of the organ, Pierre raised his head and examined the interior of the
Basilica. The nave was narrow and lofty, and streaked with bright
colours, which numerous windows flooded with light. There were scarcely
any aisles; they were reduced to the proportions of a mere passage
running between the side-chapels and the clustering columns, and this
circumstance seemed to increase the slim loftiness of the nave, the
soaring of the stonework in perpendicular lines of infantile, graceful
slenderness. A gilded railing, as transparent as lace, closed the choir,
where the high altar, of white marble richly sculptured, arose in all its
lavish chasteness. But the feature of the building which astonished you
was the mass of extraordinary ornamentation which transformed the whole
of it into an overflowing exhibition of embroidery and jewellery. What
with all the banners and votive offerings, the perfect river of gifts
which had flowed into it and remained clinging to its walls in a stream
of gold and silver, velvet and silk, covering it from top to bottom, it
was, so to say, the ever-glowing sanctuary of gratitude, whose thousand
rich adornments seemed to be chanting a perpetual canticle of faith and
thankfulness.
The banners, in particular, abounded, as innumerable as the leaves of
trees. Some thirty hung from the vaulted roof, whilst others were
suspended, like pictures, between the little columns around the
triforium. And others, again, displayed themselves on the walls, waved in
the depths of the side-chapels, and encompassed the choir with a heaven
of silk, satin, and velvet. You could count them by hundreds, and your
eyes grew weary of admiring them. Many of them were quite celebrated, so
renowned for their skilful workmanship that talented embroideresses took
the trouble to come to Lourdes on purpose to examine them. Among these
were the banner of our Lady of Fourvieres, bearing the arms of the city
of Lyons; the banner of Alsace, of black velvet embroidered with gold;
the banner of Lorraine, on which you beheld the Virgin casting her cloak
around two children; and the white and blue banner of Brittany, on which
bled the sacred heart of Jesus in the midst of a halo. All empires and
kingdoms of the earth were represented; the most distant lands--Canada,
Brazil, Chili, Haiti--here had their flags, which, in all piety, were
being offered as a tribute of homage to the Queen of Heaven.
Then, after the banners, there were other marvels, the thousands and
thousands of gold and silver hearts which were hanging everywhere,
glittering on the walls like stars in the heavens. Some were grouped
together in the form of mystical roses, others described festoons and
garlands, others, again, climbed up the pillars, surrounded the windows,
and constellated the deep, dim chapels. Below the triforium somebody had
had the ingenious idea of employing these hearts to trace in tall letters
the various words which the Blessed Virgin had addressed to Bernadette;
and thus, around the nave, there extended a long frieze of words, the
delight of the infantile minds which busied themselves with spelling
them. It was a swarming, a prodigious resplendency of hearts, whose
infinite number deeply impressed you when you thought of all the hands,
trembling with gratitude, which had offered them. Moreover, the
adornments comprised many other votive offerings, and some of quite an
unexpected description. There were bridal wreaths and crosses of honour,
jewels and photographs, chaplets, and even spurs, in glass cases or
frames. There were also the epaulets and swords of officers, together
with a superb sabre, left there in memory of a miraculous conversion.
But all this was not sufficient; other riches, riches of every kind,
shone out on all sides--marble statues, diadems enriched with brilliants,
a marvellous carpet designed at Blois and embroidered by ladies of all
parts of France, and a golden palm with ornaments of enamel, the gift of
the sovereign pontiff. The lamps suspended from the vaulted roof, some of
them of massive gold and the most delicate workmanship, were also gifts.
They were too numerous to be counted, they studded the nave with stars of
great price. Immediately in front of the tabernacle there was one, a
masterpiece of chasing, offered by Ireland. Others--one from Lille, one
from Valence, one from Macao in far-off China--were veritable jewels,
sparkling with precious stones. And how great was the resplendency when
the choir's score of chandeliers was illumined, when the hundreds of
lamps and the hundreds of candles burned all together, at the great
evening ceremonies! The whole church then became a conflagration, the
thousands of gold and silver hearts reflecting all the little flames with
thousands of fiery scintillations. It was like a huge and wondrous
brasier; the walls streamed with live flakes of light; you seemed to be
entering into the blinding glory of Paradise itself; whilst on all sides
the innumerable banners spread out their silk, their satin, and their
velvet, embroidered with sanguifluous sacred hearts, victorious saints,
and Virgins whose kindly smiles engendered miracles.
