with wild, wavy, yellow hair, a round, dimpled, milky face, a gay,
laughing disposition, and a remarkably good heart, she had made a rich
marriage, and for three years past had been wont to leave her husband
at Trouville in the fine August weather, in order to accompany the
national pilgrimage as a lady-hospitaller. This was her great passion,
an access of quivering pity, a longing desire to place herself
unreservedly at the disposal of the sick for five days, a real debauch
of devotion from which she returned tired to death but full of intense
delight. Her only regret was that she as yet had no children, and with
comical passion, she occasionally expressed a regret that she had
missed her true vocation, that of a sister of charity.
“Ah! my dear,” she hastily said to Raymonde, “don’t pity your mother
for being so much taken up with her patients. She, at all events, has
something to occupy her.” And addressing herself to Madame de
Jonquiere, she added: “If you only knew how long we find the time in
our fine first-class carriage. We cannot even occupy ourselves with a
little needlework, as it is forbidden. I asked for a place with the
patients, but all were already distributed, so that my only resource
will be to try to sleep tonight.”
She began to laugh, and then resumed: “Yes, Madame Volmar, we will try
to sleep, won’t we, since talking seems to tire you?” Madame Volmar,
who looked over thirty, was very dark, with a long face and delicate
but drawn features. Her magnificent eyes shone out like brasiers,
though every now and then a cloud seemed to veil and extinguish them.
At the first glance she did not appear beautiful, but as you gazed at
her she became more and more perturbing, till she conquered you and
inspired you with passionate admiration. It should be said though that
she shrank from all self-assertion, comporting herself with much
modesty, ever keeping in the background, striving to hide her lustre,
invariably clad in black and unadorned by a single jewel, although she
was the wife of a Parisian diamond-merchant.
“Oh! for my part,” she murmured, “as long as I am not hustled too much
I am well pleased.”
She had been to Lourdes as an auxiliary lady-helper already on two
occasions, though but little had been seen of her there—at the hospital
of Our Lady of Dolours—as, on arriving, she had been overcome by such
great fatigue that she had been forced, she said, to keep her room.
However, Madame de Jonquiere, who managed the ward, treated her with
good-natured tolerance. “Ah! my poor friends,” said she, “there will be
plenty of time for you to exert yourselves. Get to sleep if you can,
and your turn will come when I can no longer keep up.” Then addressing
her daughter, she resumed: “And you would do well, darling, not to
excite yourself too much if you wish to keep your head clear.”
Raymonde smiled and gave her mother a reproachful glance: “Mamma,
mamma, why do you say that? Am I not sensible?” she asked.
Doubtless she was not boasting, for, despite her youthful, thoughtless
air, the air of one who simply feels happy in living, there appeared in
her grey eyes an expression of firm resolution, a resolution to shape
her life for herself.
“It is true,” the mother confessed with a little confusion, “this
little girl is at times more sensible than I am myself. Come, pass me
the cutlet—it is welcome, I assure you. Lord! how hungry I was!”
The meal continued, enlivened by the constant laughter of Madame
Desagneaux and Raymonde. The latter was very animated, and her face,
which was already growing somewhat yellow through long pining for a
suitor, again assumed the rosy bloom of twenty. They had to eat very
fast, for only ten minutes now remained to them. On all sides one heard
the growing tumult of customers who feared that they would not have
time to take their coffee.
All at once, however, Pierre made his appearance; a fit of stifling had
again come over La Grivotte; and Madame de Jonquiere hastily finished
her artichoke and returned to her compartment, after kissing her
daughter, who wished her “good-night” in a facetious way. The priest,
however, had made a movement of surprise on perceiving Madame Volmar
with the red cross of the lady-hospitallers on her black bodice. He
knew her, for he still called at long intervals on old Madame Volmar,
the diamond-merchant’s mother, who had been one of his own mother’s
friends. She was the most terrible woman in the world, religious beyond
all reason, so harsh and stern, moreover, as to close the very window
shutters in order to prevent her daughter-in-law from looking into the
street. And he knew the young woman’s story, how she had been
imprisoned on the very morrow of her marriage, shut up between her
mother-in-law, who tyrannised over her, and her husband, a repulsively
ugly monster who went so far as to beat her, mad as he was with
jealousy, although he himself kept mistresses. The unhappy woman was
not allowed out of the house excepting it were to go to mass. And one
day, at La Trinite, Pierre had surprised her secret, on seeing her
behind the church exchanging a few hasty words with a well-groomed,
distinguished-looking man.
