第 72 页

to insist on the agreement being respected, and enjoining them to close

their shop at once. What do you think they answered, monsieur? Oh! what

they have replied twenty times before, what they will always answer, when

they are reminded of their engagements: 'Very well, we consent to keep

them, but we are masters at our own place, and we'll close the Grotto!'"

He raised himself up, his razor in the air, and, repeating his words, his

eyes dilated by the enormity of the thing, he said, "'We'll close the

Grotto.'"

Pierre, who was continuing his slow walk, suddenly stopped and said in

his face, "Well! the municipal council had only to answer, 'Close it.'"

At this Cazaban almost choked; the blood rushed to his face, he was

beside himself, and stammered out "Close the Grotto?--Close the Grotto?"

"Certainly! As the Grotto irritates you and rends your heart; as it's a

cause of continual warfare, injustice, and corruption. Everything would

be over, we should hear no more about it. That would really be a capital

solution, and if the council had the power it would render you a service

by forcing the Fathers to carry out their threat."

As Pierre went on speaking, Cazaban's anger subsided. He became very calm

and somewhat pale, and in the depths of his big eyes the priest detected

an expression of increasing uneasiness. Had he not gone too far in his

passion against the Fathers? Many ecclesiastics did not like them;

perhaps this young priest was simply at Lourdes for the purpose of

stirring-up an agitation against them. Then who knows?--it might possibly

result in the Grotto being closed later on. But it was by the Grotto that

they all lived. If the old city screeched with rage at only picking up

the crumbs, it was well pleased to secure even that windfall; and the

freethinkers themselves, who coined money with the pilgrims, like

everyone else, held their tongues, ill at ease, and even frightened, when

they found people too much of their opinion with regard to the

objectionable features of new Lourdes. It was necessary to be prudent.

Cazaban thereupon returned to M. de Guersaint, whose other cheek he began

shaving, murmuring the while in an off-hand manner: "Oh! what I say about

the Grotto is not because it troubles me much in reality, and, besides,

everyone must live."

In the dining-room, the children, amidst deafening shouts, had just

broken one of the bowls, and Pierre, glancing through the open doorway,

again noticed the engravings of religious subjects and the plaster Virgin

with which the hairdresser had ornamented the apartment in order to

please his lodgers. And just then, too, a voice shouted from the first

floor that the trunk was ready, and that they would be much obliged if

the assistant would cord it as soon as he returned.

However, Cazaban, in the presence of these two gentlemen whom, as a

matter of fact, he did not know, remained suspicious and uneasy, his

brain haunted by all sorts of disquieting suppositions. He was in despair

at the idea of having to let them go away without learning anything about

them, especially after having exposed himself. If he had only been able

to withdraw the more rabid of his biting remarks about the Fathers.

Accordingly, when M. de Guersaint rose to wash his chin, he yielded to a

desire to renew the conversation.

"Have you heard talk of yesterday's miracle? The town is quite upside

down with it; more than twenty people have already given me an account of

what occurred. Yes, it seems they obtained an extraordinary miracle, a

paralytic young lady got up and dragged her invalid carriage as far as

the choir of the Basilica."

M. de Guersaint, who was about to sit down after wiping himself, gave a

complacent laugh. "That young lady is my daughter," he said.

Thereupon, under this sudden and fortunate flash of enlightenment,

Cazaban became all smiles. He felt reassured, and combed M. de

Guersaint's hair with a masterly touch, amid a returning exuberance of

speech and gesture. "Ah! monsieur, I congratulate you, I am flattered at

having you in my hands. Since the young lady your daughter is cured, your

father's heart is at ease. Am I not right?"

And he also found a few pleasant words for Pierre. Then, when he had

decided to let them go, he looked at the priest with an air of

conviction, and remarked, like a sensible man, desirous of coming to a

conclusion on the subject of miracles: "There are some, Monsieur l'Abbe,

which are good fortunes for everybody. From time to time we require one

of that description."

