第 15 页

mass of stupefying facts, to explain such as admitted of explanation and

reject the others. At one moment, indeed, as a hymn once more resounded

and carried him off with its stubborn importunate rhythm, he ceased to be

master of himself, and imagined that he was at last beginning to believe

amidst the hallucinatory vertigo which reigned in that travelling

hospital, rolling, ever rolling onward at full speed.

V. BERNADETTE

THE train left Bordeaux after a stoppage of a few minutes, during which

those who had not dined hastened to purchase some provisions. Moreover,

the ailing ones were constantly drinking milk, and asking for biscuits,

like little children. And, as soon as they were off again, Sister

Hyacinthe clapped her hands, and exclaimed: "Come, let us make haste; the

evening prayer."

Thereupon, during a quarter of an hour came a confused murmuring, made up

of "Paters" and "Aves," self-examinations, acts of contrition, and vows

of trustful reliance in God, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, with

thanksgiving for protection and preservation that day, and, at last, a

prayer for the living and for the faithful departed.

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

It was ten minutes past eight o'clock, the shades of night were already

bedimming the landscape--a vast plain which the evening mist seemed to

prolong into the infinite, and where, far away, bright dots of light

shone out from the windows of lonely, scattered houses. In the carriage,

the lights of the lamps were flickering, casting a subdued yellow glow on

the luggage and the pilgrims, who were sorely shaken by the spreading

tendency of the train's motion.

"You know, my children," resumed Sister Hyacinthe, who had remained

standing, "I shall order silence when we get to Lamothe, in about an

hour's time. So you have an hour to amuse yourselves, but you must be

reasonable and not excite yourselves too much. And when we have passed

Lamothe, you hear me, there must not be another word, another sound, you

must all go to sleep."

This made them laugh.

"Oh! but it is the rule, you know," added the Sister, "and surely you

have too much sense not to obey me."

Since the morning they had punctually fulfilled the programme of

religious exercises specified for each successive hour. And now that all

the prayers had been said, the beads told, the hymns chanted, the day's

duties were over, and a brief interval for recreation was allowed before

sleeping. They were, however, at a loss as to what they should do.

"Sister," suddenly said Marie, "if you would allow Monsieur l'Abbe to

read to us--he reads extremely well,--and as it happens I have a little

book with me--a history of Bernadette which is so interesting--"

The others did nor let her finish, but with the suddenly awakened desire

of children to whom a beautiful story has been promised, loudly

exclaimed: "Oh! yes, Sister. Oh! yes, Sister--"

"Of course I will allow it," replied Sister Hyacinthe, "since it is a

question of reading something instructive and edifying."

Pierre was obliged to consent. But to be able to read the book he wished

to be under the lamp, and it was necessary that he should change seats

with M. de Guersaint, whom the promise of a story had delighted as much

as it did the ailing ones. And when the young priest, after changing

seats and declaring that he would be able to see well enough, at last

opened the little book, a quiver of curiosity sped from one end of the

carriage to the other, and every head was stretched out, lending ear with

rapt attention. Fortunately, Pierre had a clear, powerful voice and made

himself distinctly heard above the wheels, which, now that the train

travelled across a vast level plain, gave out but a subdued, rumbling

sound.

Before beginning, however, the young priest had examined the book. It was

one of those little works of propaganda issued from the Catholic

printing-presses and circulated in profusion throughout all Christendom.

Badly printed, on wretched paper, it was adorned on its blue cover with a

little wood-cut of Our Lady of Lourdes, a naive design alike stiff and

awkward. The book itself was short, and half an hour would certainly

suffice to read it from cover to cover without hurrying.

Accordingly, in his fine, clear voice, with its penetrating, musical

tones, he began his perusal as follows:--

"It happened at Lourdes, a little town near the Pyrenees, on a Thursday,

February 11, 1858. The weather was cold, and somewhat cloudy, and in the

humble home of a poor but honest miller named Francois Soubirous there

was no wood to cook the dinner. The miller's wife, Louise, said to her

younger daughter Marie, 'Go and gather some wood on the bank of the Gave

or on the common-land.' The Gave is a torrent which passes through

Lourdes.