Ah! how many ceremonies had already displayed their pomp in that
Basilica! Worship, prayer, chanting, never ceased there. From one end of
the year to the other incense smoked, organs roared, and kneeling
multitudes prayed there with their whole souls. Masses, vespers, sermons,
were continually following one upon another; day by day the religious
exercises began afresh, and each festival of the Church was celebrated
with unparalleled magnificence. The least noteworthy anniversary supplied
a pretext for pompous solemnities. Each pilgrimage was granted its share
of the dazzling resplendency. It was necessary that those suffering ones
and those humble ones who had come from such long distances should be
sent home consoled and enraptured, carrying with them a vision of
Paradise espied through its opening portals. They beheld the luxurious
surroundings of the Divinity, and would forever remain enraptured by the
sight. In the depths of bare, wretched rooms, indeed, by the side of
humble pallets of suffering throughout all Christendom, a vision of the
Basilica with its blazing riches continually arose like a vision of
fortune itself, like a vision of the wealth of that life to be, into
which the poor would surely some day enter after their long, long misery
in this terrestrial sphere.
Pierre, however, felt no delight; no consolation, no hope, came to him as
he gazed upon all the splendour. His frightful feeling of discomfort was
increasing, all was becoming black within him, with that blackness of the
tempest which gathers when men's thoughts and feelings pant and shriek.
He had felt immense desolation rising in his soul ever since Marie,
crying that she was healed, had risen from her little car and walked
along with such strength and fulness of life. Yet he loved her like a
passionately attached brother, and had experienced unlimited happiness on
seeing that she no longer suffered. Why, therefore, should her felicity
bring him such agony? He could now no longer gaze at her, kneeling there,
radiant amidst her tears, with beauty recovered and increased, without
his poor heart bleeding as from some mortal wound. Still he wished to
remain there, and so, averting his eyes, he tried to interest himself in
Father Massias, who was still shaking with violent sobbing on the
flagstones, and whose prostration and annihilation, amidst the consuming
illusion of divine love, he sorely envied. For a moment, moreover, he
questioned Berthaud, feigning to admire some banner and requesting
information respecting it.
"Which one?" asked the superintendent of the bearers; "that lace banner
over there?"
"Yes, that one on the left."
"Oh! it is a banner offered by Le Puy. The arms are those of Le Puy and
Lourdes linked together by the Rosary. The lace is so fine that if you
crumpled the banner up, you could hold it in the hollow of your hand."
However, Abbe Judaine was now stepping forward; the ceremony was about to
begin. Again did the organs resound, and again was a canticle chanted,
whilst, on the altar, the Blessed Sacrament looked like the sovereign
planet amidst the scintillations of the gold and silver hearts, as
innumerable as stars. And then Pierre lacked the strength to remain there
any longer. Since Marie had Madame de Jonquiere and Raymonde with her,
and they would accompany her back, he might surely go off by himself,
vanish into some shadowy corner, and there, at last, vent his grief. In a
few words he excused himself, giving his appointment with Doctor
Chassaigne as a pretext for his departure. However, another fear suddenly
came to him, that of being unable to leave the building, so densely did
the serried throng of believers bar the open doorway. But immediately
afterwards he had an inspiration, and, crossing the sacristy, descended
into the crypt by the narrow interior stairway.
Deep silence and sepulchral gloom suddenly succeeded to the joyous chants
and prodigious radiance of the Basilica above. Cut in the rock, the crypt
formed two narrow passages, parted by a massive block of stone which
upheld the nave, and conducting to a subterranean chapel under the apse,
where some little lamps remained burning both day and night. A dim forest
of pillars rose up there, a mystic terror reigned in that semi-obscurity
where the mystery ever quivered. The chapel walls remained bare, like the
very stones of the tomb, in which all men must some day sleep the last
sleep. And along the passages, against their sides, covered from top to
bottom with marble votive offerings, you only saw a double row of
confessionals; for it was here, in the lifeless tranquillity of the
bowels of the earth, that sins were confessed; and there were priests,
speaking all languages, to absolve the sinners who came thither from the
four corners of the world.
