第 24 页

every deformity of the contractions followed in succession--twisted

trunks, twisted arms, necks askew, all the distortions of poor creatures

whom nature had warped and broken; and among these was one whose right

hand was thrust back behind her ribs whilst her head fell to the left

resting fixedly upon her shoulder. Afterwards came poor rachitic girls

displaying waxen complexions and slender necks eaten away by sores, and

yellow-faced women in the painful stupor which falls on those whose

bosoms are devoured by cancers; whilst others, lying down with their

mournful eyes gazing heavenwards, seemed to be listening to the throbs of

the tumours which obstructed their organs. And still more and more went

by; there was always something more frightful to come; this woman

following that other one increased the general shudder of horror. From

the neck of a girl of twenty who had a crushed, flattened head like a

toad's, there hung so large a goitre that it fell even to her waist like

the bib of an apron. A blind woman walked along, her head erect, her face

pale like marble, displaying the acute inflammation of her poor,

ulcerated eyes. An aged woman stricken with imbecility, afflicted with

dreadful facial disfigurements, laughed aloud with a terrifying laugh.

And all at once an epileptic was seized with convulsions, and began

foaming on her stretcher, without, however, causing any stoppage of the

procession, which never slackened its march, lashed onward as it was by

the blizzard of feverish passion which impelled it towards the Grotto.

The bearers, the priests, and the ailing ones themselves had just

intonated a canticle, the song of Bernadette, and all rolled along amid

the besetting "Aves," so that the little carts, the litters, and the

pedestrians descended the sloping road like a swollen and overflowing

torrent of roaring water. At the corner of the Rue Saint-Joseph, near the

Plateau de la Merlasse, a family of excursionists, who had come from

Cauterets or Bagneres, stood at the edge of the footway, overcome with

profound astonishment. These people were evidently well-to-do

_bourgeois_, the father and mother very correct in appearance and

demeanour, while their two big girls, attired in light-coloured dresses,

had the smiling faces of happy creatures who are amusing themselves. But

their first feeling of surprise was soon followed by terror, a growing

terror, as if they beheld the opening of some pesthouse of ancient times,

some hospital of the legendary ages, evacuated after a great epidemic.

The two girls became quite pale, while the father and the mother felt icy

cold in presence of that endless _defile_ of so many horrors, the

pestilential emanations of which were blown full in their faces. O God!

to think that such hideousness, such filth, such suffering, should exist!

Was it possible--under that magnificently radiant sun, under those broad

heavens so full of light and joy whither the freshness of the Gave's

waters ascended, and the breeze of morning wafted the pure perfumes of

the mountains!

When Pierre, at the head of the _cortege_, reached the Plateau de la

Merlasse, he found himself immersed in that clear sunlight, that fresh

and balmy air. He turned round and smiled affectionately at Marie; and as

they came out on the Place du Rosaire in the morning splendour, they were

both enchanted with the lovely panorama which spread around them.

In front, on the east, was Old Lourdes, lying in a broad fold of the

ground beyond a rock. The sun was rising behind the distant mountains,

and its oblique rays clearly outlined the dark lilac mass of that

solitary rock, which was crowned by the tower and crumbling walls of the

ancient castle, once the redoubtable key of the seven valleys. Through

the dancing, golden dust you discerned little of the ruined pile except

some stately outlines, some huge blocks of building which looked as

though reared by Cyclopean hands; and beyond the rock you but vaguely

distinguished the discoloured, intermingled house-roofs of the old town.

Nearer in than the castle, however, the new town--the rich and noisy city

which had sprung up in a few years as though by miracle--spread out on

either hand, displaying its hotels, its stylish shops, its lodging-houses

all with white fronts smiling amidst patches of greenery. Then there was

the Gave flowing along at the base of the rock, rolling clamorous, clear

waters, now blue and now green, now deep as they passed under the old

bridge, and now leaping as they careered under the new one, which the

Fathers of the Immaculate Conception had built in order to connect the

Grotto with the railway station and the recently opened Boulevard. And as

a background to this delightful picture, this fresh water, this greenery,

this gay, scattered, rejuvenated town, the little and the big Gers arose,

two huge ridges of bare rock and low herbage, which, in the projected

shade that bathed them, assumed delicate tints of pale mauve and green,

fading softly into pink.