"Marie had an elder sister, named Bernadette, who had lately arrived from

the country, where some worthy villagers had employed her as a

shepherdess. She was a slender, delicate, extremely innocent child, and

knew nothing except her rosary. Louise Soubirous hesitated to send her

out with her sister, on account of the cold, but at last, yielding to the

entreaties of Marie and a young girl of the neighbourhood called Jeanne

Abadie, she consented to let her go.

"Following the bank of the torrent and gathering stray fragments of dead

wood, the three maidens at last found themselves in front of the Grotto,

hollowed out in a huge mass of rock which the people of the district

called Massabielle."

Pierre had reached this point and was turning the page when he suddenly

paused and let the little book fall on his knees. The childish character

of the narrative, its ready-made, empty phraseology, filled him with

impatience. He himself possessed quite a collection of documents

concerning this extraordinary story, had passionately studied even its

most trifling details, and in the depths of his heart retained a feeling

of tender affection and infinite pity for Bernadette. He had just

reflected, too, that on the very next day he would be able to begin that

decisive inquiry which he had formerly dreamt of making at Lourdes. In

fact, this was one of the reasons which had induced him to accompany

Marie on her journey. And he was now conscious of an awakening of all his

curiosity respecting the Visionary, whom he loved because he felt that

she had been a girl of candid soul, truthful and ill-fated, though at the

same time he would much have liked to analyse and explain her case.

Assuredly, she had not lied, she had indeed beheld a vision and heard

voices, like Joan of Arc; and like Joan of Arc also, she was now, in the

opinion of the devout, accomplishing the deliverance of France--from sin

if not from invaders. Pierre wondered what force could have produced

her--her and her work. How was it that the visionary faculty had become

developed in that lowly girl, so distracting believing souls as to bring

about a renewal of the miracles of primitive times, as to found almost a

new religion in the midst of a Holy City, built at an outlay of millions,

and ever invaded by crowds of worshippers more numerous and more exalted

in mind than had ever been known since the days of the Crusades?

And so, ceasing to read the book, Pierre began to tell his companions all

that he knew, all that he had divined and reconstructed of that story

which is yet so obscure despite the vast rivers of ink which it has

already caused to flow. He knew the country and its manners and customs,

through his long conversations with his friend Doctor Chassaigne. And he

was endowed with charming fluency of language, an emotional power of

exquisite purity, many remarkable gifts well fitting him to be a pulpit

orator, which he never made use of, although he had known them to be

within him ever since his seminary days. When the occupants of the

carriage perceived that he knew the story, far better and in far greater

detail than it appeared in Marie's little book, and that he related it

also in such a gentle yet passionate way, there came an increase of

attention, and all those afflicted souls hungering for happiness went

forth towards him. First came the story of Bernadette's childhood at

Bartres, where she had grown up in the abode of her foster-mother, Madame

Lagues, who, having lost an infant of her own, had rendered those poor

folks, the Soubirouses, the service of suckling and keeping their child

for them. Bartres, a village of four hundred souls, at a league or so

from Lourdes, lay as it were in a desert oasis, sequestered amidst

greenery, and far from any frequented highway. The road dips down, the

few houses are scattered over grassland, divided by hedges and planted

with walnut and chestnut trees, whilst the clear rivulets, which are

never silent, follow the sloping banks beside the pathways, and nothing

rises on high save the small ancient romanesque church, which is perched

on a hillock, covered with graves. Wooded slopes undulate upon all sides.

