第 42 页

At last a little man made his appearance, Cazaban himself, a type of the

knotty but active Pyrenean, with a long face, prominent cheek-bones, and

a sunburned complexion spotted here and there with red. His big,

glittering eyes never remained still; and the whole of his spare little

figure quivered with incessant exuberance of speech and gesture.

"For you, monsieur--a shave, eh?" said he. "I must beg your pardon for

keeping you waiting; but my assistant has gone out, and I was in there

with my boarders. If you will kindly sit down, I will attend to you at

once."

Thereupon, deigning to operate in person, Cazaban began to stir up the

lather and strop the razor. He had glanced rather nervously, however, at

the cassock worn by Pierre, who without a word had seated himself in a

corner and taken up a newspaper in the perusal of which he appeared to be

absorbed.

A short interval of silence followed; but it was fraught with suffering

for Cazaban, and whilst lathering his customer's chin he began to

chatter: "My boarders lingered this morning such a long time at the

Grotto, monsieur, that they have scarcely sat down to _dejeuner_. You can

hear them, eh? I was staying with them out of politeness. However, I owe

myself to my customers as well, do I not? One must try to please

everybody."

M. de Guersaint, who also was fond of a chat, thereupon began to question

him: "You lodge some of the pilgrims, I suppose?"

"Oh! we all lodge some of them, monsieur; it is necessary for the town,"

replied the barber.

"And you accompany them to the Grotto?"

At this, however, Cazaban revolted, and, holding up his razor, he

answered with an air of dignity "Never, monsieur, never! For five years

past I have not been in that new town which they are building."

He was still seeking to restrain himself, and again glanced at Pierre,

whose face was hidden by the newspaper. The sight of the red cross pinned

on M. de Guersaint's jacket was also calculated to render him prudent;

nevertheless his tongue won the victory. "Well, monsieur, opinions are

free, are they not?" said he. "I respect yours, but for my part I don't

believe in all that phantasmagoria! Oh I've never concealed it! I was

already a republican and a freethinker in the days of the Empire. There

were barely four men of those views in the whole town at that time. Oh!

I'm proud of it."

He had begun to shave M. de Guersaint's left cheek and was quite

triumphant. From that moment a stream of words poured forth from his

mouth, a stream which seemed to be inexhaustible. To begin with, he

brought the same charges as Majeste against the Fathers of the Grotto. He

reproached them for their dealings in tapers, chaplets, prints, and

crucifixes, for the disloyal manner in which they competed with those who

sold those articles as well as with the hotel and lodging-house keepers.

And he was also wrathful with the Blue Sisters of the Immaculate

Conception, for had they not robbed him of two tenants, two old ladies,

who spent three weeks at Lourdes each year? Moreover you could divine

within him all the slowly accumulated, overflowing spite with which the

old town regarded the new town--that town which had sprung up so quickly

on the other side of the castle, that rich city with houses as big as

palaces, whither flowed all the life, all the luxury, all the money of

Lourdes, so that it was incessantly growing larger and wealthier, whilst

its elder sister, the poor, antique town of the mountains, with its

narrow, grass-grown, deserted streets, seemed near the point of death.

Nevertheless the struggle still continued; the old town seemed determined

not to die, and, by lodging pilgrims and opening shops on her side,

endeavoured to compel her ungrateful junior to grant her a share of the

spoils. But custom only flowed to the shops which were near the Grotto,

and only the poorer pilgrims were willing to lodge so far away; so that

the unequal conditions of the struggle intensified the rupture and turned

the high town and the low town into two irreconcilable enemies, who

preyed upon one another amidst continual intrigues.

"Ah, no! They certainly won't see me at their Grotto," resumed Cazaban,

with his rageful air. "What an abusive use they make of that Grotto of

theirs! They serve it up in every fashion! To think of such idolatry,

such gross superstition in the nineteenth century! Just ask them if they

have cured a single sufferer belonging to the town during the last twenty

years! Yet there are plenty of infirm people crawling about our streets.

