 Section 0 of Lourdes. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Lourdes by Émile Zola, translated by Ernest Visitelli. Section 0. Preface. Before perusing this work, the first volume of the Trilogy of the Three Cities, it is as well that the reader should understand Mr Zola's aim in writing it, and his views, as distinct from those of his characters, upon Lourdes, its grotto and its cures. When the book first appeared, Mr Zola was interviewed upon the subject by his friend and biographer, Mr Robert H. Sherrod, and some extracts from the interesting article which Mr Sherrod then contributed to the Westminster Gazette are here appended, the editor of that journal and Mr Sherrod having kindly granted the translator permission to reproduce them. Lourdes, said Mr Zola, came to be written by mere accident. In 1891 I happened to be travelling for my pleasure with my wife in the Basque country and by the Pyrenees, and being in the neighbourhood of Lourdes included it in my tour. I spent fifteen days there and was greatly struck by what I saw, and it then occurred to me that there was material here for just the sort of novel that I like to write, a novel in which great masses of men can be shown in motion, un grand mouvement de foule, a novel the subject of which stirred up my philosophical ideas. It was too late then to study the question, for I had visited Lourdes late in September and so had missed seeing the best pilgrimage which takes place in August under the direction of the Père de la Miséricorde, of the Rue de l'Assumption in Paris, the national pilgrimage as it is called. These fathers are very active enterprising men and have made a great success of this annual national pilgrimage. Under their direction eighty thousand pilgrims are transported to Lourdes including over a thousand sick persons. So in the following year I went in August and saw a national pilgrimage and followed it during the three days which it lasts in addition to the two days given to travelling. After its departure I stayed on ten or twelve days working up the subject in every detail. My book is the story of such a national pilgrimage and is accordingly the story of five days. It is divided into five parts each of which parts is limited to one day. There are from ninety to one hundred characters in the story, sick persons, pilgrims, priests, nuns, hospitalers, nurses and peasants. And the book shows Lourdes under every aspect. There are the piscinas, the processions, the grotto, the churches at night, the people in the streets. It is in one word Lourdes in its entirety. In this canvas is worked out a very delicate central intrigue as in Dr Pascal and around this are many little stories or subsidiary plots. There is the story of the sick person who gets well, of the sick person who is not cured and so on. The philosophical idea which pervades the whole book is the idea of human suffering, the exhibition of the desperate and despairing sufferers who, abandoned by science and by man, address themselves to a higher power in the hope of relief. As where parents have a dearly loved daughter dying of consumption who has been given up and for whom nothing remains but death. A sudden hope however breaks in upon them, supposing that after all there should be a power greater than that of man, higher than that of science. They will haste to try this last chance of safety. It is the instinctive hankering after the lie which creates human credulity. I will admit that I came across some instances of real cure. Many cases of nervous disorders have undoubtedly been cured and there have also been other cures which may perhaps be attributed to eras of diagnosis on the part of doctors who attended the patients so cured. Often a patient is described by his doctor as suffering from consumption. He goes to Lourdes and is cured. However the probability is that the doctor made a mistake. In my own case I was at one time suffering from a violent pain in my chest which presented all the symptoms of angina pectoris, a mortal malady. It was nothing of the sort, indigestion doubtless and as such curable. Remember that most of the sick persons who go to Lourdes come from the country and that the country doctors are not usually men of either great skill or great experience. But all doctors mistake symptoms. Put three doctors together to discuss a case and in nine cases out of ten they will disagree in their diagnosis. Look at the quantities of tumours, swellings and sores which cannot be properly classified. These cures are based on the ignorance of the medical profession. The sick pretend, believe that they suffer from such and such a desperate malady whereas it is from some other malady that they are suffering. And so the legend forms itself. And of course there must be cures out of so large a number of cases. Nature often cures without medical aid. Certainly many of the workings of nature are wonderful but they are not supernatural. The Lord miracles can neither be proved nor denied. The miracle is based on human ignorance and so the doctor who lives at Lourdes and who is commissioned to register the cures and to tabulate the miracles has a very careless time of it. A person comes and gets cured. He has but to get three doctors together to examine the case. They will disagree as to what was the disease from which the patient suffered and the only explanation left which will be acceptable to the public with its hankering after the lie is that a miracle has been vouchsafed. I interviewed a number of people at Lourdes and could not find one who would declare that he had witnessed a miracle. All the cases which I describe in my book are real cases in which I have only changed the names of the persons concerned. In none of these instances was I able to discover any real proof for or against the miraculous nature of the cure. Thus in the case of Clémentine Trouvé who figures in my story as Sophie the patient who after suffering from a long time from a horrid open sore on her foot was suddenly cured according to current report by bathing her foot in the piscina where the bandages fell off and her foot was entirely restored to a healthy condition. I investigated that case thoroughly. I was told that there were three or four ladies living in Lourdes who could guarantee the facts as stated by little Clémentine. I looked up those ladies. The first said no, she could not vouch for anything. She had seen nothing. I had better consult somebody else. The next answered in the same way and nowhere was I able to find any corroboration of the girl's story. Yet the little girl did not look like a liar and I believe that she was fully convinced of the miraculous nature of her cure. It is the facts themselves which lie. Lourdes, the grotto, the cures, the miracles are indeed the creation of that need of the lie that necessity for credulity which is a characteristic of human nature. At first when little Bernadette came with her strange story of what she had witnessed everybody was against her. The prefect of the department, the bishop, the clergy objected to her story. But Lourdes grew up in spite of all opposition just as the Christian religion did because suffering humanity in its despair must cling to something, must have some hope. And on the other hand because humanity thirsts after illusions. In a word it is the story of the foundation of all religions. To the above account of Lourdes given by Monsieur Zola I should add that before commencing the work he had already planned the trilogy of which it was to form the first section. Rome and Paris were not afterthoughts as some have imagined, but from the outset formed integral portions of Monsieur Zola's conception. Those who wish to understand that conception rightly should therefore read all three works in their proper sequence. At the same time each volume is in some measure complete in itself just as were the various sections of Monsieur Zola's Urgo-Marcar series. Although place names have been chosen as titles for the three sections of the trilogy these sections deal essentially with the three cardinal virtues faith, hope and charity each of which the author discusses in turn. In Lourdes while freely admitting the soul hunger which consumes so large a part of humanity he argues that faith in revealed religion is virtually dead destroyed by free examination and the teachings of science. In Rome he argues that no hope can be placed in Christianity as typified by the Roman Catholic Church whose one great object is earthly domination and by no means the raising of humanity to a higher plane. Finally in Paris he points out that charity is powerless to relieve the sufferings of mankind that all the arms dispensed since the days of Christ are as a mere drop of water beside the ocean of human wretchedness and that the masses after 1800 years of trial now demand the abolition of the system of doles and the inauguration of that of justice for one and all. And in conclusion with faith dead hope denied and charity powerless he points to the eventual collapse of Christianity the decay of the superstitions and delusions of the past and the advent of a new religion in which science will play no inconsiderable part. Such briefly is the purport of these books Lourdes, Rome and Paris which I believe will eventually take prominent rank among the great literary and philosophical efforts of the age. As for Lourdes the very great success and controversy which attended its original publication will be fresh in the minds of all who follow what is called the literary movement No book written by Monsieur Zola has circulated more widely none has been more vehemently discussed it has never been answered by its adversaries for one cannot confer the rank of an answer on the Farago of Nonsense which Monseigneur Ricard a prelate of the papal household and vicar general of Aix penned under the title of Lavrée Bernadette de Lourdes shortly after Monsieur Zola's work had appeared It has been stated that Monseigneur Ricard was especially chosen by Pope Leo XIII for the purpose of annihilating Monsieur Zola by a prodigious counterblast but how little he was fit for such a task may be seen by anyone on turning the pages of Lavrée Bernadette The Catholic Church in France as elsewhere numbers many divines of distinguished literary attainments among its members and I am surprised that none of them should have entered the lists against Monsieur Zola but possibly ecclesiastical discipline prevented them from doing so At all events, apart from the painful exhibition which Monseigneur Ricard made of himself there has hitherto been no genuine effort to answer Lourdes that the fathers of the Holy Grotto were deeply incensed by the work is well known A few months after it had been first published I went to Lourdes which I had not visited since 1875 the year when the great national pilgrimages were inaugurated I found of course many changes even as is recorded in the following pages However, whilst I strolled through the town I inquired of various booksellers whether they had Monsieur Zola's work on sale and invariably received a negative answer and at last I was informed that the reverent fathers of the Grotto had brought all the pressure of their great influence to bear on the Lourdes booksellers with the results that not one of the latter dared to sell the work To sell it meant a boycott or possibly notice to quit or persecution at the hands of the thousands of bigots who formed the vast majority of the Lourdes population and thus after a long search I was only able to discover Monsieur Zola's work at the railway bookstore the property of Monsieur Arshet of Paris who rightly insisted upon freedom of action As another example of the hatred manifested against Monsieur Zola at Lourdes I may mention that about the time of my visit a well known French artist was sent to the town to make sketches for an illustrated edition of the book which was then being planned No sooner however was this artist's purpose ascertained than he was reviled driven from his hotel, set upon and incessantly persecuted Such are some of the penalties which one has to pay when