第 64 页

a sensation of a burning, incurable wound--the wound of his poor,

bruised, lacerated heart.

Then, however, amidst his abandonment, the void in which he was whirling,

a supreme struggle began, filling him again with agony. What should he

do? His sufferings made a coward of him, and he would have liked to flee,

so that he might never see Marie again. For he understood very well that

he would now have to lie to her, since she thought that he was saved like

herself, converted, healed in soul, even as she had been healed in body.

She had told him of her joy while dragging her car up the colossal

gradient way. Oh! to have had that great happiness together, together; to

have felt their hearts melt and mingle one in the other! And even then he

had already lied, as he would always be obliged to lie in order that he

might not spoil her pure and blissful illusion. He let the last

throbbings of his veins subside, and vowed that he would find sufficient

strength for the sublime charity of feigning peacefulness of soul, the

rapture of one who is redeemed. For he wished her to be wholly

happy--without a regret, without a doubt--in the full serenity of faith,

convinced that the blessed Virgin had indeed given her consent to their

purely mystical union. What did his torments matter? Later on, perhaps,

he might recover possession of himself. Amidst his desolate solitude of

mind would there not always be a little joy to sustain him, all that joy

whose consoling falsity he would leave to her?

Several minutes again elapsed, and Pierre, still overwhelmed, remained on

the flagstones, seeking to calm his fever. He no longer thought, he no

longer lived; he was a prey to that prostration of the entire being which

follows upon great crises. But, all at once, he fancied he could hear a

sound of footsteps, and thereupon he painfully rose to his feet, and

feigned to be reading the inscriptions graven in the marble votive slabs

along the walls. He had been mistaken--nobody was there; nevertheless,

seeking to divert his mind, he continued perusing the inscriptions, at

first in a mechanical kind of way, and then, little by little, feeling a

fresh emotion steal over him.

The sight was almost beyond imagination. Faith, love, and gratitude

displayed themselves in a hundred, a thousand ways on these marble slabs

with gilded lettering. Some of the inscriptions were so artless as to

provoke a smile. A colonel had sent a sculptured representation of his

foot with the words: "Thou hast preserved it; grant that it may serve

Thee." Farther on you read the line: "May Her protection extend to the

glass trade." And then, by the frankness of certain expressions of

thanks, you realised of what a strange character the appeals had been.

"To Mary the Immaculate," ran one inscription, "from a father of a

family, in recognition of health restored, a lawsuit won, and advancement

gained." However, the memory of these instances faded away amidst the

chorus of soaring, fervent cries. There was the cry of the lovers: "Paul

and Anna entreat Our Lady of Lourdes to bless their union." There was the

cry of the mothers in various forms: "Gratitude to Mary, who has thrice

healed my child."--"Gratitude to Mary for the birth of Antoinette, whom I

dedicate, like myself and all my kin, to Her."--"P. D., three years old,

has been preserved to the love of his parents." And then came the cry of

the wives, the cry, too, of the sick restored to health, and of the souls

restored to happiness: "Protect my husband; grant that my husband may

enjoy good health."--"I was crippled in both legs, and now I am

healed."--"We came, and now we hope."--"I prayed, I wept, and She heard

me." And there were yet other cries, cries whose veiled glow conjured up

thoughts of long romances: "Thou didst join us together; protect us, we

pray Thee."--"To Mary, for the greatest of all blessings." And the same

cries, the same words--gratitude, thankfulness, homage,

acknowledgment,--occurred again and again, ever with the same passionate

fervour. All! those hundreds, those thousands of cries which were forever

graven on that marble, and from the depths of the crypt rose clamorously

to the Virgin, proclaiming the everlasting devotion of the unhappy beings

whom she had succoured.

