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The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Complete

by Émile Zola · English · Gutenberg #8516 · 1,205,337 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Complete

Author: Émile Zola

Translator: Ernest Alfred Vizetelly


        
Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8516]
                Most recently updated: March 6, 2022

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8516

Credits: Dagny and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE CITIES TRILOGY: LOURDES, COMPLETE ***




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.

Acco

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