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study Bernadette's case on the spot, and see if grace would not come back

to him in a lightning flash, restoring him his faith. And now he had

settled the point--Bernadette had dreamed through the continual torments

of her flesh, and he himself would never believe again. And this forced

itself upon his mind like a brutal fact: the simple faith of the child

who kneels and prays, the primitive faith of young people, bowed down by

an awe born of their ignorance, was dead. Though thousands of pilgrims

might each year go to Lourdes, the nations were no longer with them; this

attempt to bring about the resurrection of absolute faith, the faith of

dead-and-gone centuries, without revolt or examination, was fatally

doomed to fail. History never retraces its steps, humanity cannot return

to childhood, times have too much changed, too many new inspirations have

sown new harvests for the men of to-day to become once more like the men

of olden time. It was decisive; Lourdes was only an explainable accident,

whose reactionary violence was even a proof of the extreme agony in which

belief under the antique form of Catholicism was struggling. Never again,

as in the cathedrals of the twelfth century, would the entire nation

kneel like a docile flock in the hands of the Master. To blindly,

obstinately cling to the attempt to bring that to pass would mean to dash

oneself against the impossible, to rush, perhaps, towards great moral

catastrophes.

And of his journey there already only remained to Pierre an immense

feeling of compassion. Ah! his heart was overflowing with pity; his poor

heart was returning wrung by all that he had seen. He recalled the words

of worthy Abbe Judaine; and he had seen those thousands of unhappy beings

praying, weeping, and imploring God to take pity on their suffering; and

he had wept with them, and felt within himself, like an open wound, a

sorrowful fraternal feeling for all their ailments. He could not think of

those poor people without burning with a desire to relieve them. If it

were true that the faith of the simple-minded no longer sufficed; if one

ran the risk of going astray in wishing to turn back, would it become

necessary to close the Grotto, to preach other efforts, other sufferings?

However, his compassion revolted at that thought. No, no! it would be a

crime to snatch their dream of Heaven from those poor creatures who

suffered either in body or in mind, and who only found relief in kneeling

yonder amidst the splendour of tapers and the soothing repetition of

hymns. He had not taken the murderous course of undeceiving Marie, but

had sacrificed himself in order to leave her the joy of her fancy, the

divine consolation of having been healed by the Virgin. Where was the man

hard enough, cruel enough, to prevent the lowly from believing, to rob

them of the consolation of the supernatural, the hope that God troubled

Himself about them, that He held a better life in His paradise in reserve

for them? All humanity was weeping, desperate with anguish, like some

despairing invalid, irrevocably condemned, and whom only a miracle could

save. He felt mankind to be unhappy indeed, and he shuddered with

fraternal affection in the presence of such pitiable humility, ignorance,

poverty in its rags, disease with its sores and evil odour, all the lowly

sufferers, in hospital, convent, and slums, amidst vermin and dirt, with

ugliness and imbecility written on their faces, an immense protest

against health, life, and Nature, in the triumphal name of justice,

equality, and benevolence. No, no! it would never do to drive the

wretched to despair. Lourdes must be tolerated, in the same way that you

tolerate a falsehood which makes life possible. And, as he had already

said in Bernadette's chamber, she remained the martyr, she it was who

revealed to him the only religion which still filled his heart, the

religion of human suffering. Ah! to be good and kindly, to alleviate all

ills, to lull pain, to sleep in a dream, to lie even, so that no one

might suffer any more!