At that hour, however, when the multitude was thronging the Basilica
above, the crypt had become quite deserted. Not a soul, save Pierre's,
throbbed there ever so faintly; and he, amidst that deep silence, that
darkness, that coolness of the grave, fell upon his knees. It was not,
however, through any need of prayer and worship, but because his whole
being was giving way beneath his crushing mental torment. He felt a
torturing longing to be able to see clearly within himself. Ah! why could
he not plunge even more deeply into the heart of things, reflect,
understand, and at last calm himself.
And it was a fearful agony that he experienced. He tried to remember all
the minutes that had gone by since Marie, suddenly springing from her
pallet of wretchedness, had raised her cry of resurrection. Why had he
even then, despite his fraternal joy in seeing her erect, felt such an
awful sensation of discomfort, as though, indeed, the greatest of all
possible misfortunes had fallen upon him? Was he jealous of the divine
grace? Did he suffer because the Virgin, whilst healing her, had
forgotten him, whose soul was so afflicted? He remembered how he had
granted himself a last delay, fixed a supreme appointment with Faith for
the moment when the Blessed Sacrament should pass by, were Marie only
cured; and she was cured, and still he did not believe, and henceforth
there was no hope, for never, never would he be able to believe. Therein
lay the bare, bleeding sore. The truth burst upon him with blinding
cruelty and certainty--she was saved, he was lost. That pretended miracle
which had restored her to life had, in him, completed the ruin of all
belief in the supernatural. That which he had, for a moment, dreamed of
seeking, and perhaps finding, at Lourdes,--naive faith, the happy faith
of a little child,--was no longer possible, would never bloom again after
that collapse of the miraculous, that cure which Beauclair had foretold,
and which had afterwards come to pass, exactly as had been predicted.
Jealous! No--he was not jealous; but he was ravaged, full of mortal
sadness at thus remaining all alone in the icy desert of his
intelligence, regretting the illusion, the lie, the divine love of the
simpleminded, for which henceforth there was no room in his heart.
A flood of bitterness stifled him, and tears started from his eyes. He
had slipped on to the flagstones, prostrated by his anguish. And, by
degrees, he remembered the whole delightful story, from the day when
Marie, guessing how he was tortured by doubt, had become so passionately
eager for his conversion, taking hold of his hand in the gloom, retaining
it in her own, and stammering that she would pray for him--oh! pray for
him with her whole soul. She forgot herself, she entreated the Blessed
Virgin to save her friend rather than herself if there were but one grace
that she could obtain from her Divine Son. Then came another memory, the
memory of the delightful hours which they had spent together amid the
dense darkness of the trees during the night procession. There, again,
they had prayed for one another, mingled one in the other with so ardent
a desire for mutual happiness that, for a moment, they had attained to
the very depths of the love which gives and immolates itself. And now
their long, tear-drenched tenderness, their pure idyl of suffering, was
ending in this brutal separation; she on her side saved, radiant amidst
the hosannas of the triumphant Basilica; and he lost, sobbing with
wretchedness, bowed down in the depths of the dark crypt in an icy,
grave-like solitude. It was as though he had just lost her again, and
this time forever and forever.
All at once Pierre felt the sharp stab which this thought dealt his
heart. He at last understood his pain--a sudden light illumined the
terrible crisis of woe amidst which he was struggling. He had lost Marie
for the first time on the day when he had become a priest, saying to
himself that he might well renounce his manhood since she, stricken in
her sex by incurable illness, would never be a woman. But behold! she
/was/ cured. Behold! she /had/ become a woman. She had all at once
appeared to him very strong, very beautiful, living, and desirable. He,
who was dead, however, could not become a man again. Never more would he
be able to raise the tombstone which crushed and imprisoned his flesh.
She fled away alone, leaving him in the cold grave. The whole wide world
was opening before her with smiling happiness, with the love which laughs
in the sunlit paths, with the husband, with children, no doubt. Whereas
he, buried, as it were to his shoulders, had naught of his body free,
save his brain, and that remained free, no doubt, in order that he might
suffer the more. She had still been his so long as she had not belonged
to another; and if he had been enduring such agony during the past hour,
it was only through this final rending which, this time, parted her from
him forever and forever.
