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LOURDES

FORM THE THREE CITIES

By Emile 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