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greenish bricks, speckled with moss and wild convolvuli in bloom, were

still lying among the forgotten materials. In the beds of nettles you

here and there distinguished the rails of a little railway laid down for

the trucks, one of which was lying overturned in a corner. But the

saddest sight in all this death of things was certainly the portable

engine which had remained in the shed that sheltered it. For fifteen

years it had been standing there cold and lifeless. A part of the roof of

the shed had ended by falling in upon it, and now the rain drenched it at

every shower. A bit of the leather harness by which the crane was worked

hung down, and seemed to bind the engine like a thread of some gigantic

spider's web. And its metal-work, its steel and copper, was also

decaying, as if rusted by lichens, covered with the vegetation of old

age, whose yellowish patches made it look like a very ancient,

grass-grown machine which the winters had preyed upon. This lifeless

engine, this cold engine with its empty firebox and its silent boiler,

was like the very soul of the departed labour vainly awaiting the advent

of some great charitable heart, whose coming through the eglantine and

the brambles would awaken this sleeping church in the wood from its heavy

slumber of ruin.

At last Doctor Chassaigne spoke: "Ah!" he said, "when one thinks that

fifty thousand francs would have sufficed to prevent such a disaster!

With fifty thousand francs the roof could have been put on, the heavy

work would have been saved, and one could have waited patiently. But they

wanted to kill the work just as they had killed the man." With a gesture

he designated the Fathers of the Grotto, whom he avoided naming. "And to

think," he continued, "that their annual receipts are eight hundred

thousand francs. However, they prefer to send presents to Rome to

propitiate powerful friends there."

In spite of himself, he was again opening hostilities against the

adversaries of Cure Peyramale. The whole story caused a holy anger of

justice to haunt him. Face to face with those lamentable ruins, he

returned to the facts--the enthusiastic Cure starting on the building of

his beloved church, and getting deeper and deeper into debt, whilst

Father Sempe, ever on the lookout, took advantage of each of his

mistakes, discrediting him with the Bishop, arresting the flow of

offerings, and finally stopping the works. Then, after the conquered man

was dead, had come interminable lawsuits, lawsuits lasting fifteen years,

which gave the winters time to devour the building. And now it was in

such a woeful state, and the debt had risen to such an enormous figure,

that all seemed over. The slow death, the death of the stones, was

becoming irrevocable. The portable engine beneath its tumbling shed would

fall to pieces, pounded by the rain and eaten away by the moss.

"I know very well that they chant victory," resumed the doctor; "that

they alone remain. It is just what they wanted--to be the absolute

masters, to have all the power, all the money for themselves alone. I may

tell you that their terror of competition has even made them intrigue

against the religious Orders that have attempted to come to Lourdes.

Jesuits, Dominicans, Benedictines, Capuchins, and Carmelites have made

applications at various times, and the Fathers of the Grotto have always

succeeded in keeping them away. They only tolerate the female Orders, and

will only have one flock. And the town belongs to them; they have opened

shop there, and sell God there wholesale and retail!"

Walking slowly, he had while speaking returned to the middle of the nave,

amidst the ruins, and with a sweeping wave of the arm he pointed to all

the devastation surrounding him. "Look at this sadness, this frightful

wretchedness! Over yonder the Rosary and Basilica cost them three

millions of francs."*

* About 580,000 dollars.

Then, as in Bernadette's cold, dark room, Pierre saw the Basilica rise

before him, radiant in its triumph. It was not here that you found the

realisation of the dream of Cure Peyramale, officiating and blessing

kneeling multitudes while the organs resounded joyfully. The Basilica,

over yonder, appeared, vibrating with the pealing of its bells, clamorous

with the superhuman joy of an accomplished miracle, all sparkling with

its countless lights, its banners, its lamps, its hearts of silver and

gold, its clergy attired in gold, and its monstrance akin to a golden

star. It flamed in the setting sun, it touched the heavens with its

spire, amidst the soaring of the milliards of prayers which caused its

walls to quiver. Here, however, was the church that had died before being

born, the church placed under interdict by a mandamus of the Bishop, the

church falling into dust, and open to the four winds of heaven. Each

storm carried away a little more of the stones, big flies buzzed all

alone among the nettles which had invaded the nave; and there were no

other devotees than the poor women of the neighbourhood, who came thither

to turn their sorry linen, spread upon the grass.

