第 63 页

bled the sacred heart of Jesus in the midst of a halo. All empires and

kingdoms of the earth were represented; the most distant lands--Canada,

Brazil, Chili, Haiti--here had their flags, which, in all piety, were

being offered as a tribute of homage to the Queen of Heaven.

Then, after the banners, there were other marvels, the thousands and

thousands of gold and silver hearts which were hanging everywhere,

glittering on the walls like stars in the heavens. Some were grouped

together in the form of mystical roses, others described festoons and

garlands, others, again, climbed up the pillars, surrounded the windows,

and constellated the deep, dim chapels. Below the triforium somebody had

had the ingenious idea of employing these hearts to trace in tall letters

the various words which the Blessed Virgin had addressed to Bernadette;

and thus, around the nave, there extended a long frieze of words, the

delight of the infantile minds which busied themselves with spelling

them. It was a swarming, a prodigious resplendency of hearts, whose

infinite number deeply impressed you when you thought of all the hands,

trembling with gratitude, which had offered them. Moreover, the

adornments comprised many other votive offerings, and some of quite an

unexpected description. There were bridal wreaths and crosses of honour,

jewels and photographs, chaplets, and even spurs, in glass cases or

frames. There were also the epaulets and swords of officers, together

with a superb sabre, left there in memory of a miraculous conversion.

But all this was not sufficient; other riches, riches of every kind,

shone out on all sides--marble statues, diadems enriched with brilliants,

a marvellous carpet designed at Blois and embroidered by ladies of all

parts of France, and a golden palm with ornaments of enamel, the gift of

the sovereign pontiff. The lamps suspended from the vaulted roof, some of

them of massive gold and the most delicate workmanship, were also gifts.

They were too numerous to be counted, they studded the nave with stars of

great price. Immediately in front of the tabernacle there was one, a

masterpiece of chasing, offered by Ireland. Others--one from Lille, one

from Valence, one from Macao in far-off China--were veritable jewels,

sparkling with precious stones. And how great was the resplendency when

the choir's score of chandeliers was illumined, when the hundreds of

lamps and the hundreds of candles burned all together, at the great

evening ceremonies! The whole church then became a conflagration, the

thousands of gold and silver hearts reflecting all the little flames with

thousands of fiery scintillations. It was like a huge and wondrous

brasier; the walls streamed with live flakes of light; you seemed to be

entering into the blinding glory of Paradise itself; whilst on all sides

the innumerable banners spread out their silk, their satin, and their

velvet, embroidered with sanguifluous sacred hearts, victorious saints,

and Virgins whose kindly smiles engendered miracles.

Ah! how many ceremonies had already displayed their pomp in that

Basilica! Worship, prayer, chanting, never ceased there. From one end of

the year to the other incense smoked, organs roared, and kneeling

multitudes prayed there with their whole souls. Masses, vespers, sermons,

were continually following one upon another; day by day the religious

exercises began afresh, and each festival of the Church was celebrated

with unparalleled magnificence. The least noteworthy anniversary supplied

a pretext for pompous solemnities. Each pilgrimage was granted its share

of the dazzling resplendency. It was necessary that those suffering ones

and those humble ones who had come from such long distances should be

sent home consoled and enraptured, carrying with them a vision of

Paradise espied through its opening portals. They beheld the luxurious

surroundings of the Divinity, and would forever remain enraptured by the

sight. In the depths of bare, wretched rooms, indeed, by the side of

humble pallets of suffering throughout all Christendom, a vision of the

Basilica with its blazing riches continually arose like a vision of

fortune itself, like a vision of the wealth of that life to be, into

which the poor would surely some day enter after their long, long misery

in this terrestrial sphere.

Pierre, however, felt no delight; no consolation, no hope, came to him as

he gazed upon all the splendour. His frightful feeling of discomfort was

increasing, all was becoming black within him, with that blackness of the

tempest which gathers when men's thoughts and feelings pant and shriek.