one desires to further the cause of truth One other recollection attaches to this visit of mine to Lourdes Among the pilgrims who had just been healed at the Holy Grotto was a Scotch lady who had travelled to the shrine under much the same circumstances as Marie de Gersin, Monsieur Zola's heroine and curiously enough she had been cured in almost precisely the same manner as Marie The reader of this volume will therefore bear in mind that the story told by Monsieur Zola is no mere romance but a story reared on a substantial scientific basis and as near to actual factors could be devised Monsieur Zola is always so careful so precise in all his statements that the latter can hardly need any corroboration from me Yet I may say that on returning to Lourdes I found his descriptions marvelously accurate I have only one criticism to offer it is that he has understated rather than exaggerated the truth especially with regard to the vice which flaunts itself by night in the streets of Lourdes One who was with me was amazed by it but personally I was not surprised for long acquaintance with the southern lands of Europe has taught me that superstition and vice ever go hand in hand Several editions of this translation of Lourdes have already been issued and I have now carefully revised it freely availing myself of the suggestions both of the newspaper reviewers and of the Legion of Correspondence who for some years have written to me to praise or blame my work I cannot say that this is now a perfect translation but I believe that I have considerably improved it and at all events it is as perfect as I myself can make it E. A. V. Merton Surrey July 1898 Section 0 Section 1 of Lourdes This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please contact LibriVox.org Lourdes by Emile Zola Translated by Ernest Visitelli The First Day 1. Pilgrims and Patients The Pilgrims and Patients closely packed on the hard seats of the third class carriage were just finishing the Ave Marie Stella which they had begun to chant on leaving the terminus of the Orléans line when Marie slightly raised on her couch of misery and restless with feverish impatience caught sight of the Paris fortifications through the window of the moving train Ah, the fortifications she exclaimed in a tone which was joyous despite her suffering Here we are out of Paris We are off at last Her delight drew a smile from her father Monsieur de Gersin who sat in front of her while Stabé Pierre Frumin who was looking at her with fraternal affection was so carried away by his compassionate anxieties to say aloud And now we are in for it till tomorrow morning We shall only reach Lourdes at 3.40 We have more than two and twenty hours journey before us It was half past five the sun had risen radiant in the pure sky of a delightful morning It was a Friday the 19th of August On the horizon however some small heavy clouds already presaged a terrible day of stormy heat and the oblique sun rays were infallading the compartments of the railway carriage filling them with dancing golden dust Yes, two and twenty hours moment Marie relapsing into anguish Monde Dieu, what a long time we must still wait Then her father helped her to lie down again in the narrow box, a kind of wooden gutter in which she had been living for seven years past Making an exception in her favour the railway officials had consented to take as luggage the two pairs of wheels which could be removed from the box or fitted to it whenever it became necessary to transport her from place to place Packed between the sides of this movable coffin she occupied the room of three passengers on the carriage seat and for a moment she lay there with eyes closed Although she was three and twenty the woman emaciated face was still delicately infantile charming despite everything in the midst of her marvellous fair hair the hair of a queen which illness had respected clad with the utmost simplicity in a gown of thin woolen stuff she wore, hanging from her neck the card bearing her name and number which entitled her to hospitalisation or free treatment she herself had insisted on making the journey in this humble fashion not wishing to be a source of expense to her relatives who little by little had fallen into very straightened circumstances and thus it was that she found herself in a third class carriage of the white train the train which carried the greatest sufferers the most woeful of the fourteen trains going to Lourdes that day the one in which in addition to 500 healthy pilgrims nearly 300 unfortunate wretches weak to the point of exhaustion wracked by suffering were heaped together and born at express speed to the end of France sorry that he had saddened her Pierre continued to gaze at her with the air of a compassionate elder brother he had just completed his 30th year and was pale and slight with a broad forehead after busying himself with all the arrangements for the journey he had been desirous of accompanying her and having obtained admission among the hospitalers of Our Lady of Salvation as an auxiliary member wore on his cassock the red orange tipped cross of a bearer Monsieur de Gershon on his side had simply pinned the little scarlet cross of the pilgrimage on his grey cloth jacket the idea of travelling appeared to delight him although he was over 50 he still looked young and with his eyes ever wandering over the landscape he seemed unable to keep his head still a bird-like head it was with an expression of good nature and absent-mindedness however in spite of the violent shaking of the train which constantly drew sighs from Marie Sister E. Sainte had risen to her feet in the adjoining compartment she noticed that the sun's rays were streaming in the girl's face pulled down the blind Monsieur Labille she said to Pierre come, we must install ourselves properly and set our little household in order clad in the black robe of a sister of the Assumption enlivened by a white quaff a white wimple and a large white apron Sister E. Sainte smiled the picture of courageous activity her youth bloomed upon her small fresh lips and in the depths of her beautiful blue eyes whose expression was ever gentle she was not pretty perhaps still she was charming slender and tall the bib of her apron covering a flat chest like that of a young man one of good heart displaying a snowy complexion and overflowing with health, gaiety and innocence but this sun is already roasting us said she pray pull down your blind as well madame seated in the corner near the sister was madame de Jean-Claire who had kept her little bag on her lap she slowly pulled down the blind dark and well built she was still nice looking although she had a daughter Raymond who was 4 and 20 and whom for motives of propriety she had placed in the charge of two lady-hospitalers madame des Agneaux and madame Bollemar in a first class carriage for her part directress as she was of a ward of our Lady of Delour at Lourdes she did not quit her patience and outside swinging against the door of her compartment was the regulation placard bearing under her own name those of the two sisters of the assumption who accompanied her the widow of a ruined man she lived with her daughter on the scanty income of four or five thousand francs a year at the rear of a courtyard in the Rue Van Aux but her charity was inexhaustible and she gave all her time to the work of the hospitality of the renovation an institution whose red cross she wore on her gown of Carmelite poplin and whose aims she furthered with the most active zeal of a somewhat proud disposition fond of being flattered and loved she took great delight in this annual journey from which both her heart and her passion derived contentment you are right sister she said we will organize matters I really don't know why I am encumbering myself with this bag and thereupon she placed it under the seat near her wait a moment resumed sister Yersant you have the water can between your legs it is in your way no no it isn't I assure you let it be it must always be somewhere then they both set their house in order as they expressed it so that for a day and a night they might live with their patients as comfortably as possible the worry was that they had not been able to take Marie into their compartment as she wished to have Pierre and her father near her however, neighborly intercourse was easy enough over the low partition moreover the whole carriage with its five compartments of ten seats each formed but one moving chamber a common room as it were which the eye took in at a glance from end to end between its wooden walls bare and yellow under its white painted paneled roof it showed like a hospital ward with all the disorder and promiscuous jumbling together of an improvised ambulance basins brooms and sponges lay about half hidden by the seats then as the train only carried such luggage as the pilgrims could take with them there were valises, deal boxes bonnet boxes and bags a wretched pile of poor worn out things mended with bits of string heaped up a little bit everywhere and overhead the litter began again what with articles of clothing parcels and baskets hanging from brass pegs and swinging to and fro without a pause amidst all this frippery the more afflicted patients stretched on their narrow mattresses which took up the room of several passengers were shaken, carried along by the rumbling gyrations of the wheels whilst those who were able to remain seated leaned against the partitions their faces pale, their heads resting upon pillows according to the regulations there should have been one lady hospital at each compartment however at the other end of the carriage there was but a second sister of the assumption sister Claire Desanges some of the pilgrims who were in good health were already getting up, eating and drinking one compartment was entirely occupied by women ten pilgrims closely pressed together young ones and old ones all sadly, pitifully ugly and as nobody dared to open the windows on account of the consumptives in the carriage the heat soon began to make itself felt and an unbearable odor arose set free as it were by the jolting of the train as it went its way at express speed they had said their chaplets at Juvizy and six o'clock was striking and they were rushing like a hurricane past the station of Bretigny when sister Ea Sainte rose up it was she who directed the pious exercises which most of the pilgrims followed from small blue-covered books the Angeles my children said she with her pleasant smile her maternal heir which her great youth rendered so charming and so sweet then the Aves again followed one another and were drawing to an end when Pierre and Marie began to feel interested in two women who occupied the other corner seats of their compartment one of them, she who sat at Marie's feet was a blonde of slender build and bourgeois appearance some thirty and odd years of age and faded before she had grown old she shrank back scarcely occupying any room wearing a dark dress and showing colourless hair and a long grief-stricken face which expressed unlimited self-abandonment infinite sadness the woman in front of her she who sat on the same seat as Pierre was of the same age but belonged to the working classes she wore a black cap and displayed a face ravaged by wretchedness and anxiety whilst on her lap she held a little girl of seven who was so pale, so wasted by illness that she seemed scarcely four with her nose contracted her eyelids lowered and showing blue in her waxen face the child was unable to speak to her parents to more than a low plate a gentle moan which rent the heart of her mother leaning over her each time that she heard it would she eat a few grapes timidly asked the lady who had hitherto preserved silence I have some in my basket thank you madame replied the woman she only takes milk and sometimes not even that willingly I took care to bring a bottle full with me then giving way to the desire as the wretched to confide their woes to others she began to relate her story her name was Vincent and her husband, a gilder by trade had been carried off by consumption left alone