第 19 页

to chant the "Ave maris Stella" with a growing clamour in which

lamentation finally turned into cries of hope.

Marie had again taken Pierre's hand between her little feverish fingers.

"Oh, _mon Dieu!_" said she, "to think that poor man is dead, and I feared

so much that it was I who would die before arriving. And we are

there--there at last!"

The priest was trembling with intense emotion. "It means that you are to

be cured, Marie," he replied, "and that I myself shall be cured if you

pray for me--"

The engine was now whistling in a yet louder key in the depths of the

bluish darkness. They were nearing their destination. The lights of

Lourdes already shone out on the horizon. Then the whole train again sang

a canticle--the rhymed story of Bernadette, that endless ballad of six

times ten couplets, in which the Angelic Salutation ever returns as a

refrain, all besetting and distracting, opening to the human mind the

portals of the heaven of ecstasy:--

"It was the hour for ev'ning pray'r;

Soft bells chimed on the chilly air.

Ave, ave, ave Maria!

"The maid stood on the torrent's bank,

A breeze arose, then swiftly sank.

Ave, ave, ave Maria!

"And she beheld, e'en as it fell,

The Virgin on Massabielle.

Ave, ave, ave Maria!

"All white appeared the Lady chaste,

A zone of Heaven round her waist.

Ave, ave, ave Maria!

"Two golden roses, pure and sweet,

Bloomed brightly on her naked feet.

Ave, ave, ave Maria!

"Upon her arm, so white and round,

Her chaplet's milky pearls were wound.

Ave, ave, ave Maria!

"The maiden prayed till, from her eyes,

The vision sped to Paradise.

Ave, ave, ave Maria!"

THE SECOND DAY

I. THE TRAIN ARRIVES

IT was twenty minutes past three by the clock of the Lourdes railway

station, the dial of which was illumined by a reflector. Under the

slanting roof sheltering the platform, a hundred yards or so in length,

some shadowy forms went to and fro, resignedly waiting. Only a red signal

light peeped out of the black countryside, far away.

Two of the promenaders suddenly halted. The taller of them, a Father of

the Assumption, none other indeed than the Reverend Father Fourcade,

director of the national pilgrimage, who had reached Lourdes on the

previous day, was a man of sixty, looking superb in his black cloak with

its large hood. His fine head, with its clear, domineering eyes and thick

grizzly beard, was the head of a general whom an intelligent

determination to conquer inflames. In consequence, however, of a sudden

attack of gout he slightly dragged one of his legs, and was leaning on

the shoulder of his companion, Dr. Bonamy, the practitioner attached to

the Miracle Verification Office, a short, thick-set man, with a

square-shaped, clean-shaven face, which had dull, blurred eyes and a

tranquil cast of features.

Father Fourcade had stopped to question the station-master whom he

perceived running out of his office. "Will the white train be very late,

monsieur?" he asked.

"No, your reverence. It hasn't lost more than ten minutes; it will be

here at the half-hour. It's the Bayonne train which worries me; it ought

to have passed through already."

So saying, he ran off to give an order; but soon came back again, his

slim, nervous figure displaying marked signs of agitation. He lived,

indeed, in a state of high fever throughout the period of the great

pilgrimages. Apart from the usual service, he that day expected eighteen

trains, containing more than fifteen thousand passengers. The grey and

the blue trains which had started from Paris the first had already

arrived at the regulation hour. But the delay in the arrival of the white

train was very troublesome, the more so as the Bayonne express--which

passed over the same rails--had not yet been signalled. It was easy to

understand, therefore, what incessant watchfulness was necessary, not a

second passing without the entire staff of the station being called upon

to exercise its vigilance.

"In ten minutes, then?" repeated Father Fourcade.

"Yes, in ten minutes, unless I'm obliged to close the line!" cried the

station-master as he hastened into the telegraph office.

