the bowls, and Pierre, glancing through the open doorway,
again noticed the engravings of religious subjects and the plaster Virgin
with which the hairdresser had ornamented the apartment in order to
please his lodgers. And just then, too, a voice shouted from the first
floor that the trunk was ready, and that they would be much obliged if
the assistant would cord it as soon as he returned.

However, Cazaban, in the presence of these two gentlemen whom, as a
matter of fact, he did not know, remained suspicious and uneasy, his
brain haunted by all sorts of disquieting suppositions. He was in despair
at the idea of having to let them go away without learning anything about
them, especially after having exposed himself. If he had only been able
to withdraw the more rabid of his biting remarks about the Fathers.
Accordingly, when M. de Guersaint rose to wash his chin, he yielded to a
desire to renew the conversation.

“Have you heard talk of yesterday’s miracle? The town is quite upside
down with it; more than twenty people have already given me an account of
what occurred. Yes, it seems they obtained an extraordinary miracle, a
paralytic young lady got up and dragged her invalid carriage as far as
the choir of the Basilica.”

M. de Guersaint, who was about to sit down after wiping himself, gave a
complacent laugh. “That young lady is my daughter,” he said.

Thereupon, under this sudden and fortunate flash of enlightenment,
Cazaban became all smiles. He felt reassured, and combed M. de
Guersaint’s hair with a masterly touch, amid a returning exuberance of
speech and gesture. “Ah! monsieur, I congratulate you, I am flattered at
having you in my hands. Since the young lady your daughter is cured, your
father’s heart is at ease. Am I not right?”

And he also found a few pleasant words for Pierre. Then, when he had
decided to let them go, he looked at the priest with an air of
conviction, and remarked, like a sensible man, desirous of coming to a
conclusion on the subject of miracles: “There are some, Monsieur l’Abbe,
which are good fortunes for everybody. From time to time we require one
of that description.”

Outside, M. de Guersaint had to go and fetch the coachman, who was still
laughing with the servant-girl, while her dog, dripping with water, was
shaking itself in the sun. In five minutes the trap brought them back to
the bottom of the Plateau de la Merlasse. The trip had taken a good
half-hour. Pierre wanted to keep the conveyance, with the idea of showing
Marie the town without giving her too much fatigue. So, while the father
ran to the Grotto to fetch his daughter, he waited there beneath the
trees.

The coachman at once engaged in conversation with the priest. He had lit
another cigarette and showed himself very familiar. He came from a
village in the environs of Toulouse, and did not complain, for he earned
good round sums each day at Lourdes. You fed well there, said he, you
amused yourself, it was what you might call a good neighbourhood. He said
these things with the _abandon_ of a man who was not troubled with
religious scruples, but yet did not forget the respect which he owed to
an ecclesiastic.

At last, from the top of his box, where he remained half lying down,
dangling one of his legs, he allowed this remark to fall slowly from his
lips: “Ah! yes, Monsieur l’Abbe, Lourdes has caught on well, but the
question is whether it will all last long!”

Pierre, who was very much struck by the remark, was pondering on its
involuntary profundity, when M. de Guersaint reappeared, bringing Marie
with him. He had found her kneeling on the same spot, in the same act of
faith and thankfulness, at the feet of the Blessed Virgin; and it seemed
as if she had brought all the brilliant light of the Grotto away in her
eyes, so vividly did they sparkle with divine joy at her cure. She would
not entertain a proposal to keep the trap. No, no! she preferred to go on
foot; she did not care about seeing the town, so long as she might for
another hour continue walking on her father’s arm through the gardens,
the streets, the squares, anywhere they pleased! And, when Pierre had
paid the driver, it was she who turned into a path of the Esplanade
garden, delighted at being able to saunter in this wise beside the turf
and the flower beds, under the great trees. The grass, the leaves, the
shady solitary walks where you heard the everlasting rippling of the
Gave, were so sweet and fresh! But afterwards she wished to return by way
of the streets, among the crowd, that she might find the agitation,
noise, and life, the need of which possessed her whole being.

In the Rue St. Joseph, on perceiving the panorama, where the former
Grotto was depicted, with Bernadette kneeling down before it on the day
of the miracle of the candle, the idea occurred to Pierre to go in. Marie
became as happy as a child; and even M. de Guersaint was full of innocent
delight, especially when he noticed that among the batch of pilgrims who
dived at the same time as themselves into the depths of the obscure
corridor, several recognised in his daughter the girl so miraculously
healed the day before, who was already famous, and whose name flew from
mouth to mouth. Up above, on the circular platform, when they came out
into the diffuse light, filtering through a vellum, there was a sort of
ovation around Marie; soft whispers, beatifical glances, a rapture of
delight in seeing, following, and touching her. Now glory had come, she
would be loved in that way wherever she went, and it was not until the
showman who gave the explanations had placed himself at the head of the
little party of visitors, and begun to walk round, relating the incident
depicted on the huge circular canvas, nearly five hundred feet in length,
that she was in some measure forgotten. The painting represented the
seventeenth apparition of the Blessed Virgin to Bernadette, on the day
when, kneeling before the Grotto during her vision, she had heedlessly
left her hand on the flame of the candle without burning it. The whole of
the old primitive landscape of the Grotto was shown, the whole scene was
set out with all its historical personages: the doctor verifying the
miracle watch in hand, the Mayor, the Commissary of Police, and the
Public Prosecutor, whose names the showman gave out, amidst the amazement
of the public following him.

Then, by an unconscious transition of ideas, Pierre recalled the remark
which the driver of the cabriolet had made a short time previously:
“Lourdes has caught on well, but the question is whether it will all last
long.” That, in fact, was the question. How many venerated sanctuaries
had thus been built already, at the bidding of innocent chosen children,
to whom the Blessed Virgin had shown herself! It was always the same
story beginning afresh: an apparition; a persecuted shepherdess, who was
called a liar; next the covert propulsion of human misery hungering after
illusion; then propaganda, and the triumph of the sanctuary shining like
a star; and afterwards decline, and oblivion, when the ecstatic dream of
another visionary gave birth to another sanctuary elsewhere. It seemed as
if the power of illusion wore away; that it was necessary in the course
of centuries to displace it, set it amidst new scenery, under fresh
circumstances, in order to renew its force. La Salette had dethroned the
old wooden and stone Virgins that had healed; Lourdes had just dethroned
La Salette, pending the time when it would be dethroned itself by Our
Lady of to-morrow, she who will show her sweet, consoling features to
some pure child as yet unborn. Only, if Lourdes had met with such rapid,
such prodigious fortune, it assuredly owed it to the little sincere soul,
the delightful charm of Bernadette. Here there was no deceit, no
falsehood, merely the blossoming of suffering, a delicate sick child who
brought to the afflicted multitude her dream of justice and equality in
the miraculous. She was merely eternal hope, eternal consolation.
Besides, all historical and social circumstances seem to have combined to
increase the need of this mystical flight at the close of a terrible
century of positivist inquiry; and that was perhaps the reason why
Lourdes would still long endure in its triumph, before becoming a mere
legend, one of those dead religions whose powerful perfume has
evaporated.

Ah! that ancient Lourdes, that city of peace and belief, the only
possible cradle where the legend could come into being, how easily Pierre
conjured it up before him, whilst walking round the vast canvas of the
Panorama! That canvas said everything; it was the best lesson of things
that could be seen. The monotonous explanations of the showman were not
heard; the landscape spoke for itself. First of all there was the Grotto,
the rocky hollow beside the Gave, a savage spot suitable for
reverie--bushy slopes and heaps of fallen stone, without a path among
them; and nothing yet in the way of ornamentation--no monumental quay, no
garden paths winding among trimly cut shrubs; no Grotto set in order,
deformed, enclosed with iron railings; above all, no shop for the sale of
religious articles, that simony shop which was the scandal of all pious
souls. The Virgin could not have selected a more solitary and charming
nook wherein to show herself to the chosen one of her heart, the poor
young girl who came thither still possessed by the dream of her painful
nights, even whilst gathering dead wood. And on the opposite side of the
Gave, behind the rock of the castle, was old Lourdes, confident and
asleep. Another age was then conjured up; a small town, with narrow
pebble-paved streets, black houses with marble dressings, and an antique,
semi-Spanish church, full of old carvings, and peopled with visions of
gold and painted flesh. Communication with other places was only kept up
by the Bagneres and Cauterets _diligences_, which twice a day forded the
Lapaca to climb the steep causeway of the Rue Basse. The spirit of the
century had not breathed on those peaceful roofs sheltering a belated
population which had remained childish, enclosed within the narrow limits
of strict religious discipline. There was no debauchery; a slow antique
commerce sufficed for daily life, a poor life whose hardships were the
safeguards of morality. And Pierre had never better understood how
Bernadette, born in that land of faith and honesty, had flowered like a
natural rose, budding on the briars of the road.

“It’s all the same very curious,” observed M. de Guersaint when they
found themselves in the street again. “I’m not at all sorry I saw it.”

Marie was also laughing with pleasure. “One would almost think oneself
there. Isn’t it so, father? At times it seems as if the people were going
to move. And how charming Bernadette looks on her knees, in ecstasy,
while the candle flame licks her fingers without burning them.”

“Let us see,” said the architect; “we have only an hour left, so we must
think of making our purchases, if we wish to buy anything. Shall we take
a look at the shops? We certainly promised Majeste to give him the
preference; but that does not prevent us from making a few inquiries. Eh!
Pierre, what do you say?”

“Oh! certainly, as you like,” answered the priest. “Besides, it will give
us a walk.”

And he thereupon followed the young girl and her father, who returned to
the Plateau de la Merlasse. Since he had quitted the Panorama he felt as
though he no longer knew where he was. It seemed to him as if he had all
at once been transported from one to another town, parted by centuries.
He had left the solitude, the slumbering peacefulness of old Lourdes,
which the dead light of the vellum had increased, to fall at last into
new Lourdes, sparkling with brightness and noisy with the crowd. Ten
o’clock had just struck, and extraordinary animation reigned on the
footways, where before breakfast an entire people was hastening to
complete its purchases, so that it might have nothing but its departure
to think of afterwards. The thousands of pilgrims of the national
pilgrimage streamed along the thoroughfares and besieged the shops in a
final scramble. You would have taken the cries, the jostling, and the
sudden rushes for those at some fair just breaking up amidst a ceaseless
roll of vehicles. Many, providing themselves with provisions for the
journey, cleared the open-air stalls where bread and slices of sausages
and ham were sold. Others purchased fruit and wine; baskets were filled
with bottles and greasy parcels until they almost burst. A hawker who was
wheeling some cheeses about on a small truck saw his goods carried off as
if swept away by the wind. But what the crowd more particularly purchased
were religious articles, and those hawkers whose barrows were loaded with
statuettes and sacred engravings were reaping golden gains. The customers
at the shops stood in strings on the pavement; the women were belted with
immense chaplets, had Blessed Virgins tucked under their arms, and were
provided with cans which they meant to fill at the miraculous spring.
Carried in the hand or slung from the shoulder, some of them quite plain
and others daubed over with a Lady of Lourdes in blue paint, these cans
held from one to ten quarts apiece; and, shining with all the brightness
of new tin, clashing, too, at times with the sharp jingle of stew-pans,
they added a gay note to the aspect of the noisy multitude. And the fever
of dealing, the pleasure of spending one’s money, of returning home with
one’s pockets crammed with photographs and medals, lit up all faces with
a holiday expression, transforming the radiant gathering into a
fair-field crowd with appetites either beyond control or satisfied.

On the Plateau de la Merlasse, M. de Guersaint for a moment felt tempted
to enter one of the finest and most patronised shops, on the board over
which were these words in large letters: “Soubirous, Brother of
Bernadette.”

“Eh! what if we were to make our purchases there? It would be more
appropriate, more interesting to remember.”

However, he passed on, repeating that they must see everything first of
all.

Pierre had looked at the shop kept by Bernadette’s brother with a heavy
heart. It grieved him to find the brother selling the Blessed Virgin whom
the sister had beheld. However, it was necessary to live, and he had
reason to believe that, beside the triumphant Basilica resplendent with
gold, the visionary’s relatives were not making a fortune, the
competition being so terrible. If on the one hand the pilgrims left
millions behind them at Lourdes, on the other there were more than two
hundred dealers in religious articles, to say nothing of the hotel and
lodging-house keepers, to whom the largest part of the spoils fell; and
thus the gain, so eagerly disputed, ended by being moderate enough after
all. Along the Plateau on the right and left of the repository kept by
Bernadette’s brother, other shops appeared, an uninterrupted row of them,
pressing one against the other, each occupying a division of a long
wooden structure, a sort of gallery erected by the town, which derived
from it some sixty thousand francs a year. It formed a regular bazaar of
open stalls, encroaching on the pavements so as to tempt people to stop
as they passed along. For more than three hundred yards no other trade
was plied: a river of chaplets, medals, and statuettes streamed without
end behind the windows; and in enormous letters on the boards above
appeared the venerated names of Saint Roch, Saint Joseph, Jerusalem, The
Immaculate Virgin, The Sacred Heart of Mary, all the names in Paradise
that were most likely to touch and attract customers.

“Really,” said M. de Guersaint, “I think it’s the same thing all over the
place. Let us go anywhere.” He himself had had enough of it, this
interminable display was quite exhausting him.

“But as you promised to make the purchases at Majeste’s,” said Marie, who
was not, in the least tired, “the best thing will be to go back.”

“That’s it; let’s return to Majeste’s place.”

But the rows of shops began again in the Avenue de la Grotte. They
swarmed on both sides; and among them here were jewellers, drapers, and
umbrella-makers, who also dealt in religious articles. There was even a
confectioner who sold boxes of pastilles _a l’eau de Lourdes_, with a
figure of the Virgin on the cover. A photographer’s windows were crammed
with views of the Grotto and the Basilica, and portraits of Bishops and
reverend Fathers of all Orders, mixed up with views of famous sites in
the neighbouring mountains. A bookseller displayed the last Catholic
publications, volumes bearing devout titles, and among them the
innumerable works published on Lourdes during the last twenty years, some
of which had had a wonderful success, which was still fresh in memory. In
this broad, populous thoroughfare the crowd streamed along in more open
order; their cans jingled, everyone was in high spirits, amid the bright
sunrays which enfiladed the road from one end to the other. And it seemed
as if there would never be a finish to the statuettes, the medals, and
the chaplets; one display followed another; and, indeed, there were miles
of them running through the streets of the entire town, which was ever
the same bazaar selling the same articles.

In front of the Hotel of the Apparitions M. de Guersaint again hesitated.
“Then it’s decided, we are going to make our purchases there?” he asked.

“Certainly,” said Marie. “See what a beautiful shop it is!”

And she was the first to enter the establishment, which was, in fact, one
of the largest in the street, occupying the ground-floor of the hotel on
the left hand. M. de Guersaint and Pierre followed her.

Apolline, the niece of the Majestes, who was in charge of the place, was
standing on a stool, taking some holy-water vases from a top shelf to
show them to a young man, an elegant bearer, wearing beautiful yellow
gaiters. She was laughing with the cooing sound of a dove, and looked
charming with her thick black hair and her superb eyes, set in a somewhat
square face, which had a straight forehead, chubby cheeks, and full red
lips. Jumping lightly to the ground, she exclaimed: “Then you don’t think
that this pattern would please madame, your aunt?”

“No, no,” answered the bearer, as he went off. “Obtain the other pattern.
I shall not leave until to-morrow, and will come back.”

When Apolline learnt that Marie was the young person visited by the
miracle of whom Madame Majeste had been talking ever since the previous
day, she became extremely attentive. She looked at her with her merry
smile, in which there was a dash of surprise and covert incredulity.
However, like the clever saleswoman that she was, she was profuse in
complimentary remarks. “Ah, mademoiselle, I shall be so happy to sell to
you! Your miracle is so beautiful! Look, the whole shop is at your
disposal. We have the largest choice.”

Marie was ill at ease. “Thank you,” she replied, “you are very good. But
we have only come to buy a few small things.”

“If you will allow us,” said M. de Guersaint, “we will choose ourselves.”

“Very well. That’s it, monsieur. Afterwards we will see!”

And as some other customers now came in, Apolline forgot them, returned
to her duties as a pretty saleswoman, with caressing words and seductive
glances, especially for the gentlemen, whom she never allowed to leave
until they had their pockets full of purchases.

M. de Guersaint had only two francs left of the louis which Blanche, his
eldest daughter, had slipped into his hand when he was leaving, as
pocket-money; and so he did not dare to make any large selection. But
Pierre declared that they would cause him great pain if they did not
allow him to offer them the few things which they would like to take away
with them from Lourdes. It was therefore understood that they would first
of all choose a present for Blanche, and then Marie and her father should
select the souvenirs that pleased them best.

“Don’t let us hurry,” repeated M. de Guersaint, who had become very gay.
“Come, Marie, have a good look. What would be most likely to please
Blanche?”

All three looked, searched, and rummaged. But their indecision increased
as they went from one object to another. With its counters, show-cases,
and nests of drawers, furnishing it from top to bottom, the spacious shop
was a sea of endless billows, overflowing with all the religious
knick-knacks imaginable. There were the chaplets: skeins of chaplets
hanging along the walls, and heaps of chaplets lying in the drawers, from
humble ones costing twenty sons a dozen, to those of sweet-scented wood,
agate, and lapis-lazuli, with chains of gold or silver; and some of them,
of immense length, made to go twice round the neck or waist, had carved
beads, as large as walnuts, separated by death’s-heads. Then there were
the medals: a shower of medals, boxes full of medals, of all sizes, of
all metals, the cheapest and the most precious. They bore different
inscriptions, they represented the Basilica, the Grotto, or the
Immaculate Conception; they were engraved, _repoussees_, or enamelled,
executed with care, or made by the gross, according to the price. And
next there were the Blessed Virgins, great and small, in zinc, wood,
ivory, and especially plaster; some entirely white, others tinted in
bright colours, in accordance with the description given by Bernadette;
the amiable and smiling face, the extremely long veil, the blue sash, and
the golden roses on the feet, there being, however, some slight
modification in each model so as to guarantee the copyright. And there
was another flood of other religious objects: a hundred varieties of
scapularies, a thousand different sorts of sacred pictures: fine
engravings, large chromo-lithographs in glaring colours, submerged
beneath a mass of smaller pictures, which were coloured, gilded,
varnished, decorated with bouquets of flowers, and bordered with lace
paper. And there was also jewellery: rings, brooches, and bracelets,
loaded with stars and crosses, and ornamented with saintly figures.
Finally, there was the Paris article, which rose above and submerged all
the rest: pencil-holders, purses, cigar-holders, paperweights,
paper-knives, even snuff-boxes; and innumerable other objects on which
the Basilica, Grotto, and Blessed Virgin ever and ever appeared,
reproduced in every way, by every process that is known. Heaped together
pell-mell in one of the cases reserved to articles at fifty centimes
apiece were napkin-rings, egg-cups, and wooden pipes, on which was carved
the beaming apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Little by little, M. de Guersaint, with the annoyance of a man who prides
himself on being an artist, became disgusted and quite sad. “But all this
is frightful, frightful!” he repeated at every new article he took up to
look at.

Then he relieved himself by reminding Pierre of the ruinous attempt which
he had made to improve the artistic quality of religious prints. The
remains of his fortune had been lost in that attempt, and the thought
made him all the more angry, in presence of the wretched productions with
which the shop was crammed. Had anyone ever seen things of such idiotic,
pretentious, and complicated ugliness! The vulgarity of the ideas and the
silliness of the expressions portrayed rivalled the commonplace character
of the composition. You were reminded of fashion-plates, the covers of
boxes of sweets, and the wax dolls’ heads that revolve in hairdressers’
windows; it was an art abounding in false prettiness, painfully childish,
with no really human touch in it, no tone, and no sincerity. And the
architect, who was wound up, could not stop, but went on to express his
disgust with the buildings of new Lourdes, the pitiable disfigurement of
the Grotto, the colossal monstrosity of the inclined ways, the disastrous
lack of symmetry in the church of the Rosary and the Basilica, the former
looking too heavy, like a corn market, whilst the latter had an anaemical
structural leanness with no kind of style but the mongrel.

“Ah! one must really be very fond of God,” he at last concluded, “to have
courage enough to come and adore Him amidst such horrors! They have
failed in everything, spoilt everything, as though out of pleasure. Not
one of them has experienced that moment of true feeling, of real
naturalness and sincere faith, which gives birth to masterpieces. They
are all clever people, but all plagiarists; not one has given his mind
and being to the undertaking. And what must they not require to inspire
them, since they have failed to produce anything grand even in this land
of miracles?”