Bartres lies in a hollow amidst grass of delicious freshness, grass of

intense greenness, which is ever moist at the roots, thanks to the

eternal subterraneous expanse of water which is fed by the mountain

torrents. And Bernadette, who, since becoming a big girl, had paid for

her keep by tending lambs, was wont to take them with her, season after

season, through all the greenery where she never met a soul. It was only

now and then, from the summit of some slope, that she saw the far-away

mountains, the Pic du Midi, the Pic de Viscos, those masses which rose

up, bright or gloomy, according to the weather, and which stretched away

to other peaks, lightly and faintly coloured, vaguely and confusedly

outlined, like apparitions seen in dreams.

Then came the home of the Lagueses, where her cradle was still preserved,

a solitary, silent house, the last of the village. A meadow planted with

pear and apple trees, and only separated from the open country by a

narrow stream which one could jump across, stretched out in front of the

house. Inside the latter, a low and damp abode, there were, on either

side of the wooden stairway leading to the loft, but two spacious rooms,

flagged with stones, and each containing four or five beds. The girls,

who slept together, fell asleep at even, gazing at the fine pictures

affixed to the walls, whilst the big clock in its pinewood case gravely

struck the hours in the midst of the deep silence.

Ah! those years at Bartres; in what sweet peacefulness did Bernadette

live them! Yet she grew up very thin, always in bad health, suffering

from a nervous asthma which stifled her in the least veering of the wind;

and on attaining her twelfth year she could neither read nor write, nor

speak otherwise than in dialect, having remained quite infantile,

behindhand in mind as in body. She was a very good little girl, very

gentle and well behaved, and but little different from other children,

except that instead of talking she preferred to listen. Limited as was

her intelligence, she often evinced much natural common-sense, and at

times was prompt in her _reparties_, with a kind of simple gaiety which

made one smile. It was only with infinite trouble that she was taught her

rosary, and when she knew it she seemed bent on carrying her knowledge no

further, but repeated it all day long, so that whenever you met her with

her lambs, she invariably had her chaplet between her fingers, diligently

telling each successive "Pater" and "Ave." For long, long hours she lived

like this on the grassy slopes of the hills, hidden away and haunted as

it were amidst the mysteries of the foliage, seeing nought of the world

save the crests of the distant mountains, which, for an instant, every

now and then, would soar aloft in the radiant light, as ethereal as the

peaks of dreamland.

Days followed days, and Bernadette roamed, dreaming her one narrow dream,

repeating the sole prayer she knew, which gave her amidst her solitude,

so fresh and naively infantile, no other companion and friend than the

Blessed Virgin. But what pleasant evenings she spent in the winter-time

in the room on the left, where a fire was kept burning! Her foster-mother

had a brother, a priest, who occasionally read some marvellous stories to

them--stories of saints, prodigious adventures of a kind to make one

tremble with mingled fear and joy, in which Paradise appeared upon earth,

whilst the heavens opened and a glimpse was caught of the splendour of

the angels. The books he brought with him were often full of

pictures--God the Father enthroned amidst His glory; Jesus, so gentle and

so handsome with His beaming face; the Blessed Virgin, who recurred again

and again, radiant with splendour, clad now in white, now in azure, now

in gold, and ever so amiable that Bernadette would see her again in her

dreams. But the book which was read more than all others was the Bible,

an old Bible which had been in the family for more than a hundred years,

and which time and usage had turned yellow. Each winter evening

Bernadette's foster-father, the only member of the household who had

learnt to read, would take a pin, pass it at random between the leaves of

the book, open the latter, and then start reading from the top of the

right-hand page, amidst the deep attention of both the women and the

children, who ended by knowing the book by heart, and could have

continued reciting it without a single mistake.

However, Bernadette, for her part, preferred the religious works in which

the Blessed Virgin constantly appeared with her engaging smile. True, one

reading of a different character amused her, that of the marvellous story

of the Four Brothers Aymon. On the yellow paper cover of the little book,

which had doubtless fallen from the bale of some peddler who had lost his

way in that remote region, there was a naive cut showing the four doughty

knights, Renaud and his brothers, all mounted on Bayard, their famous