The priest’s sudden appearance in the refreshment-room had somewhat
disconcerted Madame Volmar.
“What an unexpected meeting, Monsieur l’Abbe!” she said, offering him
her long, warm hand. “What a long time it is since I last saw you!” And
thereupon she explained that this was the third year she had gone to
Lourdes, her mother-in-law having required her to join the Association
of Our Lady of Salvation. “It is surprising that you did not see her at
the station when we started,” she added. “She sees me into the train
and comes to meet me on my return.”
This was said in an apparently simple way, but with such a subtle touch
of irony that Pierre fancied he could guess the truth. He knew that she
really had no religious principles at all, and that she merely followed
the rites and ceremonies of the Church in order that she might now and
again obtain an hour’s freedom; and all at once he intuitively realised
that someone must be waiting for her yonder, that it was for the
purpose of meeting him that she was thus hastening to Lourdes with her
shrinking yet ardent air and flaming eyes, which she so prudently
shrouded with a veil of lifeless indifference.
“For my part,” he answered, “I am accompanying a friend of my
childhood, a poor girl who is very ill indeed. I must ask your help for
her; you shall nurse her.”
Thereupon she faintly blushed, and he no longer doubted the truth of
his surmise. However, Raymonde was just then settling the bill with the
easy assurance of a girl who is expert in figures; and immediately
afterwards Madame Desagneaux led Madame Volmar away. The waiters were
now growing more distracted and the tables were fast being vacated;
for, on hearing a bell ring, everybody had begun to rush towards the
door.
Pierre, on his side, was hastening back to his carriage, when he was
stopped by an old priest. “Ah! Monsieur le Cure,” he said, “I saw you
just before we started, but I was unable to get near enough to shake
hands with you.”
Thereupon he offered his hand to his brother ecclesiastic, who was
looking and smiling at him in a kindly way. The Abbe Judaine was the
parish priest of Saligny, a little village in the department of the
Oise. Tall and sturdy, he had a broad pink face, around which clustered
a mass of white, curly hair, and it could be divined by his appearance
that he was a worthy man whom neither the flesh nor the spirit had ever
tormented. He believed indeed firmly and absolutely, with a tranquil
godliness, never having known a struggle, endowed as he was with the
ready faith of a child who is unacquainted with human passions. And
ever since the Virgin at Lourdes had cured him of a disease of the
eyes, by a famous miracle which folks still talked about, his belief
had become yet more absolute and tender, as though impregnated with
divine gratitude.
“I am pleased that you are with us, my friend,” he gently said; “for
there is much in these pilgrimages for young priests to profit by. I am
told that some of them at times experience a feeling of rebellion.
Well, you will see all these poor people praying,—it is a sight which
will make you weep. How can one do otherwise than place oneself in
God’s hands, on seeing so much suffering cured or consoled?”
The old priest himself was accompanying a patient; and he pointed to a
first-class compartment, at the door of which hung a placard bearing
the inscription: “M. l’Abbe Judaine, Reserved.” Then lowering his
voice, he said: “It is Madame Dieulafay, you know, the great banker’s
wife. Their chateau, a royal domain, is in my parish, and when they
learned that the Blessed Virgin had vouchsafed me such an undeserved
favour, they begged me to intercede for their poor sufferer. I have
already said several masses, and most sincerely pray for her. There,
you see her yonder on the ground. She insisted on being taken out of
the carriage, in spite of all the trouble which one will have to place
her in it again.”
On a shady part of the platform, in a kind of long box, there was, as
the old priest said, a woman whose beautiful, perfectly oval face,
lighted up by splendid eyes, denoted no greater age than
six-and-twenty. She was suffering from a frightful disease. The
disappearance from her system of the calcareous salts had led to a
softening of the osseous framework, the slow destruction of her bones.