Father Fourcade and the doctor slowly resumed their promenade. The thing

which astonished them was that no serious accident had ever happened in

the midst of such a fearful scramble. In past times, especially, the most

terrible disorder had prevailed. Father Fourcade complacently recalled

the first pilgrimage which he had organised and led, in 1875; the

terrible endless journey without pillows or mattresses, the patients

exhausted, half dead, with no means of reviving them at hand; and then

the arrival at Lourdes, the train evacuated in confusion, no _materiel_

in readiness, no straps, nor stretchers, nor carts. But now there was a

powerful organisation; a hospital awaited the sick, who were no longer

reduced to lying upon straw in sheds. What a shock for those unhappy

ones! What force of will in the man of faith who led them to the scene of

miracles! The reverend Father smiled gently at the thought of the work

which he had accomplished.

Then, still leaning on the doctor's shoulder, he began to question him:

"How many pilgrims did you have last year?" he asked.

"About two hundred thousand. That is still the average. In the year of

the Coronation of the Virgin the figure rose to five hundred thousand.

But to bring that about an exceptional occasion was needed with a great

effort of propaganda. Such vast masses cannot be collected together every

day."

A pause followed, and then Father Fourcade murmured: "No doubt. Still the

blessing of Heaven attends our endeavours; our work thrives more and

more. We have collected more than two hundred thousand francs in

donations for this journey, and God will be with us, there will be many

cures for you to proclaim to-morrow, I am sure of it." Then, breaking

off, he inquired: "Has not Father Dargeles come here?"

Dr. Bonamy waved his hand as though to say that he did not know. Father

Dargeles was the editor of the "Journal de la Grotte." He belonged to the

Order of the Fathers of the Immaculate Conception whom the Bishop had

installed at Lourdes and who were the absolute masters there; though,

when the Fathers of the Assumption came to the town with the national

pilgrimage from Paris, which crowds of faithful Catholics from Cambrai,

Arras, Chartres, Troyes, Rheims, Sens, Orleans, Blois, and Poitiers

joined, they evinced a kind of affectation in disappearing from the

scene. Their omnipotence was no longer felt either at the Grotto or at

the Basilica; they seemed to surrender every key together with every

responsibility. Their superior, Father Capdebarthe, a tall, peasant-like

man, with a knotty frame, a big head which looked as if it had been

fashioned with a bill-hook, and a worn face which retained a ruddy

mournful reflection of the soil, did not even show himself. Of the whole

community you only saw little, insinuating Father Dargeles; but he was

met everywhere, incessantly on the look-out for paragraphs for his

newspaper. At the same time, however, although the Fathers of the

Immaculate Conception disappeared in this fashion, it could be divined

that they were behind the vast stage, like a hidden sovereign power,

coining money and toiling without a pause to increase the triumphant

prosperity of their business. Indeed, they turned even their humility to

account.

"It's true that we have had to get up early--two in the morning," resumed

Father Fourcade gaily. "But I wished to be here. What would my poor

children have said, indeed, if I had not come?"

He was alluding to the sick pilgrims, those who were so much flesh for

miracle-working; and it was a fact that he had never missed coming to the

station, no matter what the hour, to meet that woeful white train, that

train which brought such grievous suffering with it.

"Five-and-twenty minutes past three--only another five minutes now,"

exclaimed Dr. Bonamy repressing a yawn as he glanced at the clock; for,

despite his obsequious air, he was at bottom very much annoyed at having

had to get out of bed so early. However, he continued his slow promenade

with Father Fourcade along that platform which resembled a covered walk,

pacing up and down in the dense night which the gas jets here and there

illumined with patches of yellow light. Little parties, dimly outlined,

composed of priests and gentlemen in frock-coats, with a solitary officer

of dragoons, went to and fro incessantly, talking together the while in

discreet murmuring tones. Other people, seated on benches, ranged along

the station wall, were also chatting or putting their patience to proof

with their glances wandering away into the black stretch of country

before them. The doorways of the offices and waiting-rooms, which were

brilliantly lighted, looked like great holes in the darkness, and all was

flaring in the refreshment-room, where you could see the marble tables

and the counter laden with bottles and glasses and baskets of bread and

fruit.

