第 80 页

alas! were quite sufficient to account for the miracles.

M. Sabathier, however, was greatly stirred by the idea that Heaven had

healed this man who had gone to Lourdes at his expense, whereas he

himself was returning home still helpless, still in the same woeful

state. He sighed, and, despite all his resignation, could not help

saying, with a touch of envy: "What would you, however? The Blessed

Virgin must know very well what she's about. Neither you nor I can call

her to account to us for her actions. Whenever it may please her to cast

her eyes on me she will find me at her feet."

After the "Angelus" when they got to Mont-de-Marsan, Sister Hyacinthe

made them repeat the second chaplet, the five sorrowful mysteries, Jesus

in the Garden of Olives, Jesus scourged, Jesus crowned with thorns, Jesus

carrying the cross, and Jesus crucified. Then they took dinner in the

carriage, for there would be no stopping until they reached Bordeaux,

where they would only arrive at eleven o'clock at night. All the

pilgrims' baskets were crammed with provisions, to say nothing of the

milk, broth, chocolate, and fruit which Sister Saint-Francois had sent

from the cantine. Then, too, there was fraternal sharing: they sat with

their food on their laps and drew close together, every compartment

becoming, as it were, the scene of a picnic, to which each contributed

his share. And they had finished their meal and were packing up the

remaining bread again when the train passed Morceux.

"My children," now said Sister Hyacinthe, rising up, "the evening

prayer!"

Thereupon came a confused murmuring made up of "Paters" and "Aves,"

self-examinations, acts of contrition and vows of trustful reliance in

God, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, with thanksgivings for that

happy day, and, at last, a prayer for the living and for the faithful

departed.

"I warn you," then resumed the Sister, "that when we get to Lamothe, at

ten o'clock, I shall order silence. However, I think you will all be very

good and won't require any rocking to get to sleep."

This made them laugh. It was now half-past eight o'clock, and the night

had slowly covered the country-side. The hills alone retained a vague

trace of the twilight's farewell, whilst a dense sheet of darkness

blotted out all the low ground. Rushing on at full speed, the train

entered an immense plain, and then there was nothing but a sea of

darkness, through which they ever and ever rolled under a blackish sky,

studded with stars.

For a moment or so Pierre had been astonished by the demeanour of La

Grivotte. While the other pilgrims and patients were already dozing off,

sinking down amidst the luggage, which the constant jolting shook, she

had risen to her feet and was clinging to the partition in a sudden spasm

of agony. And under the pale, yellow, dancing gleam of the lamp she once

more looked emaciated, with a livid, tortured face.

"Take care, madame, she will fall!" the priest called to Madame de

Jonquiere, who, with eyelids lowered, was at last giving way to sleep.

She made all haste to intervene, but Sister Hyacinthe had turned more

quickly and caught La Grivotte in her arms. A frightful fit of coughing,

however, prostrated the unhappy creature upon the seat, and for five

minutes she continued stifling, shaken by such an attack that her poor

body seemed to be actually cracking and rending. Then a red thread oozed

from between her lips, and at last she spat up blood by the throatful.

"Good heavens! good heavens! it's coming on her again!" repeated Madame

de Jonquiere in despair. "I had a fear of it; I was not at ease, seeing

her looking so strange. Wait a moment; I will sit down beside her."

But the Sister would not consent: "No, no, madame, sleep a little. I'll

watch over her. You are not accustomed to it: you would end by making

yourself ill as well."

Then she settled herself beside La Grivotte, made her rest her head

against her shoulder, and wiped the blood from her lips. The attack

subsided, but weakness was coming back, so extreme that the wretched

woman was scarcely able to stammer: "Oh, it is nothing, nothing at all; I

am cured, I am cured, completely cured!"