Three years previously, after the advent of a stillborn child, she had
felt vague pains in the spinal column. And then, little by little, her
bones had rarefied and lost shape, the vertebrae had sunk, the bones of
the pelvis had flattened, and those of the arms and legs had
contracted. Thus shrunken, melting away as it were, she had become a
mere human remnant, a nameless, fluid thing, which could not be set
erect, but had to be carried hither and thither with infinite care, for
fear lest she should vanish between one’s fingers. Her face, a
motionless face, on which sat a stupefied imbecile expression, still
retained its beauty of outline, and yet it was impossible to gaze at
this wretched shred of a woman without feeling a heart-pang, the keener
on account of all the luxury surrounding her; for not only was the box
in which she lay lined with blue quilted silk, but she was covered with
valuable lace, and a cap of rare valenciennes was set upon her head,
her wealth thus being proclaimed, displayed, in the midst of her awful
agony.
“Ah! how pitiable it is,” resumed the Abbe Judaine in an undertone. “To
think that she is so young, so pretty, possessed of millions of money!
And if you knew how dearly loved she was, with what adoration she is
still surrounded. That tall gentleman near her is her husband, that
elegantly dressed lady is her sister, Madame Jousseur.”
Pierre remembered having often noticed in the newspapers the name of
Madame Jousseur, wife of a diplomatist, and a conspicuous member of the
higher spheres of Catholic society in Paris. People had even circulated
a story of some great passion which she had fought against and
vanquished. She also was very prettily dressed, with marvellously
tasteful simplicity, and she ministered to the wants of her sorry
sister with an air of perfect devotion. As for the unhappy woman’s
husband, who at the age of five-and-thirty had inherited his father’s
colossal business, he was a clear-complexioned, well-groomed, handsome
man, clad in a closely buttoned frock-coat. His eyes, however, were
full of tears, for he adored his wife, and had left his business in
order to take her to Lourdes, placing his last hope in this appeal to
the mercy of Heaven.
Ever since the morning, Pierre had beheld many frightful sufferings in
that woeful white train. But none had so distressed his soul as did
that wretched female skeleton, slowly liquefying in the midst of its
lace and its millions. “The unhappy woman!” he murmured with a shudder.
The Abbe Judaine, however, made a gesture of serene hope. “The Blessed
Virgin will cure her,” said he; “I have prayed to her so much.”
Just then a bell again pealed, and this time it was really the signal
for starting. Only two minutes remained. There was a last rush, and
folks hurried back towards the train carrying eatables wrapped in
paper, and bottles and cans which they had filled with water. Several
of them quite lost their heads, and in their inability to find their
carriages, ran distractedly from one to the other end of the train;
whilst some of the infirm ones dragged themselves about amidst the
precipitate tapping of crutches, and others, only able to walk with
difficulty, strove to hasten their steps whilst leaning on the arms of
some of the lady-hospitallers. It was only with infinite difficulty
that four men managed to replace Madame Dieulafay in her first-class
compartment. The Vignerons, who were content with second-class
accommodation, had already reinstalled themselves in their quarters
amidst an extraordinary heap of baskets, boxes, and valises which
scarcely allowed little Gustave enough room to stretch his poor puny
limbs—the limbs as it were of a deformed insect. And then all the women
appeared again: Madame Maze gliding along in silence; Madame Vincent
raising her dear little girl in her outstretched arms and dreading lest
she should hear her cry out; Madame Vetu, whom it had been necessary to
push into the train, after rousing her from her stupefying torment; and
Elise Rouquet, who was quite drenched through her obstinacy in
endeavouring to drink from the tap, and was still wiping her monstrous
face. Whilst each returned to her place and the carriage filled once
more, Marie listened to her father, who had come back delighted with
his stroll to a pointsman’s little house beyond the station, whence a
really pleasant stretch of landscape could be discerned.
“Shall we lay you down again at once?” asked Pierre, sorely distressed
by the pained expression on Marie’s face.
“Oh no, no, by-and-by!” she replied. “I shall have plenty of time to
hear those wheels roaring in my head as though they were grinding my
bones.”
Then, as Ferrand seemed on the point of returning to the cantine van,
Sister Hyacinthe begged him to take another look at the strange man
before he went off. She was still waiting for Father Massias,
astonished at the inexplicable delay in his arrival, but not yet
without hope, as Sister Claire des Anges had not returned.
“Pray, Monsieur Ferrand,” said she, “tell me if this unfortunate man is
in any immediate danger.”