It was our folk that benefited by the first miracles; but it would seem

that the miraculous water has long lost all its power, so far as we are

concerned. We are too near it; people have to come from a long distance

if they want it to act on them. It's really all too stupid; why, I

wouldn't go there even if I were offered a hundred francs!"

Pierre's immobility was doubtless irritating the barber. He had now begun

to shave M. de Guersaint's right cheek; and was inveighing against the

Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, whose greed for gain was the one

cause of all the misunderstanding. These Fathers who were at home there,

since they had purchased from the Municipality the land on which they

desired to build, did not even carry out the stipulations of the contract

they had signed, for there were two clauses in it forbidding all trading,

such as the sale of the water and of religious articles. Innumerable

actions might have been brought against them. But they snapped their

fingers, and felt themselves so powerful that they no longer allowed a

single offering to go to the parish, but arranged matters so that the

whole harvest of money should be garnered by the Grotto and the Basilica.

And, all at once, Cazaban candidly exclaimed: "If they were only

reasonable, if they would only share with us!" Then, when M. de Guersaint

had washed his face, and reseated himself, the hairdresser resumed: "And

if I were to tell you, monsieur, what they have done with our poor town!

Forty years ago all the young girls here conducted themselves properly, I

assure you. I remember that in my young days when a young man was wicked

he generally had to go elsewhere. But times have changed, our manners are

no longer the same. Nowadays nearly all the girls content themselves with

selling candles and nosegays; and you must have seen them catching hold

of the passers-by and thrusting their goods into their hands! It is

really shameful to see so many bold girls about! They make a lot of

money, acquire lazy habits, and, instead of working during the winter,

simply wait for the return of the pilgrimage season. And I assure you

that the young men don't need to go elsewhere nowadays. No, indeed! And

add to all this the suspicious floating element which swells the

population as soon as the first fine weather sets in--the coachmen, the

hawkers, the cantine keepers, all the low-class, wandering folk reeking

with grossness and vice--and you can form an idea of the honest new town

which they have given us with the crowds that come to their Grotto and

their Basilica!"

Greatly struck by these remarks, Pierre had let his newspaper fall and

begun to listen. It was now, for the first time, that he fully realised

the difference between the two Lourdes--old Lourdes so honest and so

pious in its tranquil solitude, and new Lourdes corrupted, demoralised by

the circulation of so much money, by such a great enforced increase of

wealth, by the ever-growing torrent of strangers sweeping through it, by

the fatal rotting influence of the conflux of thousands of people, the

contagion of evil examples. And what a terrible result it seemed when one

thought of Bernadette, the pure, candid girl kneeling before the wild

primitive grotto, when one thought of all the naive faith, all the

fervent purity of those who had first begun the work! Had they desired

that the whole countryside should be poisoned in this wise by lucre and

human filth? Yet it had sufficed that the nations should flock there for

a pestilence to break out.

Seeing that Pierre was listening, Cazaban made a final threatening

gesture as though to sweep away all this poisonous superstition. Then,

relapsing into silence, he finished cutting M. de Guersaint's hair.

"There you are, monsieur!"

The architect rose, and it was only now that he began to speak of the

conveyance which he wished to hire. At first the hairdresser declined to

enter into the matter, pretending that they must apply to his brother at

the Champ Commun; but at last he consented to take the order. A

pair-horse landau for Gavarnie was priced at fifty francs. However, he

was so pleased at having talked so much, and so flattered at hearing

himself called an honest man, that he eventually agreed to charge only

forty francs. There were four persons in the party, so this would make

ten francs apiece. And it was agreed that they should start off at about

two in the morning, so that they might get back to Lourdes at a tolerably

early hour on the Monday evening.

"The landau will be outside the Hotel of the Apparitions at the appointed

time," repeated Cazaban in his emphatic way. "You may rely on me,

monsieur."

Then he began to listen. The clatter of crockery did not cease in the

adjoining room. People were still eating there with that impulsive

voracity which had spread from one to the other end of Lourdes. And all

at once a voice was heard calling for more bread.