Pierre did not reply, but he was very much struck by these reflections,
which at last gave him an explanation of a feeling of discomfort that he
had experienced ever since his arrival at Lourdes. This discomfort arose
from the difference between the modern surroundings and the faith of past
ages which it sought to resuscitate. He thought of the old cathedrals
where quivered that faith of nations; he pictured the former attributes
of worship--the images, the goldsmith’s work, the saints in wood and
stone--all of admirable power and beauty of expression. The fact was that
in those ancient times the workmen had been true believers, had given
their whole souls and bodies and all the candour of their feelings to
their productions, just as M. de Guersaint said. But nowadays architects
built churches with the same practical tranquillity that they erected
five-storey houses, just as the religious articles, the chaplets, the
medals, and the statuettes were manufactured by the gross in the populous
quarters of Paris by merrymaking workmen who did not even follow their
religion. And thus what slopwork, what toymakers’, ironmongers’ stuff it
all was! of a prettiness fit to make you cry, a silly sentimentality fit
to make your heart turn with disgust! Lourdes was inundated, devastated,
disfigured by it all to such a point as to quite upset persons with any
delicacy of taste who happened to stray through its streets. It clashed
jarringly with the attempted resuscitation of the legends, ceremonies,
and processions of dead ages; and all at once it occurred to Pierre that
the social and historical condemnation of Lourdes lay in this, that faith
is forever dead among a people when it no longer introduces it into the
churches it builds or the chaplets it manufactures.

However, Marie had continued examining the shelves with the impatience of
a child, hesitating, and finding nothing which seemed to her worthy of
the great dream of ecstasy which she would ever keep within her.

“Father,” she said, “it is getting late; you must take me back to the
hospital; and to make up my mind, look, I will give Blanche this medal
with the silver chain. After all it’s the most simple and prettiest thing
here. She will wear it; it will make her a little piece of jewellery. As
for myself, I will take this statuette of Our Lady of Lourdes, this small
one, which is rather prettily painted. I shall place it in my room and
surround it with fresh flowers. It will be very nice, will it not?”

M. de Guersaint approved of her idea, and then busied himself with his
own choice. “O dear! oh dear! how embarrassed I am!” said he.

He was examining some ivory-handled penholders capped with pea-like
balls, in which were microscopic photographs, and while bringing one of
the little holes to his eye to look in it he raised an exclamation of
mingled surprise and pleasure. “Hallo! here’s the Cirque de Gavarnie! Ah!
it’s prodigious; everything is there; how can that colossal panorama have
been got into so small a space? Come, I’ll take this penholder; it’s
curious, and  will remind me of my excursion.”

Pierre had simply chosen a portrait of Bernadette, the large photograph
which represents her on her knees in a black gown, with a handkerchief
tied over her hair, and which is said to be the only one in existence
taken from life. He hastened to pay, and they were all three on the point
of leaving when Madame Majeste entered, protested, and positively
insisted on making Marie a little present, saying that it would bring her
establishment good-fortune. “I beg of you, mademoiselle, take a
scapulary,” said she. “Look among those there. The Blessed Virgin who
chose you will repay me in good luck.”

She raised her voice and made so much fuss that the purchasers filling
the shop were interested, and began gazing at the girl with envious eyes.
It was popularity bursting out again around her, a popularity which ended
even by reaching the street when the landlady went to the threshold of
the shop, making signs to the tradespeople opposite and putting all the
neighbourhood in a flutter.

“Let us go,” repeated Marie, feeling more and more uncomfortable.

But her father, on noticing a priest come in, detained her. “Ah! Monsieur
l’Abbe des Hermoises!”

It was in fact the handsome Abbe, clad in a cassock of fine cloth
emitting a pleasant odour, and with an expression of soft gaiety on his
fresh-coloured face. He had not noticed his companion of the previous
day, but had gone straight to Apolline and taken her on one side. And
Pierre overheard him saying in a subdued tone: “Why didn’t you bring me
my three-dozen chaplets this morning?”

Apolline again began laughing with the cooing notes of a dove, and looked
at him sideways, roguishly, without answering.

“They are for my little penitents at Toulouse. I wanted to place them at
the bottom of my trunk; and you offered to help me pack my linen.”

She continued laughing, and her pretty eyes sparkled.

“However, I shall not leave before to-morrow. Bring them me to-night,
will you not? When you are at liberty. It’s at the end of the street, at
Duchene’s.”

Thereupon, with a slight movement of her red lips, and in a somewhat
bantering way, which left him in doubt as to whether she would keep her
promise, she replied: “Certainly, Monsieur l’Abbe, I will go.”

They were now interrupted by M. de Guersaint, who came forward to shake
the priest’s hand. And the two men at once began talking again of the
Cirque de Gavarnie: they had had a delightful trip, a most pleasant time,
which they would never forget. Then they enjoyed a laugh at the expense
of their two companions, ecclesiastics of slender means, good-natured
fellows, who had much amused them. And the architect ended by reminding
his new friend that he had kindly promised to induce a personage at
Toulouse, who was ten times a millionaire, to interest himself in his
studies on navigable balloons. “A first advance of a hundred thousand
francs would be sufficient,” he said.

“You can rely on me,” answered Abbe des Hermoises. “You will not have
prayed to the Blessed Virgin in vain.”

However, Pierre, who had kept Bernadette’s portrait in his hand, had just
then been struck by the extraordinary likeness between Apolline and the
visionary. It was the same rather massive face, the same full thick
mouth, and the same magnificent eyes; and he recollected that Madame
Majeste had already pointed out to him this striking resemblance, which
was all the more peculiar as Apolline had passed through a similar
poverty-stricken childhood at Bartres before her aunt had taken her with
her to assist in keeping the shop. Bernadette! Apolline! What a strange
association, what an unexpected reincarnation at thirty years’ distance!
And, all at once, with this Apolline, who was so flightily merry and
careless, and in regard to whom there were so many odd rumours, new
Lourdes rose before his eyes: the coachmen, the candle-girls, the persons
who let rooms and waylaid tenants at the railway station, the hundreds of
furnished houses with discreet little lodgings, the crowd of free
priests, the lady hospitallers, and the simple passers-by, who came there
to satisfy their appetites. Then, too, there was the trading mania
excited by the shower of millions, the entire town given up to lucre, the
shops transforming the streets into bazaars which devoured one another,
the hotels living gluttonously on the pilgrims, even to the Blue Sisters
who kept a _table d’hote_, and the Fathers of the Grotto who coined money
with their God! What a sad and frightful course of events, the vision of
pure Bernadette inflaming multitudes, making them rush to the illusion of
happiness, bringing a river of gold to the town, and from that moment
rotting everything. The breath of superstition had sufficed to make
humanity flock thither, to attract abundance of money, and to corrupt
this honest corner of the earth forever. Where the candid lily had
formerly bloomed there now grew the carnal rose, in the new loam of
cupidity and enjoyment. Bethlehem had become Sodom since an innocent
child had seen the Virgin.

“Eh? What did I tell you?” exclaimed Madame Majeste, perceiving that
Pierre was comparing her niece with the portrait. “Apolline is Bernadette
all over!”

The young girl approached with her amiable smile, flattered at first by
the comparison.

“Let’s see, let’s see!” said Abbe des Hermoises, with an air of lively
interest.

He took the photograph in his turn, compared it with the girl, and then
exclaimed in amazement: “It’s wonderful; the same features. I had not
noticed it before. Really I’m delighted--”

“Still I fancy she had a larger nose,” Apolline ended by remarking.

The Abbe then raised an exclamation of irresistible admiration: “Oh! you
are prettier, much prettier, that’s evident. But that does not matter,
anyone would take you for two sisters.”

Pierre could not refrain from laughing, he thought the remark so
peculiar. Ah! poor Bernadette was absolutely dead, and she had no sister.
She could not have been born again; it would have been impossible for her
to exist in the region of crowded life and passion which she had made.

At length Marie went off leaning on her father’s arm, and it was agreed
that they would both call and fetch her at the hospital to go to the
station together. More than fifty people were awaiting her in the street
in a state of ecstasy. They bowed to her and followed her; and one woman
even made her infirm child, whom she was bringing back from the Grotto,
touch her gown.




III. DEPARTURE

At half-past two o’clock the white train, which was to leave Lourdes at
three-forty, was already in the station, alongside the second platform.
For three days it had been waiting on a siding, in the same state as when
it had come from Paris, and since it had been run into the station again
white flags had been waving from the foremost and hindmost of its
carriages, by way of preventing any mistakes on the part of the pilgrims,
whose entraining was usually a very long and troublesome affair.
Moreover, all the fourteen trains of the pilgrimage were timed to leave
that day. The green train had started off at ten o’clock, followed by the
pink and the yellow trains, and the others--the orange, the grey, and the
blue--would start in turn after the white train had taken its departure.
It was, indeed, another terrible day’s work for the station staff, amidst
a tumult and a scramble which altogether distracted them.

However, the departure of the white train was always the event of the day
which provoked most interest and emotion, for it took away with it all
the more afflicted patients, amongst whom were naturally those loved by
the Virgin and chosen by her for the miraculous cures. Accordingly, a
large, serried crowd was collected under the roofing of the spacious
platform, a hundred yards in length, where all the benches were already
covered with waiting pilgrims and their parcels. In the refreshment-room,
at one end of the buildings, men were drinking beer and women ordering
lemonade at the little tables which had been taken by assault, whilst at
the other end bearers stood on guard at the goods entrance so as to keep
the way clear for the speedy passage of the patients, who would soon be
arriving. And all along the broad platform there was incessant coming and
going, poor people rushing hither and thither in bewilderment, priests
trotting along to render assistance, gentlemen in frock-coats looking on
with quiet inquisitiveness: indeed, all the jumbling and jostling of the
most mixed, most variegated throng ever elbowed in a railway station.

At three o’clock, however, the sick had not yet reached the station, and
Baron Suire was in despair, his anxiety arising from the dearth of
horses, for a number of unexpected tourists had arrived at Lourdes that
morning and hired conveyances for Bareges, Cauterets, and Gavarnie. At
last, however, the Baron espied Berthaud and Gerard arriving in all
haste, after scouring the town; and when he had rushed up to them they
soon pacified him by announcing that things were going splendidly. They
had been able to procure the needful animals, and the removal of the
patients from the hospital was now being carried out under the most
favorable circumstances. Squads of bearers with their stretchers and
little carts were already in the station yard, watching for the arrival
of the vans, breaks, and other vehicles which had been recruited. A
reserve supply of mattresses and cushions was, moreover, heaped up beside
a lamp-post. Nevertheless, just as the first patients arrived, Baron
Suire again lost his head, whilst Berthaud and Gerard hastened to the
platform from which the train would start. There they began to
superintend matters, and gave orders amidst an increasing scramble.

Father Fourcade was on this platform, walking up and down alongside the
train, on Father Massias’s arm. Seeing Doctor Bonamy approach, he stopped
short to speak to him: “Ah, doctor,” said he, “I am pleased to see you.
Father Massias, who is about to leave us, was again telling me just now
of the extraordinary favor granted by the Blessed Virgin to that
interesting young person, Mademoiselle Marie de Guersaint. There has not
been such a brilliant miracle for years! It is signal good-fortune for
us--a blessing which should render our labours fruitful. All Christendom
will be illumined, comforted, enriched by it.”

He was radiant with pleasure, and forthwith the doctor with his
clean-shaven face, heavy, peaceful features, and usually tired eyes, also
began to exult: “Yes, your reverence, it is prodigious, prodigious! I
shall write a pamphlet about it. Never was cure produced by supernatural
means in a more authentic manner. Ah! what a stir it will create!”

Then, as they had begun walking to and fro again, all three together, he
noticed that Father Fourcade was dragging his leg with increased
difficulty, leaning heavily the while on his companion’s arm. “Is your
attack of gout worse, your reverence?” he inquired. “You seem to be
suffering a great deal.”

“Oh! don’t speak of it; I wasn’t able to close my eyes all night! It is
very annoying that this attack should have come on me the very day of my
arrival here! It might as well have waited. But there is nothing to be
done, so don’t let us talk of it any more. I am, at all events, very
pleased with this year’s result.”

“Ah! yes, yes indeed,” in his turn said Father Massias, in a voice which
quivered with fervour; “we may all feel proud, and go away with our
hearts full of enthusiasm and gratitude. How many prodigies there have
been, in addition to the healing of that young woman you spoke of! There
is no counting all the miracles: deaf women and dumb women have recovered
their faculties, faces disfigured by sores have become as smooth as the
hand, moribund consumptives have come to life again and eaten and danced!
It is not a train of sufferers, but a train of resurrection, a train of
glory, that I am about to take back to Paris!”

He had ceased to see the ailing creatures around him, and in the
blindness of his faith was soaring triumphantly.

Then, alongside the carriages, whose compartments were beginning to fill,
they all three continued their slow saunter, smiling at the pilgrims who
bowed to them, and at times again stopping to address a kind word to some
mournful woman who, pale and shivering, passed by upon a stretcher. They
boldly declared that she was looking much better, and would assuredly
soon get well.

However, the station-master, who was incessantly bustling about, passed
by, calling in a shrill voice: “Don’t block up the platform, please;
don’t block up the platform!” And on Berthaud pointing out to him that it
was, at all events, necessary to deposit the stretchers on the platform
before hoisting the patients into the carriages, he became quite angry:
“But, come, come; is it reasonable?” he asked. “Look at that little
hand-cart which has been left on the rails over yonder. I expect the
train to Toulouse in a few minutes. Do you want your people to be crushed
to death?”

Then he went off at a run to instruct some porters to keep the bewildered
flock of pilgrims away from the rails. Many of them, old and simple
people, did not even recognise the colour of their train, and this was
the reason why one and all wore cards of some particular hue hanging from
their necks, so that they might be led and entrained like marked cattle.
And what a constant state of excitement it was, with the starting of
these fourteen special trains, in addition to all the ordinary traffic,
in which no change had been made.

Pierre arrived, valise in hand, and found some difficulty in reaching the
platform. He was alone, for Marie had expressed an ardent desire to kneel
once more at the Grotto, so that her soul might burn with gratitude
before the Blessed Virgin until the last moment; and so he had left M. de
Guersaint to conduct her thither whilst he himself settled the hotel
bill. Moreover, he had made them promise that they would take a fly to
the station, and they would certainly arrive within a quarter of an hour.
Meantime, his idea was to seek their carriage, and there rid himself of
his valise. This, however, was not an easy task, and he only recognised
the carriage eventually by the placard which had been swinging from it in
the sunlight and the storms during the last three days--a square of
pasteboard bearing the names of Madame de Jonquiere and Sisters Hyacinthe
and Claire des Anges. There could be no mistake, and Pierre again
pictured the compartments full of his travelling companions. Some
cushions already marked M. Sabathier’s corner, and on the seat where
Marie had experienced such suffering he still found some scratches caused
by the ironwork of her box. Then, having deposited his valise in his own
place, he remained on the platform waiting and looking around him, with a
slight feeling of surprise at not perceiving Doctor Chassaigne, who had
promised to come and embrace him before the train started.

Now that Marie was well again, Pierre had laid his bearer straps aside,
and merely wore the red cross of the pilgrimage on his cassock. The
station, of which he had caught but a glimpse, in the livid dawn amidst
the anguish of the terrible morning of their arrival, now surprised him
by its spacious platforms, its broad exits, and its clear gaiety. He
could not see the mountains, but some verdant slopes rose up on the other
side, in front of the waiting-rooms; and that afternoon the weather was
delightfully mild, the sky of a milky whiteness, with light fleecy clouds
veiling the sun, whence there fell a broad diffuse light, like a
nacreous, pearly dust: “maiden’s weather,” as country folk are wont to
say.

The big clock had just struck three, and Pierre was looking at it when he
saw Madame Desagneaux and Madame Volmar arrive, followed by Madame de
Jonquiere and her daughter. These ladies, who had driven from the
hospital in a landau, at once began looking for their carriage, and it
was Raymonde who first recognised the first-class compartment in which
she had travelled from Paris. “Mamma, mamma, here; here it is!” she
called. “Stay a little while with us; you have plenty of time to install
yourself among your patients, since they haven’t yet arrived.”

Pierre now again found himself face to face with Madame Volmar, and their
glances met. However, he gave no sign of recognition, and on her side
there was but a slight sudden drooping of the eyelids. She had again
assumed the air of a languid, indolent, black-robed woman, who modestly
shrinks back, well pleased to escape notice. Her brasier-like eyes no
longer glowed; it was only at long intervals that they kindled into a
spark beneath the veil of indifference, the moire-like shade, which
dimmed them.

“Oh! it was a fearful sick headache!” she was repeating to Madame
Desagneaux. “And, you can see, I’ve hardly recovered the use of my poor
head yet. It’s the journey which brings it on. It’s the same thing every
year.”

However, Berthaud and Gerard, who had just perceived the ladies, were
hurrying up to them. That morning they had presented themselves at the
Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours, and Madame de Jonquiere had received
them in a little office near the linen-room. Thereupon, apologising with
smiling affability for making his request amidst such a hurly-burly,
Berthaud had solicited the hand of Mademoiselle Raymonde for his cousin,
Gerard. They at once felt themselves at ease, the mother, with some show
of emotion, saying that Lourdes would bring the young couple good luck.
And so the marriage was arranged in a few words, amidst general
satisfaction. A meeting was even appointed for the fifteenth of September
at the Chateau of Berneville, near Caen, an estate belonging to
Raymonde’s uncle, the diplomatist, whom Berthaud knew, and to whom he
promised to introduce Gerard. Then Raymonde was summoned, and blushed
with pleasure as she placed her little hand in those of her betrothed.

Binding her now upon the platform, the latter began paying her every
attention, and asking, “Would you like some pillows for the night? Don’t
make any ceremony about it; I can give you plenty, both for yourself and
for these ladies who are accompanying you.”

However, Raymonde gaily refused the offer, “No, no,” said she, “we are
not so delicate. Keep them for the poor sufferers.”

All the ladies were now talking together. Madame de Jonquiere declared
that she was so tired, so tired that she no longer felt alive; and yet
she displayed great happiness, her eyes smiling as she glanced at her
daughter and the young man she was engaged to. But neither Berthaud nor
Gerard could remain there; they had their duties to perform, and
accordingly took their leave, after reminding Madame de Jonquiere and
Raymonde of the appointed meeting. It was understood, was it not, on
September 15th, at the Chateau of Berneville? Yes, yes, it was
understood! And then came fresh smiles and handshakes, whilst the eyes of
the newly engaged couple--caressing, delighted eyes--added all that they
dared not say aloud in the midst of such a throng.

“What!” exclaimed little Madame Desagneaux, “you will go to Berneville on
the 15th? But if we stay at Trouville till the 10th, as my husband wishes
to do, we will go to see you!” And then, turning towards Madame Volmar,
who stood there silent, she added, “You ought to come as well, my dear.
It would be so nice to meet there all together.”

But, with a slow wave of the hand and an air of weary indifference,
Madame Volmar answered, “Oh! my holiday is all over; I am going home.”

Just then her eyes again met those of Pierre, who had remained standing
near the party, and he fancied that she became confused, whilst an
expression of indescribable suffering passed over her lifeless face.

The Sisters of the Assumption were now arriving, and the ladies joined
them in front of the cantine van. Ferrand, who had come with the Sisters
from the hospital, got into the van, and then helped Sister
Saint-Francois to mount upon the somewhat high footboard. Then he
remained standing on the threshold of the van--transformed into a kitchen
and containing all sorts of supplies for the journey, such as bread,
broth, milk, and chocolate,--whilst Sister Hyacinthe and Sister Claire
des Anges, who were still on the platform, passed him his little
medicine-chest and some small articles of luggage.

“You are sure you have everything?” Sister Hyacinthe asked him. “All
right. Well, now you only have to go and lie down in your corner and get
to sleep, since you complain that your services are not utilised.”

Ferrand began to laugh softly. “I shall help Sister Saint-Francois,” said
he. “I shall light the oil-stove, wash the crockery, carry the cups of
broth and milk to the patients whenever we stop, according to the
time-table hanging yonder; and if, all the same, you _should_ require a
doctor, you will please come to fetch me.”

Sister Hyacinthe had also begun to laugh. “But we no longer require a
doctor since all our patients are cured,” she replied; and, fixing her
eyes on his, with her calm, sisterly air, she added, “Good-bye, Monsieur
Ferrand.”