Pierre was thoroughly upset: This sudden, overwhelming relapse had sent

an icy chill through the whole carriage. Many of the passengers raised

themselves up and looked at La Grivotte with terror in their eyes. Then

they dived down into their corners again, and nobody spoke, nobody

stirred any further. Pierre, for his part, reflected on the curious

medical aspect of this girl's case. Her strength had come back to her

over yonder. She had displayed a ravenous appetite, she had walked long

distances with a dancing gait, her face quite radiant the while; and now

she had spat blood, her cough had broken out afresh, she again had the

heavy ashen face of one in the last agony. Her ailment had returned to

her with brutal force, victorious over everything. Was this, then, some

special case of phthisis complicated by neurosis? Or was it some other

malady, some unknown disease, quietly continuing its work in the midst of

contradictory diagnosis? The sea of error and ignorance, the darkness

amidst which human science is still struggling, again appeared to Pierre.

And he once more saw Doctor Chassaigne shrugging his shoulders with

disdain, whilst Doctor Bonamy, full of serenity, quietly continued his

verification work, absolutely convinced that nobody would be able to

prove to him the impossibility of his miracles any more than he himself

could have proved their possibility.

"Oh! I am not frightened," La Grivotte continued, stammering. "I am

cured, completely cured; they all told me so, over yonder."

Meantime the carriage was rolling, rolling along, through the black

night. Each of its occupants was making preparations, stretching himself

out in order to sleep more comfortably. They compelled Madame Vincent to

lie down on the seat, and gave her a pillow on which to rest her poor

pain-racked head; and then, as docile as a child, quite stupefied, she

fell asleep in a nightmare-like torpor, with big, silent tears still

flowing from her closed eyes. Elise Rouquet, who had a whole seat to

herself, was also getting ready to lie down, but first of all she made

quite an elaborate toilet, tying the black wrap which had served to hide

her sore about her head, and then again peering into her glass to see if

this headgear became her, now that the swelling of her lip had subsided.

And again did Pierre feel astonished at sight of that sore, which was

certainly healing, if not already healed--that face, so lately a

monster's face, which one could now look at without feeling horrified.

The sea of incertitude stretched before him once more. Was it even a real

lupus? Might it not rather be some unknown form of ulcer of hysterical

origin? Or ought one to admit that certain forms of lupus, as yet but

imperfectly studied and arising from faulty nutrition of the skin, might

be benefited by a great moral shock? At all events there here seemed to

be a miracle, unless, indeed, the sore should reappear again in three

weeks', three months', or three years' time, like La Grivotte's phthisis.

It was ten o'clock, and the people in the carriage were falling asleep

when they left Lamothe. Sister Hyacinthe, upon whose knees La Grivotte

was now drowsily resting her head, was unable to rise, and, for form's

sake, merely said, "Silence, silence, my children!" in a low voice, which

died away amidst the growling rumble of the wheels.

However, something continued stirring in an adjoining compartment; she

heard a noise which irritated her nerves, and the cause of which she at

last fancied she could understand.

"Why do you keep on kicking the seat, Sophie?" she asked. "You must get

to sleep, my child."

"I'm not kicking, Sister. It's a key that was rolling about under my

foot."

"A key!--how is that? Pass it to me."

Then she examined it. A very old, poor-looking key it was--blackened,

worn away, and polished by long use, its ring bearing the mark of where

it had been broken and resoldered. However, they all searched their

pockets, and none of them, it seemed, had lost a key.

"I found it in the corner," now resumed Sophie; "it must have belonged to

the man."

"What man?" asked Sister Hyacinthe.

"The man who died there."

They had already forgotten him. But it had surely been his, for Sister

Hyacinthe recollected that she had heard something fall while she was

wiping his forehead. And she turned the key over and continued looking at

it, as it lay in her hand, poor, ugly, wretched key that it was, no

longer of any use, never again to open the lock it belonged to--some

unknown lock, hidden far away in the depths of the world. For a moment

she was minded to put it in her pocket, as though by a kind of compassion

for this little bit of iron, so humble and so mysterious, since it was

all that remained of that unknown man. But then the pious thought came to

her that it is wrong to show attachment to any earthly thing; and, the

window being half-lowered, she threw out the key, which fell into the

black night.