It seemed amidst the mournful silence as though a low voice were sobbing,

perhaps the voice of the marble columns weeping over their useless beauty

under their wooden shirts. At times birds would fly across the deserted

apse uttering a shrill cry. Bands of enormous rats which had taken refuge

under bits of the lowered scaffoldings would fight, and bite, and bound

out of their holes in a gallop of terror. And nothing could have been more

heart-rending than the sight of this pre-determined ruin, face to face

with its triumphant rival, the Basilica, which beamed with gold.

Again Doctor Chassaigne curtly said, "Come."

They left the church, and following the left aisle, reached a door,

roughly fashioned out of a few planks nailed together; and, when they had

passed down a half-demolished wooden staircase, the steps of which shook

beneath their feet, they found themselves in the crypt.

It was a low vault, with squat arches, on exactly the same plan as the

choir. The thick, stunted columns, left in the rough, also awaited their

sculptors. Materials were lying about, pieces of wood were rotting on the

beaten ground, the whole vast hall was white with plaster in the

abandonment in which unfinished buildings are left. At the far end, three

bays, formerly glazed, but in which not a pane of glass remained, threw a

clear, cold light upon the desolate bareness of the walls.

And there, in the middle, lay Cure Peyramale's corpse. Some pious friends

had conceived the touching idea of thus burying him in the crypt of his

unfinished church. The tomb stood on a broad step and was all marble. The

inscriptions, in letters of gold, expressed the feelings of the

subscribers, the cry of truth and reparation that came from the monument

itself. You read on the face: "This tomb has been erected by the aid of

pious offerings from the entire universe to the blessed memory of the

great servant of Our Lady of Lourdes." On the right side were these words

from a Brief of Pope Pius IX.: "You have entirely devoted yourself to

erecting a temple to the Mother of God." And on the left were these words

from the New Testament: "Happy are they who suffer persecution for

justice' sake." Did not these inscriptions embody the true plaint, the

legitimate hope of the vanquished man who had fought so long in the sole

desire of strictly executing the commands of the Virgin as transmitted to

him by Bernadette? She, Our Lady of Lourdes, was there personified by a

slender statuette, standing above the commemorative inscription, against

the naked wall whose only decorations were a few bead wreaths hanging

from nails. And before the tomb, as before the Grotto, were five or six

benches in rows, for the faithful who desired to sit down.

But with another gesture of sorrowful compassion, Doctor Chassaigne had

silently pointed out to Pierre a huge damp spot which was turning the

wall at the far end quite green. Pierre remembered the little lake which

he had noticed up above on the cracked cement flooring of the

choir--quite a quantity of water left by the storm of the previous night.

Infiltration had evidently commenced, a perfect stream ran down, invading

the crypt, whenever there was heavy rain. And they both felt a pang at

their hearts when they perceived that the water was trickling along the

vaulted roof in narrow threads, and thence falling in large, regular

rhythmical drops upon the tomb. The doctor could not restrain a groan.

"Now it rains," he said; "it rains on him!"

Pierre remained motionless, in a kind of awe. In the presence of that

falling water, at the thought of the blasts which must rush at winter

time through the glassless windows, that corpse appeared to him both

woeful and tragic. It acquired a fierce grandeur, lying there alone in

its splendid marble tomb, amidst all the rubbish, at the bottom of the

crumbling ruins of its own church. It was the solitary guardian, the dead

sleeper and dreamer watching over the empty spaces, open to all the birds

of night. It was the mute, obstinate, eternal protest, and it was

expectation also. Cure Peyramale, stretched in his coffin, having all

eternity before him to acquire patience, there, without weariness,

awaited the workmen who would perhaps return thither some fine April

morning. If they should take ten years to do so, he would be there, and

if it should take them a century, he would be there still. He was waiting

for the rotten scaffoldings up above, among the grass of the nave, to be

resuscitated like the dead, and by the force of some miracle to stand

upright once more, along the walls. He was waiting, too, for the

moss-covered engine to become all at once burning hot, recover its

breath, and raise the timbers for the roof. His beloved enterprise, his

gigantic building, was crumbling about his head, and yet with joined

hands and closed eyes he was watching over its ruins, watching and

waiting too.