He smiled again, whilst a feeling of deep emotion brought moisture to his
eyes. The tremulous accents of his voice expressed his conviction that he
would never be able to forget this journey, his joy at having seen her
again, and the souvenir of divine and eternal affection which he was
taking away with him. “Good-bye, Sister,” said he.

Then Madame de Jonquiere talked of going to her carriage with Sister
Claire des Anges and Sister Hyacinthe; but the latter assured her that
there was no hurry, since the sick pilgrims were as yet scarcely
arriving. She left her, therefore, taking the other Sister with her, and
promising to see to everything. Moreover, she even insisted on ridding
the superintendent of her little bag, saying that she would find it on
her seat when it was time for her to come. Thus the ladies continued
walking and chatting gaily on the broad platform, where the atmosphere
was so pleasant.

Pierre, however, his eyes fixed upon the big clock, watched the minutes
hasten by on the dial, and began to feel surprised at not seeing Marie
arrive with her father. It was to be hoped that M. de Guersaint would not
lose himself on the road!

The young priest was still watching, when, to his surprise, he caught
sight of M. Vigneron, in a state of perfect exasperation, pushing his
wife and little Gustave furiously before him.

“Oh, Monsieur l’Abbe,” he exclaimed, “tell me where our carriage is! Help
me to put our luggage and this child in it. I am at my wit’s end! They
have made me altogether lose my temper.”

Then, on reaching the second-class compartment, he caught hold of
Pierre’s hands, just as the young man was about to place little Gustave
inside, and quite an outburst followed. “Could you believe it? They
insist on my starting. They tell me that my return-ticket will not be
available if I wait here till to-morrow. It was of no use my telling them
about the accident. As it is, it’s by no means pleasant to have to stay
with that corpse, watch over it, see it put in a coffin, and remove it
to-morrow within the regulation time. But they pretend that it doesn’t
concern them, that they already make large enough reductions on the
pilgrimage tickets, and that they can’t enter into any questions of
people dying.”

Madame Vigneron stood all of a tremble listening to him, whilst Gustave,
forgotten, staggering on his crutch with fatigue, raised his poor,
inquisitive, suffering face.

“But at all events,” continued the irate father, “as I told them, it’s a
case of compulsion. What do they expect me to do with that corpse? I
can’t take it under my arm, and bring it them to-day, like an article of
luggage! I am therefore absolutely obliged to remain behind. But no! ah!
how many stupid and wicked people there are!”

“Have you spoken to the station-master?” asked Pierre.

“The station-master! Oh! he’s somewhere about, in the midst of the
scramble. They were never able to find him. How could you have anything
done properly in such a bear-garden? Still, I mean to rout him out, and
give him a bit of my mind!”

Then, perceiving his wife standing beside him motionless, glued as it
were to the platform, he cried: “What are you doing there? Get in, so
that we may pass you the youngster and the parcels!”

With these words he pushed her in, and threw the parcels after her,
whilst the young priest took Gustave in his arms. The poor little fellow,
who was as light as a bird, seemingly thinner than before, consumed by
sores, and so full of pain, raised a faint cry. “Oh, my dear child, have
I hurt you?” asked Pierre.

“No, no, Monsieur l’Abbe, but I’ve been moved about so much to-day, and
I’m very tired this afternoon.” As he spoke, he smiled with his usual
intelligent and mournful expression, and then, sinking back into his
corner, closed his eyes, exhausted, indeed done for, by this fearful trip
to Lourdes.

“As you can very well understand,” now resumed M. Vigneron, “it by no
means amuses me to stay here, kicking my heels, while my wife and my son
go back to Paris without me. They have to go, however, for life at the
hotel is no longer bearable; and besides, if I kept them with me, and the
railway people won’t listen to reason, I should have to pay three extra
fares. And to make matters worse, my wife hasn’t got much brains. I’m
afraid she won’t be able to manage things properly.”

Then, almost breathless, he overwhelmed Madame Vigneron with the most
minute instructions--what she was to do during the journey, how she was
to get back home on arriving in Paris, and what steps she was to take if
Gustave was to have another attack. Somewhat scared, she responded, in
all docility, to each recommendation: “Yes, yes, dear--of course, dear,
of course.”

But all at once her husband’s rage came back to him. “After all,” he
shouted, “what I want to know is whether my return ticket be good or not!
I must know for certain! They must find that station-master for me!”

He was already on the point of rushing away through the crowd, when he
noticed Gustave’s crutch lying on the platform. This was disastrous, and
he raised his eyes to heaven as though to call Providence to witness that
he would never be able to extricate himself from such awful
complications. And, throwing the crutch to his wife, he hurried off,
distracted and shouting, “There, take it! You forget everything!”

The sick pilgrims were now flocking into the station, and, as on the
occasion of their arrival, there was plenty of disorderly carting along
the platform and across the lines. All the abominable ailments, all the
sores, all the deformities, went past once more, neither their gravity
nor their number seeming to have decreased; for the few cures which had
been effected were but a faint inappreciable gleam of light amidst the
general mourning. They were taken back as they had come. The little
carts, laden with helpless old women with their bags at their feet,
grated over the rails. The stretchers on which you saw inflated bodies
and pale faces with glittering eyes, swayed amidst the jostling of the
throng. There was wild and senseless haste, indescribable confusion,
questions, calls, sudden running, all the whirling of a flock which
cannot find the entrance to the pen. And the bearers ended by losing
their heads, no longer knowing which direction to take amidst the warning
cries of the porters, who at each moment were frightening people,
distracting them with anguish. “Take care, take care over there! Make
haste! No, no, don’t cross! The Toulouse train, the Toulouse train!”

Retracing his steps, Pierre again perceived the ladies, Madame de
Jonquiere and the others, still gaily chatting together. Lingering near
them, he listened to Berthaud, whom Father Fourcade had stopped, to
congratulate him on the good order which had been maintained throughout
the pilgrimage. The ex-public prosecutor was now bowing his thanks,
feeling quite flattered by this praise. “Is it not a lesson for their
Republic, your reverence?” he asked. “People get killed in Paris when
such crowds as these celebrate some bloody anniversary of their hateful
history. They ought to come and take a lesson here.”

He was delighted with the thought of being disagreeable to the Government
which had compelled him to resign. He was never so happy as when women
were just saved from being knocked over amidst the great concourse of
believers at Lourdes. However, he did not seem to be satisfied with the
results of the political propaganda which he came to further there,
during three days, every year. Fits of impatience came over him, things
did not move fast enough. When did Our Lady of Lourdes mean to bring back
the monarchy?

“You see, your reverence,” said he, “the only means, the real triumph,
would be to bring the working classes of the towns here _en masse_. I
shall cease dreaming, I shall devote myself to that entirely. Ah! if one
could only create a Catholic democracy!”

Father Fourcade had become very grave. His fine, intelligent eyes filled
with a dreamy expression, and wandered far away. How many times already
had he himself made the creation of that new people the object of his
efforts! But was not the breath of a new Messiah needed for the
accomplishment of such a task? “Yes, yes,” he murmured, “a Catholic
democracy; ah! the history of humanity would begin afresh!”

But Father Massias interrupted him in a passionate voice, saying that all
the nations of the earth would end by coming; whilst Doctor Bonamy, who
already detected a slight subsidence of fervour among the pilgrims,
wagged his head and expressed the opinion that the faithful ones of the
Grotto ought to increase their zeal. To his mind, success especially
depended on the greatest possible measure of publicity being given to the
miracles. And he assumed a radiant air and laughed complacently whilst
pointing to the tumultuous _defile_ of the sick. “Look at them!” said he.
“Don’t they go off looking better? There are a great many who, although
they don’t appear to be cured, are nevertheless carrying the germs of
cure away with them; of that you may be certain! Ah! the good people;
they do far more than we do all together for the glory of Our Lady of
Lourdes!”

However, he had to check himself, for Madame Dieulafay was passing before
them, in her box lined with quilted silk. She was deposited in front of
the door of the first-class carriage, in which a maid was already placing
the luggage. Pity came to all who beheld the unhappy woman, for she did
not seem to have awakened from her prostration during her three days’
sojourn at Lourdes. What she had been when they had removed her from the
carriage on the morning of her arrival, that she also was now when the
bearers were about to place her inside it again--clad in lace, covered
with jewels, still with the lifeless, imbecile face of a mummy slowly
liquefying; and, indeed, one might have thought that she had become yet
more wasted, that she was being taken back diminished, shrunken more and
more to the proportions of a child, by the march of that horrible disease
which, after destroying her bones, was now dissolving the softened fibres
of her muscles. Inconsolable, bowed down by the loss of their last hope,
her husband and sister, their eyes red, were following her with Abbe
Judaine, even as one follows a corpse to the grave.

“No, no! not yet!” said the old priest to the bearers, in order to
prevent them from placing the box in the carriage. “She will have time
enough to roll along in there. Let her have the warmth of that lovely sky
above her till the last possible moment.”

Then, seeing Pierre near him, he drew him a few steps aside, and, in a
voice broken by grief, resumed: “Ah! I am indeed distressed. Again this
morning I had a hope. I had her taken to the Grotto, I said my mass for
her, and came back to pray till eleven o’clock. But nothing came of it;
the Blessed Virgin did not listen to me. Although she cured me, a poor,
useless old man like me, I could not obtain from her the cure of this
beautiful, young, and wealthy woman, whose life ought to be a continual
_fete_. Undoubtedly the Blessed Virgin knows what she ought to do better
than ourselves, and I bow and bless her name. Nevertheless, my soul is
full of frightful sadness.”

He did not tell everything; he did not confess the thought which was
upsetting him, simple, childish, worthy man that he was, whose life had
never been troubled by either passion or doubt. But his thought was that
those poor weeping people, the husband and the sister, had too many
millions, that the presents they had brought were too costly, that they
had given far too much money to the Basilica. A miracle is not to be
bought. The wealth of the world is a hindrance rather than an advantage
when you address yourself to God. Assuredly, if the Blessed Virgin had
turned a deaf ear to their entreaties, had shown them but a stern, cold
countenance, it was in order that she might the more attentively listen
to the weak voices of the lowly ones who had come to her with empty
hands, with no other wealth than their love, and these she had loaded
with grace, flooded with the glowing affection of her Divine Motherhood.
And those poor wealthy ones, who had not been heard, that sister and that
husband, both so wretched beside the sorry body they were taking away
with them, they themselves felt like pariahs among the throng of the
humble who had been consoled or healed; they seemed embarrassed by their
very luxury, and recoiled, awkward and ill at ease, covered with shame at
the thought that Our Lady of Lourdes had relieved beggars whilst never
casting a glance upon that beautiful and powerful lady agonising unto
death amidst all her lace!

All at once it occurred to Pierre that he might have missed seeing M. de
Guersaint and Marie arrive, and that they were perhaps already in the
carriage. He returned thither, but there was still only his valise on the
seat. Sister Hyacinthe and Sister Claire des Anges, however, had begun to
install themselves, pending the arrival of their charges, and as Gerard
just then brought up M. Sabathier in a little handcart, Pierre helped to
place him in the carriage, a laborious task which put both the young
priest and Gerard into a perspiration. The ex-professor, who looked
disconsolate though very calm, at once settled himself in his corner.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said he. “That’s over, thank goodness. And now
they’ll only have to take me out at Paris.”

After wrapping a rug round his legs, Madame Sabathier, who was also
there, got out of the carriage and remained standing near the open door.
She was talking to Pierre when all at once she broke off to say: “Ah!
here’s Madame Maze coming to take her seat. She confided in me the other
day, you know. She’s a very unhappy little woman.”

Then, in an obliging spirit, she called to her and offered to watch over
her things. But Madame Maze shook her head, laughed, and gesticulated as
though she were out of her senses.

“No, no, I am not going,” said she.

“What! you are not going back?”

“No, no, I am not going--that is, I am, but not with you, not with you!”

She wore such an extraordinary air, she looked so bright, that Pierre and
Madame Sabathier found it difficult to recognise her. Her fair,
prematurely faded face was radiant, she seemed to be ten years younger,
suddenly aroused from the infinite sadness into which desertion had
plunged her. And, at last, her joy overflowing, she raised a cry: “I am
going off with him! Yes, he has come to fetch me, he is taking me with
him. Yes, yes, we are going to Luchon together, together!”

Then, with a rapturous glance, she pointed out a dark, sturdy-looking
young man, with gay eyes and bright red lips, who was purchasing some
newspapers. “There! that’s my husband,” said she, “that handsome man
who’s laughing over there with the newspaper-girl. He turned up here
early this morning, and he’s carrying me off. We shall take the Toulouse
train in a couple of minutes. Ah! dear madame, I told you of all my
worries, and you can understand my happiness, can’t you?”

However, she could not remain silent, but again spoke of the frightful
letter which she had received on Sunday, a letter in which he had
declared to her that if she should take advantage of her sojourn at
Lourdes to come to Luchon after him, he would not open the door to her.
And, think of it, theirs had been a love match! But for ten years he had
neglected her, profiting by his continual journeys as a commercial
traveller to take friends about with him from one to the other end of
France. Ah! that time she had thought it all over, she had asked the
Blessed Virgin to let her die, for she knew that the faithless one was at
that very moment at Luchon with two friends. What was it then that had
happened? A thunderbolt must certainly have fallen from heaven. Those two
friends must have received a warning from on high--perhaps they had
dreamt that they were already condemned to everlasting punishment. At all
events they had fled one evening without a word of explanation, and he,
unable to live alone, had suddenly been seized with a desire to fetch his
wife and keep her with him for a week. Grace must have certainly fallen
on him, though he did not say it, for he was so kind and pleasant that
she could not do otherwise than believe in a real beginning of
conversion.

“Ah! how grateful I am to the Blessed Virgin,” she continued; “she alone
can have acted, and I well understood her last evening. It seemed to me
that she made me a little sign just at the very moment when my husband
was making up his mind to come here to fetch me. I asked him at what time
it was that the idea occurred to him, and the hours fit in exactly. Ah!
there has been no greater miracle. The others make me smile with their
mended legs and their vanished sores. Blessed be Our Lady of Lourdes, who
has healed my heart!”

Just then the sturdy young man turned round, and she darted away to join
him, so full of delight that she forgot to bid the others good-bye. And
it was at this moment, amidst the growing crowd of patients whom the
bearers were bringing, that the Toulouse train at last came in. The
tumult increased, the confusion became extraordinary. Bells rang and
signals worked, whilst the station-master was seen rushing up, shouting
with all the strength of his lungs: “Be careful there! Clear the line at
once!”

A railway _employe_ had to rush from the platform to push a little
vehicle, which had been forgotten on the line, with an old woman in it,
out of harm’s way; however, yet another scared band of pilgrims ran
across when the steaming, growling engine was only thirty yards distant.
Others, losing their heads, would have been crushed by the wheels if
porters had not roughly caught them by the shoulders. Then, without
having pounded anybody, the train at last stopped alongside the
mattresses, pillows, and cushions lying hither and thither, and the
bewildered, whirling groups of people. The carriage doors opened and a
torrent of travellers alighted, whilst another torrent climbed in, these
two obstinately contending currents bringing the tumult to a climax.
Faces, first wearing an inquisitive expression, and then overcome by
stupefaction at the astonishing sight, showed themselves at the windows
of the doors which remained closed; and, among them, one especially
noticed the faces of two remarkably pretty girls, whose large candid eyes
ended by expressing the most dolorous compassion.

Followed by her husband, however, Madame Maze had climbed into one of the
carriages, feeling as happy and buoyant as if she were in her twentieth
year again, as on the already distant evening of her honeymoon journey.
And the doors having been slammed, the engine gave a loud whistle and
began to move, going off slowly and heavily between the throng, which, in
the rear of the train, flowed on to the lines again like an invading
torrent whose flood-gates have been swept away.

“Bar the platform!” shouted the station-master to his men. “Keep watch
when the engine comes up!”

The belated patients and pilgrims had arrived during this alert. La
Grivotte passed by with her feverish eyes and excited, dancing gait,
followed by Elise Rouquet and Sophie Couteau, who were very gay, and
quite out of breath through running. All three hastened to their
carriage, where Sister Hyacinthe scolded them. They had almost been left
behind at the Grotto, where, at times, the pilgrims lingered forgetfully,
unable to tear themselves away, still imploring and entreating the
Blessed Virgin, when the train was waiting for them at the
railway-station.

All at once Pierre, who likewise was anxious, no longer knowing what to
think, perceived M. de Guersaint and Marie quietly talking with Abbe
Judaine on the covered platform. He hastened to join them, and told them
of his impatience. “What have you been doing?” he asked. “I was losing
all hope.”

“What have we been doing?” responded M. de Guersaint, with quiet
astonishment. “We were at the Grotto, as you know very well. There was a
priest there, preaching in a most remarkable manner, and we should still
be there if I hadn’t remembered that we had to leave. And we took a fly
here, as we promised you we would do.”

He broke off to look at the clock. “But hang it all!” he added, “there’s
no hurry. The train won’t start for another quarter of an hour.”

This was true. Then Marie, smiling with divine joy, exclaimed: “Oh! if
you only knew, Pierre, what happiness I have brought away from that last
visit to the Blessed Virgin. I saw her smile at me, I felt her giving me
strength to live. Really, that farewell was delightful, and you must not
scold us, Pierre.”

He himself had begun to smile, somewhat ill at ease, however, as he
thought of his nervous fidgeting. Had he, then, experienced so keen a
desire to get far away from Lourdes? Had he feared that the Grotto might
keep Marie, that she might never come away from it again? Now that she
was there beside him, he was astonished at having indulged such thoughts,
and felt himself to be very calm.

However, whilst he was advising them to go and take their seats in the
carriage, he recognised Doctor Chassaigne hastily approaching. “Ah! my
dear doctor,” he said, “I was waiting for you. I should have been sorry
indeed to have gone away without embracing you.”

But the old doctor, who was trembling with emotion, interrupted him.
“Yes, yes, I am late. But ten minutes ago, just as I arrived, I caught
sight of that eccentric fellow, the Commander, and had a talk with him
over yonder. He was sneering at the sight of your people taking the train
again to go and die at home, when, said he, they ought to have done so
before coming to Lourdes. Well, all at once, while he was talking like
this, he fell on the ground before me. It was his third attack of
paralysis; the one he had long been expecting.”

“Oh! _mon Dieu_,” murmured Abbe Judaine, who heard the doctor, “he was
blaspheming. Heaven has punished him.”

M. de Guersaint and Marie were listening, greatly interested and deeply
moved.

“I had him carried yonder, into that shed,” continued the doctor. “It is
all over; I can do nothing. He will doubtless be dead before a quarter of
an hour has gone by. But I thought of a priest, and hastened up to you.”

Then, turning towards Abbe Judaine, M. Chassaigne added: “Come with me,
Monsieur le Cure; you know him. We cannot let a Christian depart
unsuccoured. Perhaps he will be moved, recognise his error, and become
reconciled with God.”

Abbe Judaine quickly followed the doctor, and in the rear went M. de
Guersaint, leading Marie and Pierre, whom the thought of this tragedy
impassioned. All five entered the goods shed, at twenty paces from the
crowd which was still bustling and buzzing, without a soul in it
expecting that there was a man dying so near by.

In a solitary corner of the shed, between two piles of sacks filled with
oats, lay the Commander, on a mattress borrowed from the Hospitality
reserve supply. He wore his everlasting frock-coat, with its buttonhole
decked with a broad red riband, and somebody who had taken the precaution
to pick up his silver-knobbed walking-stick had carefully placed it on
the ground beside the mattress.

Abbe Judaine at once leant over him. “You recognise us, you can hear us,
my poor friend, can’t you?” asked the priest.

Only the Commander’s eyes now appeared to be alive; but they _were_
alive, still glittering brightly with a stubborn flame of energy. The
attack had this time fallen on his right side, almost entirely depriving
him of the power of speech. He could only stammer a few words, by which
he succeeded in making them understand that he wished to die there,
without being moved or worried any further. He had no relative at
Lourdes, where nobody knew anything either of his former life or his
family. For three years he had lived there happily on the salary attached
to his little post at the station, and now he at last beheld his ardent,
his only desire, approaching fulfilment--the desire that he might depart
and fall into the eternal sleep. His eyes expressed the great joy he felt
at being so near his end.

“Have you any wish to make known to us?” resumed Abbe Judaine. “Cannot we
be useful to you in any way?”

No, no; his eyes replied that he was all right, well pleased. For three
years past he had never got up in the morning without hoping that by
night time he would be sleeping in the cemetery. Whenever he saw the sun
shine he was wont to say in an envious tone: “What a beautiful day for
departure!” And now that death was at last at hand, ready to deliver him
from his hateful existence, it was indeed welcome.