Outside, M. de Guersaint had to go and fetch the coachman, who was still

laughing with the servant-girl, while her dog, dripping with water, was

shaking itself in the sun. In five minutes the trap brought them back to

the bottom of the Plateau de la Merlasse. The trip had taken a good

half-hour. Pierre wanted to keep the conveyance, with the idea of showing

Marie the town without giving her too much fatigue. So, while the father

ran to the Grotto to fetch his daughter, he waited there beneath the

trees.

The coachman at once engaged in conversation with the priest. He had lit

another cigarette and showed himself very familiar. He came from a

village in the environs of Toulouse, and did not complain, for he earned

good round sums each day at Lourdes. You fed well there, said he, you

amused yourself, it was what you might call a good neighbourhood. He said

these things with the _abandon_ of a man who was not troubled with

religious scruples, but yet did not forget the respect which he owed to

an ecclesiastic.

At last, from the top of his box, where he remained half lying down,

dangling one of his legs, he allowed this remark to fall slowly from his

lips: "Ah! yes, Monsieur l'Abbe, Lourdes has caught on well, but the

question is whether it will all last long!"

Pierre, who was very much struck by the remark, was pondering on its

involuntary profundity, when M. de Guersaint reappeared, bringing Marie

with him. He had found her kneeling on the same spot, in the same act of

faith and thankfulness, at the feet of the Blessed Virgin; and it seemed

as if she had brought all the brilliant light of the Grotto away in her

eyes, so vividly did they sparkle with divine joy at her cure. She would

not entertain a proposal to keep the trap. No, no! she preferred to go on

foot; she did not care about seeing the town, so long as she might for

another hour continue walking on her father's arm through the gardens,

the streets, the squares, anywhere they pleased! And, when Pierre had

paid the driver, it was she who turned into a path of the Esplanade

garden, delighted at being able to saunter in this wise beside the turf

and the flower beds, under the great trees. The grass, the leaves, the

shady solitary walks where you heard the everlasting rippling of the

Gave, were so sweet and fresh! But afterwards she wished to return by way

of the streets, among the crowd, that she might find the agitation,

noise, and life, the need of which possessed her whole being.

In the Rue St. Joseph, on perceiving the panorama, where the former

Grotto was depicted, with Bernadette kneeling down before it on the day

of the miracle of the candle, the idea occurred to Pierre to go in. Marie

became as happy as a child; and even M. de Guersaint was full of innocent

delight, especially when he noticed that among the batch of pilgrims who

dived at the same time as themselves into the depths of the obscure

corridor, several recognised in his daughter the girl so miraculously

healed the day before, who was already famous, and whose name flew from

mouth to mouth. Up above, on the circular platform, when they came out

into the diffuse light, filtering through a vellum, there was a sort of

ovation around Marie; soft whispers, beatifical glances, a rapture of

delight in seeing, following, and touching her. Now glory had come, she

would be loved in that way wherever she went, and it was not until the

showman who gave the explanations had placed himself at the head of the

little party of visitors, and begun to walk round, relating the incident

depicted on the huge circular canvas, nearly five hundred feet in length,

that she was in some measure forgotten. The painting represented the

seventeenth apparition of the Blessed Virgin to Bernadette, on the day

when, kneeling before the Grotto during her vision, she had heedlessly

left her hand on the flame of the candle without burning it. The whole of

the old primitive landscape of the Grotto was shown, the whole scene was

set out with all its historical personages: the doctor verifying the

miracle watch in hand, the Mayor, the Commissary of Police, and the

Public Prosecutor, whose names the showman gave out, amidst the amazement

of the public following him.