Pierre did not weary of reading them, albeit his mouth was bitter and

increasing desolation was filling him. So it was only he who had no

succour to hope for! When so many sufferers were listened to, he alone

had been unable to make himself heard! And he now began to think of the

extraordinary number of prayers which must be said at Lourdes from one

end of the year to the other. He tried to cast them up; those said during

the days spent at the Grotto and during the nights spent at the Rosary,

those said at the ceremonies at the Basilica, and those said at the

sunlight and the starlight processions. But this continual entreaty of

every second was beyond computation. It seemed as if the faithful were

determined to weary the ears of the Divinity, determined to extort

favours and forgiveness by the very multitude, the vast multitude of

their prayers. The priests said that it was necessary to offer to God the

acts of expiation which the sins of France required, and that when the

number of these acts of expiation should be large enough, God would smite

France no more. What a harsh belief in the necessity of chastisement!

What a ferocious idea born of the gloomiest pessimism! How evil life must

be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of

physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to Heaven!

In the midst of all his sadness, Pierre felt deep compassion penetrate

his heart. He was upset by the thought that mankind should be so

wretched, reduced to such a state of woe, so bare, so weak, so utterly

forsaken, that it renounced its own reason to place the one sole

possibility of happiness in the hallucinatory intoxication of dreams.

Tears once more filled his eyes; he wept for himself and for others, for

all the poor tortured beings who feel a need of stupefying and numbing

their pains in order to escape from the realities of the world. He again

seemed to hear the swarming, kneeling crowd of the Grotto, raising the

glowing entreaty of its prayer to Heaven, the multitude of twenty and

thirty thousand souls from whose midst ascended such a fervour of desire

that you seemed to see it smoking in the sunlight like incense. Then

another form of the exaltation of faith glowed, beneath the crypt, in the

Church of the Rosary, where nights were spent in a paradise of rapture,

amidst the silent delights of the communion, the mute appeals in which

the whole being pines, burns, and soars aloft. And as though the cries

raised before the Grotto and the perpetual adoration of the Rosary were

not sufficient, that clamour of ardent entreaty burst forth afresh on the

walls of the crypt around him; and here it was eternised in marble, here

it would continue shrieking the sufferings of humanity even into the

far-away ages. It was the marble, it was the walls themselves praying,

seized by that shudder of universal woe which penetrated even the world's

stones. And, at last, the prayers ascended yet higher, still higher,

soared aloft from the radiant Basilica, which was humming and buzzing

above him, full as it now was of a frantic multitude, whose mighty voice,

bursting into a canticle of hope, he fancied he could hear through the

flagstones of the nave. And it finally seemed to him that he was being

whirled away, transported, as though he were indeed amidst the very

vibrations of that huge wave of prayer, which, starting from the dust of

the earth, ascended the tier of superposed churches, spreading from

tabernacle to tabernacle, and filling even the walls with such pity that

they sobbed aloud, and that the supreme cry of wretchedness pierced its

way into heaven with the white spire, the lofty golden cross, above the

steeple. O Almighty God, O Divinity, Helpful Power, whoever, whatever

Thou mayst be, take pity upon poor mankind and make human suffering

cease!

All at once Pierre was dazzled. He had followed the left-hand passage,

and was coming out into broad daylight, above the inclined ways, and two

affectionate arms at once caught hold of him and clasped him. It was

Doctor Chassaigne, whose appointment he had forgotten, and who had been

waiting there to take him to visit Bernadette's room and Abbe Peyramale's

church. "Oh! what joy must be yours, my child!" exclaimed the good old

man. "I have just learnt the great news, the extraordinary favour which

Our Lady of Lourdes has granted to your young friend. Recollect what I

told you the day before yesterday. I am now at ease--you are saved!"

A last bitterness came to the young priest who was very pale. However, he

was able to smile, and he gently answered: "Yes, we are saved, we are

very happy."

It was the lie beginning; the divine illusion which in a spirit of

charity he wished to give to others.