“I can do nothing, science is powerless. He is condemned,” said Doctor
Chassaigne in a low, bitter tone to the old priest, who begged him to
attempt some effort.

However, at that same moment it chanced that an aged woman, a pilgrim of
fourscore years, who had lost her way and knew not whither she was going,
entered the shed. Lame and humpbacked, reduced to the stature of
childhood’s days, afflicted with all the ailments of extreme old age, she
was dragging herself along with the assistance of a stick, and at her
side was slung a can full of Lourdes water, which she was taking away
with her, in the hope of yet prolonging her old age, in spite of all its
frightful decay. For a moment her senile, imbecile mind was quite scared.
She stood looking at that outstretched, stiffened man, who was dying.
Then a gleam of grandmotherly kindliness appeared in the depths of her
dim, vague eyes; and with the sisterly feelings of one who was very aged
and suffered very grievously she drew nearer, and, taking hold of her can
with her hands, which never ceased shaking, she offered it to the man.

To Abbe Judaine this seemed like a sudden flash of light, an inspiration
from on high. He, who had prayed so fervently and so often for the cure
of Madame Dieulafay without being heard by the Blessed Virgin, now glowed
with fresh faith in the conviction that if the Commander would only drink
that water he would be cured.

The old priest fell upon his knees beside the mattress. “O brother!” he
said, “it is God who has sent you this woman. Reconcile yourself with
God, drink and pray, whilst we ourselves implore the divine mercy with
our whole souls. God will prove His power to you; God will work the great
miracle of setting you erect once more, so that you may yet spend many
years upon this earth, loving Him and glorifying Him.”

No, no! the Commander’s sparkling eyes cried no! He, indeed, show himself
as cowardly as those flocks of pilgrims who came from afar, through so
many fatigues, in order to drag themselves on the ground and sob and beg
Heaven to let them live a month, a year, ten years longer! It was so
pleasant, so simple to die quietly in your bed. You turned your face to
the wall and you died.

“Drink, O my brother, I implore you!” continued the old priest. “It is
life that you will drink, it is strength and health, the very joy of
living. Drink that you may become young again, that you may begin a new
and pious life; drink that you may sing the praises of the Divine Mother,
who will have saved both your body and your soul. She is speaking to me,
your resurrection is certain.”

But no! but no! The eyes refused, repelled the offer of life with growing
obstinacy, and in their expression now appeared a covert fear of the
miraculous. The Commander did not believe; for three years he had been
shrugging his shoulders at the pretended cases of cure. But could one
ever tell in this strange world of ours? Such extraordinary things did
sometimes happen. And if by chance their water should really have a
supernatural power, and if by force they should make him drink some of
it, it would be terrible to have to live again--to endure once more the
punishment of a galley-slave existence, that abomination which
Lazarus--the pitiable object of the great miracle--had suffered twice.
No, no, he would not drink; he would not incur the fearful risk of
resurrection.

“Drink, drink, my brother,” repeated Abbe Judaine, who was now in tears;
“do not harden your heart to refuse the favours of Heaven.”

And then a terrible thing was seen; this man, already half dead, raised
himself, shaking off the stifling bonds of paralysis, loosening for a
second his tied tongue, and stammering, growling in a hoarse voice: “No,
no, NO!”

Pierre had to lead the stupefied old woman away and put her in the right
direction again. She had failed to understand that refusal of the water
which she herself was taking home with her like an inestimable treasure,
the very gift of God’s eternity to the poor who did not wish to die. Lame
of one leg, humpbacked, dragging the sorry remnants of her fourscore
years along by the assistance of her stick, she disappeared among the
tramping crowd, consumed by the passion of being, eager for space, air,
sunshine, and noise.

Marie and her father had shuddered in presence of that appetite for
death, that greedy hungering for the end which the Commander showed. Ah!
to sleep, to sleep without a dream, in the infinite darkness forever and
ever--nothing in the world could have seemed so sweet to him. He did not
hope in a better life; he had no desire to become happy, at last, in
Paradise where equality and justice would reign. His sole longing was for
black night and endless sleep, the joy of being no more, of never, never
being again. And Doctor Chassaigne also had shuddered, for he also
nourished but one thought, the thought of the happy moment when he would
depart. But, in his case, on the other side of this earthly existence he
would find his dear lost ones awaiting him, at the spot where eternal
life began; and how icy cold all would have seemed had he but for a
single moment thought that he might not meet them there.

Abbe Judaine painfully rose up. It had seemed to him that the Commander
was now fixing his bright eyes upon Marie. Deeply grieved that his
entreaties should have been of no avail, the priest wished to show the
dying man an example of that goodness of God which he repulsed.

“You recognise her, do you not?” he asked. “Yes, it is the young lady who
arrived here on Saturday so ill, with both legs paralysed. And you see
her now, so full of health, so strong, so beautiful. Heaven has taken
pity on her, and now she is reviving to youth, to the long life she was
born to live. Do you feel no regret in seeing her? Would you also like
her to be dead? would you have advised her not to drink the water?”

The Commander could not answer; but his eyes no longer strayed from
Marie’s young face, on which one read such great happiness at having
resuscitated, such vast hopes in countless morrows; and tears appeared in
those fixed eyes of his, gathered under their lids, and rolled down his
cheeks, which were already cold. He was certainly weeping for her; he
must have been thinking of that other miracle which he had wished
her--that if she should be cured, she might be happy. It was the
tenderness of an old man, who knows the miseries of this world, stirred
to pity by the thought of all the sorrows which awaited this young
creature. Ah! poor woman, how many times; perhaps, might she regret that
she had not died in her twentieth year!

Then the Commander’s eyes grew very dim, as though those last pitiful
tears had dissolved them. It was the end; coma was coming; the mind was
departing with the breath. He slightly turned, and died.

Doctor Chassaigne at once drew Marie aside. “The train’s starting,” he
said; “make haste, make haste!”

Indeed, the loud ringing of a bell was clearly resounding above the
growing tumult of the crowd. And the doctor, having requested two bearers
to watch the body, which would be removed later on when the train had
gone, desired to accompany his friends to their carriage.

They hastened their steps. Abbe Judaine, who was in despair, joined them
after saying a short prayer for the repose of that rebellious soul.
However, while Marie, followed by Pierre and M. de Guersaint, was running
along the platform, she was stopped once more, and this time by Doctor
Bonamy, who triumphantly presented her to Father Fourcade. “Here is
Mademoiselle de Guersaint, your reverence, the young lady who was healed
so marvellously yesterday.”

The radiant smile of a general who is reminded of his most decisive
victory appeared on Father Fourcade’s face. “I know, I know; I was
there,” he replied. “God has blessed you among all women, my dear
daughter; go, and cause His name to be worshipped.”

Then he congratulated M. de Guersaint, whose paternal pride savoured
divine enjoyment. It was the ovation beginning afresh--the concert of
loving words and enraptured glances which had followed the girl through
the streets of Lourdes that morning, and which again surrounded her at
the moment of departure. The bell might go on ringing; a circle of
delighted pilgrims still lingered around her; it seemed as if she were
carrying away in her person all the glory of the pilgrimage, the triumph
of religion, which would echo and echo to the four corners of the earth.

And Pierre was moved as he noticed the dolorous group which Madame
Jousseur and M. Dieulafay formed near by. Their eyes were fixed upon
Marie; like the others, they were astonished by the resurrection of this
beautiful girl, whom they had seen lying inert, emaciated, with ashen
face. Why should that child have been healed? Why not the young woman,
the dear woman, whom they were taking home in a dying state? Their
confusion, their sense of shame, seemed to increase; they drew back,
uneasy, like pariahs burdened with too much wealth; and it was a great
relief for them when, three bearers having with difficulty placed Madame
Dieulafay in the first-class compartment, they themselves were able to
vanish into it in company with Abbe Judaine.

The _employes_ were already shouting, “Take your seats! take your seats,”
 and Father Massias, the spiritual director of the train, had returned to
his compartment, leaving Father Fourcade on the platform leaning on
Doctor Bonamy’s shoulder. In all haste Gerard and Berthaud again saluted
the ladies, while Raymonde got in to join Madame Desagneaux and Madame
Volmar in their corner; and Madame de Jonquiere at last ran off to her
carriage, which she reached at the same time as the Guersaints. There was
hustling, and shouting, and wild running from one to the other end of the
long train, to which the engine, a copper engine, glittering like a star,
had just been coupled.

Pierre was helping Marie into the carriage, when M. Vigneron, coming back
at a gallop, shouted to him: “It’ll be good to-morrow, it’ll be good
tomorrow!” Very red in the face, he showed and waved his ticket, and then
galloped off again to the compartment where his wife and son had their
seats, in order to announce the good news to them.

When Marie and her father were installed in their places, Pierre lingered
for another moment on the platform with Doctor Chassaigne, who embraced
him paternally. The young man wished to induce the doctor to return to
Paris and take some little interest in life again. But M. Chassaigne
shook his head. “No, no, my dear child,” he replied. “I shall remain
here. They are here, they keep me here.” He was speaking of his dear lost
ones. Then, very gently and lovingly, he said, “Farewell.”

“Not farewell, my dear doctor; till we meet again.”

“Yes, yes, farewell. The Commander was right, you know; nothing can be so
sweet as to die, but to die in order to live again.”

Baron Suire was now giving orders for the removal of the white flags on
the foremost and hindmost carriages of the train; the shouts of the
railway _employes_ were ringing out in more and more imperious tones,
“Take your seats! take your seats!” and now came the supreme scramble,
the torrent of belated pilgrims rushing up distracted, breathless, and
covered with perspiration. Madame de Jonquiere and Sister Hyacinthe were
counting their party in the carriage. La Grivotte, Elise Rouquet, and
Sophie Couteau were all three there. Madame Sabathier, too, had taken her
seat in front of her husband, who, with his eyes half closed, was
patiently awaiting the departure. However, a voice inquired, “And Madame
Vincent, isn’t she going back with us?”

Thereupon Sister Hyacinthe, who was leaning out of the window exchanging
a last smile with Ferrand, who stood at the door of the cantine van,
exclaimed: “Here she comes!”

Madame Vincent crossed the lines, rushed up, the last of all, breathless
and haggard. And at once, by an involuntary impulse, Pierre glanced at
her arms. They carried nothing now.

All the doors were being closed, slammed one after the other; the
carriages were full, and only the signal for departure was awaited.
Panting and smoking, the engine gave vent to a first loud whistle, shrill
and joyous; and at that moment the sun, hitherto veiled from sight,
dissipated the light cloudlets and made the whole train resplendent,
gilding the engine, which seemed on the point of starting for the
legendary Paradise. No bitterness, but a divine, infantile gaiety
attended the departure. All the sick appeared to be healed. Though most
of them were being taken away in the same condition as they had been
brought, they went off relieved and happy, at all events, for an hour.
And not the slightest jealousy tainted their brotherly and sisterly
feelings; those who were not cured waxed quite gay, triumphant at the
cure of the others. Their own turns would surely come; yesterday’s
miracle was the formal promise of to-morrow’s. Even after those three
days of burning entreaty their fever of desire remained within them; the
faith of the forgotten ones continued as keen as ever in the conviction
that the Blessed Virgin had simply deferred a cure for their souls’
benefit. Inextinguishable love, invincible hope glowed within all those
wretched ones thirsting for life. And so a last outburst of joy, a
turbulent display of happiness, laughter and shouts, overflowed from all
the crowded carriages.   “Till next year! We’ll come back, we’ll come
back again!” was the cry; and then the gay little Sisters of the
Assumption clapped their hands, and the hymn of gratitude, the
“Magnificat,” began, sung by all the eight hundred pilgrims: “_Magnificat
anima mea Dominum_.” “My soul doth magnify the Lord.”

Thereupon the station-master, his mind at last at ease, his arms hanging
beside him, caused the signal to be given. The engine whistled once again
and then set out, rolling along in the dazzling sunlight as amidst a
glory. Although his leg was causing him great suffering, Father Fourcade
had remained on the platform, leaning upon Doctor Bonamy’s shoulder, and,
in spite of everything, saluting the departure of his dear children with
a smile. Berthaud, Gerard, and Baron Suire formed another group, and near
them were Doctor Chassaigne and M. Vigneron waving their handkerchiefs.
Heads were looking joyously out of the windows of the fleeing carriages,
whence other handkerchiefs were streaming in the current of air produced
by the motion of the train. Madame Vigneron compelled Gustave to show his
pale little face, and for a long time Raymonde’s small hand could be seen
waving good wishes; but Marie remained the last, looking back on Lourdes
as it grew smaller and smaller amidst the trees.

Across the bright countryside the train triumphantly disappeared,
resplendent, growling, chanting at the full pitch of its eight hundred
voices: “_Et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo_.” “And my
spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour!”




IV. MARIE’S VOW

ONCE more was the white train rolling, rolling towards Paris on its way
home; and the third-class carriage, where the shrill voices singing the
“Magnificat” at full pitch rose above the growling of the wheels, had
again become a common room, a travelling hospital ward, full of disorder,
littered like an improvised ambulance. Basins and brooms and sponges lay
about under the seats, which half concealed them. Articles of luggage,
all the wretched mass of poor worn-out things, were heaped together, a
little bit everywhere; and up above, the litter began again, what with
the parcels, the baskets, and the bags hanging from the brass pegs and
swinging to and fro without a moment’s rest. The same Sisters of the
Assumption and the same lady-hospitallers were there with their patients,
amidst the contingent of healthy pilgrims, who were already suffering
from the overpowering heat and unbearable odour. And at the far end there
was again the compartment full of women, the ten close-packed female
pilgrims, some young, some old, and all looking pitifully ugly as they
violently chanted the canticle in cracked and woeful voices.

“At what time shall we reach Paris?” M. de Guersaint inquired of Pierre.

“To-morrow at about two in the afternoon, I think,” the priest replied.

Since starting, Marie had been looking at the latter with an air of
anxious preoccupation, as though haunted by a sudden sorrow which she
could not reveal. However, she found her gay, healthful smile again to
say: “Twenty-two hours’ journey! Ah! it won’t be so long and trying as it
was coming.”

“Besides,” resumed her father, “we have left some of our people behind.
We have plenty of room now.”

In fact Madame Maze’s absence left a corner free at the end of the seat
which Marie, now sitting up like any other passenger, no longer
encumbered with her box. Moreover, little Sophie had this time been
placed in the next compartment, where there was neither Brother Isidore
nor his sister Marthe. The latter, it was said, had remained at Lourdes
in service with a pious lady. On the other side, Madame de Jonquiere and
Sister Hyacinthe also had the benefit of a vacant seat, that of Madame
Vetu; and it had further occurred to them to get rid of Elise Rouquet by
placing her with Sophie, so that only La Grivotte and the Sabathier
couple were with them in their compartment. Thanks to these new
arrangements, they were better able to breathe, and perhaps they might
manage to sleep a little.

The last verse of the “Magnificat” having been sung, the ladies finished
installing themselves as comfortably as possible by setting their little
household in order. One of the most important matters was to put the zinc
water-can, which interfered with their legs, out of the way. All the
blinds of the left-hand windows had been pulled down, for the oblique
sunrays were falling on the train, and had poured into it in sheets of
fire. The last storms, however, must have laid the dust, and the night
would certainly be cool. Moreover, there was less suffering: death had
carried off the most afflicted ones, and only stupefied ailments, numbed
by fatigue and lapsing into a slow torpor, remained. The overpowering
reaction which always follows great moral shocks was about to declare
itself. The souls had made the efforts required of them, the miracles had
been worked, and now the relaxing was beginning amidst a hebetude tinged
with profound relief.

Until they got to Tarbes they were all very much occupied in setting
things in order and making themselves comfortable. But as they left that
station Sister Hyacinthe rose up and clapped her hands. “My children,”
 said she, “we must not forget the Blessed Virgin who has been so kind to
us. Let us begin the Rosary.”

Then the whole carriage repeated the first chaplet--the five joyful
mysteries, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the
Purification, and the Finding of Jesus in the Temple. And afterwards they
intoned the canticle, “Let us contemplate the heavenly Archangel,” in
such loud voices that the peasants working in the fields raised their
heads to look at this singing train as it rushed past them at full speed.

Marie was at the window, gazing with admiration at the vast landscape and
the immense stretch of sky, which had gradually freed itself of its mist
and was now of a dazzling blue. It was the delicious close of a fine day.
However, she at last looked back into the carriage, and her eyes were
fixing themselves on Pierre with that mute sadness which had previously
dimmed them, when all at once a sound of furious sobbing burst forth in
front of her. The canticle was finished, and it was Madame Vincent who
was crying, stammering confused words, half-choked by her tears: “Ah, my
poor little one!” she gasped. “Ah, my jewel, my treasure, my life!”

She had previously remained in her corner, shrinking back into it as
though anxious to disappear. With a fierce face, her lips tightly set,
and her eyes closed, as though to isolate herself in the depths of her
cruel grief, she had hitherto not said a word. But, chancing to open her
eyes, she had espied the leathern window-strap hanging down beside the
door, and the sight of that strap, which her daughter had touched, almost
played with at one moment during the previous journey, had overwhelmed
her with a frantic despair which swept away her resolution to remain
silent.

“Ah! my poor little Rose,” she continued. “Her little hand touched that
strap, she turned it, and looked at it--ah, it was her last plaything!
And we were there both together then; she was still alive, I still had
her on my lap, in my arms. It was still so nice, so nice! But now I no
longer have her; I shall never, never have her again, my poor little
Rose, my poor little Rose!”

Distracted, sobbing bitterly, she looked at her knees and her arms, on
which nothing now rested, and which she was at a loss how to employ. She
had so long rocked her daughter on her knees, so long carried her in her
arms, that it now seemed to her as if some portion of her being had been
amputated, as if her body had been deprived of one of its functions,
leaving her diminished, unoccupied, distracted at being unable to fulfil
that function any more. Those useless arms and knees of hers quite
embarrassed her.

Pierre and Marie, who were deeply moved, had drawn near, uttering kind
words and striving to console the unhappy mother. And, little by little,
from the disconnected sentences which mingled with her sobs, they learned
what a Calvary she had ascended since her daughter’s death. On the
morning of the previous day, when she had carried the body off in her
arms amidst the storm, she must have long continued walking, blind and
deaf to everything, whilst the torrential rain beat down upon her. She no
longer remembered what squares she had crossed, what streets she had
traversed, as she roamed through that infamous Lourdes, that Lourdes
which killed little children, that Lourdes which she cursed.

“Ah! I can’t remember, I can’t remember,” she faltered. “But some people
took me in, had pity upon me, some people whom I don’t know, but who live
somewhere. Ah! I can’t remember where, but it was somewhere high up, far
away, at the other end of the town. And they were certainly very poor
folk, for I can still see myself in a poor-looking room with my dear
little one who was quite cold, and whom they laid upon their bed.”

At this recollection a fresh attack of sobbing shook her, in fact almost
stifled her.

“No, no,” she at last resumed, “I would not part with her dear little
body by leaving it in that abominable town. And I can’t tell exactly how
it happened, but it must have been those poor people who took me with
them. We did a great deal of walking, oh! a great deal of walking; we saw
all those gentlemen of the pilgrimage and the railway. ‘What can it
matter to you?’ I repeated to them. ‘Let me take her back to Paris in my
arms. I brought her here like that when she was alive, I may surely take
her back dead? Nobody will notice anything, people will think that she is
asleep.’”

“And all of them, all those officials, began shouting and driving me away
as though I were asking them to let me do something wicked. Then I ended
by telling them my mind. When people make so much fuss, and bring so many
agonising sick to a place like that, they surely ought to send the dead
ones home again, ought they not? And do you know how much money they
ended by asking of me at the station? Three hundred francs! Yes, it
appears it is the price! Three hundred francs, good Lord! of me, who came
here with thirty sous in my pocket and have only five left. Why, I don’t
earn that amount of money by six months’ sewing. They ought to have asked
me for my life; I would have given it so willingly. Three hundred francs!
three hundred francs for that poor little bird-like body, which it would
have consoled me so much to have brought away on my knees!”

Then she began stammering and complaining in a confused, husky voice:
“Ah, if you only knew how sensibly those poor people talked to me to
induce me to go back. A work-woman like myself, with work waiting, ought
to return to Paris, they said; and, besides, I couldn’t afford to
sacrifice my return ticket; I must take the three-forty train. And they
told me, too, that people are compelled to put up with things when they
are not rich. Only the rich can keep their dead, do what they like with
them, eh? And I can’t remember--no, again I can’t remember! I didn’t even
know the time; I should never have been able to find my way back to the
station. After the funeral over there, at a place where there were two
trees, it must have been those poor people who led me away, half out of
my senses, and brought me to the station, and pushed me into the carriage
just at the moment when the train was starting. But what a rending it
was--as if my heart had remained there underground, and it is frightful,
that it is, frightful, my God!”