In a low voice, the doctor finished the cruel story, telling how, after

persecuting Cure Peyramale and his work, they persecuted his tomb. There

had formerly been a bust of the Cure there, and pious hands had kept a

little lamp burning before it. But a woman had one day fallen with her

face to the earth, saying that she had perceived the soul of the

deceased, and thereupon the Fathers of the Grotto were in a flutter. Were

miracles about to take place there? The sick already passed entire days

there, seated on the benches before the tomb. Others knelt down, kissed

the marble, and prayed to be cured. And at this a feeling of terror

arose: supposing they should be cured, supposing the Grotto should find a

competitor in this martyr, lying all alone, amidst the old tools left

there by the masons! The Bishop of Tarbes, informed and influenced,

thereupon published the mandamus which placed the church under interdict,

forbidding all worship there and all pilgrimages and processions to the

tomb of the former priest of Lourdes. As in the case of Bernadette, his

memory was proscribed, his portrait could be found, officially, nowhere.

In the same manner as they had shown themselves merciless against the

living man, so did the Fathers prove merciless to his memory. They

pursued him even in his tomb. They alone, again nowadays, prevented the

works of the church from being proceeded with, by raising continual

obstacles, and absolutely refusing to share their rich harvest of alms.

And they seemed to be waiting for the winter rains to fall and complete

the work of destruction, for the vaulted roof of the crypt, the walls,

the whole gigantic pile to crumble down upon the tomb of the martyr, upon

the body of the defeated man, so that he might be buried beneath them and

at last pounded to dust!

"Ah!" murmured the doctor, "I, who knew him so valiant, so enthusiastic

in all noble labour! Now, you see it, it rains, it rains on him!"

Painfully, he set himself on his knees and found relief in a long prayer.

Pierre, who could not pray, remained standing. Compassionate sorrow was

overflowing from his heart. He listened to the heavy drops from the roof

as one by one they broke on the tomb with a slow rhythmical pit-a-pat,

which seemed to be numbering the seconds of eternity, amidst the profound

silence. And he reflected on the eternal misery of this world, on the

choice which suffering makes in always falling on the best. The two great

makers of Our Lady of Lourdes, Bernadette and Cure Peyramale, rose up in

the flesh again before him, like woeful victims, tortured during their

lives and exiled after their deaths. That alone, indeed, would have

completed within him the destruction of his faith; for the Bernadette,

whom he had just found at the end of his researches, was but a human

sister, loaded with every dolour. But none the less he preserved a tender

brotherly veneration for her, and two tears slowly trickled down his

cheeks.

THE FIFTH DAY

I. EGOTISM AND LOVE

AGAIN that night Pierre, at the Hotel of the Apparitions, was unable to

obtain a wink of sleep. After calling at the hospital to inquire after

Marie, who, since her return from the procession, had been soundly

enjoying the delicious, restoring sleep of a child, he had gone to bed

himself feeling anxious at the prolonged absence of M. de Guersaint. He

had expected him at latest at dinner-time, but probably some mischance

had detained him at Gavarnie; and he thought how disappointed Marie would

be if her father were not there to embrace her the first thing in the

morning. With a man like M. de Guersaint, so pleasantly heedless and so

hare-brained, everything was possible, every fear might be realised.

Perhaps this anxiety had at first sufficed to keep Pierre awake in spite

of his great fatigue; but afterwards the nocturnal noises of the hotel

had really assumed unbearable proportions. The morrow, Tuesday, was the

day of departure, the last day which the national pilgrimage would spend

at Lourdes, and the pilgrims no doubt were making the most of their time,