"You must not play any more, Sophie," she resumed. "Come, come, my

children, silence!"

It was only after the brief stay at Bordeaux, however, at about half-past

eleven o'clock, that sleep came back again and overpowered all in the

carriage. Madame de Jonquiere had been unable to contend against it any

longer, and her head was now resting against the partition, her face

wearing an expression of happiness amidst all her fatigue. The Sabathiers

were, in a like fashion, calmly sleeping; and not a sound now came from

the compartment which Sophie Couteau and Elise Rouquet occupied,

stretched in front of each other, on the seats. From time to time a low

plaint would rise, a strangled cry of grief or fright, escaping from the

lips of Madame Vincent, who, amidst her prostration, was being tortured

by evil dreams. Sister Hyacinthe was one of the very few who still had

their eyes open, anxious as she was respecting La Grivotte, who now lay

quite motionless, like a felled animal, breathing painfully, with a

continuous wheezing sound. From one to the other end of this travelling

dormitory, shaken by the rumbling of the train rolling on at full speed,

the pilgrims and the sick surrendered themselves to sleep, and limbs

dangled and heads swayed under the pale, dancing gleams from the lamps.

At the far end, in the compartment occupied by the ten female pilgrims,

there was a woeful jumbling of poor, ugly faces, old and young, and all

open-mouthed, as though sleep had suddenly fallen upon them at the moment

they were finishing some hymn. Great pity came to the heart at the sight

of all those mournful, weary beings, prostrated by five days of wild hope

and infinite ecstasy, and destined to awaken, on the very morrow, to the

stern realities of life.

And now Pierre once more felt himself to be alone with Marie. She had not

consented to stretch herself on the seat--she had been lying down too

long, she said, for seven years, alas! And in order that M. de Guersaint,

who on leaving Bordeaux had again fallen into his childlike slumber,

might be more at ease, Pierre came and sat down beside the girl. As the

light of the lamp annoyed her he drew the little screen, and they thus

found themselves in the shade, a soft and transparent shade. The train

must now have been crossing a plain, for it glided through the night as

in an endless flight, with a sound like the regular flapping of huge

wings. Through the window, which they had opened, a delicious coolness

came from the black fields, the fathomless fields, where not even any

lonely little village lights could be seen gleaming. For a moment Pierre

had turned towards Marie and had noticed that her eyes were closed. But

he could divine that she was not sleeping, that she was savouring the

deep peacefulness which prevailed around them amidst the thundering roar

of their rush through the darkness, and, like her, he closed his eyelids

and began dreaming.

Yet once again did the past arise before him: the little house at

Neuilly, the embrace which they had exchanged near the flowering hedge

under the trees flecked with sunlight. How far away all that already was,

and with what perfume had it not filled his life! Then bitter thoughts

returned to him at the memory of the day when he had become a priest.

Since she would never be a woman, he had consented to be a man no more;

and that was to prove their eternal misfortune, for ironical Nature was

to make her a wife and a mother after all. Had he only been able to

retain his faith he might have found eternal consolation in it. But all

his attempts to regain it had been in vain. He had gone to Lourdes, he

had striven his utmost at the Grotto, he had hoped for a moment that he

would end by believing should Marie be miraculously healed; but total and

irremediable ruin had come when the predicted cure had taken place even

as science had foretold. And their idyl, so pure and so painful, the long

story of their affection bathed in tears, likewise spread out before him.

She, having penetrated his sad secret, had come to Lourdes to pray to

Heaven for the miracle of his conversion. When they had remained alone

under the trees amidst the perfume of the invisible roses, during the

night procession, they had prayed one for the other, mingling one in the

other, with an ardent desire for their mutual happiness. Before the

Grotto, too, she had entreated the Blessed Virgin to forget her and to

save him, if she could obtain but one favour from her Divine Son. Then,

healed, beside herself, transported with love and gratitude, whirled with

her little car up the inclined ways to the Basilica, she had thought her

prayers granted, and had cried aloud the joy she felt that they should