“Poor woman!” murmured Marie. “Take courage, and pray to the Blessed
Virgin for the succour which she never refuses to the afflicted.”

But at this Madame Vincent shook with rage. “It isn’t true!” she cried.
“The Blessed Virgin doesn’t care a rap about me. She doesn’t tell the
truth! Why did she deceive me? I should never have gone to Lourdes if I
hadn’t heard that voice in a church. My little girl would still be alive,
and perhaps the doctors would have saved her. I, who would never set my
foot among the priests formerly! Ah! I was right! I was right! There’s no
Blessed Virgin at all!”

And in this wise, without resignation, without illusion, without hope,
she continued blaspheming with the coarse fury of a woman of the people,
shrieking the sufferings of her heart aloud in such rough fashion that
Sister Hyacinthe had to intervene: “Be quiet, you unhappy woman! It is
God who is making you suffer, to punish you.”

The scene had already lasted a long time, and as they passed Riscle at
full speed the Sister again clapped her hands and gave the signal for the
chanting of the “Laudate Mariam.” “Come, come, my children,” she
exclaimed, “all together, and with all your hearts:

     “In heav’n, on earth,
        All voices raise,
      In concert sing
        My Mother’s praise:
   _Laudate, laudate, laudate Mariam_!”

Madame Vincent, whose voice was drowned by this canticle of love, now
only sobbed, with her hands pressed to her face. Her revolt was over, she
was again strengthless, weak like a suffering woman whom grief and
weariness have stupefied.

After the canticle, fatigue fell more or less heavily upon all the
occupants of the carriage. Only Sister Hyacinthe, so quick and active,
and Sister Claire des Anges, so gentle, serious, and slight, retained, as
on their departure from Paris and during their sojourn at Lourdes, the
professional serenity of women accustomed to everything, amidst the
bright gaiety of their white coifs and wimples. Madame de Jonquiere, who
had scarcely slept for five days past, had to make an effort to keep her
poor eyes open; and yet she was delighted with the journey, for her heart
was full of joy at having arranged her daughter’s marriage, and at
bringing back with her the greatest of all the miracles, a _miraculee_
whom everybody was talking of. She decided in her own mind that she would
get to sleep that night, however bad the jolting might be; though on the
other hand she could not shake off a covert fear with regard to La
Grivotte, who looked very strange, excited, and haggard, with dull eyes,
and cheeks glowing with patches of violet colour. Madame de Jonquiere had
tried a dozen times to keep her from fidgeting, but had not been able to
induce her to remain still, with joined hands and closed eyes.
Fortunately, the other patients gave her no anxiety; most of them were
either so relieved or so weary that they were already dozing off. Elise
Rouquet, however, had bought herself a pocket mirror, a large round one,
in which she did not weary of contemplating herself, finding herself
quite pretty, and verifying from minute to minute the progress of her
cure with a coquetry which, now that her monstrous face was becoming
human again, made her purse her lips and try a variety of smiles. As for
Sophie Couteau, she was playing very prettily; for finding that nobody
now asked to examine her foot, she had taken off her shoe and stocking of
her own accord, repeating that she must surely have a pebble in one or
the other of them; and as her companions still paid no attention to that
little foot which the Blessed Virgin had been pleased to visit, she kept
it in her hands, caressing it, seemingly delighted to touch it and turn
it into a plaything.

M. de Guersaint had meantime risen from his seat, and, leaning on the low
partition between the compartments, he was glancing at M. Sabathier, when
all of a sudden Marie called: “Oh! father, father, look at this notch in
the seat; it was the ironwork of my box that made it!”

The discovery of this trace rendered her so happy that for a moment she
forgot the secret sorrow which she seemed anxious to keep to herself. And
in the same way as Madame Vincent had burst out sobbing on perceiving the
leather strap which her little girl had touched, so she burst into joy at
the sight of this scratch, which reminded her of her long martyrdom in
this same carriage, all the abomination which had now disappeared,
vanished like a nightmare. “To think that four days have scarcely gone
by,” she said; “I was lying there, I could not stir, and now, now I come
and go, and feel so comfortable!”

Pierre and M. de Guersaint were smiling at her; and M. Sabathier, who had
heard her, slowly said: “It is quite true. We leave a little of ourselves
in things, a little of our sufferings and our hopes, and when we find
them again they speak to us, and once more tell us the things which
sadden us or make us gay.”

He had remained in his corner silent, with an air of resignation, ever
since their departure from Lourdes. Even his wife whilst wrapping up his
legs had only been able to obtain sundry shakes of the head from him in
response to her inquiries whether he was suffering. In point of fact he
was not suffering, but extreme dejection was overcoming him.

“Thus for my own part,” he continued, “during our long journey from Paris
I tried to divert my thoughts by counting the bands in the roofing up
there. There were thirteen from the lamp to the door. Well, I have just
been counting them again, and naturally enough there are still thirteen.
It’s like that brass knob beside me. You can’t imagine what dreams I had
whilst I watched it shining at night-time when Monsieur l’Abbe was
reading the story of Bernadette to us. Yes, I saw myself cured; I was
making that journey to Rome which I have been talking of for twenty years
past; I walked and travelled the world--briefly, I had all manner of wild
and delightful dreams. And now here we are on our way back to Paris, and
there are thirteen bands across the roofing there, and the knob is still
shining--all of which tells me that I am again on the same seat, with my
legs lifeless. Well, well, it’s understood, I’m a poor, old, used-up
animal, and such I shall remain.”

Two big tears appeared in his eyes; he must have been passing through an
hour of frightful bitterness. However, he raised his big square head,
with its jaw typical of patient obstinacy, and added: “This is the
seventh year that I have been to Lourdes, and the Blessed Virgin has not
listened to me. No matter! It won’t prevent me from going back next year.
Perhaps she will at last deign to hear me.”

For his part he did not revolt. And Pierre, whilst chatting with him, was
stupefied to find persistent, tenacious credulity springing up once more,
in spite of everything, in the cultivated brain of this man of intellect.
What ardent desire of cure and life was it that had led to this refusal
to accept evidence, this determination to remain blind? He stubbornly
clung to the resolution to be saved when all human probabilities were
against him, when the experiment of the miracle itself had failed so many
times already; and he had reached such a point that he wished to explain
his fresh rebuff, urging moments of inattention at the Grotto, a lack of
sufficient contrition, and all sorts of little transgressions which must
have displeased the Blessed Virgin. Moreover, he was already deciding in
his mind that he would perform a novena somewhere next year, before again
repairing to Lourdes.

“Ah! by the way,” he resumed, “do you know of the good-luck which my
substitute has had? Yes, you must remember my telling you about that poor
fellow suffering from tuberculosis, for whom I paid fifty francs when I
obtained _hospitalisation_ for myself. Well, he has been thoroughly
cured.”

“Really! And he was suffering from tuberculosis!” exclaimed M. de
Guersaint.

“Certainly, monsieur, perfectly cured I had seen him looking so low, so
yellow, so emaciated, when we started; but when he came to pay me a visit
at the hospital he was quite a new man; and, dear me, I gave him five
francs.”

Pierre had to restrain a smile, for be had heard the story from Doctor
Chassaigne. This miraculously healed individual was a feigner, who had
eventually been recognised at the Medical Verification Office. It was,
apparently, the third year that he had presented himself there, the first
time alleging paralysis and the second time a tumour, both of which had
been as completely healed as his pretended tuberculosis. On each occasion
he obtained an outing, lodging and food, and returned home loaded with
alms. It appeared that he had formerly been a hospital nurse, and that he
transformed himself, “made-up” a face suited to his pretended ailment, in
such an extremely artistic manner that it was only by chance that Doctor
Bonamy had detected the imposition. Moreover, the Fathers had immediately
required that the incident should be kept secret. What was the use of
stirring up a scandal which would only have led to jocular remarks in the
newspapers? Whenever any fraudulent miracles of this kind were
discovered, the Fathers contented themselves with forcing the guilty
parties to go away. Moreover, these feigners were far from numerous,
despite all that was related of them in the amusing stories concocted by
Voltairean humourists. Apart from faith, human stupidity and ignorance,
alas! were quite sufficient to account for the miracles.

M. Sabathier, however, was greatly stirred by the idea that Heaven had
healed this man who had gone to Lourdes at his expense, whereas he
himself was returning home still helpless, still in the same woeful
state. He sighed, and, despite all his resignation, could not help
saying, with a touch of envy: “What would you, however? The Blessed
Virgin must know very well what she’s about. Neither you nor I can call
her to account to us for her actions. Whenever it may please her to cast
her eyes on me she will find me at her feet.”

After the “Angelus” when they got to Mont-de-Marsan, Sister Hyacinthe
made them repeat the second chaplet, the five sorrowful mysteries, Jesus
in the Garden of Olives, Jesus scourged, Jesus crowned with thorns, Jesus
carrying the cross, and Jesus crucified. Then they took dinner in the
carriage, for there would be no stopping until they reached Bordeaux,
where they would only arrive at eleven o’clock at night. All the
pilgrims’ baskets were crammed with provisions, to say nothing of the
milk, broth, chocolate, and fruit which Sister Saint-Francois had sent
from the cantine. Then, too, there was fraternal sharing: they sat with
their food on their laps and drew close together, every compartment
becoming, as it were, the scene of a picnic, to which each contributed
his share. And they had finished their meal and were packing up the
remaining bread again when the train passed Morceux.

“My children,” now said Sister Hyacinthe, rising up, “the evening
prayer!”

Thereupon came a confused murmuring made up of “Paters” and “Aves,”
 self-examinations, acts of contrition and vows of trustful reliance in
God, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, with thanksgivings for that
happy day, and, at last, a prayer for the living and for the faithful
departed.

“I warn you,” then resumed the Sister, “that when we get to Lamothe, at
ten o’clock, I shall order silence. However, I think you will all be very
good and won’t require any rocking to get to sleep.”

This made them laugh. It was now half-past eight o’clock, and the night
had slowly covered the country-side. The hills alone retained a vague
trace of the twilight’s farewell, whilst a dense sheet of darkness
blotted out all the low ground. Rushing on at full speed, the train
entered an immense plain, and then there was nothing but a sea of
darkness, through which they ever and ever rolled under a blackish sky,
studded with stars.

For a moment or so Pierre had been astonished by the demeanour of La
Grivotte. While the other pilgrims and patients were already dozing off,
sinking down amidst the luggage, which the constant jolting shook, she
had risen to her feet and was clinging to the partition in a sudden spasm
of agony. And under the pale, yellow, dancing gleam of the lamp she once
more looked emaciated, with a livid, tortured face.

“Take care, madame, she will fall!” the priest called to Madame de
Jonquiere, who, with eyelids lowered, was at last giving way to sleep.

She made all haste to intervene, but Sister Hyacinthe had turned more
quickly and caught La Grivotte in her arms. A frightful fit of coughing,
however, prostrated the unhappy creature upon the seat, and for five
minutes she continued stifling, shaken by such an attack that her poor
body seemed to be actually cracking and rending. Then a red thread oozed
from between her lips, and at last she spat up blood by the throatful.

“Good heavens! good heavens! it’s coming on her again!” repeated Madame
de Jonquiere in despair. “I had a fear of it; I was not at ease, seeing
her looking so strange. Wait a moment; I will sit down beside her.”

But the Sister would not consent: “No, no, madame, sleep a little. I’ll
watch over her. You are not accustomed to it: you would end by making
yourself ill as well.”

Then she settled herself beside La Grivotte, made her rest her head
against her shoulder, and wiped the blood from her lips. The attack
subsided, but weakness was coming back, so extreme that the wretched
woman was scarcely able to stammer: “Oh, it is nothing, nothing at all; I
am cured, I am cured, completely cured!”

Pierre was thoroughly upset: This sudden, overwhelming relapse had sent
an icy chill through the whole carriage. Many of the passengers raised
themselves up and looked at La Grivotte with terror in their eyes. Then
they dived down into their corners again, and nobody spoke, nobody
stirred any further. Pierre, for his part, reflected on the curious
medical aspect of this girl’s case. Her strength had come back to her
over yonder. She had displayed a ravenous appetite, she had walked long
distances with a dancing gait, her face quite radiant the while; and now
she had spat blood, her cough had broken out afresh, she again had the
heavy ashen face of one in the last agony. Her ailment had returned to
her with brutal force, victorious over everything. Was this, then, some
special case of phthisis complicated by neurosis? Or was it some other
malady, some unknown disease, quietly continuing its work in the midst of
contradictory diagnosis? The sea of error and ignorance, the darkness
amidst which human science is still struggling, again appeared to Pierre.
And he once more saw Doctor Chassaigne shrugging his shoulders with
disdain, whilst Doctor Bonamy, full of serenity, quietly continued his
verification work, absolutely convinced that nobody would be able to
prove to him the impossibility of his miracles any more than he himself
could have proved their possibility.

“Oh! I am not frightened,” La Grivotte continued, stammering. “I am
cured, completely cured; they all told me so, over yonder.”

Meantime the carriage was rolling, rolling along, through the black
night. Each of its occupants was making preparations, stretching himself
out in order to sleep more comfortably. They compelled Madame Vincent to
lie down on the seat, and gave her a pillow on which to rest her poor
pain-racked head; and then, as docile as a child, quite stupefied, she
fell asleep in a nightmare-like torpor, with big, silent tears still
flowing from her closed eyes. Elise Rouquet, who had a whole seat to
herself, was also getting ready to lie down, but first of all she made
quite an elaborate toilet, tying the black wrap which had served to hide
her sore about her head, and then again peering into her glass to see if
this headgear became her, now that the swelling of her lip had subsided.
And again did Pierre feel astonished at sight of that sore, which was
certainly healing, if not already healed--that face, so lately a
monster’s face, which one could now look at without feeling horrified.
The sea of incertitude stretched before him once more. Was it even a real
lupus? Might it not rather be some unknown form of ulcer of hysterical
origin? Or ought one to admit that certain forms of lupus, as yet but
imperfectly studied and arising from faulty nutrition of the skin, might
be benefited by a great moral shock? At all events there here seemed to
be a miracle, unless, indeed, the sore should reappear again in three
weeks’, three months’, or three years’ time, like La Grivotte’s phthisis.

It was ten o’clock, and the people in the carriage were falling asleep
when they left Lamothe. Sister Hyacinthe, upon whose knees La Grivotte
was now drowsily resting her head, was unable to rise, and, for form’s
sake, merely said, “Silence, silence, my children!” in a low voice, which
died away amidst the growling rumble of the wheels.

However, something continued stirring in an adjoining compartment; she
heard a noise which irritated her nerves, and the cause of which she at
last fancied she could understand.

“Why do you keep on kicking the seat, Sophie?” she asked. “You must get
to sleep, my child.”

“I’m not kicking, Sister. It’s a key that was rolling about under my
foot.”

“A key!--how is that? Pass it to me.”

Then she examined it. A very old, poor-looking key it was--blackened,
worn away, and polished by long use, its ring bearing the mark of where
it had been broken and resoldered. However, they all searched their
pockets, and none of them, it seemed, had lost a key.

“I found it in the corner,” now resumed Sophie; “it must have belonged to
the man.”

“What man?” asked Sister Hyacinthe.

“The man who died there.”

They had already forgotten him. But it had surely been his, for Sister
Hyacinthe recollected that she had heard something fall while she was
wiping his forehead. And she turned the key over and continued looking at
it, as it lay in her hand, poor, ugly, wretched key that it was, no
longer of any use, never again to open the lock it belonged to--some
unknown lock, hidden far away in the depths of the world. For a moment
she was minded to put it in her pocket, as though by a kind of compassion
for this little bit of iron, so humble and so mysterious, since it was
all that remained of that unknown man. But then the pious thought came to
her that it is wrong to show attachment to any earthly thing; and, the
window being half-lowered, she threw out the key, which fell into the
black night.

“You must not play any more, Sophie,” she resumed. “Come, come, my
children, silence!”

It was only after the brief stay at Bordeaux, however, at about half-past
eleven o’clock, that sleep came back again and overpowered all in the
carriage. Madame de Jonquiere had been unable to contend against it any
longer, and her head was now resting against the partition, her face
wearing an expression of happiness amidst all her fatigue. The Sabathiers
were, in a like fashion, calmly sleeping; and not a sound now came from
the compartment which Sophie Couteau and Elise Rouquet occupied,
stretched in front of each other, on the seats. From time to time a low
plaint would rise, a strangled cry of grief or fright, escaping from the
lips of Madame Vincent, who, amidst her prostration, was being tortured
by evil dreams. Sister Hyacinthe was one of the very few who still had
their eyes open, anxious as she was respecting La Grivotte, who now lay
quite motionless, like a felled animal, breathing painfully, with a
continuous wheezing sound. From one to the other end of this travelling
dormitory, shaken by the rumbling of the train rolling on at full speed,
the pilgrims and the sick surrendered themselves to sleep, and limbs
dangled and heads swayed under the pale, dancing gleams from the lamps.
At the far end, in the compartment occupied by the ten female pilgrims,
there was a woeful jumbling of poor, ugly faces, old and young, and all
open-mouthed, as though sleep had suddenly fallen upon them at the moment
they were finishing some hymn. Great pity came to the heart at the sight
of all those mournful, weary beings, prostrated by five days of wild hope
and infinite ecstasy, and destined to awaken, on the very morrow, to the
stern realities of life.

And now Pierre once more felt himself to be alone with Marie. She had not
consented to stretch herself on the seat--she had been lying down too
long, she said, for seven years, alas! And in order that M. de Guersaint,
who on leaving Bordeaux had again fallen into his childlike slumber,
might be more at ease, Pierre came and sat down beside the girl. As the
light of the lamp annoyed her he drew the little screen, and they thus
found themselves in the shade, a soft and transparent shade. The train
must now have been crossing a plain, for it glided through the night as
in an endless flight, with a sound like the regular flapping of huge
wings. Through the window, which they had opened, a delicious coolness
came from the black fields, the fathomless fields, where not even any
lonely little village lights could be seen gleaming. For a moment Pierre
had turned towards Marie and had noticed that her eyes were closed. But
he could divine that she was not sleeping, that she was savouring the
deep peacefulness which prevailed around them amidst the thundering roar
of their rush through the darkness, and, like her, he closed his eyelids
and began dreaming.

Yet once again did the past arise before him: the little house at
Neuilly, the embrace which they had exchanged near the flowering hedge
under the trees flecked with sunlight. How far away all that already was,
and with what perfume had it not filled his life! Then bitter thoughts
returned to him at the memory of the day when he had become a priest.
Since she would never be a woman, he had consented to be a man no more;
and that was to prove their eternal misfortune, for ironical Nature was
to make her a wife and a mother after all. Had he only been able to
retain his faith he might have found eternal consolation in it. But all
his attempts to regain it had been in vain. He had gone to Lourdes, he
had striven his utmost at the Grotto, he had hoped for a moment that he
would end by believing should Marie be miraculously healed; but total and
irremediable ruin had come when the predicted cure had taken place even
as science had foretold. And their idyl, so pure and so painful, the long
story of their affection bathed in tears, likewise spread out before him.
She, having penetrated his sad secret, had come to Lourdes to pray to
Heaven for the miracle of his conversion. When they had remained alone
under the trees amidst the perfume of the invisible roses, during the
night procession, they had prayed one for the other, mingling one in the
other, with an ardent desire for their mutual happiness. Before the
Grotto, too, she had entreated the Blessed Virgin to forget her and to
save him, if she could obtain but one favour from her Divine Son. Then,
healed, beside herself, transported with love and gratitude, whirled with
her little car up the inclined ways to the Basilica, she had thought her
prayers granted, and had cried aloud the joy she felt that they should
have both been saved, together, together! Ah! that lie which he, prompted
by affection and charity, had told, that error in which he had from that
moment suffered her to remain, with what a weight did it oppress his
heart! It was the heavy slab which walled him in his voluntarily chosen
sepulchre. He remembered the frightful attack of grief which had almost
killed him in the gloom of the crypt, his sobs, his brutal revolt, his
longing to keep her for himself alone, to possess her since he knew her
to be his own--all that rising passion of his awakened manhood, which
little by little had fallen asleep again, drowned by the rushing river of
his tears; and in order that he might not destroy the divine illusion
which possessed her, yielding to brotherly compassion, he had taken that
heroic vow to lie to her, that vow which now filled him with such
anguish.