Then, upon the north, on the right bank of the Gave, beyond the hills

followed by the railway line, the heights of La Buala ascended, their

wooded slopes radiant in the morning light. On that side lay Bartres.

More to the left arose the Serre de Julos, dominated by the Miramont.

Other crests, far off, faded away into the ether. And in the foreground,

rising in tiers among the grassy valleys beyond the Gave, a number of

convents, which seemed to have sprung up in this region of prodigies like

early vegetation, imparted some measure of life to the landscape. First,

there was an Orphan Asylum founded by the Sisters of Nevers, whose vast

buildings shone brightly in the sunlight. Next came the Carmelite

convent, on the highway to Pau, just in front of the Grotto; and then

that of the Assumptionists higher up, skirting the road to Poueyferre;

whilst the Dominicans showed but a corner of their roofs, sequestered in

the far-away solitude. And at last appeared the establishment of the

Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, those who were called the Blue

Sisters, and who had founded at the far end of the valley a home where

they received well-to-do lady pilgrims, desirous of solitude, as

boarders.

At that early hour all the bells of these convents were pealing joyfully

in the crystalline atmosphere, whilst the bells of other convents, on the

other, the southern horizon, answered them with the same silvery strains

of joy. The bell of the nunnery of Sainte Clarissa, near the old bridge,

rang a scale of gay, clear notes, which one might have fancied to be the

chirruping of a bird. And on this side of the town, also, there were

valleys that dipped down between the ridges, and mountains that upreared

their bare sides, a commingling of smiling and of agitated nature, an

endless surging of heights amongst which you noticed those of Visens,

whose slopes the sunlight tinged ornately with soft blue and carmine of a

rippling, moire-like effect.

However, when Marie and Pierre turned their eyes to the west, they were

quite dazzled. The sun rays were here streaming on the large and the

little Beout with their cupolas of unequal height. And on this side the

background was one of gold and purple, a dazzling mountain on whose sides

one could only discern the road which snaked between the trees on its way

to the Calvary above. And here, too, against the sunlit background,

radiant like an aureola, stood out the three superposed churches which at

the voice of Bernadette had sprung from the rock to the glory of the

Blessed Virgin. First of all, down below, came the church of the Rosary,

squat, circular, and half cut out of the rock, at the farther end of an

esplanade on either side of which, like two huge arms, were colossal

gradient ways ascending gently to the Crypt church. Vast labour had been

expended here, a quarryful of stones had been cut and set in position,

there were arches as lofty as naves supporting the gigantic terraced

avenues which had been constructed so that the processions might roll

along in all their pomp, and the little conveyances containing sick

children might ascend without hindrance to the divine presence. Then came

the Crypt, the subterranean church within the rock, with only its low

door visible above the church of the Rosary, whose paved roof, with its

vast promenade, formed a continuation of the terraced inclines. And at

last, from the summit sprang the Basilica, somewhat slender and frail,

recalling some finely chased jewel of the Renascence, and looking very

new and very white--like a prayer, a spotless dove, soaring aloft from

the rocks of Massabielle. The spire, which appeared the more delicate and

slight when compared with the gigantic inclines below, seemed like the

little vertical flame of a taper set in the midst of the vast landscape,

those endless waves of valleys and mountains. By the side, too, of the

dense greenery of the Calvary hill, it looked fragile and candid, like

childish faith; and at sight of it you instinctively thought of the

little white arm, the little thin hand of the puny girl, who had here

pointed to Heaven in the crisis of her human sufferings. You could not

see the Grotto, the entrance of which was on the left, at the base of the

rock. Beyond the Basilica, the only buildings which caught the eye were

the heavy square pile where the Fathers of the Immaculate Conception had

their abode, and the episcopal palace, standing much farther away, in a

spreading, wooded valley. And the three churches were flaming in the

morning glow, and the rain of gold scattered by the sun rays was sweeping

the whole countryside, whilst the flying peals of the bells seemed to be

the very vibration of the light, the musical awakening of the lovely day

that was now beginning.