"Excuse me," hastily resumed Cazaban, "my boarders want me." And

thereupon he rushed away, his hands still greasy through fingering the

comb.

The door remained open for a second, and on the walls of the dining-room

Pierre espied various religious prints, and notably a view of the Grotto,

which surprised him; in all probability, however, the hairdresser only

hung these engravings there during the pilgrimage season by way of

pleasing his boarders.

It was now nearly three o'clock. When the young priest and M. de

Guersaint got outside they were astonished at the loud pealing of bells

which was flying through the air. The parish church had responded to the

first stroke of vespers chiming at the Basilica; and now all the

convents, one after another, were contributing to the swelling peals. The

crystalline notes of the bell of the Carmelites mingled with the grave

notes of the bell of the Immaculate Conception; and all the joyous bells

of the Sisters of Nevers and the Dominicans were jingling together. In

this wise, from morning till evening on fine days of festivity, the

chimes winged their flight above the house-roofs of Lourdes. And nothing

could have been gayer than that sonorous melody resounding in the broad

blue heavens above the gluttonous town, which had at last lunched, and

was now comfortably digesting as it strolled about in the sunlight.

III. THE NIGHT PROCESSION

AS soon as night had fallen Marie, still lying on her bed at the Hospital

of Our Lady of Dolours, became extremely impatient, for she had learnt

from Madame de Jonquiere that Baron Suire had obtained from Father

Fourcade the necessary permission for her to spend the night in front of

the Grotto. Thus she kept on questioning Sister Hyacinthe, asking her:

"Pray, Sister, is it not yet nine o'clock?"

"No, my child, it is scarcely half-past eight," was the reply. "Here is a

nice woollen shawl for you to wrap round you at daybreak, for the Gave is

close by, and the mornings are very fresh, you know, in these mountainous

parts."

"Oh! but the nights are so lovely, Sister, and besides, I sleep so little

here!" replied Marie; "I cannot be worse off out-of-doors. _Mon Dieu_,

how happy I am; how delightful it will be to spend the whole night with

the Blessed Virgin!"

The entire ward was jealous of her; for to remain in prayer before the

Grotto all night long was the most ineffable of joys, the supreme

beatitude. It was said that in the deep peacefulness of night the chosen

ones undoubtedly beheld the Virgin, but powerful protection was needed to

obtain such a favour as had been granted to Marie; for nowadays the

reverend Fathers scarcely liked to grant it, as several sufferers had

died during the long vigil, falling asleep, as it were, in the midst of

their ecstasy.

"You will take the Sacrament at the Grotto tomorrow morning, before you

are brought back here, won't you, my child?" resumed Sister Hyacinthe.

However, nine o'clock at last struck, and, Pierre not arriving, the girl

wondered whether he, usually so punctual, could have forgotten her? The

others were now talking to her of the night procession, which she would

see from beginning to end if she only started at once. The ceremonies

concluded with a procession every night, but the Sunday one was always

the finest, and that evening, it was said, would be remarkably splendid,

such, indeed, as was seldom seen. Nearly thirty thousand pilgrims would

take part in it, each carrying a lighted taper: the nocturnal marvels of

the sky would be revealed; the stars would descend upon earth. At this

thought the sufferers began to bewail their fate; what a wretched lot was

theirs, to be tied to their beds, unable to see any of those wonders.

At last Madame de Jonquiere approached Marie's bed. "My dear girl," said

she, "here is your father with Monsieur l'Abbe."

Radiant with delight, the girl at once forgot her weary waiting. "Oh!

pray let us make haste, Pierre," she exclaimed; "pray let us make haste!"

They carried her down the stairs, and the young priest harnessed himself

to the little car, which gently rolled along, under the star-studded

heavens, whilst M. de Guersaint walked beside it. The night was moonless,

but extremely beautiful; the vault above looked like deep blue velvet,

spangled with diamonds, and the atmosphere was exquisitely mild and pure,