Pierre shuddered amidst his reverie. Would he have the strength to keep
that vow forever? Had he not detected a feeling of impatience in his
heart even whilst he was waiting for her at the railway station, a
jealous longing to leave that Lourdes which she loved too well, in the
vague hope that she might again become his own, somewhere far away? If he
had not been a priest he would have married her. And what rapture, what
felicity would then have been his! He would have given himself wholly
unto her, she would have been wholly his own, and he and she would have
lived again in the dear child that would doubtless have been born to
them. Ah! surely that alone was divine, the life which is complete, the
life which creates life! And then his reverie strayed: he pictured
himself married, and the thought filled him with such delight that he
asked why such a dream should be unrealisable? She knew no more than a
child of ten; he would educate her, form her mind. She would then
understand that this cure for which she thought herself indebted to the
Blessed Virgin, had in reality come to her from the Only Mother, serene
and impassive Nature. But even whilst he was thus settling things in his
mind, a kind of terror, born of his religious education, arose within
him. Could he tell if that human happiness with which he desired to endow
her would ever be worth as much as the holy ignorance, the infantile
candour in which she now lived? How bitterly he would reproach himself
afterwards if she should not be happy. Then, too, what a drama it would
all be; he to throw off the cassock, and marry this girl healed by an
alleged miracle--ravage her faith sufficiently to induce her to consent
to such sacrilege? Yet therein lay the brave course; there lay reason,
life, real manhood, real womanhood. Why, then, did he not dare? Horrible
sadness was breaking upon his reverie, he became conscious of nothing
beyond the sufferings of his poor heart.

The train was still rolling along with its great noise of flapping wings.
Beside Pierre and Marie, only Sister Hyacinthe was still awake amidst the
weary slumber of the carriage; and just then, Marie leant towards Pierre,
and softly said to him: “It’s strange, my friend; I am so sleepy, and yet
I can’t sleep.” Then, with alight laugh, she added: “I’ve got Paris in my
head!”

“How is that--Paris?”

“Yes, yes. I’m thinking that it’s waiting for me, that I am about to
return to it--that Paris which I know nothing of, and where I shall have
to live!”

These words brought fresh anguish to Pierre’s heart. He had well foreseen
it; she could no longer belong to him, she would belong to others. If
Lourdes had restored her to him, Paris was about to take her from him
again. And he pictured this ignorant little being fatally acquiring all
the education of woman. That little spotless soul which had remained so
candid in the frame of a big girl of three-and-twenty, that soul which
illness had kept apart from others, far from life, far even from novels,
would soon ripen, now that it could fly freely once more. He beheld her,
a gay, healthy young girl, running everywhere, looking and learning, and,
some day, meeting the husband who would finish her education.

“And so,” said he, “you propose to amuse yourself in Paris?”

“Oh! what are you saying, my friend? Are we rich enough to amuse
ourselves?” she replied. “No, I was thinking of my poor sister Blanche,
and wondering what I should be able to do in Paris to help her a little.
She is so good, she works so hard; I don’t wish that she should have to
continue earning all the money.”

And, after a fresh pause, as he, deeply moved, remained silent, she
added: “Formerly, before I suffered so dreadfully, I painted miniatures
rather nicely. You remember, don’t you, that I painted a portrait of papa
which was very like him, and which everybody praised. You will help me,
won’t you? You will find me customers?”

Then she began talking of the new life which she was about to live. She
wanted to arrange her room and hang it with cretonne, something pretty,
with a pattern of little blue flowers. She would buy it out of the first
money she could save. Blanche had spoken to her of the big shops where
things could be bought so cheaply. To go out with Blanche and run about a
little would be so amusing for her, who, confined to her bed since
childhood, had never seen anything. Then Pierre, who for a moment had
been calmer, again began to suffer, for he could divine all her glowing
desire to live, her ardour to see everything, know everything, and taste
everything. It was at last the awakening of the woman whom she was
destined to be, whom he had divined in childhood’s days--a dear creature
of gaiety and passion, with blooming lips, starry eyes, a milky
complexion, golden hair, all resplendent with the joy of being.

“Oh! I shall work, I shall work,” she resumed; “but you are right,
Pierre, I shall also amuse myself, because it cannot be a sin to be gay,
can it?”

“No, surely not, Marie.”

“On Sundays we will go into the country, oh very far away, into the woods
where there are beautiful trees. And we will sometimes go to the theatre,
too, if papa will take us. I have been told that there are many plays
that one may see. But, after all, it’s not all that. Provided I can go
out and walk in the streets and see things, I shall be so happy; I shall
come home so gay. It is so nice to live, is it not, Pierre?”

“Yes, yes, Marie, it is very nice.”

A chill like that of death was coming over him; his regret that he was no
longer a man was filling him with agony. But since she tempted him like
this with her irritating candour, why should he not confess to her the
truth which was ravaging his being? He would have won her, have conquered
her. Never had a more frightful struggle arisen between his heart and his
will. For a moment he was on the point of uttering irrevocable words.

But with the voice of a joyous child she was already resuming: “Oh! look
at poor papa; how pleased he must be to sleep so soundly!”

On the seat in front of them M. de Guersaint was indeed slumbering with a
comfortable expression on his face, as though he were in his bed, and had
no consciousness of the continual jolting of the train. This monotonous
rolling and heaving seemed, in fact, a lullaby rocking the whole carriage
to sleep. All surrendered themselves to it, sinking powerless on to the
piles of bags and parcels, many of which had also fallen; and the
rhythmical growling of the wheels never ceased in the unknown darkness
through which the train was still rolling. Now and again, as they passed
through a station or under a bridge, there would be a loud rush of wind,
a tempest would suddenly sweep by; and then the lulling, growling sound
would begin again, ever the same for hours together.

Marie gently took hold of Pierre’s hands; he and she were so lost, so
completely alone among all those prostrated beings, in the deep, rumbling
peacefulness of the train flying across the black night. And sadness, the
sadness which she had hitherto hidden, had again come back to her,
casting a shadow over her large blue eyes.

“You will often come with us, my good Pierre, won’t you?” she asked.

He had started on feeling her little hand pressing his own. His heart was
on his lips, he was making up his mind to speak. However, he once again
restrained himself and stammered: “I am not always at liberty, Marie; a
priest cannot go everywhere.”

“A priest?” she repeated. “Yes, yes, a priest. I understand.”

Then it was she who spoke, who confessed the mortal secret which had been
oppressing her heart ever since they had started. She leant nearer, and
in a lower voice resumed: “Listen, my good Pierre; I am fearfully sad. I
may look pleased, but there is death in my soul. You did not tell me the
truth yesterday.”

He became quite scared, but did not at first understand her. “I did not
tell you the truth--About what?” he asked.

A kind of shame restrained her, and she again hesitated at the moment of
descending into the depths of another conscience than her own. Then, like
a friend, a sister, she continued: “No, you let me believe that you had
been saved with me, and it was not true, Pierre, you have not found your
lost faith again.”

Good Lord! she knew. For him this was desolation, such a catastrophe that
he forgot his torments. And, at first, he obstinately clung to the
falsehood born of his fraternal charity. “But I assure you, Marie. How
can you have formed such a wicked idea?”

“Oh! be quiet, my friend, for pity’s sake. It would grieve me too deeply
if you were to speak to me falsely again. It was yonder, at the station,
at the moment when we were starting, and that unhappy man had died. Good
Abbe Judaine had knelt down to pray for the repose of that rebellious
soul. And I divined everything, I understood everything when I saw that
you did not kneel as well, that prayer did not rise to your lips as to
his.”

“But, really, I assure you, Marie--”

“No, no, you did not pray for the dead; you no longer believe. And
besides, there is something else; something I can guess, something which
comes to me from you, a despair which you can’t hide from me, a
melancholy look which comes into your poor eyes directly they meet mine.
The Blessed Virgin did not grant my prayer, she did not restore your
faith, and I am very, very wretched.”

She was weeping, a hot tear fell upon the priest’s hand, which she was
still holding. It quite upset him, and he ceased struggling, confessing,
in his turn letting his tears flow, whilst, in a very low voice, he
stammered: “Ah! Marie, I am very wretched also. Oh! so very wretched.”

For a moment they remained silent, in their cruel grief at feeling that
the abyss which parts different beliefs was yawning between them. They
would never belong to one another again, and they were in despair at
being so utterly unable to bring themselves nearer to one another; but
the severance was henceforth definitive, since Heaven itself had been
unable to reconnect the bond. And thus, side by side, they wept over
their separation.

“I who prayed so fervently for your conversion,” she said in a dolorous
voice, “I who was so happy. It had seemed to me that your soul was
mingling with mine; and it was so delightful to have been saved together,
together. I felt such strength for life; oh, strength enough to raise the
world!”

He did not answer; his tears were still flowing, flowing without end.

“And to think,” she resumed, “that I was saved all alone; that this great
happiness fell upon me without you having any share in it. And to see you
so forsaken, so desolate, when I am loaded with grace and joy, rends my
heart. Ah! how severe the Blessed Virgin has been! Why did she not heal
your soul at the same time that she healed my body?”

The last opportunity was presenting itself; he ought to have illumined
this innocent creature’s mind with the light of reason, have explained
the miracle to her, in order that life, after accomplishing its healthful
work in her body, might complete its triumph by throwing them into one
another’s arms. He also was healed, his mind was healthy now, and it was
not for the loss of faith, but for the loss of herself, that he was
weeping. However, invincible compassion was taking possession of him
amidst all his grief. No, no, he would not trouble that dear soul; he
would not rob her of her belief, which some day might prove her only stay
amidst the sorrows of this world. One cannot yet require of children and
women the bitter heroism of reason. He had not the strength to do it; he
even thought that he had not the right. It would have seemed to him
violation, abominable murder. And he did not speak out, but his tears
flowed, hotter and hotter, in this immolation of his love, this
despairing sacrifice of his own happiness in order that she might remain
candid and ignorant and gay at heart.

“Oh, Marie, how wretched I am! Nowhere on the roads, nowhere at the
galleys even, is there a man more wretched than myself! Oh, Marie, if you
only knew; if you only knew how wretched I am!”

She was distracted, and caught him in her trembling arms, wishing to
console him with a sisterly embrace. And at that moment the woman awaking
within her understood everything, and she herself sobbed with sorrow that
both human and divine will should thus part them. She had never yet
reflected on such things, but suddenly she caught a glimpse of life, with
its passions, its struggles, and its sufferings; and then, seeking for
what she might say to soothe in some degree that broken heart, she
stammered very faintly, distressed that she could find nothing sweet
enough, “I know, I know--”

Then the words it was needful she should speak came to her; and as though
that which she had to say ought only to be heard by the angels, she
became anxious and looked around her. But the slumber which reigned in
the carriage seemed more heavy even than before. Her father was still
sleeping, with the innocent look of a big child. Not one of the pilgrims,
not one of the ailing ones, had stirred amidst the rough rocking which
bore them onward. Even Sister Hyacinthe, giving way to her overpowering
weariness, had just closed her eyes, after drawing the lamp-screen in her
own compartment. And now there were only vague shadows there, ill-defined
bodies amidst nameless things, ghostly forms scarce visible, which a
tempest blast, a furious rush, was carrying on and on through the
darkness. And she likewise distrusted that black country-side whose
unknown depths went by on either side of the train without one even being
able to tell what forests, what rivers, what hills one was crossing. A
short time back some bright sparks of light had appeared, possibly the
lights of some distant forges, or the woeful lamps of workers or
sufferers. Now, however, the night again streamed deeply all around, the
obscure, infinite, nameless sea, farther and farther through which they
ever went, not knowing where they were.

Then, with a chaste confusion, blushing amidst her tears, Marie placed
her lips near Pierre’s ear. “Listen, my friend; there is a great secret
between the Blessed Virgin and myself. I had sworn that I would never
tell it to anybody. But you are too unhappy, you are suffering too
bitterly; she will forgive me; I will confide it to you.”

And in a faint breath she went on: “During that night of love, you know,
that night of burning ecstasy which I spent before the Grotto, I engaged
myself by a vow: I promised the Blessed Virgin the gift of my chastity if
she would but heal me.... She has healed me, and never--you hear me,
Pierre, never will I marry anybody.”

Ah! what unhoped-for sweetness! He thought that a balmy dew was falling
on his poor wounded heart. It was a divine enchantment, a delicious
relief. If she belonged to none other she would always be a little bit
his own. And how well she had known his torment and what it was needful
she should say in order that life might yet be possible for him.

In his turn he wished to find happy words and promise that he also would
ever be hers, ever love her as he had loved her since childhood, like the
dear creature she was, whose one kiss, long, long ago, had sufficed to
perfume his entire life. But she made him stop, already anxious, fearing
to spoil that pure moment. “No, no, my friend,” she murmured, “let us say
nothing more; it would be wrong, perhaps. I am very weary; I shall sleep
quietly now.”

And, with her head against his shoulder, she fell asleep at once, like a
sister who is all confidence. He for a moment kept himself awake in that
painful happiness of renunciation which they had just tasted together. It
was all over, quite over now; the sacrifice was consummated. He would
live a solitary life, apart from the life of other men. Never would he
know woman, never would any child be born to him. And there remained to
him only the consoling pride of that accepted and desired suicide, with
the desolate grandeur that attaches to lives which are beyond the pale of
nature.

But fatigue overpowered him also; his eyes closed, and in his turn he
fell asleep. And afterwards his head slipped down, and his cheek touched
the cheek of his dear friend, who was sleeping very gently with her brow
against his shoulder. Then their hair mingled. She had her golden hair,
her royal hair, half unbound, and it streamed over his face, and he
dreamed amidst its perfume. Doubtless the same blissful dream fell upon
them both, for their loving faces assumed the same expression of rapture;
they both seemed to be smiling to the angels. It was chaste and
passionate abandon, the innocence of chance slumber placing them in one
another’s arms, with warm, close lips so that their breath mingled, like
the breath of two babes lying in the same cradle. And such was their
bridal night, the consummation of the spiritual marriage in which they
were to live, a delicious annihilation born of extreme fatigue, with
scarcely a fleeting dream of mystical possession, amidst that carriage of
wretchedness and suffering, which still and ever rolled along through the
dense night. Hours and hours slipped by, the wheels growled, the bags and
baskets swung from the brass hooks, whilst from the piled-up, crushed
bodies there only arose a sense of terrible fatigue, the great physical
exhaustion brought back from the land of miracles when the overworked
souls returned home.

At last, at five o’clock, whilst the sun was rising, there was a sudden
awakening, a resounding entry into a large station, with porters calling,
doors opening, and people scrambling together. They were at Poitiers, and
at once the whole carriage was on foot, amidst a chorus of laughter and
exclamations. Little Sophie Couteau alighted here, and was bidding
everybody farewell. She embraced all the ladies, even passing over the
partition to take leave of Sister Claire des Anges, whom nobody had seen
since the previous evening, for, silent and slight of build, with eyes
full of mystery, she had vanished into her corner. Then the child came
back again, took her little parcel, and showed herself particularly
amiable towards Sister Hyacinthe and Madame de Jonquiere.

“_Au revoir_, Sister! _Au revoir_, madame! I thank you for all your
kindness.”

“You must come back again next year, my child.”

“Oh, I sha’n’t fail, Sister; it’s my duty.”

“And be good, my dear child, and take care of your health, so that the
Blessed Virgin may be proud of you.”

“To be sure, madame, she was so good to me, and it amuses me so much to
go to see her.”

When she was on the platform, all the pilgrims in the carriage leaned
out, and with happy faces watched her go off.

“Till next year!” they called to her; “till next year!”

“Yes, yes, thank you kindly. Till next year.”

The morning prayer was only to be said at Chatelherault. After the
stoppage at Poitiers, when the train was once more rolling on in the
fresh breeze of morning, M. de Guersaint gaily declared that he had slept
delightfully, in spite of the hardness of the seat. Madame de Jonquiere
also congratulated herself on the good rest which she had had, and of
which she had been in so much need; though, at the same time, she was
somewhat annoyed at having left Sister Hyacinthe all alone to watch over
La Grivotte, who was now shivering with intense fever, again attacked by
her horrible cough. Meanwhile the other female pilgrims were tidying
themselves. The ten women at the far end were fastening their _fichus_
and tying their cap strings, with a kind of modest nervousness displayed
on their mournfully ugly faces. And Elise Rouquet, all attention, with
her face close to her pocket glass, did not cease examining her nose,
mouth, and cheeks, admiring herself with the thought that she was really
and truly becoming nice-looking.

And it was then that Pierre and Marie again experienced a feeling of deep
compassion on glancing at Madame Vincent, whom nothing had been able to
rouse from a state of torpor, neither the tumultuous stoppage at
Poitiers, nor the noise of voices which had continued ever since they had
started off again. Prostrate on the seat, she had not opened her eyes,
but still and ever slumbered, tortured by atrocious dreams. And, with big
tears still streaming from her closed eyes, she had caught hold of the
pillow which had been forced upon her, and was closely pressing it to her
breast in some nightmare born of her suffering. Her poor arms, which had
so long carried her dying daughter, her arms now unoccupied, forever
empty, had found this cushion whilst she slept, and had coiled around
them, as around a phantom, with a blind and frantic embrace.

On the other hand, M. Sabathier had woke up feeling quite joyous. Whilst
his wife was pulling up his rug, carefully wrapping it round his lifeless
legs; he began to chat with sparkling eyes, once more basking in
illusion. He had dreamt of Lourdes, said he, and had seen the Blessed
Virgin leaning towards him with a smile of kindly promise. And then,
although he had before him both Madame Vincent, that mother whose
daughter the Virgin had allowed to die, and La Grivotte, the wretched
woman whom she had healed and who had so cruelly relapsed into her mortal
disease, he nevertheless rejoiced and made merry, repeating to M. de
Guersaint, with an air of perfect conviction: “Oh! I shall return home
quite easy in mind, monsieur--I shall be cured next year. Yes, yes, as
that dear little girl said just now: ‘Till next year, till next year!’”

It was indestructible illusion, victorious even over certainty, eternal
hope determined not to die, but shooting up with more life than ever,
after each defeat, upon the ruins of everything.

At Chatelherault, Sister Hyacinthe made them say the morning prayer, the
“Pater,” the “Ave,” the “Credo,” and an appeal to God begging Him for the
happiness of a glorious day: “O God, grant me sufficient strength that I
may avoid all that is evil, do all that is good, and suffer without
complaint every pain.”




V. THE DEATH OP BERNADETTE--THE NEW RELIGION

AND the journey continued; the train rolled, still rolled along.
At Sainte-Maure the prayers of the mass were said, and at
Sainte-Pierre-des-Corps the “Credo” was chanted. However, the religious
exercises no longer proved so welcome; the pilgrims’ zeal was flagging
somewhat in the increasing fatigue of their return journey, after such
prolonged mental excitement. It occurred to Sister Hyacinthe that the
happiest way of entertaining these poor worn-out folks would be for
someone to read aloud; and she promised that she would allow Monsieur
l’Abbe to read them the finish of Bernadette’s life, some of the
marvellous episodes of which he had already on two occasions related to
them. However, they must wait until they arrived at Les Aubrais; there
would be nearly two hours between Les Aubrais and Etampes, ample time to
finish the story without being disturbed.

Then the various religious exercises followed one after the other, in a
monotonous repetition of the order which had been observed whilst they
crossed the same plains on their way to Lourdes. They again began the
Rosary at Amboise, where they said the first chaplet, the five joyful
mysteries; then, after singing the canticle, “O loving Mother, bless,” at
Blois, they recited the second chaplet, the five sorrowful mysteries, at
Beaugency. Some little fleecy clouds had veiled the sun since morning,
and the landscapes, very sweet and somewhat sad, flew by with a
continuous fan-like motion. The trees and houses on either side of the
line disappeared in the grey light with the fleetness of vague visions,
whilst the distant hills, enveloped in mist, vanished more slowly, with
the gentle rise and fall of a swelling sea. Between Beaugency and Les
Aubrais the train seemed to slacken speed, though it still kept up its
rhythmical, persistent rumbling, which the deafened pilgrims no longer
even heard.

At length, when Les Aubrais had been left behind, they began to lunch in
the carriage. It was then a quarter to twelve, and when they had said the
“Angelus,” and the three “Aves” had been thrice repeated, Pierre took
from Marie’s bag the little book whose blue cover was ornamented with an
artless picture of Our Lady of Lourdes. Sister Hyacinthe clapped her
hands as a signal for silence, and amidst general wakefulness and ardent
curiosity like that of big children impassioned by the marvellous story,
the priest was able to begin reading in his fine, penetrating voice. Now
came the narrative of Bernadette’s sojourn at Nevers, and then her death
there. Pierre, however, as on the two previous occasions, soon ceased
following the exact text of the little book, and added charming anecdotes
of his own, both what he knew and what he could divine; and, for himself
alone, he again evolved the true story, the human, pitiful story, that
which none had ever told, but which he felt so deeply.

