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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