On the right hand, beyond the roofing of the platform, there was a

confused swarming of people. There was here a goods gate, by which the

sick were taken out of the station, and a mass of stretchers, litters,

and hand-carts, with piles of pillows and mattresses, obstructed the

broad walk. Three parties of bearers were also assembled here, persons of

well-nigh every class, but more particularly young men of good society,

all wearing red, orange-tipped crosses and straps of yellow leather. Many

of them, too, had adopted the Bearnese cap, the convenient head-gear of

the region; and a few, clad as though they were bound on some distant

expedition, displayed wonderful gaiters reaching to their knees. Some

were smoking, whilst others, installed in their little vehicles, slept or

read newspapers by the light of the neighbouring gas jets. One group,

standing apart, were discussing some service question.

Suddenly, however, one and all began to salute. A paternal-looking man,

with a heavy but good-natured face, lighted by large blue eyes, like

those of a credulous child, was approaching. It was Baron Suire, the

President of the Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation. He possessed a

great fortune and occupied a high position at Toulouse.

"Where is Berthaud?" he inquired of one bearer after another, with a busy

air. "Where is Berthaud? I must speak to him."

The others answered, volunteering contradictory information. Berthaud was

their superintendent, and whilst some said that they had seen him with

the Reverend Father Fourcade, others affirmed that he must be in the

courtyard of the station inspecting the ambulance vehicles. And they

thereupon offered to go and fetch him.

"No, no, thank you," replied the Baron. "I shall manage to find him

myself."

Whilst this was happening, Berthaud, who had just seated himself on a

bench at the other end of the station, was talking with his young friend,

Gerard de Peyrelongue, by way of occupation pending the arrival of the

train. The superintendent of the bearers was a man of forty, with a

broad, regular-featured, handsome face and carefully trimmed whiskers of

a lawyer-like pattern. Belonging to a militant Legitimist family and

holding extremely reactionary opinions, he had been Procureur de la

Republique (public prosecutor) in a town of the south of France from the

time of the parliamentary revolution of the twenty-fourth of May* until

that of the decree of the Religious Communities,** when he had resigned

his post in a blusterous fashion, by addressing an insulting letter to

the Minister of Justice. And he had never since laid down his arms, but

had joined the Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation as a sort of protest,

repairing year after year to Lourdes in order to "demonstrate"; convinced

as he was that the pilgrimages were both disagreeable and hurtful to the

Republic, and that God alone could re-establish the Monarchy by one of

those miracles which He worked so lavishly at the Grotto. Despite all

this, however, Berthaud possessed no small amount of good sense, and

being of a gay disposition, displayed a kind of jovial charity towards

the poor sufferers whose transport he had to provide for during the three

days that the national pilgrimage remained at Lourdes.

* The parliamentary revolution of May, 1873, by which M. Thiers

was overthrown and Marshal MacMahon installed in his place with

the object of restoring the Monarchy in France.--Trans.

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

"And so, my dear Gerard," he said to the young man seated beside him,

"your marriage is really to come off this year?"

"Why yes, if I can find such a wife as I want," replied the other. "Come,

cousin, give me some good advice."

Gerard de Peyrelongue, a short, thin, carroty young man, with a

pronounced nose and prominent cheek-bones, belonged to Tarbes, where his

father and mother had lately died, leaving him at the utmost some seven

or eight thousand francs a year. Extremely ambitious, he had been unable

to find such a wife as he desired in his native province--a

well-connected young woman capable of helping him to push both forward

and upward in the world; and so he had joined the Hospitality, and betook

himself every summer to Lourdes, in the vague hope that amidst the mass

of believers, the torrent of devout mammas and daughters which flowed

thither, he might find the family whose help he needed to enable him to

make his way in this terrestrial sphere. However, he remained in

perplexity, for if, on the one hand, he already had several young ladies