It was on the 8th July, 1866, that Bernadette left Lourdes. She went to
take the veil at Nevers, in the convent of Saint-Gildard, the chief
habitation of the Sisters on duty at the Asylum where she had learnt to
read and had been living for eight years. She was then twenty-two years
of age, and it was eight years since the Blessed Virgin had appeared to
her. And her farewells to the Grotto, to the Basilica, to the whole town
which she loved, were watered with tears. But she could no longer remain
there, owing to the continuous persecution of public curiosity, the
visits, the homage, and the adoration paid to her, from which, on account
of her delicate health, she suffered cruelly. Her sincere humility, her
timid love of shade and silence, had at last produced in her an ardent
desire to disappear, to hide her resounding glory--the glory of one whom
heaven had chosen and whom the world would not leave in peace--in the
depth of some unknown darkness; and she longed only for
simple-mindedness, for a quiet humdrum life devoted to prayer and petty
daily occupations. Her departure was therefore a relief both to her and
to the Grotto, which she was beginning to embarrass with her excessive
innocence and burdensome complaints.

At Nevers, Saint-Gildard ought to have proved a paradise. She there found
fresh air, sunshine, spacious apartments, and an extensive garden planted
with fine trees. Yet she did not enjoy peace,--that utter forgetfulness
of the world for which one flees to the far-away desert. Scarcely twenty
days after her arrival, she donned the garb of the Order and assumed the
name of Sister Marie-Bernard, for the time simply engaging herself by
partial vows. However, the world still flocked around her, the
persecution of the multitude began afresh. She was pursued even into the
cloister through an irresistible desire to obtain favours from her
saintly person. Ah! to see her, touch her, become lucky by gazing on her
or surreptitiously rubbing some medal against her dress. It was the
credulous passion of fetishism, a rush of believers pursuing this poor
beatified being in the desire which each felt to secure a share of hope
and divine illusion. She wept at it with very weariness, with impatient
revolt, and often repeated: “Why do they torment me like this? What more
is there in me than in others?” And at last she felt real grief at thus
becoming “the raree-show,” as she ended by calling herself with a sad,
suffering smile. She defended herself as far as she could, refusing to
see anyone. Her companions defended her also, and sometimes very sternly,
showing her only to such visitors as were authorised by the Bishop. The
doors of the Convent remained closed, and ecclesiastics almost alone
succeeded in effecting an entrance. Still, even this was too much for her
desire for solitude, and she often had to be obstinate, to request that
the priests who had called might be sent away, weary as she was of always
telling the same story, of ever answering the same questions. She was
incensed, wounded, on behalf of the Blessed Virgin herself. Still, she
sometimes had to yield, for the Bishop in person would bring great
personages, dignitaries, and prelates; and she would then appear with her
grave air, answering politely and as briefly as possible; only feeling at
ease when she was allowed to return to her shadowy corner. Never, indeed,
had distinction weighed more heavily on a mortal. One day, when she was
asked if she was not proud of the continual visits paid her by the
Bishop, she answered simply: “Monseigneur does not come to see me, he
comes to show me.” On another occasion some princes of the Church, great
militant Catholics, who wished to see her, were overcome with emotion and
sobbed before her; but, in her horror of being shown, in the vexation
they caused her simple mind, she left them without comprehending, merely
feeling very weary and very sad.

At length, however, she grew accustomed to Saint-Gildard, and spent a
peaceful existence there, engaged in avocations of which she became very
fond. She was so delicate, so frequently ill, that she was employed in
the infirmary. In addition to the little assistance she rendered there,
she worked with her needle, with which she became rather skilful,
embroidering albs and altar-cloths in a delicate manner. But at times
she, would lose all strength, and be unable to do even this light work.
When she was not confined to her bed she spent long days in an
easy-chair, her only diversion being to recite her rosary or to read some
pious work. Now that she had learnt to read, books interested her,
especially the beautiful stories of conversion, the delightful legends in
which saints of both sexes appear, and the splendid and terrible dramas
in which the devil is baffled and cast back into hell. But her great
favourite, the book at which she continually marvelled, was the Bible,
that wonderful New Testament of whose perpetual miracle she never
wearied. She remembered the Bible at Bartres, that old book which had
been in the family a hundred years, and whose pages had turned yellow;
she could again see her foster-father slip a pin between the leaves to
open the book at random, and then read aloud from the top of the
right-hand page; and even at that time she had already known those
beautiful stories so well that she could have continued repeating the
narrative by heart, whatever might be the passage at which the perusal
had ceased. And now that she read the book herself, she found in it a
constant source of surprise, an ever-increasing delight. The story of the
Passion particularly upset her, as though it were some extraordinary
tragical event that had happened only the day before. She sobbed with
pity; it made her poor suffering body quiver for hours. Mingled with her
tears, perhaps, there was the unconscious dolour of her own passion, the
desolate Calvary which she also had been ascending ever since her
childhood.

When Bernadette was well and able to perform her duties in the infirmary,
she bustled about, filling the building with childish liveliness. Until
her death she remained an innocent, infantile being, fond of laughing,
romping, and play. She was very little, the smallest Sister of the
community, so that her companions always treated her somewhat like a
child. Her face grew long and hollow, and lost its bloom of youth; but
she retained the pure divine brightness of her eyes, the beautiful eyes
of a visionary, in which, as in a limpid sky, you detected the flight of
her dreams. As she grew older and her sufferings increased, she became
somewhat sour-tempered and violent, cross-grained, anxious, and at times
rough; little imperfections which after each attack filled her with
remorse. She would humble herself, think herself damned, and beg pardon
of everyone. But, more frequently, what a good little daughter of
Providence she was! She became lively, alert, quick at repartee, full of
mirth-provoking remarks, with a grace quite her own, which made her
beloved. In spite of her great devotion, although she spent days in
prayer, she was not at all bigoted or over-exacting with regard to
others, but tolerant and compassionate. In fact, no nun was ever so much
a woman, with distinct features, a decided personality, charming even in
its puerility. And this gift of childishness which she had retained, the
simple innocence of the child she still was, also made children love her,
as though they recognised in her one of themselves. They all ran to her,
jumped upon her lap, and passed their tiny arms round her neck, and the
garden would then fill with the noise of joyous games, races, and cries;
and it was not she who ran or cried the least, so happy was she at once
more feeling herself a poor unknown little girl as in the far-away days
of Bartres! Later on it was related that a mother had one day brought her
paralysed child to the convent for the saint to touch and cure it. The
woman sobbed so much that the Superior ended by consenting to make the
attempt. However, as Bernadette indignantly protested whenever she was
asked to perform a miracle, she was not forewarned, but simply called to
take the sick child to the infirmary. And she did so, and when she stood
the child on the ground it walked. It was cured.

Ah! how many times must Bartres and her free childhood spent watching her
lambs--the years passed among the hills, in the long grass, in the leafy
woods--have returned to her during the hours she gave to her dreams when
weary of praying for sinners! No one then fathomed her soul, no one could
say if involuntary regrets did not rend her wounded heart. One day she
spoke some words, which her historians have preserved, with the view of
making her passion more touching. Cloistered far away from her mountains,
confined to a bed of sickness, she exclaimed: “It seems to me that I was
made to live, to act, to be ever on the move, and yet the Lord will have
me remain motionless.” What a revelation, full of terrible testimony and
immense sadness! Why should the Lord wish that dear being, all grace and
gaiety, to remain motionless? Could she not have honoured Him equally
well by living the free, healthy life that she had been born to live? And
would she not have done more to increase the world’s happiness and her
own if, instead of praying for sinners, her constant occupation, she had
given her love to the husband who might have been united to her and to
the children who might have been born to her? She, so gay and so active,
would, on certain evenings, become extremely depressed. She turned gloomy
and remained wrapped in herself, as though overcome by excess of pain. No
doubt the cup was becoming too bitter. The thought of her life’s
perpetual renunciation was killing her.

Did Bernadette often think of Lourdes whilst she was at Saint-Gildard?
What knew she of the triumph of the Grotto, of the prodigies which were
daily transforming the land of miracles? These questions were never
thoroughly elucidated. Her companions were forbidden to talk to her of
such matters, which remained enveloped in absolute, continual silence.
She herself did not care to speak of them; she kept silent with regard to
the mysterious past, and evinced no desire to know the present, however
triumphant it might be. But all the same did not her heart, in
imagination, fly away to the enchanted country of her childhood, where
lived her kith and kin, where all her life-ties had been formed, where
she had left the most extraordinary dream that ever human being dreamt?
Surely she must have sometimes travelled the beautiful journey of memory,
she must have known the main features of the great events that had taken
place at Lourdes. What she most dreaded was to go there herself, and, she
always refused to do so, knowing full well that she could not remain
unrecognised, and fearful of meeting the crowds whose adoration awaited
her. What glory would have been hers had she been headstrong, ambitious,
domineering! She would have returned to the holy spot of her visions,
have worked miracles there, have become a priestess, a female pope, with
the infallibility and sovereignty of one of the elect, a friend of the
Blessed Virgin. But the Fathers never really feared this, although
express orders had been given to withdraw her from the world for her
salvation’s sake. In reality they were easy, for they knew her, so gentle
and so humble in her fear of becoming divine, in her ignorance of the
colossal machine which she had put in motion, and the working of which
would have made her recoil with affright had she understood it. No, no!
that was no longer her land, that place of crowds, of violence and
trafficking. She would have suffered too much there, she would have been
out of her element, bewildered, ashamed. And so, when pilgrims bound
thither asked her with a smile, “Will you come with us?” she shivered
slightly, and then hastily replied, “No, no! but how I should like to,
were I a little bird!”

Her reverie alone was that little travelling bird, with rapid flight and
noiseless wings, which continually went on pilgrimage to the Grotto. In
her dreams, indeed, she must have continually lived at Lourdes, though in
the flesh she had not even gone there for either her father’s or her
mother’s funeral. Yet she loved her kin; she was anxious to procure work
for her relations who had remained poor, and she had insisted on seeing
her eldest brother, who, coming to Nevers to complain, had been refused
admission to the convent. However, he found her weary and resigned, and
she did not ask him a single question about New Lourdes, as though that
rising town were no longer her own. The year of the crowning of the
Virgin, a priest whom she had deputed to pray for her before the Grotto
came back and told her of the never-to-be forgotten wonders of the
ceremony, the hundred thousand pilgrims who had flocked to it, and the
five-and-thirty bishops in golden vestments who had assembled in the
resplendent Basilica. Whilst listening, she trembled with her customary
little quiver of desire and anxiety. And when the priest exclaimed, “Ah!
if you had only seen that pomp!” she answered: “Me! I was much better
here in my little corner in the infirmary.” They had robbed her of her
glory; her work shone forth resplendently amidst a continuous hosanna,
and she only tasted joy in forgetfulness, in the gloom of the cloister,
where the opulent farmers of the Grotto forgot her. It was never the
re-echoing solemnities that prompted her mysterious journeys; the little
bird of her soul only winged its lonesome flight to Lourdes on days of
solitude, in the peaceful hours when no one could there disturb its
devotions. It was before the wild primitive Grotto that she returned to
kneel, amongst the bushy eglantine, as in the days when the Gave was not
walled in by a monumental quay. And it was the old town that she visited
at twilight, when the cool, perfumed breezes came down from the
mountains, the old painted and gilded semi-Spanish church where she had
made her first communion, the old Asylum so full of suffering where
during eight years she had grown accustomed to solitude--all that poor,
innocent old town, whose every paving-stone awoke old affections in her
memory’s depths.

And did Bernadette ever extend the pilgrimage of her dreams as far as
Bartres? Probably, at times when she sat in her invalid-chair and let
some pious book slip from her tired hands, and closed her eyes, Bartres
did appear to her, lighting up the darkness of her view. The little
antique Romanesque church with sky-blue nave and blood-red altar screens
stood there amidst the tombs of the narrow cemetery. Then she would find
herself once more in the house of the Lagues, in the large room on the
left, where the fire was burning, and where, in winter-time, such
wonderful stories were told whilst the big clock gravely ticked the hours
away. At times the whole countryside spread out before her, meadows
without end, giant chestnut-trees beneath which you lost yourself,
deserted table-lands whence you descried the distant mountains, the Pic
du Midi and the Pic de Viscos soaring aloft as airy and as rose-coloured
as dreams, in a paradise such as the legends have depicted. And
afterwards, afterwards came her free childhood, when she scampered off
whither she listed in the open air, her lonely, dreamy thirteenth year,
when with all the joy of living she wandered through the immensity of
nature. And now, too, perhaps, she again beheld herself roaming in the
tall grass among the hawthorn bushes beside the streams on a warm sunny
day in June. Did she not picture herself grown, with a lover of her own
age, whom she would have loved with all the simplicity and affection of
her heart? Ah! to be a child again, to be free, unknown, happy once more,
to love afresh, and to love differently! The vision must have passed
confusedly before her--a husband who worshipped her, children gaily
growing up around her, the life that everybody led, the joys and sorrows
that her own parents had known, and which her children would have had to
know in their turn. But little by little all vanished, and she again
found herself in her chair of suffering, imprisoned between four cold
walls, with no other desire than a longing one for a speedy death, since
she had been denied a share of the poor common happiness of this world.

Bernadette’s ailments increased each year. It was, in fact, the
commencement of her passion, the passion of this new child-Messiah, who
had come to bring relief to the unhappy, to announce to mankind the
religion of divine justice and equality in the face of miracles which
flouted the laws of impassible nature. If she now rose it was only to
drag herself from chair to chair for a few days at a time, and then she
would have a relapse and be again forced to take to her bed. Her
sufferings became terrible. Her hereditary nervousness, her asthma,
aggravated by cloister life, had probably turned into phthisis. She
coughed frightfully, each fit rending her burning chest and leaving her
half dead. To complete her misery, caries of the right knee-cap
supervened, a gnawing disease, the shooting pains of which caused her to
cry aloud. Her poor body, to which dressings were continually being
applied, became one great sore, which was irritated by the warmth of her
bed, by her prolonged sojourn between sheets whose friction ended by
breaking her skin. One and all pitied her; those who beheld her martyrdom
said that it was impossible to suffer more, or with greater fortitude.
She tried some of the Lourdes water, but it brought her no relief. Lord,
Almighty King, why cure others and not cure her? To save her soul? Then
dost Thou not save the souls of the others? What an inexplicable
selection! How absurd that in the eternal evolution of worlds it should
be necessary for this poor being to be tortured! She sobbed, and again
and again said in order to keep up her courage: “Heaven is at the end,
but how long the end is in coming!” There was ever the idea that
suffering is the test, that it is necessary to suffer upon earth if one
would triumph elsewhere, that suffering is indispensable, enviable, and
blessed. But is this not blasphemous, O Lord? Hast Thou not created youth
and joy? Is it Thy wish that Thy creatures should enjoy neither the sun,
nor the smiling Nature which Thou hast created, nor the human affections
with which Thou hast endowed their flesh? She dreaded the feeling of
revolt which maddened her at times, and wished also to strengthen herself
against the disease which made her groan, and she crucified herself in
thought, extending her arms so as to form a cross and unite herself to
Jesus, her limbs against His limbs, her mouth against His mouth,
streaming the while with blood like Him, and steeped like Him in
bitterness! Jesus died in three hours, but a longer agony fell to her,
who again brought redemption by pain, who died to give others life. When
her bones ached with agony she would sometimes utter complaints, but she
reproached herself immediately. “Oh! how I suffer, oh! how I suffer! but
what happiness it is to bear this pain!” There can be no more frightful
words, words pregnant with a blacker pessimism. Happy to suffer, O Lord!
but why, and to what unknown and senseless end? Where is the reason in
this useless cruelty, in this revolting glorification of suffering, when
from the whole of humanity there ascends but one desperate longing for
health and happiness?

In the midst of her frightful sufferings, however, Sister Marie-Bernard
took the final vows on September 22, 1878. Twenty years had gone by since
the Blessed Virgin had appeared to her, visiting her as the Angel had
visited the Virgin, choosing her as the Virgin had been chosen, amongst
the most lowly and the most candid, that she might hide within her the
secret of King Jesus. Such was the mystical explanation of that election
of suffering, the _raison d’etre_ of that being who was so harshly
separated from her fellows, weighed down by disease, transformed into the
pitiable field of every human affliction. She was the “garden inclosed” *
that brings such pleasure to the gaze of the Spouse. He had chosen her,
then buried her in the death of her hidden life. And even when the
unhappy creature staggered beneath the weight of her cross, her
companions would say to her: “Do you forget that the Blessed Virgin
promised you that you should be happy, not in this world, but in the
next?” And with renewed strength, and striking her forehead, she would
answer: “Forget? no, no! it is here!” She only recovered temporary energy
by means of this illusion of a paradise of glory, into which she would
enter escorted by seraphims, to be forever and ever happy. The three
personal secrets which the Blessed Virgin had confided to her, to arm her
against evil, must have been promises of beauty, felicity, and
immortality in heaven. What monstrous dupery if there were only the
darkness of the earth beyond the grave, if the Blessed Virgin of her
dream were not there to meet her with the prodigious guerdons she had
promised! But Bernadette had not a doubt; she willingly undertook all the
little commissions with which her companions naively entrusted her for
Heaven: “Sister Marie-Bernard, you’ll say this, you’ll say that, to the
Almighty.” “Sister Marie-Bernard, you’ll kiss my brother if you meet him
in Paradise.” “Sister Marie-Bernard, give me a little place beside you
when I die.” And she obligingly answered each one: “Have no fear, I will
do it!” Ah! all-powerful illusion, delicious repose, power ever reviving
and consolatory!

  * Song of Solomon iv. 12.

And then came the last agony, then came death.

On Friday, March 28, 1879, it was thought that she would not last the
night. She had a despairing longing for the tomb, in order that she might
suffer no more, and live again in heaven. And thus she obstinately
refused to receive extreme unction, saying that twice already it had
cured her. She wished, in short, that God would let her die, for it was
more than she could bear; it would have been unreasonable to require that
she should suffer longer. Yet she ended by consenting to receive the
sacraments, and her last agony was thereby prolonged for nearly three
weeks. The priest who attended her frequently said: “My daughter, you
must make the sacrifice of your life”; and one day, quite out of
patience, she sharply answered him: “But, Father, it is no sacrifice.” A
terrible saying, that also, for it implied disgust at _being_, furious
contempt for existence, and an immediate ending of her humanity, had she
had the power to suppress herself by a gesture. It is true that the poor
girl had nothing to regret, that she had been compelled to banish
everything from her life, health, joy, and love, so that she might leave
it as one casts off a soiled, worn, tattered garment. And she was right;
she condemned her useless, cruel life when she said: “My passion will
finish only at my death; it will not cease until I enter into eternity.”
 And this idea of her passion pursued her, attaching her more closely to
the cross with her Divine Master. She had induced them to give her a
large crucifix; she pressed it vehemently against her poor maidenly
breast, exclaiming that she would like to thrust it into her bosom and
leave it there. Towards the end, her strength completely forsook her, and
she could no longer grasp the crucifix with her trembling hands. “Let it
be tightly tied to me,” she prayed, “that I may feel it until my last
breath!” The Redeemer upon that crucifix was the only spouse that she was
destined to know; His bleeding kiss was to be the only one bestowed upon
her womanhood, diverted from nature’s course. The nuns took cords, passed
them under her aching back, and fastened the crucifix so roughly to her
bosom that it did indeed penetrate it.

At last death took pity upon her. On Easter Monday she was seized with a
great fit of shivering. Hallucinations perturbed her, she trembled with
fright, she beheld the devil jeering and prowling around her. “Be off, be
off, Satan!” she gasped; “do not touch me, do not carry me away!” And
amidst her delirium she related that the fiend had sought to throw
himself upon her, that she had felt his mouth scorching her with all the
flames of hell. The devil in a life so pure, in a soul without sin! what
for, O Lord! and again I ask it, why this relentless suffering, intense
to the very last, why this nightmare-like ending, this death troubled
with such frightful fancies, after so beautiful a life of candour,
purity, and innocence? Could she not fall asleep serenely in the
peacefulness of her chaste soul? But doubtless so long as breath remained
in her body it was necessary to leave her the hatred and dread of life,
which is the devil. It was life which menaced her, and it was life which
she cast out, in the same way that she denied life when she reserved to
the Celestial Bridegroom her tortured, crucified womanhood. That dogma of
the Immaculate Conception, which her dream had come to strengthen, was a
blow dealt by the Church to woman, both wife and mother. To decree that
woman is only worthy of worship on condition that she be a virgin, to
imagine that virgin to be herself born without sin, is not this an insult
to Nature, the condemnation of life, the denial of womanhood, whose true
greatness consists in perpetuating life? “Be off, be off, Satan! let me
die without fulfilling Nature’s law.” And she drove the sunshine from the
room and the free air that entered by the window, the air that was sweet
with the scent of flowers, laden with all the floating germs which
transmit love throughout the whole vast world.