Whilst crossing the Place du Rosaire, Pierre and Marie glanced at the

Esplanade, the public walk with its long central lawn skirted by broad

parallel paths and extending as far as the new bridge. Here, with face

turned towards the Basilica, was the great crowned statue of the Virgin.

All the sufferers crossed themselves as they went by. And still

passionately chanting its canticle, the fearful _cortege_ rolled on,

through nature in festive array. Under the dazzling sky, past the

mountains of gold and purple, amidst the centenarian trees, symbolical of

health, the running waters whose freshness was eternal, that _cortege_

still and ever marched on with its sufferers, whom nature, if not God,

had condemned, those who were afflicted with skin diseases, those whose

flesh was eaten away, those who were dropsical and inflated like

wine-skins, and those whom rheumatism and paralysis had twisted into

postures of agony. And the victims of hydrocephalus followed, with the

dancers of St. Vitus, the consumptives, the rickety, the epileptic, the

cancerous, the goitrous, the blind, the mad, and the idiotic. "Ave, ave,

ave, Maria!" they sang; and the stubborn plaint acquired increased

volume, as nearer and nearer to the Grotto it bore that abominable

torrent of human wretchedness and pain, amidst all the fright and horror

of the passers-by, who stopped short, unable to stir, their hearts frozen

as this nightmare swept before their eyes.

Pierre and Marie were the first to pass under the lofty arcade of one of

the terraced inclines. And then, as they followed the quay of the Gave,

they all at once came upon the Grotto. And Marie, whom Pierre wheeled as

near to the railing as possible, was only able to raise herself in her

little conveyance, and murmur: "O most Blessed Virgin, Virgin most

loved!"

She had seen neither the entrances to the piscinas nor the twelve-piped

fountain, which she had just passed; nor did she distinguish any better

the shop on her left hand where crucifixes, chaplets, statuettes,

pictures, and other religious articles were sold, or the stone pulpit on

her right which Father Massias already occupied. Her eyes were dazzled by

the splendour of the Grotto; it seemed to her as if a hundred thousand

tapers were burning there behind the railing, filling the low entrance

with the glow of a furnace and illuminating, as with star rays, the

statue of the Virgin, which stood, higher up, at the edge of a narrow

ogive-like cavity. And for her, apart from that glorious apparition,

nothing existed there, neither the crutches with which a part of the

vault had been covered, nor the piles of bouquets fading away amidst the

ivy and the eglantine, nor even the altar placed in the centre near a

little portable organ over which a cover had been thrown. However, as she

raised her eyes above the rock, she once more beheld the slender white

Basilica profiled against the sky, its slight, tapering spire soaring

into the azure of the Infinite like a prayer.

"O Virgin most powerful--Queen of the Virgins--Holy Virgin of Virgins!"

Pierre had now succeeded in wheeling Marie's box to the front rank,

beyond the numerous oak benches which were set out here in the open air

as in the nave of a church. Nearly all these benches were already

occupied by those sufferers who could sit down, while the vacant spaces

were soon filled with litters and little vehicles whose wheels became

entangled together, and on whose close-packed mattresses and pillows all

sorts of diseases were gathered pell-mell. Immediately on arriving, the

young priest had recognised the Vignerons seated with their sorry child

Gustave in the middle of a bench, and now, on the flagstones, he caught

sight of the lace-trimmed bed of Madame Dieulafay, beside whom her

husband and sister knelt in prayer. Moreover, all the patients of Madame

de Jonquiere's carriage took up position here--M. Sabathier and Brother

Isidore side by side, Madame Vetu reclining hopelessly in a conveyance,

Elise Rouquet seated, La Grivotte excited and raising herself on her

clenched hands. Pierre also again perceived Madame Maze, standing

somewhat apart from the others, and humbling herself in prayer; whilst

Madame Vincent, who had fallen on her knees, still holding her little

Rose in her arms, presented the child to the Virgin with ardent entreaty,