And then one more spectacle met Pierre's eyes. The principal door of the

Basilica stood wide open, and a red sheet of light from the setting sun

was enfilading the nave from one to the other end. Everything was flaring

with the splendour of a conflagration--the gilt railings of the choir,

the votive offerings of gold and silver, the lamps enriched with precious

stones, the banners with their bright embroideries, and the swinging

censers, which seemed like flying jewels. And yonder, in the depths of

this burning splendour, amidst the snowy surplices and the golden

chasubles, he recognised Marie, with hair unbound, hair of gold like all

else, enveloping her in a golden mantle. And the organs burst into a hymn

of triumph; and the delirious people acclaimed God; and Abbe Judaine, who

had again just taken the Blessed Sacrament from off the altar, raised it

aloft and presented it to their gaze for the last time; and radiantly

magnificent it shone out like a glory amidst the streaming gold of the

Basilica, whose prodigious triumph all the bells proclaimed in clanging,

flying peals.

V. CRADLE AND GRAVE

IMMEDIATELY afterwards, as they descended the steps, Doctor Chassaigne

said to Pierre: "You have just seen the triumph; I will now show you two

great injustices."

And he conducted him into the Rue des Petits-Fosses to visit Bernadette's

room, that low, dark chamber whence she set out on the day the Blessed

Virgin appeared to her.

The Rue des Petits-Fosses starts from the former Rue des Bois, now the

Rue de la Grotte, and crosses the Rue du Tribunal. It is a winding lane,

slightly sloping and very gloomy. The passers-by are few; it is skirted

by long walls, wretched-looking houses, with mournful facades in which

never a window opens. All its gaiety consists in an occasional tree in a

courtyard.

"Here we are," at last said the doctor.

At the part where he had halted, the street contracted, becoming very

narrow, and the house faced the high, grey wall of a barn. Raising their

heads, both men looked up at the little dwelling, which seemed quite

lifeless, with its narrow casements and its coarse, violet pargeting,

displaying the shameful ugliness of poverty. The entrance passage down

below was quite black; an old light iron gate was all that closed it; and

there was a step to mount, which in rainy weather was immersed in the

water of the gutter.

"Go in, my friend, go in," said the doctor. "You have only to push the

gate."

The passage was long, and Pierre kept on feeling the damp wall with his

hand, for fear of making a false step. It seemed to him as if he were

descending into a cellar, in deep obscurity, and he could feel a slippery

soil impregnated with water beneath his feet. Then at the end, in

obedience to the doctor's direction, he turned to the right.

"Stoop, or you may hurt yourself," said M. Chassaigne; "the door is very

low. There, here we are."

The door of the room, like the gate in the street, stood wide open, as if

the place had been carelessly abandoned; and Pierre, who had stopped in

the middle of the chamber, hesitating, his eyes still full of the bright

daylight outside, could distinguish absolutely nothing. He had fallen

into complete darkness, and felt an icy chill about the shoulders similar

to the sensation that might be caused by a wet towel.

But, little by little, his eyes became accustomed to the dimness. Two

windows of unequal size opened on to a narrow, interior courtyard, where

only a greenish light descended, as at the bottom of a well; and to read

there, in the middle of the day, it would be necessary to have a candle.

Measuring about fifteen feet by twelve, the room was flagged with large

uneven stones; while the principal beam and the rafters of the roof,

which were visible, had darkened with time and assumed a dirty, sooty

hue. Opposite the door was the chimney, a miserable plaster chimney, with

a mantelpiece formed of a rotten old plank. There was a sink between this

chimney and one of the windows. The walls, with their decaying,

damp-stained plaster falling off by bits, were full of cracks, and

turning a dirty black like the ceiling. There was no longer any furniture

there; the room seemed abandoned; you could only catch a glimpse of some

confused, strange objects, unrecognisable in the heavy obscurity that

hung about the corners.

After a spell of silence, the doctor exclaimed "Yes, this is the room;

all came from here. Nothing has been changed, with the exception that the

furniture has gone. I have tried to picture how it was placed: the beds

certainly stood against this wall, opposite the windows; there must have

been three of them at least, for the Soubirouses were seven--the father,

mother, two boys, and three girls. Think of that! Three beds filling this

room! Seven persons living in this small space! All of them buried alive,

without air, without light, almost without bread! What frightful misery!