The Three Cities
LOURDES
by Émile Zola
Volume 1.
TRANSLATED BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY
Contents
PREFACE
THE FIRST DAY
I. PILGRIMS AND PATIENTS
II. PIERRE AND MARIE
III. POITIERS
IV. MIRACLES
V. BERNADETTE
PREFACE
BEFORE perusing this work, it is as well that the reader should
understand M. Zola’s aim in writing it, and his views—as distinct from
those of his characters—upon Lourdes, its Grotto, and its cures. A
short time before the book appeared M. Zola was interviewed upon the
subject by his friend and biographer, Mr. Robert H. Sherard, to whom he
spoke as follows:
“‘Lourdes’ 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 Peres de la
Misericorde, of the Rue de l’Assomption 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 thirty 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, hospitallers, 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 errors 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 Lourdes 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 Clementine Trouve, who figures in my story
as Sophie—the patient who, after suffering for 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 Clementine. 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 foregoing account of “Lourdes” as supplied by its author, it may
be added that the present translation, first made from early proofs of
the French original whilst the latter was being completed, has for the
purposes of this new American edition been carefully and extensively
revised by Mr. E. A. Vizetelly,—M. Zola’s representative for all
English-speaking countries. “Lourdes” forms the first volume of the
“Trilogy of the Three Cities,” the second being “Rome,” and the third
“Paris.”
LOURDES
THE FIRST DAY
I
PILGRIMS AND PATIENTS
THE pilgrims and patients, closely packed on the hard seats of a
third-class carriage, were just finishing the “Ave maris Stella,” which
they had begun to chant on leaving the terminus of the Orleans 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, M. de Guersaint, who sat in
front of her, whilst Abbe Pierre Froment, who was looking at her with
fraternal affection, was so carried away by his compassionate anxiety
as to say aloud: “And now we are in for it till to-morrow morning. We
shall only reach Lourdes at three-forty. 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 sunrays were enfilading the
compartments of the railway carriage, filling them with dancing, golden
dust.
“Yes, two-and-twenty hours,” murmured Marie, relapsing into a state of
anguish. “/Mon 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; her ashen, 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 woollen 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 straitened
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 five hundred healthy pilgrims,
nearly three hundred unfortunate wretches, weak to the point of
exhaustion, racked by suffering, were heaped together, and borne at
express speed from one to the other 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
thirtieth 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
Hospitallers of Our Lady of Salvation as an auxiliary member, wore on
his cassock the red, orange-tipped cross of a bearer. M. de Guersaint
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 fifty 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 Hyacinthe had risen to her feet in the
adjoining compartment. She noticed that the sun’s rays were streaming
in the girl’s face.
“Pull down the blind, Monsieur l’Abbe,” she said to Pierre. “Come,
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 coif, a white wimple, and a large white apron, Sister Hyacinthe
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 her 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 Jonquiere, 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, Raymonde, who was four-and-twenty, and whom for motives of
propriety she had placed in the charge of two lady-hospitallers, Madame
Desagneaux and Madame Volmar, in a first-class carriage. For her part,
directress as she was of a ward of the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours
at Lourdes, she did not quit her patients; 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 Vanneau. But her charity was
inexhaustible, and she gave all her time to the work of the Hospitality
of Our Lady of Salvation, 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 organise 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 Hyacinthe; “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 neighbourly 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
panelled 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-hospitaller to each compartment. However, at the other end of the
carriage there was but a second Sister of the Assumption, Sister Claire
des Anges. 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 was
soon felt and an unbearable odour 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 Juvisy; and six o’clock was striking,
and they were rushing like a hurricane past the station of Bretigny,
when Sister Hyacinthe stood up. It was she who directed the pious
exercises, which most of the pilgrims followed from small, blue-covered
books.
“The Angelus, my children,” said she with a pleasant smile, a maternal
air which her great youth rendered very charming and 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 /bourgeoise/
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 scarcely seemed four. With her nose contracted, her eyelids
lowered and showing blue in her waxen face, the child was unable to
speak, unable to give utterance to more than a low plaint, 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 bottleful
with me.”
Then, giving way to the desire which possesses 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 until reduced almost to nothingness.
She, the mother, who never went to mass, 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 Lourdes, 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 leant
over her, distracted and turning pale. “What is the matter, my jewel,
my treasure?” she asked. “Are you thirsty?”
But the little girl was already closing her dim eyes of a hazy sky-blue
hue, and did not even answer, but relapsed into 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
Lourdes? One can see very well that you are ill.”
But the lady, with a frightened look, shrank woefully into her corner,
murmuring: “No, no, I am not ill. Would to God that I were! I should
suffer less.”
Her name was Madame Maze, 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 twelvemonth’s honeymoon. Ever
travelling, following the profession of a jeweller’s bagman, her
husband, who earned a deal of money, would disappear for six months at
a stretch, deceive her from one frontier 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 Lourdes, 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, the mother, 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 Lourdes. 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, to say 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 sick, 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 inquiries concerning them and
obtained the needful papers, such as doctors’ certificates and
certificates of birth. And, these matters being settled, the sick ones
had nothing further to trouble about, they became but so much suffering
flesh, food for miracles, in the hands of the hospitallers of either
sex.
“But you need only have applied to your parish priest, madame,” Pierre
explained. “This poor child is deserving of all sympathy. She would
have been immediately admitted.”
“I did not know it, monsieur l’Abbe.”
“Then how did you manage?”