He had felt immense desolation rising in his soul ever since Marie,

crying that she was healed, had risen from her little car and walked

along with such strength and fulness of life. Yet he loved her like a

passionately attached brother, and had experienced unlimited happiness on

seeing that she no longer suffered. Why, therefore, should her felicity

bring him such agony? He could now no longer gaze at her, kneeling there,

radiant amidst her tears, with beauty recovered and increased, without

his poor heart bleeding as from some mortal wound. Still he wished to

remain there, and so, averting his eyes, he tried to interest himself in

Father Massias, who was still shaking with violent sobbing on the

flagstones, and whose prostration and annihilation, amidst the consuming

illusion of divine love, he sorely envied. For a moment, moreover, he

questioned Berthaud, feigning to admire some banner and requesting

information respecting it.

"Which one?" asked the superintendent of the bearers; "that lace banner

over there?"

"Yes, that one on the left."

"Oh! it is a banner offered by Le Puy. The arms are those of Le Puy and

Lourdes linked together by the Rosary. The lace is so fine that if you

crumpled the banner up, you could hold it in the hollow of your hand."

However, Abbe Judaine was now stepping forward; the ceremony was about to

begin. Again did the organs resound, and again was a canticle chanted,

whilst, on the altar, the Blessed Sacrament looked like the sovereign

planet amidst the scintillations of the gold and silver hearts, as

innumerable as stars. And then Pierre lacked the strength to remain there

any longer. Since Marie had Madame de Jonquiere and Raymonde with her,

and they would accompany her back, he might surely go off by himself,

vanish into some shadowy corner, and there, at last, vent his grief. In a

few words he excused himself, giving his appointment with Doctor

Chassaigne as a pretext for his departure. However, another fear suddenly

came to him, that of being unable to leave the building, so densely did

the serried throng of believers bar the open doorway. But immediately

afterwards he had an inspiration, and, crossing the sacristy, descended

into the crypt by the narrow interior stairway.

Deep silence and sepulchral gloom suddenly succeeded to the joyous chants

and prodigious radiance of the Basilica above. Cut in the rock, the crypt

formed two narrow passages, parted by a massive block of stone which

upheld the nave, and conducting to a subterranean chapel under the apse,

where some little lamps remained burning both day and night. A dim forest

of pillars rose up there, a mystic terror reigned in that semi-obscurity

where the mystery ever quivered. The chapel walls remained bare, like the

very stones of the tomb, in which all men must some day sleep the last

sleep. And along the passages, against their sides, covered from top to

bottom with marble votive offerings, you only saw a double row of

confessionals; for it was here, in the lifeless tranquillity of the

bowels of the earth, that sins were confessed; and there were priests,

speaking all languages, to absolve the sinners who came thither from the

four corners of the world.

At that hour, however, when the multitude was thronging the Basilica

above, the crypt had become quite deserted. Not a soul, save Pierre's,

throbbed there ever so faintly; and he, amidst that deep silence, that

darkness, that coolness of the grave, fell upon his knees. It was not,

however, through any need of prayer and worship, but because his whole

being was giving way beneath his crushing mental torment. He felt a

torturing longing to be able to see clearly within himself. Ah! why could

he not plunge even more deeply into the heart of things, reflect,

understand, and at last calm himself.

And it was a fearful agony that he experienced. He tried to remember all

the minutes that had gone by since Marie, suddenly springing from her

pallet of wretchedness, had raised her cry of resurrection. Why had he

even then, despite his fraternal joy in seeing her erect, felt such an

awful sensation of discomfort, as though, indeed, the greatest of all

possible misfortunes had fallen upon him? Was he jealous of the divine

grace? Did he suffer because the Virgin, whilst healing her, had

forgotten him, whose soul was so afflicted? He remembered how he had

granted himself a last delay, fixed a supreme appointment with Faith for

the moment when the Blessed Sacrament should pass by, were Marie only

cured; and she was cured, and still he did not believe, and henceforth

there was no hope, for never, never would he be able to believe. Therein

lay the bare, bleeding sore. The truth burst upon him with blinding

cruelty and certainty--she was saved, he was lost. That pretended miracle

which had restored her to life had, in him, completed the ruin of all

belief in the supernatural. That which he had, for a moment, dreamed of

seeking, and perhaps finding, at Lourdes,--naive faith, the happy faith

of a little child,--was no longer possible, would never bloom again after

that collapse of the miraculous, that cure which Beauclair had foretold,

and which had afterwards come to pass, exactly as had been predicted.