with her little rose who was the passion of her heart she had worked by day and night at her calling as a dressmaker in order to bring the child up but disease had come and for fourteen months now she had had her in her arms like that growing more and more woeful and wasted almost to nothingness she, the mother who never went to mass had one day entered a church impelled by despair to pray for her daughter's cure and there she had heard a voice which had told her to take the little one to Lord where the blessed virgin would have pity on her acquainted with nobody not knowing even how the pilgrimages were organised she had had but one idea to work, save up the money necessary for the journey, take a ticket and start off with the thirty sous remaining to her, destitute of all supplies save a bottle of milk for the child not having even thought of purchasing a crust of bread for herself what is the poor little thing suffering from, resumed the lady oh it must be consumption of the bowels madame but the doctors have names they give it at first she only had slight pains in the stomach then her stomach began to swell and she suffered oh so dreadfully it made one cry to see her her stomach has gone down now only she's worn out she has got so thin that she has no legs left her and she's wasting away with continual sweating then as rose raising her eyelids began to moan her mother lent over her, distracted and turning pale what is the matter my jewel, my treasure she asked, do you want to drink but the little girl was already closing her dim eyes of a hazy sky blue hue and did not even answer to her torpor quite white in the white frock she wore a last coquetry on the part of her mother who had gone to this useless expense in the hope that the virgin would be more compassionate and gentle to a little sufferer who was well dressed, so immaculately white there was an interval of silence and then madame Vincent inquired and you madame it's for yourself no doubt that you are going to lured one can see very well that you are ill but the lady with a frightened look would be into her corner murmuring no, no, I am not ill would to God that I were I should suffer less her name was madame Mars and her heart was full of an incurable grief after a love marriage to a big gay fellow with ripe red lips she had found herself deserted at the end of a 12 months honeymoon ever travelling following the profession of a jeweller's bag man her husband who earned a deal of money would disappear for six months at a stretch one tier to the other of France at times even carrying creatures about with him and she worshipped him she suffered so frightfully from it all that she had sought a remedy in religion and had at last made up her mind to repair to lured in order to pray the virgin to restore her husband to her and make him amend his ways although madame Vincent did not understand the other's words she realised that she was a prey to great mental affliction and they continued looking at one another whom the sight of her dying daughter was killing and the abandoned wife whom her passion cast into throes of death-like agony however Pierre who like Marie had been listening to the conversation now intervened he was astonished that the dressmaker had not sought free treatment for her little patient the association of Our Lady of Salvation had been founded by the Augustine fathers of the assumption after the Franco-German war with the object of contributing to the salvation of France and the defence of the church by prayer in common and the practice of charity and it was this association which had promoted the great pilgrimage movement in particular initiating and unremittingly extending the national pilgrimage which every year towards the close of August set out for lured an elaborate organisation had been gradually perfected donations of considerable amounts were collected in all parts of the world sufferers were enrolled in every parish and agreements were signed with the railway companies nothing of the active help of the little sisters of the assumption and the establishment of the hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation a widespread brotherhood of the benevolent in which one beheld men and women mostly belonging to society who under the orders of the pilgrimage managers nursed the Sikh helped to transport them and watched over the observance of good discipline a written request was needed for the sufferers to obtain hospitalisation which dispensed them from making the smallest payment in respect either of their journey or their sojourn they were fetched from their homes and conveyed back thither and they simply had to provide a few provisions for the road by far the greater number were recommended by priests or benevolent persons who superintended the enquiries concerning them and obtained the needful papers such as doctor's certificates and certificates of birth and these matters being settled the Sikh ones had nothing further to trouble about they became but so much suffering flesh food for miracles of the hospitalers of either Sikhs but you need only have applied to your parish priest madame Pierre explained this poor child is deserving of every sympathy she would have been immediately admitted I did not know it Mr. Laby then how did you manage why Mr. Laby I went to take a ticket at a place which one of my neighbours who reads the newspapers told me about she was referring to the tickets at greatly reduced rates which were issued to the pilgrims possessed of means and Marie listening to her felt great pity for her and also some shame for she who was not entirely destitute of resources had succeeded in obtaining hospitalisation thanks to Pierre whereas that mother and her sorry child after exhausting their scanty savings remained without a copper however a more violent jolt of the carriage drew a cry of pain from the girl oh father she said pray raise me a little I can't stay on my back any longer when Monsieur de Gersaint had helped her into a sitting posture she gave a deep sigh of relief they were now at étamp after a run of an hour and a half from Paris and what with the increased warmth of the sun the dust and the noise weariness was becoming apparent already Madame de Jean-Chières had got up to speak a few words of kindly encouragement to Marie over the petition and Sister Ier Saint moreover again rose she felt her hands that she might be heard and obeyed from one to the other end of the carriage come come said she we mustn't think of our little troubles let us pray and sing and the Blessed Virgin will be with us she herself then began the rosary according to the rite of our Lady of Lourdes and all the patients and pilgrims followed her this was the first chaplet the five joyful mysteries the annunciation the visitation the nativity the purification found in the temple then they all began to chant the canticle let us contemplate the heavenly archangel their voices were lost amid the loud rumbling of the wheels you heard but the muffled surging of that human wave stifling within the closed carriage which rolled on and on without a pause although Monsieur de Gersaint was a worshipper he could never follow a hymn to the end he got up sat down again and finished by resting his elbow on the petition conversing in an undertone with a patient who sat against this same petition in the next compartment the patient in question was a thick-set man of fifty with a good-natured face and a large head completely bald his name was Sabatier and for fifteen years he had been stricken with ataxia he only suffered pain by fits and starts but he had quite lost the use of his legs which his wife who accompanied him moved for him as though they had been dead legs whenever they became too heavy weighty like bars of lead yes Monsieur he said such as you see me I was formerly fifth class professor at the Lice Charlemagne at first I thought that it was mere sciatica but afterwards I was seized with sharp lightning like pains red-hot sword thrusts you know in the muscles during nearly ten years the disease kept on mastering me more and more I consulted all the doctors tried every imaginable mineral spring I suffered less but I can no longer move from my seat and then after long living without a thought of religion I was led back to God by the idea that I was too wretched and that our Lady of Lord could not do otherwise than take pity on me feeling interested Pierre and his turn had lent over the partition and was listening is it not so Monsieur Labé continued Monsieur Sabatier is not suffering the best awakening of souls the seventh year that I am going to Lord without despairing of cure this year the Blessed Virgin will cure me I feel sure of it yes I expect to be able to walk about again I now live solely in that hope Monsieur Sabatier paused he wished his wife to push his legs a little more to the left and Pierre looked at him astonished to find such obstinate faith in a man of intellect in one of those university professors who as a rule are such Voltarians how could the belief in miracles have germinated and taken root in this man's brain as he himself said great suffering alone explained this need of illusion this blossoming of eternal and consolatory hope and my wife and I resumed the ex-professor addressed you see as poor folks for I wished to go as a mere pauper this year and applied for hospitalisation in a spirit of humility in order that the Blessed Virgin might include me among the wretched her children only as I did not wish to take the place of a real pauper I gave 50 francs to the hospitalité and this as you are aware gives one the right to have a patient of one's own in the pilgrimage I even know my patient he was introduced to me at the railway station he is suffering from tuberculosis it appears and seems to me very low very low a fresh interval of silence ensued well said Monsieur Sabatier at last may the Blessed Virgin save him also she who can do everything I shall be so happy she will have loaded me with favours then the three men isolating themselves from the others went on conversing together at first on medical subjects and at last diverging into a discussion on romanesque architecture a propos of a steeple which they had perceived on a hillside and which every pilgrim had saluted with a sign of the cross swayed once more by the habits of cultivated intellect the young priest and his two companions forgot themselves together in the midst of their fellow passengers all those poor suffering simple-minded folk whom wretchedness stupefied another hour went by two more canticles had just been sung and the stations of Turry and Les Obrés had been left behind went at Beaujancis they at last ceased their chat on hearing Sister Yersaint clap her hands and intonate in her fresh sonorous voice Parce domine parce populo tour and then the chant went on all voices became mingled in that ever-surging wave of prayer which stilled pain excited hope and little by little penetrated the entire being harassed by the haunting thought of the grace and cure which one and all were going to seek so far away however as Pierre sat down again he saw that Marie was very pale and had her eyes closed by the painful contraction of her features he could tell that she was not sleeping are you in great suffering? he asked yes, yes, I suffered dreadfully I shall never last till the end it is this incessant jolting she moaned raised her eyelids and half-fainting remained in a sitting posture her eyes turned on the other sufferers in the adjoining compartment la grivote hitherto stretched out scarce breathing like a corpse had just raised herself up in front of Monsieur Sabatier she was a tall slip-shod singular looking creature of over thirty with a round ravaged face which her frizzy hair and flaming eyes rendered almost pretty she had reached the third stage of thysis hey mademoiselle she said addressing herself in a horse indistinct voice to Marie how nice it would be if we could only doze off a little but it can't be managed all these wheels keep on whirling round and round in one's head then although it fatigued her to speak