The young doctor again looked at the sufferer, felt him, and listened
to his breathing. Then with a gesture of discouragement he answered in
a low voice, “I feel convinced that you will not get him to Lourdes
alive.”
Every head was still anxiously stretched forward. If they had only
known the man’s name, the place he had come from, who he was! But it
was impossible to extract a word from this unhappy stranger, who was
about to die there, in that carriage, without anybody being able to
give his face a name!
It suddenly occurred to Sister Hyacinthe to have him searched. Under
the circumstances there could certainly be no harm in such a course.
“Feel in his pockets, Monsieur Ferrand,” she said.
The doctor thereupon searched the man in a gentle, cautious way, but
the only things that he found in his pockets were a chaplet, a knife,
and three sous. And nothing more was ever learnt of the man.
At that moment, however, a voice announced that Sister Claire des Anges
was at last coming back with Father Massias. All this while the latter
had simply been chatting with the priest of Sainte-Radegonde in one of
the waiting-rooms. Keen emotion attended his arrival; for a moment all
seemed saved. But the train was about to start, the porters were
already closing the carriage doors, and it was necessary that extreme
unction should be administered in all haste in order to avoid too long
a delay.
“This way, reverend Father!” exclaimed Sister Hyacinthe; “yes, yes,
pray come in; our unfortunate patient is here.”
Father Massias, who was five years older than Pierre, whose
fellow-student however he had been at the seminary, had a tall, spare
figure with an ascetic countenance, framed round with a light-coloured
beard and vividly lighted up by burning eyes, He was neither the priest
harassed by doubt, nor the priest with childlike faith, but an apostle
carried away by his passion, ever ready to fight and vanquish for the
pure glory of the Blessed Virgin. In his black cloak with its large
hood, and his broad-brimmed flossy hat, he shone resplendently with the
perpetual ardour of battle.
He immediately took from his pocket the silver case containing the Holy
Oils, and the ceremony began whilst the last carriage doors were being
slammed and belated pilgrims were rushing back to the train; the
station-master, meantime, anxiously glancing at the clock, and
realising that it would be necessary for him to grant a few minutes’
grace.
“/Credo in unum Deum/,” hastily murmured the Father.
“/Amen/,” replied Sister Hyacinthe and the other occupants of the
carriage.
Those who had been able to do so, had knelt upon the seats, whilst the
others joined their hands, or repeatedly made the sign of the cross;
and when the murmured prayers were followed by the Litanies of the
ritual, every voice rose, an ardent desire for the remission of the
man’s sins and for his physical and spiritual cure winging its flight
heavenward with each successive /Kyrie eleison/. Might his whole life,
of which they knew nought, be forgiven him; might he enter, stranger
though he was, in triumph into the Kingdom of God!
“/Christe, exaudi nos/.”
“/Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genitrix/.”
Father Massias had pulled out the silver needle from which hung a drop
of Holy Oil. In the midst of such a scramble, with the whole train
waiting—many people now thrusting their heads out of the carriage
windows in surprise at the delay in starting—he could not think of
following the usual practice, of anointing in turn all the organs of
the senses, those portals of the soul which give admittance to evil.
He must content himself, as the rules authorised him to do in pressing
cases, with one anointment; and this he made upon the man’s lips, those
livid parted lips from between which only a faint breath escaped,
whilst the rest of his face, with its lowered eyelids, already seemed
indistinct, again merged into the dust of the earth.
“/Per istam sanctam unctionem/,” said the Father, “/et suam piissimam
misericordiam indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per visum, auditum,
odoratum, gustum, tactum, deliquisti.”*
* Through this holy unction and His most tender mercy may the
Lord pardon thee whatever sins thou hast committed by thy sight,
hearing, etc.
The remainder of the ceremony was lost amid the hurry and scramble of
the departure. Father Massias scarcely had time to wipe off the oil
with the little piece of cotton-wool which Sister Hyacinthe held in
readiness, before he had to leave the compartment and get into his own
as fast as possible, setting the case containing the Holy Oils in order
as he did so, whilst the pilgrims finished repeating the final prayer.
“We cannot wait any longer! It is impossible!” repeated the
station-master as he bustled about. “Come, come, make haste everybody!”