Jealous! No--he was not jealous; but he was ravaged, full of mortal

sadness at thus remaining all alone in the icy desert of his

intelligence, regretting the illusion, the lie, the divine love of the

simpleminded, for which henceforth there was no room in his heart.

A flood of bitterness stifled him, and tears started from his eyes. He

had slipped on to the flagstones, prostrated by his anguish. And, by

degrees, he remembered the whole delightful story, from the day when

Marie, guessing how he was tortured by doubt, had become so passionately

eager for his conversion, taking hold of his hand in the gloom, retaining

it in her own, and stammering that she would pray for him--oh! pray for

him with her whole soul. She forgot herself, she entreated the Blessed

Virgin to save her friend rather than herself if there were but one grace

that she could obtain from her Divine Son. Then came another memory, the

memory of the delightful hours which they had spent together amid the

dense darkness of the trees during the night procession. There, again,

they had prayed for one another, mingled one in the other with so ardent

a desire for mutual happiness that, for a moment, they had attained to

the very depths of the love which gives and immolates itself. And now

their long, tear-drenched tenderness, their pure idyl of suffering, was

ending in this brutal separation; she on her side saved, radiant amidst

the hosannas of the triumphant Basilica; and he lost, sobbing with

wretchedness, bowed down in the depths of the dark crypt in an icy,

grave-like solitude. It was as though he had just lost her again, and

this time forever and forever.

All at once Pierre felt the sharp stab which this thought dealt his

heart. He at last understood his pain--a sudden light illumined the

terrible crisis of woe amidst which he was struggling. He had lost Marie

for the first time on the day when he had become a priest, saying to

himself that he might well renounce his manhood since she, stricken in

her sex by incurable illness, would never be a woman. But behold! she

_was_ cured. Behold! she _had_ become a woman. She had all at once

appeared to him very strong, very beautiful, living, and desirable. He,

who was dead, however, could not become a man again. Never more would he

be able to raise the tombstone which crushed and imprisoned his flesh.

She fled away alone, leaving him in the cold grave. The whole wide world

was opening before her with smiling happiness, with the love which laughs

in the sunlit paths, with the husband, with children, no doubt. Whereas

he, buried, as it were to his shoulders, had naught of his body free,

save his brain, and that remained free, no doubt, in order that he might

suffer the more. She had still been his so long as she had not belonged

to another; and if he had been enduring such agony during the past hour,

it was only through this final rending which, this time, parted her from

him forever and forever.

Then rage shook Pierre from head to foot. He was tempted to return to the

Basilica, and cry the truth aloud to Marie. The miracle was a lie! The

helpful beneficence of an all-powerful Divinity was but so much illusion!

Nature alone had acted, life had conquered once again. And he would have

given proofs: he would have shown how life, the only sovereign, worked

for health amid all the sufferings of this terrestrial sphere. And then

they would have gone off together; they would have fled far, far away,

that they might be happy. But a sudden terror took possession of him.

What! lay hands upon that little spotless soul, kill all belief in it,

fill it with the ruins which worked such havoc in his own soul? It all at

once occurred to him that this would be odious sacrilege. He would

afterwards become horrified with himself, he would look upon himself as

her murderer were he some day to realise that he was unable to give her a

happiness equal to that which she would have lost. Perhaps, too, she

would not believe him. And, moreover, would she ever consent to marry a

priest who had broken his vows? She who would always retain the sweet and

never-to be-forgotten memory of how she had been healed in ecstasy! His

design then appeared to him insane, monstrous, polluting. And his revolt

rapidly subsided, until he only retained a feeling of infinite weariness,