she obstinately went on talking volunteering particulars about herself she was a mattress maker and with one of her aunts had long gone from yard to yard at Belcy to comb and sew up mattresses and indeed it was to the pestilential wool which she had combed in her youth that she ascribed her malady for five years past she had been making the round of the hospitals of Paris and she spoke ideally of all the great doctors it was the sisters of charity at the la riboisière hospital who finding that she had a passion for religious ceremonies had completed her conversion and convinced her that the virgin awaited her at Lourdes to cure her I certainly need it said she the doctors say that I have one lung done for and that the other one is scarcely any better there are great big holes you know at first I only felt bad between the shoulders and spat up some froth but then I got thin and became a dreadful sight and now I'm always in a sweat and cough till I think I'm going to bring my heart up and I can no longer spit and I haven't the strength to stand you see I can't eat a stifling sensation made her pause and she became livid all the same I prefer being in my skin instead of in that of the brother in the compartment behind you he has the same complaint as I have but he is in a worse state than I am she was mistaken in the further compartment beyond Marie there was indeed a young missionary brother Risidor who was lying on a mattress and could not be seen since he was unable to raise even a finger but he was not suffering from thysis he was dying of inflammation of the liver contracted in Senegal very long and lank he had a yellow face with skin as dry and lifeless as parchment the abscess which had formed in his liver had ended by breaking out externally and amidst the continuous shivering of fever vomiting and delirium supuration was exhausting him his eyes alone were still alive eyes full of unextinguishable love whose flame lighted up his expiring face a peasant face such as painters have given to the crucified Christ common but rendered sublime at moments by its expression of faith and passion he was a breton the last puny child of an over-numerous family and had left his little share of land to his elder brothers one of his sisters, Maart older than himself by a couple of years accompanied him she had been in service in Paris an insignificant maid of all work but with all so devoted to her brother that she had left her situation to follow him subsisting scantily on her petty savings I was lying on the platform resumed like rivote when he was put in the carriage there were four men carrying him but she was unable to speak any further for just then an attack of coughing shook and threw her back upon the seat she was suffocating and the red flush on her cheekbones turned blue Sister Ier Saint however immediately raised her head and wiped her lips with a linen cloth which became spotted with blood at the same time Madame de Genquière gave her attention to a patient in front of her who had just fainted she was called Madame Vettu and was the wife of a petty clockmaker of the Mouffetard district she cut up his shop in order to accompany her to Lourdes and to make sure that she would be cared for she had sought and obtained hospitalisation the fear of death was bringing her back to religion although she had not set foot in church since her first communion she knew that she was lost that a cancer in the chest was eating into her and she already had the haggard orange huge mark of the cancerous patient since the beginning of the journey she had not spoken a word but suffering terribly with her lips tightly closed then all at once she had swooned away after an attack of vomiting it is unbearable moment Madame de la Genquière who herself felt faint we must let in a little fresh air Sister Ier Saint was just then laying la grivote to rest on her pillows certainly said she we will open the windows for a few moments but not on this side for I am afraid we might have a fresh fit of coughing open the window on your side Madame the heat was still increasing and the occupants of the carriage were stifling in that heavy evil smelling atmosphere the pure air which came in when the window was opened brought relief however for a moment there were other duties to be attended to a clearance and cleansing the sister emptied the basins out of the window whilst the lady hospitalour wiped the shaking floor with a sponge next things had to be set in order and then came a fresh anxiety for the fourth patient this slender girl whose face was entirely covered by a black fichu and who had not yet moved was saying that she felt hungry with quiet devotion Madame de Genquière immediately tended her services don't you trouble sister I will cut her bread into little bits for her Marie with the need she felt of diverting her mind from her own sufferings had already begun to take an interest in the motionless sufferer whose countenance was hidden by that black veil I suspect that it was a case of some distressing facial sore she had merely been told that the patient was a servant which was true but the poor creature a native of Picardie named Elise Rouquet had been obliged to leave her situation and seek her home with a sister who ill treated her for no hospital would take her in extremely devout she had for many months been possessed by an ardent desire to go to Lourdes whilst Marie with dread in her heart waited for the fichu to be moved on the side Madame de Genquière having cut some bread into small pieces inquired maternally are they small enough can you put them into your mouth there upon a horse voice growled confused words under the black fichu yes yes Madame and at last the veil fell and Marie shuddered with horror it was a case of lupus which had prayed upon the unhappy woman's nose and mouth ulceration had spread and was hourly spreading this peculiarities of this terrible disease were in full process of development almost obliterating the traces of what once were pleasing womanly linuments oh look Pierre Marie murmured trembling the priest in his turn shuddered as he beheld Elise Rouquet cautiously slipping the tiny pieces of bread into her poor shapeless mouth everyone in the carriage had turned pale at the sight of the awful apparition and the same thought ascended from all those hope-inflated souls ah blessed virgin powerful virgin what a miracle indeed if such an ill were cured we must not think of ourselves my children if we wish to get well resumed sister Yersaint who still retained her encouraging smile and then she made them say 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 afterwards came the canticle in thy help virgin do I put my trust they had just passed through Blois for three long hours they had been rolling onward and Marie who had averted her eyes from Elise Rouquet now turned them on a man who occupied a corner seat in the compartment on her left that in which brother Isidore was lying she had noticed this man several times already poorly clad in an old black frock coat he looked still young although his sparse beard was already turning grey and short and emaciated he seemed to experience great suffering his fleshless livid face being covered with sweat however he remained motionless ensconced in his corner speaking to nobody but staring straight before him with dilated eyes and all at once Marie noticed that his eyelids were falling and that he was fainting away she there upon drew sister Maria sounds attention to him look sister one would think that that gentleman is dangerously ill which one my dear child that one over there with his head thrown back general excitement followed all the healthy pilgrims rose up to look and it occurred to madame Jean-Claire to call Martre brother Isidore's sister and tell her to tap the man's hands question him she added ask what ails him Martre drew near shook the man and questioned him but instead of an answer only a rattle came from his throat and his eyes remained closed then a frightened voice was heard saying I think he is going to die the dread increased words flew about advice was tended from one to the other end of the carriage nobody knew the man he had certainly not obtained hospitalisation for no white card was hanging from his neck somebody related however that he had seen him arrive dragging himself along before the train started and that he had remained quite motionless scarce breathing ever since he had flung himself with an air of intense weariness into that corner where he was now apparently dying his ticket was at last seen protruding from under the band of an old silk hat which hung from a peg near him ah he is breathing again now sister Iesant suddenly exclaimed ask him his name however on being again questioned by Martre the man he clearly gave vent to a low-plaint an exclamation scarcely articulated oh how I suffer and thenceforth that was the only answer that could be obtained from him with reference to everything that they wished to know who he was, whence he came what his illness was, what could be done for him he gave no information but still and ever continued moaning oh how I suffer how I suffer sister Iesant grew restless with impatience ah if she had only been in the same compartment with him and she resolved that she would change her seat at the first station they should stop at only there would be no stoppage for a long time the position was becoming terrible the more so as the man's head again fell back he is dying he is dying repeated the frightened voice what was to be done, Monde Dieu the sister was aware that one of the fathers of the assumption Father Marseillais was in the train with the holy oils ready to administer extreme unction to the dying for every year some of the patients passed away during the journey but she did not dare to have recourse to the alarm signal moreover in the canteen van where sister Saint Francois officiated there was a doctor with a little medicine chest if the sufferer should survive until they reached Poitiers where there would be half an hour stoppage all possible help might be given to him but on the other hand he might suddenly expire however they ended by becoming somewhat calmer the man although still unconscious began to breathe in a more regular manner and seemed to fall asleep to think of it to die before getting there moment Marie with a shudder to die in sight of the promised land and as her father sought to reassure her she added I am suffering I am suffering dreadfully myself have confidence said Pierre the Blessed Virgin is watching over you she could no longer remain seated and it became necessary to replace her in a recumbent position in her narrow coffin her father and the priest had to take every precaution in doing so for the slightest hurt drew a moan from her and she lay there breathless like one dead her face contracted by suffering and surrounded by her regal fair hair they had now been rolling on ever rolling on for nearly four hours and if the carriage was so greatly shaken with an unbearable spreading tendency it was through being at the rear part of the train the coupling iron shrieked the wheels growled furiously and as it was necessary to leave the windows partially open the dust came in acrid and burning but it was especially the heat which grew terrible a devouring stormy heat falling from a torny sky which large hanging clouds had slowly covered the hot carriages those rolling boxes where the pilgrims ate and drank where the sick lay in a vitiated atmosphere amid dizzying moans prayers and hymns became like so many furnaces and Marie was not the only one whose condition had been aggravated others also were suffering from the journey resting in the lap of her despairing mother who gazed at her with large tear-blurred eyes little Rose had ceased to stir and had grown so pale that Madame Mars had twice lent forward to feel her hands fearful lest she should find them cold at each moment also Madame Sabatier had to move her husband's legs for their weight was so great, said he that it seemed as if his hips were being torn from him Brother Isidore too had just begun