The train passed at full speed through a village, and Pierre vaguely

caught sight of a church nestling amidst some large apple trees. All the

pilgrims in the carriage crossed themselves. But he was now becoming

uneasy, scruples were tingeing his reverie with anxiety. This religion of

human suffering, this redemption by pain, was not this yet another lure,

a continual aggravation of pain and misery? It is cowardly and dangerous

to allow superstition to live. To tolerate and accept it is to revive the

dark evil ages afresh. It weakens and stupefies; the sanctimoniousness

bequeathed by heredity produces humiliated, timorous generations,

decadent and docile nations, who are an easy prey to the powerful of the

earth. Whole nations are imposed upon, robbed, devoured, when they have

devoted the whole effort of their will to the mere conquest of a future

existence. Would it not, therefore, be better to cure humanity at once by

boldly closing the miraculous Grottos whither it goes to weep, and thus

restore to it the courage to live the real life, even in the midst of

tears? And it was the same prayer, that incessant flood of prayer which

ascended from Lourdes, the endless supplication in which he had been

immersed and softened: was it not after all but puerile lullaby, a

debasement of all one's energies? It benumbed the will, one's very being

became dissolved in it and acquired disgust for life and action. Of what

use could it be to will anything, do anything, when you totally resigned

yourself to the caprices of an unknown almighty power? And, in another

respect, what a strange thing was this mad desire for prodigies, this

anxiety to drive the Divinity to transgress the laws of Nature

established by Himself in His infinite wisdom! Therein evidently lay

peril and unreasonableness; at the risk even of losing illusion, that

divine comforter, only the habit of personal effort and the courage of

truth should have been developed in man, and especially in the child.

Then a great brightness arose in Pierre's mind and dazzled him. It was

Reason, protesting against the glorification of the absurd and the

deposition of common-sense. Ah! reason, it was through her that he had

suffered, through her alone that he was happy. As he had told Doctor

Chassaigne, his one consuming longing was to satisfy reason ever more and

more, although it might cost him happiness to do so. It was reason, he

now well understood it, whose continual revolt at the Grotto, at the

Basilica, throughout entire Lourdes, had prevented him from believing.

Unlike his old friend--that stricken old man, who was afflicted with such

dolorous senility, who had fallen into second childhood since the

shipwreck of his affections,--he had been unable to kill reason and

humiliate and annihilate himself. Reason remained his sovereign mistress,

and she it was who buoyed him up even amidst the obscurities and failures

of science. Whenever he met with a thing which he could not understand,

it was she who whispered to him, "There is certainly a natural

explanation which escapes me." He repeated that there could be no healthy

ideal outside the march towards the discovery of the unknown, the slow

victory of reason amidst all the wretchedness of body and mind. In the

clashing of the twofold heredity which he had derived from his father,

all brain, and his mother, all faith, he, a priest, found it possible to

ravage his life in order that he might keep his vows. He had acquired

strength enough to master his flesh, but he felt that his paternal

heredity had now definitely gained the upper hand, for henceforth the

sacrifice of his reason had become an impossibility; this he would not

renounce and would not master. No, no, even human suffering, the hallowed

suffering of the poor, ought not to prove an obstacle, enjoining the

necessity of ignorance and folly. Reason before all; in her alone lay

salvation. If at Lourdes, whilst bathed in tears, softened by the sight

of so much affliction, he had said that it was sufficient to weep and

love, he had made a dangerous mistake. Pity was but a convenient

expedient. One must live, one must act; reason must combat suffering,

unless it be desired that the latter should last forever.

However, as the train rolled on and the landscape flew by, a church once

more appeared, this time on the fringe of heaven, some votive chapel

perched upon a hill and surmounted by a lofty statue of the Virgin. And

once more all the pilgrims made the sign of the cross, and once more

Pierre's reverie strayed, a fresh stream of reflections bringing his

anguish back to him. What was this imperious need of the things beyond,

which tortured suffering humanity? Whence came it? Why should equality

and justice be desired when they did not seem to exist in impassive

nature? Man had set them in the unknown spheres of the Mysterious, in the

supernatural realms of religious paradises, and there contented his

ardent thirst for them. That unquenchable thirst for happiness had ever

consumed, and would consume him always. If the Fathers of the Grotto

drove such a glorious trade, it was simply because they made motley out

of what was divine. That thirst for the Divine, which nothing had

quenched through the long, long ages, seemed to have returned with

increased violence at the close of our century of science. Lourdes was a

resounding and undeniable proof that man could never live without the

dream of a Sovereign Divinity, re-establishing equality and re-creating

happiness by dint of miracles. When man has reached the depths of life's

misfortunes, he returns to the divine illusion, and the origin of all

religions lies there. Man, weak and bare, lacks the strength to live

through his terrestrial misery without the everlasting lie of a paradise.