At last then they were about to resume their journey. Everybody sat
down, returned to his or her corner again. Madame de Jonquiere,
however, had changed her place, in order to be nearer La Grivotte,
whose condition still worried her, and she was now seated in front of
M. Sabathier, who remained waiting with silent resignation. Moreover,
Sister Hyacinthe had not returned to her compartment, having decided to
remain near the unknown man so that she might watch over him and help
him. By following this course, too, she was able to minister to Brother
Isidore, whose sufferings his sister Marthe was at a loss to assuage.
And Marie, turning pale, felt the jolting of the train in her ailing
flesh, even before it had resumed its journey under the heavy sun,
rolling onward once more with its load of sufferers stifling in the
pestilential atmosphere of the over-heated carriages.
At last a loud whistle resounded, the engine puffed, and Sister
Hyacinthe rose up to say: The /Magnificat/, my children!
IV
MIRACLES
JUST as the train was beginning to move, the door of the compartment in
which Pierre and Marie found themselves was opened and a porter pushed
a girl of fourteen inside, saying: “There’s a seat here—make haste!”
The others were already pulling long faces and were about to protest,
when Sister Hyacinthe exclaimed: “What, is it you, Sophie? So you are
going back to see the Blessed Virgin who cured you last year!”
And at the same time Madame de Jonquiere remarked: “Ah! Sophie, my
little friend, I am very pleased to see that you are grateful.”
“Why, yes, Sister; why, yes, madame,” answered the girl, in a pretty
way.
The carriage door had already been closed again, so that it was
necessary that they should accept the presence of this new pilgrim who
had fallen from heaven as it were at the very moment when the train,
which she had almost missed, was starting off again. She was a slender
damsel and would not take up much room. Moreover these ladies knew her,
and all the patients had turned their eyes upon her on hearing that the
Blessed Virgin had been pleased to cure her. They had now got beyond
the station, the engine was still puffing, whilst the wheels increased
their speed, and Sister Hyacinthe, clapping her hands, repeated: “Come,
come, my children, the /Magnificat/.”
Whilst the joyful chant arose amidst the jolting of the train, Pierre
gazed at Sophie. She was evidently a young peasant girl, the daughter
of some poor husbandman of the vicinity of Poitiers, petted by her
parents, treated in fact like a young lady since she had become the
subject of a miracle, one of the elect, whom the priests of the
district flocked to see. She wore a straw hat with pink ribbons, and a
grey woollen dress trimmed with a flounce. Her round face although not
pretty was a very pleasant one, with a beautifully fresh complexion and
clear, intelligent eyes which lent her a smiling, modest air.
When the /Magnificat/ had been sung, Pierre was unable to resist his
desire to question Sophie. A child of her age, with so candid an air,
so utterly unlike a liar, greatly interested him.
“And so you nearly missed the train, my child?” he said.
“I should have been much ashamed if I had, Monsieur l’Abbe,” she
replied. “I had been at the station since twelve o’clock. And all at
once I saw his reverence, the priest of Sainte-Radegonde, who knows me
well and who called me to him, to kiss me and tell me that it was very
good of me to go back to Lourdes. But it seems the train was starting
and I only just had time to run on to the platform. Oh! I ran so fast!”
She paused, laughing, still slightly out of breath, but already
repenting that she had been so giddy.
“And what is your name, my child?” asked Pierre.
“Sophie Couteau, Monsieur l’Abbe.”
“You do not belong to the town of Poitiers?”
“Oh no! certainly not. We belong to Vivonne, which is seven kilometres
away. My father and mother have a little land there, and things would
not be so bad if there were not eight children at home—I am the
fifth,—fortunately the four older ones are beginning to work.”
“And you, my child, what do you do?”
“I, Monsieur l’Abbe! Oh! I am no great help. Since last year, when I
came home cured, I have not been left quiet a single day, for, as you
can understand, so many people have come to see me, and then too I have
been taken to Monseigneur’s,* and to the convents and all manner of
other places. And before all that I was a long time ill. I could not
walk without a stick, and each step I took made me cry out, so
dreadfully did my foot hurt me.”
* The Bishop’s residence.
“So it was of some injury to the foot that the Blessed Virgin cured
you?”
Sophie did not have time to reply, for Sister Hyacinthe, who was
listening, intervened: “Of caries of the bones of the left heel, which
had been going on for three years,” said she. “The foot was swollen and
quite deformed, and there were fistulas giving egress to continual
suppuration.”