to cry out emerging from his accustomed taupor and his sister had only been able to ask why she's sufferings by raising him and clasping him in her arms like Grivott seemed to be asleep but a continuous hiccuping shook her and a tiny streamlet of blood dribbled from her mouth Madame Vitu had again vomited Elise Grouquet no longer thought of hiding the frightful sore open on her face and from the man yonder breathing hard there still came a lugubrious rattle as though he were at every moment on the point of expiring In vain did Madame de Junquier and Sister Iassin relavish their attentions on the patients they could but slightly assuage so much suffering at times it all seemed like an evil dream that carriage of wretchedness and pain hurried along at express speed with a continuous shaking and jolting which made everything hanging from the pegs the old clothes, the worn out baskets mended with bits of string swing to and fro incessantly and in the compartment at the far end the ten female pilgrims some old, some young and all pitifully ugly sang on without a pause in cracked voices shrill and dreary Then Pierre began to think of the other carriages of the train which conveyed most, if not all of the more seriously afflicted patients These carriages were rolling along all displaying similar scenes of suffering among the 300 sick and 500 healthy pilgrims crowded within them and afterwards he thought of the other trains which were leaving Paris that day the grey train and the blue train which had preceded the white one the green train, the yellow train the pink train, the orange train which were following it from one to the other end of France and he thought too of those which that same morning had started from Orléans Le Mans, Poitiers, Bordeaux Marseille and Carcassonne Coming from all parts trains were rushing across that land of France at the same hour, all directing their course yonder towards the Holy Grotto bringing 30,000 patients and pilgrims to the Virgin's feet and he reflected that other days of the year witnessed a like rush of human beings that not a week went by without lured beholding the arrival of some pilgrimage that it was not merely France which set out on the march but all Europe, the whole world that in certain years of great religious fervour there had been 300,000 and even 500,000 pilgrims and patients streaming to the spot Pierre fancied that he could hear those flying trains those trains from everywhere all converging towards the same rocky cavity where the tapers were blazing they all rumbled loudly amid the cries of pain and snatches of hymns wafted from their carriages they were the rolling hospitals of disease at its last stage a human suffering rushing to the hope of cure furiously seeking consolation between attacks of increased severity with the ever-present threat of death death hastened, supervening under awful conditions amidst the mob-like scramble they rolled on, they rolled on again and again they rolled on without a pause carrying the wretchedness of this world on its way to the divine illusion the health of the infirm the consolation of the afflicted and immense pity overflowed from Pierre's heart human compassion for all the suffering and all the tears that consumed weak and naked man he was sad unto death and ardent charity burnt within him the unextinguishable flame as it were of his fraternal feelings towards all things and beings when they left the station of Saint-Pierre-de-Corps at half past ten Sister Iassante gave the signal and they recited the third chaplet the five glorious mysteries the resurrection of our Lord the ascension of our Lord the mission of the Holy Ghost the assumption of the most blessed virgin the crowning of the most blessed virgin and afterwards they sang the canticle of Bernadette that long, long chant composed of six times ten couplets to which the angelic salutation ever occurring serves as a refrain a prolonged lullaby slowly besetting one until it ends by penetrating one's entire being transporting one into ecstatic sleep in delicious expectancy of a miracle End of Section 1 Section 2 of Lourdes This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please contact LibriVox.org Lourdes by Emile Zola created by Ernest Visitelli The first day 2. Pierre and Marie The green landscapes of Poitou were now defiling before them and Abbe Pierre-Fremont gazing out of the window watched the trees fly away till little by little he ceased to distinguish them A steeple appeared and then vanished and all the pilgrims crossed themselves They would not reach Poitiers until 1235 and the train was still rolling on amid the growing weariness of that oppressive stormy day Falling into a deep reverie the young priest no longer heard the words of the canticle which sounded in his ears merely like a slow, wavy lullaby Forgetfulness of the present had come upon him an awakening of the past filled his whole being He was re-ascending the stream of memory, re-ascending it to its source He again beheld the house at Neuilly where he had been born He lived that home of peace and toil with its garden planted with a few fine trees and parted by a quick-set hedge and palisade from the garden of the neighbouring house which was similar to his own He was again three, perhaps four, years old and round a table shaded by the big horse-chestnut tree he once more beheld his father, his mother and his elder brother at Dejeuner To his father Michel-Fremont he could give no distinct lineaments to him but faintly, vaguely renowned as an illustrious chemist bearing the title of member of the institute and leading a cloistered life in the laboratory which he had installed in that secluded, deserted suburb However he could plainly see his first brother Guillaume then fourteen years of age whom some holiday had brought from college that morning and then, and even more vividly his mother so gentle and so quiet with eyes so full of active kindliness Later on he learnt what anguish had wracked that religious soul that believing woman who, from esteem and gratitude, had resignedly accepted marriage with an unbeliever her senior by fifteen years to whom her relatives were indebted for great services He, Pierre the tardy offspring of this union born when his father was already near his fiftieth year had only known his mother as a respectful conquered woman in the presence of her husband whom she had learnt to love passionately with the frightful torment of knowing however that he was doomed to perdition and all at once another memory flashed upon the young priest the terrible memory of the day when his father had died killed in his laboratory by an accident the explosion of a retort He, Pierre, had then been five years old and he remembered the slightest incidents his mother's cry when she had found the shattered body among the remnants of the chemical appliances then her terror, her sobs her prayers at the idea that God had slain the unbeliever damned him forever more not daring to burn his books and papers she had contented herself with locking up the laboratory which henceforth nobody entered and from that moment haunted by a vision of hell she had had but one idea to possess herself of her second son who was still so young to give him a strictly religious training and through him to ransom her husband secure his forgiveness from God Guillaume, her elder boy had already ceased to belong to her having grown up at the college where he had been won over by the ideas of the century but she resolved that the other the younger one should not leave the house but should have a priest as tutor and her secret dream her consuming hope was that she might someday see him a priest himself saying his first mass and soullessing souls whom the thought of eternity tortured then between green leafy boughs and sunlight another figure rose vividly before Pierre's eyes he suddenly beheld Marie de Gersin as he had seen her one morning through a gap in the hedge dividing the two gardens Monsieur de Gersin who belonged to the petty Norman Noblesse was a combination of architect and inventor and he was at that time busy with the scheme of model dwellings for the poor to which churches and schools were to be attached an affair of considerable magnitude planned none too well however and in which, with his customary impetuosity the lack of foresight of an imperfect artist he was risking the 300,000 francs that he possessed a similarity of religious faith had drawn Madame de Gersin and Madame Frommin together but the former was altogether a superior woman perspicuous and rigid with an iron hand which alone prevented her household from gliding to a catastrophe and she was bringing up her two daughters Blanche and Marie in principles of narrow piety the elder one already being as grave as herself whilst the younger albeit very devout was still fond of play with an intensity of life within her which found vent in gay peals of sonorous laughter from their early childhood Pierre and Marie played together the hedge was ever being crossed the two families constantly mingled and on that clear sunshiny morning when he pictured her parting the leafy branches she was already ten years old he who was sixteen was to enter the seminary on the following Tuesday never had she seemed to him so pretty her hair of a pure golden hue was so long that when it was let down it sufficed to clothe her well did he remember her face as it had been then with round cheeks, blue eyes red mouth and skin of dazzling snowy whiteness she was indeed as gay and brilliant as the sun itself a transplendency yet there were tears at the corner of her eyes for she was aware of his coming departure they sat down together at the far end of the garden in the shadow cast by the hedge their hands mingled and their hearts were very heavy they had however never exchanged any vows amid their pastimes for their innocence was absolute but now on the eve of separation their mutual tenderness rose to their lips and they spoke without knowing swore that they would ever think of one another again some day even as one meets in heaven to be very very happy then without understanding how it happened they clasped each other tightly to the point of suffocation and kissed each other's face weeping the while, hot tears and it was that delightful memory which Pierre had ever carried with him which he felt alive within him still after so many years and after so many painful renunciations just then a more violent shock from his reverie he turned his eyes upon the carriage and vaguely aspired to the suffering beings it contained Madame Mars motionless, overwhelmed with grief little Rose gently moaning in her mother's lap La Grévaute whom a horse cough was choking for a moment sister E.S. Ant's gay face shone out amidst the whiteness of her quaff and wimple dominating all the others the painful journey was continuing with a ray of divine hope still shining yonder then everything slowly vanished from Pierre's eyes as a fresh wave of memory brought the past back from afar and nothing of the present remained save the lulling him the indistinct voices of dreamland emerging from the invisible henceforth he was at the seminary the classrooms, the recreation ground with its trees rose up clearly before him but all at once he only beheld as in a mirror the youthful face which had then been his and he contemplated it and scrutinized it as though it had been the face of a stranger tall and slender he had an elongated visage with an unusually developed forehead lofty and straight like a tower whilst his jaws tapered ending in a small refined chin he seemed in fact to be all brains his mouth rather large alone retained an expression of tenderness indeed when his usually serious face relaxed his mouth and eyes acquired an exceedingly soft expression betokening an unsatisfied, hungry desire to love, devote oneself and live but immediately afterwards the look of intellectual passion would come back again that intellectuality which had ever consumed him with an anxiety to understand and know and it was with surprise that he now recalled those years of seminary life how was it