On the Wednesday after Easter (April 16th), the death agony commenced. It
is related that on the morning of that day one of Bernadette’s
companions, a nun attacked with a mortal illness and lying in the
infirmary in an adjoining bed, was suddenly healed upon drinking a glass
of Lourdes water. But she, the privileged one, had drunk of it in vain.
God at last granted her the signal favour which she desired by sending
her into the good sound sleep of the earth, in which there is no more
suffering. She asked pardon of everyone. Her passion was consummated;
like the Saviour, she had the nails and the crown of thorns, the scourged
limbs, the pierced side. Like Him she raised her eyes to heaven, extended
her arms in the form of a cross, and uttered a loud cry: “My God!” And,
like Him, she said, towards three o’clock: “I thirst.” She moistened her
lips in the glass, then bowed her head and expired.

Thus, very glorious and very holy, died the Visionary of Lourdes,
Bernadette Soubirous, Sister Marie-Bernard, one of the Sisters of Charity
of Nevers. During three days her body remained exposed to view, and vast
crowds passed before it; a whole people hastened to the convent, an
interminable procession of devotees hungering after hope, who rubbed
medals, chaplets, pictures, and missals against the dead woman’s dress,
to obtain from her one more favour, a fetish bringing happiness. Even in
death her dream of solitude was denied her: a mob of the wretched ones of
this world rushed to the spot, drinking in illusion around her coffin.
And it was noticed that her left eye, the eye which at the time of the
apparitions had been nearest to the Blessed Virgin, remained obstinately
open. Then a last miracle amazed the convent: the body underwent no
change, but was interred on the third day, still supple, warm, with red
lips, and a very white skin, rejuvenated as it were, and smelling sweet.
And to-day Bernadette Soubirous, exiled from Lourdes, obscurely sleeps
her last sleep at Saint Gildard, beneath a stone slab in a little chapel,
amidst the shade and silence of the old trees of the garden, whilst
yonder the Grotto shines resplendently in all its triumph.

Pierre ceased speaking; the beautiful, marvellous story was ended. And
yet the whole carriage was still listening, deeply impressed by that
death, at once so tragic and so touching. Compassionate tears fell from
Marie’s eyes, while the others, Elise Rouquet, La Grivotte herself, now
calmer, clasped their hands and prayed to her who was in heaven to
intercede with the Divinity to complete their cure. M. Sabathier made a
big sign of the cross, and then ate a cake which his wife had bought him
at Poitiers.

M. de Guersaint, whom sad things always upset, had fallen asleep again in
the middle of the story. And there was only Madame Vincent, with her face
buried in her pillow, who had not stirred, like a deaf and blind
creature, determined to see and hear nothing more.

Meanwhile the train rolled, still rolled along. Madame de Jonquiere,
after putting her head out of the window, informed them that they were
approaching Etampes. And, when they had left that station behind them,
Sister Hyacinthe gave the signal, and they recited the third chaplet of
the Rosary, the five glorious mysteries--the Resurrection of Our Lord,
the Ascension of Our Lord, the Mission of the Holy Ghost, the Assumption
of the Most Blessed Virgin, and the Crowning of the Most Blessed Virgin.
And afterwards they sang the canticle:

  “O Virgin, in thy help I put my trust.”

Then Pierre fell into a deep reverie. His glance had turned towards the
now sunlit landscape, the continual flight of which seemed to lull his
thoughts. The noise of the wheels was making him dizzy, and he ended by
no longer recognising the familiar horizon of this vast suburban expanse
with which he had once been acquainted. They still had to pass Bretigny
and Juvisy, and then, in an hour and a half at the utmost, they would at
last be at Paris. So the great journey was finished! the inquiry, which
he had so much desired to make, the experiment which he had attempted
with so much passion, were over! He had wished to acquire certainty, to
study Bernadette’s case on the spot, and see if grace would not come back
to him in a lightning flash, restoring him his faith. And now he had
settled the point--Bernadette had dreamed through the continual torments
of her flesh, and he himself would never believe again. And this forced
itself upon his mind like a brutal fact: the simple faith of the child
who kneels and prays, the primitive faith of young people, bowed down by
an awe born of their ignorance, was dead. Though thousands of pilgrims
might each year go to Lourdes, the nations were no longer with them; this
attempt to bring about the resurrection of absolute faith, the faith of
dead-and-gone centuries, without revolt or examination, was fatally
doomed to fail. History never retraces its steps, humanity cannot return
to childhood, times have too much changed, too many new inspirations have
sown new harvests for the men of to-day to become once more like the men
of olden time. It was decisive; Lourdes was only an explainable accident,
whose reactionary violence was even a proof of the extreme agony in which
belief under the antique form of Catholicism was struggling. Never again,
as in the cathedrals of the twelfth century, would the entire nation
kneel like a docile flock in the hands of the Master. To blindly,
obstinately cling to the attempt to bring that to pass would mean to dash
oneself against the impossible, to rush, perhaps, towards great moral
catastrophes.

And of his journey there already only remained to Pierre an immense
feeling of compassion. Ah! his heart was overflowing with pity; his poor
heart was returning wrung by all that he had seen. He recalled the words
of worthy Abbe Judaine; and he had seen those thousands of unhappy beings
praying, weeping, and imploring God to take pity on their suffering; and
he had wept with them, and felt within himself, like an open wound, a
sorrowful fraternal feeling for all their ailments. He could not think of
those poor people without burning with a desire to relieve them. If it
were true that the faith of the simple-minded no longer sufficed; if one
ran the risk of going astray in wishing to turn back, would it become
necessary to close the Grotto, to preach other efforts, other sufferings?
However, his compassion revolted at that thought. No, no! it would be a
crime to snatch their dream of Heaven from those poor creatures who
suffered either in body or in mind, and who only found relief in kneeling
yonder amidst the splendour of tapers and the soothing repetition of
hymns. He had not taken the murderous course of undeceiving Marie, but
had sacrificed himself in order to leave her the joy of her fancy, the
divine consolation of having been healed by the Virgin. Where was the man
hard enough, cruel enough, to prevent the lowly from believing, to rob
them of the consolation of the supernatural, the hope that God troubled
Himself about them, that He held a better life in His paradise in reserve
for them? All humanity was weeping, desperate with anguish, like some
despairing invalid, irrevocably condemned, and whom only a miracle could
save. He felt mankind to be unhappy indeed, and he shuddered with
fraternal affection in the presence of such pitiable humility, ignorance,
poverty in its rags, disease with its sores and evil odour, all the lowly
sufferers, in hospital, convent, and slums, amidst vermin and dirt, with
ugliness and imbecility written on their faces, an immense protest
against health, life, and Nature, in the triumphal name of justice,
equality, and benevolence. No, no! it would never do to drive the
wretched to despair. Lourdes must be tolerated, in the same way that you
tolerate a falsehood which makes life possible. And, as he had already
said in Bernadette’s chamber, she remained the martyr, she it was who
revealed to him the only religion which still filled his heart, the
religion of human suffering. Ah! to be good and kindly, to alleviate all
ills, to lull pain, to sleep in a dream, to lie even, so that no one
might suffer any more!

The train passed at full speed through a village, and Pierre vaguely
caught sight of a church nestling amidst some large apple trees. All the
pilgrims in the carriage crossed themselves. But he was now becoming
uneasy, scruples were tingeing his reverie with anxiety. This religion of
human suffering, this redemption by pain, was not this yet another lure,
a continual aggravation of pain and misery? It is cowardly and dangerous
to allow superstition to live. To tolerate and accept it is to revive the
dark evil ages afresh. It weakens and stupefies; the sanctimoniousness
bequeathed by heredity produces humiliated, timorous generations,
decadent and docile nations, who are an easy prey to the powerful of the
earth. Whole nations are imposed upon, robbed, devoured, when they have
devoted the whole effort of their will to the mere conquest of a future
existence. Would it not, therefore, be better to cure humanity at once by
boldly closing the miraculous Grottos whither it goes to weep, and thus
restore to it the courage to live the real life, even in the midst of
tears? And it was the same prayer, that incessant flood of prayer which
ascended from Lourdes, the endless supplication in which he had been
immersed and softened: was it not after all but puerile lullaby, a
debasement of all one’s energies? It benumbed the will, one’s very being
became dissolved in it and acquired disgust for life and action. Of what
use could it be to will anything, do anything, when you totally resigned
yourself to the caprices of an unknown almighty power? And, in another
respect, what a strange thing was this mad desire for prodigies, this
anxiety to drive the Divinity to transgress the laws of Nature
established by Himself in His infinite wisdom! Therein evidently lay
peril and unreasonableness; at the risk even of losing illusion, that
divine comforter, only the habit of personal effort and the courage of
truth should have been developed in man, and especially in the child.

Then a great brightness arose in Pierre’s mind and dazzled him. It was
Reason, protesting against the glorification of the absurd and the
deposition of common-sense. Ah! reason, it was through her that he had
suffered, through her alone that he was happy. As he had told Doctor
Chassaigne, his one consuming longing was to satisfy reason ever more and
more, although it might cost him happiness to do so. It was reason, he
now well understood it, whose continual revolt at the Grotto, at the
Basilica, throughout entire Lourdes, had prevented him from believing.
Unlike his old friend--that stricken old man, who was afflicted with such
dolorous senility, who had fallen into second childhood since the
shipwreck of his affections,--he had been unable to kill reason and
humiliate and annihilate himself. Reason remained his sovereign mistress,
and she it was who buoyed him up even amidst the obscurities and failures
of science. Whenever he met with a thing which he could not understand,
it was she who whispered to him, “There is certainly a natural
explanation which escapes me.” He repeated that there could be no healthy
ideal outside the march towards the discovery of the unknown, the slow
victory of reason amidst all the wretchedness of body and mind. In the
clashing of the twofold heredity which he had derived from his father,
all brain, and his mother, all faith, he, a priest, found it possible to
ravage his life in order that he might keep his vows. He had acquired
strength enough to master his flesh, but he felt that his paternal
heredity had now definitely gained the upper hand, for henceforth the
sacrifice of his reason had become an impossibility; this he would not
renounce and would not master. No, no, even human suffering, the hallowed
suffering of the poor, ought not to prove an obstacle, enjoining the
necessity of ignorance and folly. Reason before all; in her alone lay
salvation. If at Lourdes, whilst bathed in tears, softened by the sight
of so much affliction, he had said that it was sufficient to weep and
love, he had made a dangerous mistake. Pity was but a convenient
expedient. One must live, one must act; reason must combat suffering,
unless it be desired that the latter should last forever.

However, as the train rolled on and the landscape flew by, a church once
more appeared, this time on the fringe of heaven, some votive chapel
perched upon a hill and surmounted by a lofty statue of the Virgin. And
once more all the pilgrims made the sign of the cross, and once more
Pierre’s reverie strayed, a fresh stream of reflections bringing his
anguish back to him. What was this imperious need of the things beyond,
which tortured suffering humanity? Whence came it? Why should equality
and justice be desired when they did not seem to exist in impassive
nature? Man had set them in the unknown spheres of the Mysterious, in the
supernatural realms of religious paradises, and there contented his
ardent thirst for them. That unquenchable thirst for happiness had ever
consumed, and would consume him always. If the Fathers of the Grotto
drove such a glorious trade, it was simply because they made motley out
of what was divine. That thirst for the Divine, which nothing had
quenched through the long, long ages, seemed to have returned with
increased violence at the close of our century of science. Lourdes was a
resounding and undeniable proof that man could never live without the
dream of a Sovereign Divinity, re-establishing equality and re-creating
happiness by dint of miracles. When man has reached the depths of life’s
misfortunes, he returns to the divine illusion, and the origin of all
religions lies there. Man, weak and bare, lacks the strength to live
through his terrestrial misery without the everlasting lie of a paradise.
To-day, thought Pierre, the experiment had been made; it seemed that
science alone could not suffice, and that one would be obliged to leave a
door open on the Mysterious.

All at once in the depths of his deeply absorbed mind the words rang out,
A new religion! The door which must be left open on the Mysterious was
indeed a new religion. To subject mankind to brutal amputation, lop off
its dream, and forcibly deprive it of the Marvellous, which it needed to
live as much as it needed bread, would possibly kill it. Would it ever
have the philosophical courage to take life as it is, and live it for its
own sake, without any idea of future rewards and penalties? It certainly
seemed that centuries must elapse before the advent of a society wise
enough to lead a life of rectitude without the moral control of some
cultus and the consolation of superhuman equality and justice. Yes, a new
religion! The call burst forth, resounded within Pierre’s brain like the
call of the nations, the eager, despairing desire of the modern soul. The
consolation and hope which Catholicism had brought the world seemed
exhausted after eighteen hundred years full of so many tears, so much
blood, so much vain and barbarous agitation. It was an illusion
departing, and it was at least necessary that the illusion should be
changed. If mankind had long ago darted for refuge into the Christian
paradise, it was because that paradise then opened before it like a fresh
hope. But now a new religion, a new hope, a new paradise, yes, that was
what the world thirsted for, in the discomfort in which it was
struggling. And Father Fourcade, for his part, fully felt such to be the
case; he had not meant to imply anything else when he had given rein to
his anxiety, entreating that the people of the great towns, the dense
mass of the humble which forms the nation, might be brought to Lourdes.
One hundred thousand, two hundred thousand pilgrims at Lourdes each year,
that was, after all, but a grain of sand. It was the people, the whole
people, that was required. But the people has forever deserted the
churches, it no longer puts any soul in the Blessed Virgins which it
manufactures, and nothing nowadays could restore its lost faith. A
Catholic democracy--yes, history would then begin afresh; only were it
possible to create a new Christian people, would not the advent of a new
Saviour, the mighty breath of a new Messiah, have been needed for such a
task?

However, the words still sounded, still rang out in Pierre’s mind with
the growing clamour of pealing bells. A new religion; a new religion.
Doubtless it must be a religion nearer to life, giving a larger place to
the things of the world, and taking the acquired truths into due account.
And, above all, it must be a religion which was not an appetite for
death--Bernadette living solely in order that she might die, Doctor
Chassaigne aspiring to the tomb as to the only happiness--for all that
spiritualistic abandonment was so much continuous disorganisation of the
will to live. At bottom of it was hatred to life, disgust with and
cessation of action. Every religion, it is true, is but a promise of
immortality, an embellishment of the spheres beyond, an enchanted garden
to be entered on the morrow of death. Could a new religion ever place
such a garden of eternal happiness on earth? Where was the formula, the
dogma, that would satisfy the hopes of the mankind of to-day? What belief
should be sown to blossom forth in a harvest of strength and peace? How
could one fecundate the universal doubt so that it should give birth to a
new faith? and what sort of illusion, what divine falsehood of any kind
could be made to germinate in the contemporary world, ravaged as it had
been upon all sides, broken up by a century of science?

At that moment, without any apparent transition, Pierre saw the face of
his brother Guillaume arise in the troublous depths of his mind. Still,
he was not surprised; some secret link must have brought that vision
there. Ah! how fond they had been of one another long ago, and what a
good brother that elder brother, so upright and gentle, had been!
Henceforth, also, the rupture was complete; Pierre no longer saw
Guillaume, since the latter had cloistered himself in his chemical
studies, living like a savage in a little suburban house, with a mistress
and two big dogs. Then Pierre’s reverie again diverged, and he thought of
that trial in which Guillaume had been mentioned, like one suspected of
having compromising friendships amongst the most violent revolutionaries.
It was related, too, that the young man had, after long researches,
discovered the formula of a terrible explosive, one pound of which would
suffice to blow up a cathedral. And Pierre then thought of those
Anarchists who wished to renew and save the world by destroying it. They
were but dreamers, horrible dreamers; yet dreamers in the same way as
those innocent pilgrims whom he had seen kneeling at the Grotto in an
enraptured flock. If the Anarchists, if the extreme Socialists, demanded
with violence the equality of wealth, the sharing of all the enjoyments
of the world, the pilgrims on their side demanded with tears equality of
health and an equitable sharing of moral and physical peace. The latter
relied on miracles, the former appealed to brute force. At bottom,
however, it was but the same exasperated dream of fraternity and justice,
the eternal desire for happiness--neither poor nor sick left, but bliss
for one and all. And, in fact, had not the primitive Christians been
terrible revolutionaries for the pagan world, which they threatened, and
did, indeed, destroy? They who were persecuted, whom the others sought to
exterminate, are to-day inoffensive, because they have become the Past.
The frightful Future is ever the man who dreams of a future society; even
as to-day it is the madman so wildly bent on social renovation that he
harbours the great black dream of purifying everything by the flame of
conflagrations. This seemed monstrous to Pierre. Yet, who could tell?
Therein, perchance, lay the rejuvenated world of to-morrow.

Astray, full of doubts, he nevertheless, in his horror of violence, made
common cause with old society now reduced to defend itself, unable though
he was to say whence would come the new Messiah of Gentleness, in whose
hands he would have liked to place poor ailing mankind. A new religion,
yes, a new religion. But it is not easy to invent one, and he knew not to
what conclusion to come between the ancient faith, which was dead, and
the young faith of to-morrow, as yet unborn. For his part, in his
desolation, he was only sure of keeping his vow, like an unbelieving
priest watching over the belief of others, chastely and honestly
discharging his duties, with the proud sadness that he had been unable to
renounce his reason as he had renounced his flesh. And for the rest, he
would wait.

However, the train rolled on between large parks, and the engine gave a
prolonged whistle, a joyful flourish, which drew Pierre from his
reflections. The others were stirring, displaying emotion around him. The
train had just left Juvisy, and Paris was at last near at hand, within a
short half-hour’s journey. One and all were getting their things
together: the Sabathiers were remaking their little parcels, Elise
Rouquet was giving a last glance at her mirror. For a moment Madame de
Jonquiere again became anxious concerning La Grivotte, and decided that
as the girl was in such a pitiful condition she would have her taken
straight to a hospital on arriving; whilst Marie endeavoured to rouse
Madame Vincent from the torpor in which she seemed determined to remain.
M. de Guersaint, who had been indulging in a little siesta, also had to
be awakened. And at last, when Sister Hyacinthe had clapped her hands,
the whole carriage intonated the “Te Deum,” the hymn of praise and
thanksgiving. “_Te Deum, laudamus, te Dominum confitemur_.” The voices
rose amidst a last burst of fervour. All those glowing souls returned
thanks to God for the beautiful journey, the marvellous favours that He
had already bestowed on them, and would bestow on them yet again.

At last came the fortifications. The two o’clock sun was slowly
descending the vast, pure heavens, so serenely warm. Distant smoke, a
ruddy smoke, was rising in light clouds above the immensity of Paris like
the scattered, flying breath of that toiling colossus. It was Paris in
her forge, Paris with her passions, her battles, her ever-growling
thunder, her ardent life ever engendering the life of to-morrow. And the
white train, the woeful train of every misery and every dolour, was
returning into it all at full speed, sounding in higher and higher
strains the piercing flourishes of its whistle-calls. The five hundred
pilgrims, the three hundred patients, were about to disappear in the vast
city, fall again upon the hard pavement of life after the prodigious
dream in which they had just indulged, until the day should come when
their need of the consolation of a fresh dream would irresistibly impel
them to start once more on the everlasting pilgrimage to mystery and
forgetfulness.

Ah! unhappy mankind, poor ailing humanity, hungering for illusion, and in
the weariness of this waning century distracted and sore from having too
greedily acquired science; it fancies itself abandoned by the physicians
of both the mind and the body, and, in great danger of succumbing to
incurable disease, retraces its steps and asks the miracle of its cure of
the mystical Lourdes of a past forever dead! Yonder, however, Bernadette,
the new Messiah of suffering, so touching in her human reality,
constitutes the terrible lesson, the sacrifice cut off from the world,
the victim condemned to abandonment, solitude, and death, smitten with
the penalty of being neither woman, nor wife, nor mother, because she
beheld the Blessed Virgin.


THE END