To-day, thought Pierre, the experiment had been made; it seemed that

science alone could not suffice, and that one would be obliged to leave a

door open on the Mysterious.

All at once in the depths of his deeply absorbed mind the words rang out,

A new religion! The door which must be left open on the Mysterious was

indeed a new religion. To subject mankind to brutal amputation, lop off

its dream, and forcibly deprive it of the Marvellous, which it needed to

live as much as it needed bread, would possibly kill it. Would it ever

have the philosophical courage to take life as it is, and live it for its

own sake, without any idea of future rewards and penalties? It certainly

seemed that centuries must elapse before the advent of a society wise

enough to lead a life of rectitude without the moral control of some

cultus and the consolation of superhuman equality and justice. Yes, a new

religion! The call burst forth, resounded within Pierre's brain like the

call of the nations, the eager, despairing desire of the modern soul. The

consolation and hope which Catholicism had brought the world seemed

exhausted after eighteen hundred years full of so many tears, so much

blood, so much vain and barbarous agitation. It was an illusion

departing, and it was at least necessary that the illusion should be

changed. If mankind had long ago darted for refuge into the Christian

paradise, it was because that paradise then opened before it like a fresh

hope. But now a new religion, a new hope, a new paradise, yes, that was

what the world thirsted for, in the discomfort in which it was

struggling. And Father Fourcade, for his part, fully felt such to be the

case; he had not meant to imply anything else when he had given rein to

his anxiety, entreating that the people of the great towns, the dense

mass of the humble which forms the nation, might be brought to Lourdes.

One hundred thousand, two hundred thousand pilgrims at Lourdes each year,

that was, after all, but a grain of sand. It was the people, the whole

people, that was required. But the people has forever deserted the

churches, it no longer puts any soul in the Blessed Virgins which it

manufactures, and nothing nowadays could restore its lost faith. A

Catholic democracy--yes, history would then begin afresh; only were it

possible to create a new Christian people, would not the advent of a new

Saviour, the mighty breath of a new Messiah, have been needed for such a

task?

However, the words still sounded, still rang out in Pierre's mind with

the growing clamour of pealing bells. A new religion; a new religion.

Doubtless it must be a religion nearer to life, giving a larger place to

the things of the world, and taking the acquired truths into due account.

And, above all, it must be a religion which was not an appetite for

death--Bernadette living solely in order that she might die, Doctor

Chassaigne aspiring to the tomb as to the only happiness--for all that

spiritualistic abandonment was so much continuous disorganisation of the

will to live. At bottom of it was hatred to life, disgust with and

cessation of action. Every religion, it is true, is but a promise of

immortality, an embellishment of the spheres beyond, an enchanted garden

to be entered on the morrow of death. Could a new religion ever place

such a garden of eternal happiness on earth? Where was the formula, the

dogma, that would satisfy the hopes of the mankind of to-day? What belief

should be sown to blossom forth in a harvest of strength and peace? How

could one fecundate the universal doubt so that it should give birth to a

new faith? and what sort of illusion, what divine falsehood of any kind

could be made to germinate in the contemporary world, ravaged as it had

been upon all sides, broken up by a century of science?

At that moment, without any apparent transition, Pierre saw the face of

his brother Guillaume arise in the troublous depths of his mind. Still,

he was not surprised; some secret link must have brought that vision

there. Ah! how fond they had been of one another long ago, and what a

good brother that elder brother, so upright and gentle, had been!

Henceforth, also, the rupture was complete; Pierre no longer saw

Guillaume, since the latter had cloistered himself in his chemical

studies, living like a savage in a little suburban house, with a mistress