that he had so long been able to accept the rude discipline of blind faith, of obedient belief in everything without the slightest examination it had been required of him that he should absolutely surrender his reasoning faculties and he had striven to do so had succeeded indeed in stifling his torturing need of truth doubtless he had been softened weakened by his mother's tears had been possessed by the sole desire to afford her the great happiness she dreamt of yet now he remembered certain quiverings of revolt he found in the depths of his mind the nights which he had spent in weeping without knowing why nights peopled with vague images nights through which galloped the free virile life of the world when Marie's face incessantly returned to him such as he had seen it one morning dazzling and bathed in tears while she embraced him with her whole soul and that alone now remained his years of religious study with their monotonous lessons their ever similar exercises and ceremonies had flown away into the same haze into a vague half-light full of mortal silence then just as the train had passed through a station at full speed with the sudden uproar of its rush there arose within him a succession of confused visions he had noticed a large deserted enclosure and fancied that he could see himself within it at twenty years of age his reverie was wandering an indisposition of rather long duration had however at one time interrupted his studies and led to his being sent into the country he had remained for a long time without seeing Marie during his vacations spent at Noyee he had twice failed to meet her for she was almost always travelling he knew that she was very ill in consequence of her fall from a horse when she was thirteen a critical moment in a girl's life and her despairing mother perplexed by the contradictory advice of medical men was taking her each year to a different watering place then he learnt the startling news of the sudden tragic death of that mother who was so severe and yet so useful to her kin she had been carried off in five days by inflammation of the lungs which she had contracted one evening whilst she was out walking at La Bourboule through having taken off her mantle to place it round the shoulders of Marie who had been conveyed thither for treatment it had been necessary that the father should at once start off to fetch his daughter who was mad with grief and the corpse of his wife who had been so suddenly torn from him and unhappily after losing her the affairs of the family went from bad to worse in the hands of this architect who without counting flung his fortune into the yawning gulf of his unsuccessful enterprises Marie no longer stirred from her couch only Blanche remained to manage the household and she had matters of her own to attend to being busy with the last examinations which she had to pass the diplomas which she was obstinately intent on securing for seeing as she did would someday have to earn her bread all at once from amidst this massive confused half forgotten incidents Pierre was conscious of the rise of a vivid vision ill health he remembered had again compelled him to take a holiday he had just completed his twenty fourth year he was greatly behind hand having so far only secured the four minor orders but on his return a sub-deaconship would be conferred on him and an inviolable vow would bind him forever more and the Gershan's little garden at Neuilly whither he had formally so often gone to play again distinctly appeared before him Marie's couch had been rolled under the tall trees at the far end of the garden near the hedge they were alone together in the sad peacefulness of an autumnal afternoon and he saw Marie clad in deep mourning for her mother and reclining there with legs inert whilst he also clad in black in a cassock already sat near her on an iron garden chair for five years she had been suffering she was now eighteen paler and thinner than formerly but still adorable with her regal golden hair which illness respected he believed from what he had heard that she was destined to remain infirm condemned never to become a woman stricken even in her sex the doctors who failed to agree respecting her case had abandoned her doubtless it was she who told him these things that dreary afternoon whilst the yellow withered leaves reigned upon them however he could not remember the words that they had spoken her pale smile her young face still so charming though already dimmed by regretfulness for life alone remained present with him but he realized that she had evoked the far off day of their parting on that same spot behind the hedge flecked with sunlight and all that was already as though dead their tears their embrace their promise to find one another some day lived happiness for although they had found one another again what availed it since she was but a corpse and he was about to bid farewell to the life of the world as the doctors condemned her as she would never be woman nor wife nor mother he on his side might well renounce manhood and annihilate himself dedicate himself to God to whom his mother gave him and he still felt within him the soft bitterness of that last interview Marie smiling painfully in the memory of their childish play and prattle and speaking to him of the happiness which he would assuredly find in the service of God so penetrated indeed with emotion at this thought that she had made him promise that he would let her hear him say his first mass but the train was passing the station of Saint More and just then a sudden uproar momentarily brought Pierre's attention back to the carriage and its occupants he fancied that there had been some fresh seizure or swooning but the suffering faces that he beheld were still the same ever contracted by the same expression of anxious waiting for the divine sucker which was so slow in coming Monsieur Sabatier was vainly striving to get his legs into a comfortable position whilst brother Isidore raised a feeble, continuous moan like a dying child and Madame Vetu, a prey to terrible agony devoured by her disease sat motionless and kept her lips tightly closed her face distorted, haggard almost black the noise which Pierre had heard had been occasioned by Madame de Junquier who whilst cleansing a basin had dropped the large zinc water can and despite their torment this had made the patients laugh like the simple souls they were rendered purile by suffering however sister Ier Saint who rightly called them her children children whom she governed with a word at once sent them saying the chaplet again pending the Angelus in accordance with the predetermined program and thereupon the Aves followed one after the other spreading into a confused murmuring and mumbling amidst the rattling of the coupling irons and noisy growling of the wheels Pierre had meantime relapsed into his reverie and beheld himself as he had been at six and twenty when ordained a priest Tadi Scruples had come to him a few days before his ordination a semi-consciousness that he was binding himself without having clearly questioned his heart and mind but he had avoided doing so living in the dizzy bewilderment of his decision fancying that he had lopped off all human ties and feelings with a voluntary hatchet stroke his flesh had surely died with his childhood's innocent romance that white-skinned girl with golden hair whom now he never beheld otherwise than stretched upon her couch of suffering her flesh as lifeless as his own and he had afterwards made the sacrifice of his mind even an easier one hoping as he did that determination would suffice to prevent him from thinking besides it was too late he could not recoil at the last moment and if when he pronounced at the last solemn vow he felt a secret terror an indeterminate but immense regret agitating him he forgot everything savoring a divine reward for his efforts on the day when he afforded his mother the great and long expected joy of hearing him say his first mass he could still see the poor woman in the little church of Noyee which she herself had selected the church where the funeral service for his father had been celebrated he saw her on that cold November morning kneeling almost alone in the dark little chapel her hands hiding her face as she continued weeping whilst he raised the host it was there that she had tasted her last happiness for she had led a sad and lonely life no longer seeing her elder son who had gone away swayed by other ideas than her own bent on breaking off all family intercourse since his brother intended to enter the church it was said that Guillaume a chemist of great talent like his father but at the same time a Bohemian addicted to revolutionary dreams was living in a little house in the suburbs where he devoted himself to the dangerous study of explosive substances and folks added that he was living with a woman who had come no one knew whence this it was which had severed the last tie between himself and his mother all piety and propriety for three years Pierre had not once seen Guillaume whom in his childhood he had worshipped as a kind, merry and fatherly big brother but there came an awful pang to his heart he once more beheld his mother lying dead this again was a thunderbolt an illness of scarcely three days duration a sudden passing away as in the case of Madame de Guercin one evening after a wild hunter for the doctor he had found her motionless and quite white she had died during his absence and his lips had ever retained the icy thrill of the last kiss that he had given her of everything else, the vigil the preparations, the funeral he remembered nothing all that had become lost in the black night of his stupor and grief grief so extreme that he had almost died of it seized with shivering on his return from the cemetery locked down by a fever which during three weeks had kept him delirious, hovering between life and death his brother had come and nursed him and then attended to pecuniary matters dividing the little inheritance leaving him the house and a modest income and taking his own share in money and as soon as Guillaume had found him out of danger he had gone off again once more vanishing into the unknown but then through what a long convalescence he, Pierre, had passed buried as it were in that deserted house he had done nothing to detain Guillaume for he realised that there was an abyss between them at first the solitude had brought him suffering but afterwards it had grown very pleasant whether in the deep silence of the rooms which the rare noises of the street did not disturb or under the screening shady foliage of the little garden where he could spend whole days without seeing a soul his favourite place of refuge, however, was the old laboratory his father's cabinet which his mother for twenty years had kept carefully locked up as though to amure within it all the incredulity and damnation of the past and despite the gentleness the respectful submissiveness which he had shown in former times she would perhaps have some day ended by destroying all her husband's books and papers had not death so suddenly surprised her Pierre, however, had once more had the windows opened the writing table in the bookcase dusted and installed in the large leather armchair he now spent delicious hours there by his illness brought back to his youthful days again deriving a wondrous intellectual delight from the perusal of the books which he came upon the only person whom he remembered having received during those two months of slow recovery was Dr. Chasseigne an old friend of his father's a medical man of real merit who, with the one ambition of curing disease modestly confined himself to the role of the practitioner it was in vain that the doctor had sought to save but he flattered himself that he had extricated the young priest from Grievous Danger and he came to see him from time to time to chat with him and to cheer him talking with him of his father, the great chemist of whom he recounted many a charming anecdote, many a particular still glowing with the flame of ardent friendship little by little amidst the weak languor of