Then rage shook Pierre from head to foot. He was tempted to return to the
Basilica, and cry the truth aloud to Marie. The miracle was a lie! The
helpful beneficence of an all-powerful Divinity was but so much illusion!
Nature alone had acted, life had conquered once again. And he would have
given proofs: he would have shown how life, the only sovereign, worked
for health amid all the sufferings of this terrestrial sphere. And then
they would have gone off together; they would have fled far, far away,
that they might be happy. But a sudden terror took possession of him.
What! lay hands upon that little spotless soul, kill all belief in it,
fill it with the ruins which worked such havoc in his own soul? It all at
once occurred to him that this would be odious sacrilege. He would
afterwards become horrified with himself, he would look upon himself as
her murderer were he some day to realise that he was unable to give her a
happiness equal to that which she would have lost. Perhaps, too, she
would not believe him. And, moreover, would she ever consent to marry a
priest who had broken his vows? She who would always retain the sweet and
never-to be-forgotten memory of how she had been healed in ecstasy! His
design then appeared to him insane, monstrous, polluting. And his revolt
rapidly subsided, until he only retained a feeling of infinite weariness,
a sensation of a burning, incurable wound--the wound of his poor,
bruised, lacerated heart.
Then, however, amidst his abandonment, the void in which he was whirling,
a supreme struggle began, filling him again with agony. What should he
do? His sufferings made a coward of him, and he would have liked to flee,
so that he might never see Marie again. For he understood very well that
he would now have to lie to her, since she thought that he was saved like
herself, converted, healed in soul, even as she had been healed in body.
She had told him of her joy while dragging her car up the colossal
gradient way. Oh! to have had that great happiness together, together; to
have felt their hearts melt and mingle one in the other! And even then he
had already lied, as he would always be obliged to lie in order that he
might not spoil her pure and blissful illusion. He let the last
throbbings of his veins subside, and vowed that he would find sufficient
strength for the sublime charity of feigning peacefulness of soul, the
rapture of one who is redeemed. For he wished her to be wholly
happy--without a regret, without a doubt--in the full serenity of faith,
convinced that the blessed Virgin had indeed given her consent to their
purely mystical union. What did his torments matter? Later on, perhaps,
he might recover possession of himself. Amidst his desolate solitude of
mind would there not always be a little joy to sustain him, all that joy
whose consoling falsity he would leave to her?
Several minutes again elapsed, and Pierre, still overwhelmed, remained on
the flagstones, seeking to calm his fever. He no longer thought, he no
longer lived; he was a prey to that prostration of the entire being which
follows upon great crises. But, all at once, he fancied he could hear a
sound of footsteps, and thereupon he painfully rose to his feet, and
feigned to be reading the inscriptions graven in the marble votive slabs
along the walls. He had been mistaken--nobody was there; nevertheless,
seeking to divert his mind, he continued perusing the inscriptions, at
first in a mechanical kind of way, and then, little by little, feeling a
fresh emotion steal over him.
The sight was almost beyond imagination. Faith, love, and gratitude
displayed themselves in a hundred, a thousand ways on these marble slabs
with gilded lettering. Some of the inscriptions were so artless as to
provoke a smile. A colonel had sent a sculptured representation of his
foot with the words: "Thou hast preserved it; grant that it may serve
Thee." Farther on you read the line: "May Her protection extend to the
glass trade." And then, by the frankness of certain expressions of
thanks, you realised of what a strange character the appeals had been.
"To Mary the Immaculate," ran one inscription, "from a father of a
family, in recognition of health restored, a lawsuit won, and advancement
gained." However, the memory of these instances faded away amidst the
chorus of soaring, fervent cries. There was the cry of the lovers: "Paul
and Anna entreat Our Lady of Lourdes to bless their union." There was the
cry of the mothers in various forms: "Gratitude to Mary, who has thrice
healed my child."--"Gratitude to Mary for the birth of Antoinette, whom I
dedicate, like myself and all my kin, to Her."--"P. D., three years old,
has been preserved to the love of his parents." And then came the cry of
the wives, the cry, too, of the sick restored to health, and of the souls
restored to happiness: "Protect my husband; grant that my husband may
enjoy good health."--"I was crippled in both legs, and now I am
healed."--"We came, and now we hope."--"I prayed, I wept, and She heard
me." And there were yet other cries, cries whose veiled glow conjured up
thoughts of long romances: "Thou didst join us together; protect us, we
pray Thee."--"To Mary, for the greatest of all blessings." And the same
cries, the same words--gratitude, thankfulness, homage,
acknowledgment,--occurred again and again, ever with the same passionate
fervour. All! those hundreds, those thousands of cries which were forever
graven on that marble, and from the depths of the crypt rose clamorously
to the Virgin, proclaiming the everlasting devotion of the unhappy beings
whom she had succoured.