Then, by an unconscious transition of ideas, Pierre recalled the remark

which the driver of the cabriolet had made a short time previously:

"Lourdes has caught on well, but the question is whether it will all last

long." That, in fact, was the question. How many venerated sanctuaries

had thus been built already, at the bidding of innocent chosen children,

to whom the Blessed Virgin had shown herself! It was always the same

story beginning afresh: an apparition; a persecuted shepherdess, who was

called a liar; next the covert propulsion of human misery hungering after

illusion; then propaganda, and the triumph of the sanctuary shining like

a star; and afterwards decline, and oblivion, when the ecstatic dream of

another visionary gave birth to another sanctuary elsewhere. It seemed as

if the power of illusion wore away; that it was necessary in the course

of centuries to displace it, set it amidst new scenery, under fresh

circumstances, in order to renew its force. La Salette had dethroned the

old wooden and stone Virgins that had healed; Lourdes had just dethroned

La Salette, pending the time when it would be dethroned itself by Our

Lady of to-morrow, she who will show her sweet, consoling features to

some pure child as yet unborn. Only, if Lourdes had met with such rapid,

such prodigious fortune, it assuredly owed it to the little sincere soul,

the delightful charm of Bernadette. Here there was no deceit, no

falsehood, merely the blossoming of suffering, a delicate sick child who

brought to the afflicted multitude her dream of justice and equality in

the miraculous. She was merely eternal hope, eternal consolation.

Besides, all historical and social circumstances seem to have combined to

increase the need of this mystical flight at the close of a terrible

century of positivist inquiry; and that was perhaps the reason why

Lourdes would still long endure in its triumph, before becoming a mere

legend, one of those dead religions whose powerful perfume has

evaporated.

Ah! that ancient Lourdes, that city of peace and belief, the only

possible cradle where the legend could come into being, how easily Pierre

conjured it up before him, whilst walking round the vast canvas of the

Panorama! That canvas said everything; it was the best lesson of things

that could be seen. The monotonous explanations of the showman were not

heard; the landscape spoke for itself. First of all there was the Grotto,

the rocky hollow beside the Gave, a savage spot suitable for

reverie--bushy slopes and heaps of fallen stone, without a path among

them; and nothing yet in the way of ornamentation--no monumental quay, no

garden paths winding among trimly cut shrubs; no Grotto set in order,

deformed, enclosed with iron railings; above all, no shop for the sale of

religious articles, that simony shop which was the scandal of all pious

souls. The Virgin could not have selected a more solitary and charming

nook wherein to show herself to the chosen one of her heart, the poor

young girl who came thither still possessed by the dream of her painful

nights, even whilst gathering dead wood. And on the opposite side of the

Gave, behind the rock of the castle, was old Lourdes, confident and

asleep. Another age was then conjured up; a small town, with narrow

pebble-paved streets, black houses with marble dressings, and an antique,

semi-Spanish church, full of old carvings, and peopled with visions of

gold and painted flesh. Communication with other places was only kept up

by the Bagneres and Cauterets _diligences_, which twice a day forded the

Lapaca to climb the steep causeway of the Rue Basse. The spirit of the

century had not breathed on those peaceful roofs sheltering a belated

population which had remained childish, enclosed within the narrow limits

of strict religious discipline. There was no debauchery; a slow antique

commerce sufficed for daily life, a poor life whose hardships were the

safeguards of morality. And Pierre had never better understood how

Bernadette, born in that land of faith and honesty, had flowered like a

natural rose, budding on the briars of the road.

"It's all the same very curious," observed M. de Guersaint when they

found themselves in the street again. "I'm not at all sorry I saw it."

Marie was also laughing with pleasure. "One would almost think oneself

there. Isn't it so, father? At times it seems as if the people were going

to move. And how charming Bernadette looks on her knees, in ecstasy,

while the candle flame licks her fingers without burning them."

"Let us see," said the architect; "we have only an hour left, so we must

think of making our purchases, if we wish to buy anything. Shall we take

a look at the shops? We certainly promised Majeste to give him the

preference; but that does not prevent us from making a few inquiries. Eh!

Pierre, what do you say?"

"Oh! certainly, as you like," answered the priest. "Besides, it will give

us a walk."

And he thereupon followed the young girl and her father, who returned to

the Plateau de la Merlasse. Since he had quitted the Panorama he felt as

though he no longer knew where he was. It seemed to him as if he had all