convalescence the son had thus beheld an embodiment of charming simplicity affection and good nature rising up before him his father such as he had really been not the man of stern science whom he had pictured whilst listening to his mother certainly she had never taught him ought but respect for that dear memory but had not her husband been the unbeliever the man who denied and made the angel sweep the artisan of impiety who sought to change the world that God had made and so he had long remained a gloomy vision a specter of damnation prowling about the house whereas now he became the house's very light, clear and gay, a worker consumed by a longing for truth who had never desired anything but the love and happiness of all for his part Dr. Chasseigne, a Pyrenean by birth born in a far-off secluded village where folks still believed in sorceresses inclined rather towards religion although he had not set his feet inside a church during the 40 years that he had been living in Paris however his conviction was absolute if there were a heaven somewhere Michel Frommand was assuredly there and not merely there but seated upon a throne on the divinity's right hand then Pierre in a few minutes again lived through the frightful torment which during two long months had ravaged him it was not that he had found controversial works of an anti-religious character in the bookcase or that his father whose papers he sought had ever gone beyond his technical studies as a savant but little by little, despite himself the light of science dawned upon him an ensemble of proven phenomena which demolished dogmas and left within him nothing of the things which as a priest he should have believed it seemed in fact as though illness had renewed him as though he were again beginning to live and learn amid the physical pleasantness of convalescence that still subsisting weakness which lent penetrating lucidity to his brain at the seminary by the advice of his masters he had always kept the spirit of inquiry his thirst for knowledge in check much of that which was taught him there had surprised him however he had succeeded in making the sacrifice of his mind required of his piety but now all the laboriously raised scaffolding of dogmas was swept away in a revolt of that sovereign mind which clamoured for its rights and which he could no longer silence truth was bubbling up and overflowing in such an irresistible stream that he realised he would never succeed in lodging error in his brain again it was indeed the total and irreparable ruin of faith although he had been able to kill his flesh by renouncing the romance of his youth although he felt that he had altogether mastered carnal passion he now knew that it would be impossible for him to make the sacrifice of his intelligence and he was not mistaken it was indeed his father again springing to life in the depths of his being and at last obtaining the mastery in that dual heredity in which during so many years his mother had dominated the upper part of his face his straight towering brow seemed to have risen yet higher whilst the lower part the small chin the affectionate mouth were becoming less distinct however he suffered at certain twilight hours when his kindliness his need of love awoke he felt distracted with grief at no longer believing distracted with desire to believe again and it was necessary that the lighted lamp should be brought in that he should see clearly around him and within him before he could recover the energy and calmness of reason the strength of martyrdom the determination to sacrifice everything to the peace of his conscience then came the crisis he was a priest and he no longer believed this had suddenly yawned before him like a bottomless abyss it was the end of his life the collapse of everything what should he do? did not simple rectitude require that he should throw off the cassock and return to the world but he had seen some renegade priests the married priest with whom he was acquainted filled him with disgust all this no doubt was but a survival of his long religious training he retained the notion that a priest cannot, must not weaken the idea that when one has dedicated oneself to God one cannot take possession of oneself again possibly also he felt that he was too plainly branded, too different from other men already to prove otherwise than awkward and unwelcome among them since he had been cut off from them he would remain apart in his grievous pride and after days of anguish days of struggle incessantly renewed in which his thirst for happiness warred with the energies of his returning health he took the heroic resolution that he would remain a priest and an honest one he would find the strength necessary for such abnegation since he had conquered the flesh albeit unable to conquer the brain he felt sure of keeping his vow of chastity and that would be unshakable therein lay the pure upright life which he was absolutely certain of living what mattered the rest if he alone suffered if nobody in the world suspected that his heart was reduced to ashes that nothing remained of his faith that he was agonizing amidst fearful falsehood his rectitude would prove a firm prop he would follow his priestly calling like an honest man without breaking any of the vows that he had taken he would in due accord with the rites discharge his duties as a minister of the divinity whom he would praise and glorify at the altar and distribute as the bread of life to the faithful who then would dare to impute his loss of faith to him as a crime even if this great misfortune should someday become known and what more could be asked of him than life long devotion to his vow regard for his ministry and the practice of every charity without the hope of any future reward in this wise he ended by calming himself still upright still bearing his head erect the desolate grandeur of the priest who himself no longer believes but continues watching over the faith of others and he certainly was not alone he felt that he had many brothers priests with ravaged minds who had sunk into incredulity and who yet like soldiers without a fatherland remained at the altar and despite everything found the courage to make the divine illusion shine forth above the kneeling crowds on recovering his health Pierre had immediately resumed his service at the little church of Neuilly he set his mass there every morning but he had resolved to refuse any appointment any preferment months and years went by and he obstinately insisted on remaining the least known and the most humble of those priests who are tolerated in a parish who appear and disappear after discharging their duty the acceptance of any appointment would have seemed to him an aggravation of his falsehood a theft from those who were more deserving than himself and he had to resist frequent offers for it was impossible for his merits to remain unnoticed indeed his obstinate modesty provoked astonishment at the Archbishop's palace where there was a desire to utilize the power which could be divined in him now and again it is true he bitterly regretted that he was not useful that he did not co-operate in some great work in furthering the purification of the world the salvation and happiness of all in accordance with his own ardent torturing desire fortunately his time was nearly all his own and to console himself he gave reign to his passion for work by devouring every volume in his father's bookcase and then again resuming and considering his studies feverishly preoccupied with regard to the history of nations full of a desire to explore the depths of the social and religious crisis so that he might ascertain whether it were really beyond remedy it was at this time whilst rummaging one morning in one of the large drawers in the lower part of the bookcase that he discovered quite a collection of papers respecting the apparitions of Lourdes it was a very complete set of documents comprising detailed notes of the interrogatories to which Bernadette had been subjected copies of numerous official documents and police and medical reports in addition to many private and confidential letters of the greatest interest this discovery had surprised Pierre and he had questioned Dr. Chassain concerning it the latter thereupon remembered that his friend Michel Chromand had at one time passionately devoted himself to the study of Bernadette's case and he himself, a native of a village near Lourdes had procured for the chemist a portion of the documents in the collection Pierre in his turn then became impassioned and for a whole month continued studying the affair powerfully attracted by the visionary's pure upright nature but indignant with all that had subsequently sprouted up the barbarous fetishism the painful superstitions of the triumphant simony in the access of unbelief which had come upon him this story of Lourdes was certainly of a nature to complete the collapse of his faith however it had also excited his curiosity and he would have liked to investigate it to establish beyond dispute what scientific truth was in it and render to pure Christianity the service of reading it of this scoria this fairy tale all touching and childish as it was but he had been obliged to relinquish his studies shrinking from the necessity of making a journey to the grotto and finding that it would be extremely difficult to obtain the information which he still needed and of it all there at last only remained within him a tender feeling for Bernadette of whom he could not think without a sensation of delightful charm and infinite pity the days went by and Pierre led a more and more lonely life Dr. Chasseigne had just left for the Pyrenees in a state of mortal anxiety abandoning his patients he had set out for Cordray with his ailing wife who was sinking more and more each day to the infinite distress of both his charming daughter and himself from that moment the little house had no ye fell into death-like silence and emptiness Pierre had no other distraction than that of occasionally going to see the gersens who had long since left the neighbouring house but whom he had found again in a small lodging in a wretched tenement of the district and the memory of his first visit to them there was no fresh within him that he felt a pang at his heart as he recalled his emotion at sight of the hapless Marie that pang roused him from his reverie and on looking round he perceived Marie stretched on the seat as he had found her on the day which he recalled already imprisoned in that gutter-like box that coffin to which wheels were adapted when she was taken out of doors for an airing she, formerly so brimful of life ever a stir and laughing in action and immobility in that box of her old-time beauty she had retained nothing save her hair which clad her as with a royal mantel and she was so emaciated that she seemed to have grown smaller again to have become once more a child and what was most distressing was the expression on her pale face the blank frigid stare of her eyes which did not see the ever-haunting absent look as one of whom her suffering overwhelmed however she noticed that Pierre was gazing at her and at once desired to smile at him but irresistible moans escaped her and when she did it last smile it was like a poor smitten creature who is convinced that she will expire before the miracle takes place he was overcome by it and amidst all the sufferings with which the carriage abounded hers were now the only ones that he beheld and heard as though one and all were summed up in her in the long and terrible agony of her beauty, gaiety and youth again by degrees without taking his eyes off Marie he again reverted to former days again lived those hours fraught with a mournful and bitter charm which he had often spent beside her when he called at the sorry lodging to keep her company Monsieur de Gersin had finally ruined himself by trying to improve the artistic quality of the religious prints so widely sold in France the faulty execution of which quite irritated him his last resources had been swallowed up in the failure of a colour printing firm and heedless