Pierre did not weary of reading them, albeit his mouth was bitter and
increasing desolation was filling him. So it was only he who had no
succour to hope for! When so many sufferers were listened to, he alone
had been unable to make himself heard! And he now began to think of the
extraordinary number of prayers which must be said at Lourdes from one
end of the year to the other. He tried to cast them up; those said during
the days spent at the Grotto and during the nights spent at the Rosary,
those said at the ceremonies at the Basilica, and those said at the
sunlight and the starlight processions. But this continual entreaty of
every second was beyond computation. It seemed as if the faithful were
determined to weary the ears of the Divinity, determined to extort
favours and forgiveness by the very multitude, the vast multitude of
their prayers. The priests said that it was necessary to offer to God the
acts of expiation which the sins of France required, and that when the
number of these acts of expiation should be large enough, God would smite
France no more. What a harsh belief in the necessity of chastisement!
What a ferocious idea born of the gloomiest pessimism! How evil life must
be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of
physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to Heaven!
In the midst of all his sadness, Pierre felt deep compassion penetrate
his heart. He was upset by the thought that mankind should be so
wretched, reduced to such a state of woe, so bare, so weak, so utterly
forsaken, that it renounced its own reason to place the one sole
possibility of happiness in the hallucinatory intoxication of dreams.
Tears once more filled his eyes; he wept for himself and for others, for
all the poor tortured beings who feel a need of stupefying and numbing
their pains in order to escape from the realities of the world. He again
seemed to hear the swarming, kneeling crowd of the Grotto, raising the
glowing entreaty of its prayer to Heaven, the multitude of twenty and
thirty thousand souls from whose midst ascended such a fervour of desire
that you seemed to see it smoking in the sunlight like incense. Then
another form of the exaltation of faith glowed, beneath the crypt, in the
Church of the Rosary, where nights were spent in a paradise of rapture,
amidst the silent delights of the communion, the mute appeals in which
the whole being pines, burns, and soars aloft. And as though the cries
raised before the Grotto and the perpetual adoration of the Rosary were
not sufficient, that clamour of ardent entreaty burst forth afresh on the
walls of the crypt around him; and here it was eternised in marble, here
it would continue shrieking the sufferings of humanity even into the
far-away ages. It was the marble, it was the walls themselves praying,
seized by that shudder of universal woe which penetrated even the world's
stones. And, at last, the prayers ascended yet higher, still higher,
soared aloft from the radiant Basilica, which was humming and buzzing
above him, full as it now was of a frantic multitude, whose mighty voice,
bursting into a canticle of hope, he fancied he could hear through the
flagstones of the nave. And it finally seemed to him that he was being
whirled away, transported, as though he were indeed amidst the very
vibrations of that huge wave of prayer, which, starting from the dust of
the earth, ascended the tier of superposed churches, spreading from
tabernacle to tabernacle, and filling even the walls with such pity that
they sobbed aloud, and that the supreme cry of wretchedness pierced its
way into heaven with the white spire, the lofty golden cross, above the
steeple. O Almighty God, O Divinity, Helpful Power, whoever, whatever
Thou mayst be, take pity upon poor mankind and make human suffering
cease!
All at once Pierre was dazzled. He had followed the left-hand passage,
and was coming out into broad daylight, above the inclined ways, and two
affectionate arms at once caught hold of him and clasped him. It was
Doctor Chassaigne, whose appointment he had forgotten, and who had been
waiting there to take him to visit Bernadette's room and Abbe Peyramale's
church. "Oh! what joy must be yours, my child!" exclaimed the good old
man. "I have just learnt the great news, the extraordinary favour which
Our Lady of Lourdes has granted to your young friend. Recollect what I
told you the day before yesterday. I am now at ease--you are saved!"