“Why, Monsieur l’Abbe, 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 M. de Guersaint had helped her into a sitting posture, she gave a
deep sigh of relief. They were now at Etampes, 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 Jonquiere had got up to speak a few words of kindly
encouragement to Marie over the partition; and Sister Hyacinthe
moreover again rose, and gaily clapped 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, and Jesus 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 M. de Guersaint 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 partition and conversing in an undertone with a patient
who sat against this same partition 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 Sabathier, 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 Lycee 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.
For nearly ten years the disease kept on mastering me more and more. I
consulted all the doctors, tried every imaginable mineral spring, and
now I suffer 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 Lourdes could
not do otherwise than take pity on me.”
Feeling interested, Pierre in his turn had leant over the partition and
was listening.
“Is it not so, Monsieur l’Abbe?” continued M. Sabathier. “Is not
suffering the best awakener of souls? This is the seventh year that I
am going to Lourdes 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.”
M. Sabathier 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 Voltairians. 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, “are dressed, 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 fifty
francs to the Hospitalite, 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 seemed to me very low,
very low.”
A fresh interval of silence ensued. “Well,” said M. Sabathier 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 Toury and Les Aubrais had been left behind, when, at
Beaugency, they at last ceased their chat, on hearing Sister Hyacinthe
clap her hands and intonate in her fresh, sonorous voice:
“/Parce, Domine, parce populo tuo/.”
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 asleep. “Are you in great suffering?” he
asked.
“Yes, yes, I suffer dreadfully. I shall never last to 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 Grivotte, hitherto stretched out, scarce
breathing, like a corpse, had just raised herself up in front of M.
Sabathier. 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
phthisis.
“Eh, mademoiselle,” she said, addressing herself in a hoarse,
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 Bercy 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 she had been making the round of the
hospitals of Paris, and she spoke familiarly of all the great doctors.
It was the Sisters of Charity, at the Lariboisiere 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 that I am.”
She was mistaken. In the farther compartment, beyond Marie, there was
indeed a young missionary, Brother Isidore, 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 phthisis. 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, suppuration
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, Marthe, older than himself by a couple of years,
accompanied him. She had been in service in Paris, an insignificant
maid-of-all-work, but withal 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 La Grivotte, “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 her and threw her back upon the seat. She was
suffocating, and the red flush on her cheek-bones turned blue. Sister
Hyacinthe, however, immediately raised her head and wiped her lips with
a linen cloth, which became spotted with blood. At the same time Madame
de Jonquiere gave her attention to a patient in front of her, who had
just fainted. She was called Madame Vetu, and was the wife of a petty
clockmaker of the Mouffetard district, who had not been able to shut 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-hued mark of the cancerous patient. Since the
beginning of the journey she had not spoken a word, but, suffering
terribly, had remained with her lips tightly closed. Then all at once,
she had swooned away after an attack of vomiting.
“It is unbearable!” murmured Madame de Jonquiere, who herself felt
faint; “we must let in a little fresh air.”
Sister Hyacinthe was just then laying La Grivotte to rest on her
pillows, “Certainly,” said she, “we will open the window 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-hospitaller 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, a 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 Jonquiere immediately tendered her
services. “Don’t you trouble, Sister,” she said, “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 that motionless
sufferer whose countenance was so thickly veiled, for she not
unnaturally suspected 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 it happened that the poor creature, a native of Picardy,
named Elise Rouquet, had been obliged to leave her situation, and seek
a 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.
While Marie, with dread in her heart, waited for the fichu to be moved
aside, Madame de Jonquiere, having cut some bread into small pieces,
inquired maternally: “Are they small enough? Can you put them into your
mouth?”
Thereupon a hoarse 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 preyed upon the unhappy woman’s nose
and mouth. Ulceration had spread, and was hourly spreading—in short,
all the hideous peculiarities of this terrible disease were in full
process of development, almost obliterating the traces of what once
were pleasing womanly lineaments.
“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 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 Hyacinthe, 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 upon 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 thereupon drew Sister’s Hyacinthe’s 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 de Jonquiere to call to Marthe, Brother
Isidore’s sister, and tell her to tap the man’s hands.
“Question him,” she added; “ask what ails him.”
Marthe 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 tendered 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,
but three minutes or so 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 was hung from a peg near him.
“Ah, he is breathing again now!” Sister Hyacinthe suddenly exclaimed.
“Ask him his name.”
However, on being again questioned by Marthe, the man merely gave vent
to a low plaint, an exclamation scarcely articulated, “Oh, how I
suffer!”
And thenceforward 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 Hyacinthe 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, /mon Dieu/? The Sister was aware that one of the
Fathers of the Assumption, Father Massias, 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
/cantine/ 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’s
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, though still unconscious, began to
breathe in a more regular manner, and seemed to fall asleep.
“To think of it, to die before getting there,” murmured 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 from its position at the rear part of the train. The
coupling irons 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 tawny 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 Maze
had twice leant forward to feel her hands, fearful lest she should find
them cold. At each moment also Madame Sabathier 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 wonted torpor; and his sister had
only been able to assuage his sufferings by raising him, and clasping
him in her arms. La Grivotte seemed to be asleep, but a continuous
hiccoughing shook her, and a tiny streamlet of blood dribbled from her
mouth. Madame Vetu had again vomited, Elise Rouquet 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
Jonquiere and Sister Hyacinthe lavish 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, that
white 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 three hundred sick and five
hundred 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 hour to hour trains set out from one to the other end of
France. And he thought, too, of those which that same morning had
started from Orleans, Le Mans, Poitiers, Bordeaux, Marseilles, 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 thirty thousand 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
Lourdes 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
three hundred thousand, and even five hundred thousand, pilgrims and
patients streaming to the spot.
* Different-coloured tickets are issued for these trains; it is for
this reason that they are called the white, blue, and grey trains,
etc.—Trans.
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, of 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 the 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 men.
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.