as he was deficient in foresight ever trusting in providence his childish mind continually swayed by illusions he did not notice the awful pecuniary embarrassment of the household but applied himself to the study of aerial navigation without even realising what prodigious activity his elder daughter Blanche was forced to display in order to earn the living of her two children as she was wont to call her father and her sister it was Blanche who running about Paris in the dust in the mud from morning to evening in order to give French or music lessons contrived to provide the money necessary for the unremitting attentions which Marie required and Marie often experienced attacks of despair bursting into tears and accusing herself of being the primary cause of their ruin as for years and years now it had been necessary to pay for medical attendance and for taking her to almost every imaginable spring La Bourboule Ex La Malou the outcome of ten years of varied diagnosis and treatment was that the doctors had now abandoned her some thought her illness to be due to the rupture of certain ligaments others believed in the presence of a tumour others again in paralysis due to injury to the spinal cord and as she with maidenly revolt refused to undergo any examination and they did not even dare to address precise questions to her they each contented themselves with their several opinions and declared that she was beyond cure moreover she now solely relied upon the divine help having grown rigidly pious since she had been suffering and finding her only relief in her ardent faith us every morning she herself read the holy offices for to her great sorrow she was unable to go to church her inert limbs now seemed quite lifeless and she had sunk into a condition of extreme weakness to such a point in fact that on certain days it became necessary for her sister to place her food in her mouth Pierre was thinking of this when all at once he recalled an evening he had spent with her the lamp had not yet been lighted and as he sat beside her in the growing obscurity she suddenly told him that she wished to go to lord feeling certain that she would return cured he had experienced an uncomfortable sensation on hearing her speak in this fashion and quite forgetting himself had exclaimed that it was folly to believe in such childishness he had hitherto made it a rule never to converse with her on religious matters having not only refused to be her confessor but even to advise her with regard to the petty uncertainties of her pietyism in this respect he was influenced by feelings of both shame and compassion to lie to her of all people would have made him suffer and moreover he would have deemed himself a criminal had he even by a breath sullied the fervent pure faith which lent her such strength against pain and so regretting that he had not been able to restrain his exclamation he remained sorely embarrassed when all at once he felt the girl's cold hand take hold of his own and then emboldened by the darkness she ventured in a gentle faltering voice to tell him that she already knew his secret his misfortune that wretchedness so fearful for a priest of being unable to believe despite himself he had revealed everything during their chats together and she with the delicate intuition of a friend had been able to read his conscience she felt terribly distressed on his account she deemed him with that mortal moral malady to be more deserving of pity than herself and then as he, thunderstruck was still unable to find an answer acknowledging the truth of her words by his very silence she again began to speak to him of lured adding in a low whisper that she wished to confide him as well as herself to the protection of the blessed virgin whom she entreated to restore him to faith and from that evening forward she did not see speaking on the subject repeating again and again that if she went to lured she would be surely cured but she was prevented from making the journey by lack of means and did not even dare to speak to her sister of the pecuniary question so two months went by and day by day she grew weaker exhausted by her longing dreams her eyes ever turned towards the flashing light of the miraculous grotto far away Pierre then experienced many painful days he had at first told Marie that he would not accompany her but his decision was somewhat shaken by the thoughts that if he made up his mind to go he might profit by the journey to continue his inquiries with regard to Bernadette whose charming image lingered in his heart and at last he even felt penetrated by a delightful feeling an unacknowledged hope the hope that Marie was perhaps right that the virgin might take pity on him and restore to him his former blind faith the faith of the child who loves and does not question oh to believe to believe with his whole soul to plunge into faith forever doubtless there was no other possible happiness he longed for faith with all the joyousness of his youth with all the love that he had felt for his mother with all his burning desire to escape from the torment of understanding and knowing and to slumber forever in the depths of divine ignorance it was cowardly and yet so delightful to exist no more to become a mere thing in the hands of the divinity and thus he was at last possessed by a desire to make the supreme experiment a week later the journey to Lord was decided upon Pierre however had insisted on a final consultation of medical men in order to ascertain if it were really possible for Marie to travel and this again was a scene which rose up before him with certain incidents which he ever beheld whilst others were already fading from his mind two of the doctors who had formally attended the patient and one of whom believed in the rupture of certain ligaments whilst the other asserted the case to be one of medullary paralysis had ended by agreeing that this paralysis existed and that there was also possibly some ligamentary injury in their opinion all the symptoms pointed to this diagnosis and the nature of the case seemed to them so evident that they did not hesitate to give certificates each his own agreeing almost word for word with one another and so positive in character as to leave no room for doubt moreover they thought that the journey was practicable though it would certainly prove an extremely painful one Pierre there upon resolved to risk it for he had found the doctors very prudent and very desirous to arrive at the truth and he retained but a confused recollection of the third medical man who had been called in a distant cousin of his named de Beauclair who was young extremely intelligent but little known as yet and said by some to be rather strange in his theories this doctor after looking at Marie for a long time had asked somewhat anxiously about her parents and had seemed greatly interested by what was told him of Monsieur de Gersin this architect and inventor with a weak and exuberant mind then he had desired to measure the sufferer's visual field and by a slight discreet touch had ascertained the locality of the pain which under certain pressure seemed to ascend like a heavy shifting mass towards the breast he did not appear to attach importance to the paralysis of the legs but on a direct question being put to him he exclaimed that the girl ought to be taken to Lourdes and that she would assuredly be cured there if she herself were convinced of it Faith suffice said he with a smile two pious lady patients of his whom he had sent thither during the preceding year had returned in radiant health he even predicted how the miracle would come about it would be like a lightning stroke an exultation of the entire being whilst the evil that horrid diabolical weight which stifled the poor girl would once more ascend and fly away as though emerging by her mouth but at the same time he flatly declined to give a certificate he had failed to agree with his two confrères who treated him coldly as though they considered him a wild adventurous young fellow Pierre confusedly remembered some shreds of the discussion which had begun again in his presence some little part of the diagnosis framed her by Beauclair first a dislocation of the organ with a slight laceration of the ligaments resulting from the patient's fall from her horse then a slow healing everything returning to its place followed by consecutive nervous symptoms so that the sufferer was now simply beset by her original fright her attention fixed on the injured part arrested there amidst increasing pain incapable of acquiring fresh notions unless it were under the lash of some violent emotion moreover he also admitted the probability of accidents due to nutrition as yet unexplained and on the course and importance of which he himself would not venture to give an opinion however the idea that Marie dreamt her disease that the fearful sufferings torturing her came from an injury long since healed appeared such a paradox to Pierre when he gazed at her and saw her in such agony her limbs already stretched out lifeless on her bed of misery and even paused to consider it but at that moment felt simply happy in the thought that all three doctors agreed in authorising the journey to Lourdes to him it was sufficient that she might be cured and to attain that result he would have followed her to the end of the world ah those last days of Paris amid what a scramble they were spent the national pilgrimage was about to start and in order to avoid heavy expenses it had occurred to him to obtain hospitalisation for Marie then he had been obliged to run about in order to obtain his own admission as a helper into the hospitality of our Lady of Salvation Monsieur de Gersin was delighted with the prospect of the journey for he was fond of nature and ardently desired to become acquainted with the Pyrenees moreover he did not allow anything to worry him but was perfectly willing that the young priest should pay his railway fare and provide for him at the hotel yonder as for a child and his daughter Blanche having slipped a 20 franc piece into his hand at the last moment he had even thought himself rich again that poor brave Blanche had a little hidden store of her own savings to the amount of 50 francs which it had been absolutely necessary to accept for she became quite angry in her determination to contribute towards her sister's cure enabler she was to form one of the party owing to the lessons which she had to give in Paris whose hard pavements she must continue pacing whilst her dear ones were kneeling yonder amidst the enchantments of the grotto and so the others had started off and were now rolling ever rolling along as they passed the station of Chateaureaux a sudden burst of voices made Pierre start and drove away the torpor into which his reverie had plunged him what was the matter were they reaching Poitiers but it was only half past 12 o'clock and it was simply sister Ier Saint who had roused him by making her patience and pilgrims say the Angeles is thrice repeated then the voices burst forth and the sound of a fresh canticle arose and continued like a lamentation fully five and twenty minutes must elapse before they would reach Poitiers where it seemed as if the half hour stoppage would bring relief to every suffering they were all so uncomfortable so roughly shaken in that malodorous burning carriage such wretchedness was beyond endurance big tears coursed down the cheeks of Madame Vincent who had escaped Monsieur Sabatier usually so resigned and Brother Isidore, La Grivotte and Madame Vitu seemed to have become inanimate mere waves carried along by a torrent moreover Marie no longer answered but had closed her eyes and would not open them pursued as she was by the horrible vision of Elis-Rouquet's face that face with its gaping cavities which seemed to her to be the image of death and whilst the train increased its speed bearing all this human despair onward under the heavy sky a thwart of the burning plains there was yet another scare in the carriage the strange man had apparently ceased to breathe and a voice cried out that he was expiring End of section two