of Madame Jousseur, that lady in mauve. She is the wife of a diplomatist
who neglects her, it seems, in spite of her great beauty; and last year
there was a deal of talk about her fancy for a young colonel who is well
known in Parisian society. It is said, however, in Catholic /salons/ that
her religious principles enabled her to conquer it."
They all five remained there, looking up at the balcony. "To think,"
resumed Madame Desagneaux, "that her sister, poor woman, was once her
living portrait." And, indeed, there was an expression of greater
kindliness and more gentle gaiety on Madame Dieulafay's face. And now you
see her--no different from a dead woman except that she is above instead
of under ground--with her flesh wasted away, reduced to a livid, boneless
thing which they scarcely dare to move. Ah! the unhappy woman!
Raymonde thereupon assured the others that Madame Dieulafay, who had been
married scarcely two years previously, had brought all the jewellery
given her on the occasion of her wedding to offer it as a gift to Our
Lady of Lourdes; and Gerard confirmed this assertion, saying that the
jewellery had been handed over to the treasurer of the Basilica that very
morning with a golden lantern studded with gems and a large sum of money
destined for the relief of the poor. However, the Blessed Virgin could
not have been touched as yet, for the sufferer's condition seemed, if
anything, to be worse.
From that moment Pierre no longer beheld aught save that young woman on
that handsome balcony, that woeful, wealthy creature lying there high
above the merrymaking throng, the Lourdes mob which was feasting and
laughing in the Sunday sunshine. The two dear ones who were so tenderly
watching over her--her sister who had forsaken her society triumphs, her
husband who had forgotten his financial business, his millions dispersed
throughout the world--increased, by their irreproachable demeanour, the
woefulness of the group which they thus formed high above all other
heads, and face to face with the lovely valley. For Pierre they alone
remained; and they were exceedingly wealthy and exceedingly wretched.
However, lingering in this wise on the footway with their eyes upturned,
the five promenaders narrowly escaped being knocked down and run over,
for at every moment fresh vehicles were coming up, for the most part
landaus drawn by four horses, which were driven at a fast trot, and whose
bells jingled merrily. The occupants of these carriages were tourists,
visitors to the waters of Pau, Bareges, and Cauterets, whom curiosity had
attracted to Lourdes, and who were delighted with the fine weather and
quite inspirited by their rapid drive across the mountains. They would
remain at Lourdes only a few hours; after hastening to the Grotto and the
Basilica in seaside costumes, they would start off again, laughing, and
well pleased at having seen it all. In this wise families in light
attire, bands of young women with bright parasols, darted hither and
thither among the grey, neutral-tinted crowd of pilgrims, imparting to
it, in a yet more pronounced manner, the aspect of a fair-day mob, amidst
which folks of good society deign to come and amuse themselves.
All at once Madame Desagneaux raised a cry "What, is it you, Berthe?" And
thereupon she embraced a tall, charming brunette who had just alighted
from a landau with three other young women, the whole party smiling and
animated. Everyone began talking at once, and all sorts of merry
exclamations rang out, in the delight they felt at meeting in this
fashion. "Oh! we are at Cauterets, my dear," said the tall brunette. "And
as everybody comes here, we decided to come all four together. And your
husband, is he here with you?"
Madame Desagneaux began protesting: "Of course not," said she. "He is at
Trouville, as you ought to know. I shall start to join him on Thursday."
"Yes, yes, of course," resumed the tall brunette, who, like her friend,
seemed to be an amiable, giddy creature, "I was forgetting; you are here
with the pilgrimage."
Then Madame Desagneaux offered to guide her friends, promising to show
them everything of interest in less than a couple of hours; and turning
to Raymonde, who stood by, smiling, she added "Come with us, my dear;
your mother won't be anxious."
The ladies and Pierre and M. de Guersaint thereupon exchanged bows: and
Gerard also took leave, tenderly pressing Raymonde's hand, with his eyes
fixed on hers, as though to pledge himself definitively. The women
swiftly departed, directing their steps towards the Grotto, and when
Gerard also had gone off, returning to his duties, M. de Guersaint said
to Pierre: "And the hairdresser on the Place du Marcadal, I really must
go and see him. You will come with me, won't you?"
"Of course I will go wherever you like. I am quite at your disposal as
Marie does not need us."
Following the pathways between the large lawns which stretch out in front
of the Rosary, they reached the new bridge, where they had another
encounter, this time with Abbe des Hermoises, who was acting as guide to
two young married ladies who had arrived that morning from Tarbes.
Walking between them with the gallant air of a society priest, he was
showing them Lourdes and explaining it to them, keeping them well away,
however, from its more repugnant features, its poor and its ailing folk,
its odour of low misery, which, it must be admitted, had well-nigh
disappeared that fine, sunshiny day. At the first word which M. de
Guersaint addressed to him with respect to the hiring of a vehicle for
the trip to Gavarnie, the Abbe was seized with a dread lest he should be
obliged to leave his pretty lady-visitors: "As you please, my dear sir,"
he replied. "Kindly attend to the matter, and--you are quite right, make
the cheapest arrangements possible, for I shall have two ecclesiastics of
small means with me. There will be four of us. Let me know at the hotel
this evening at what hour we shall start."
Thereupon he again joined his lady-friends, and led them towards the
Grotto, following the shady path which skirts the Gave, a cool,
sequestered path well suited for lovers' walks.
Feeling somewhat tired, Pierre had remained apart from the others,
leaning against the parapet of the new bridge. And now for the first time
he was struck by the prodigious number of priests among the crowd. He saw
all varieties of them swarming across the bridge: priests of correct mien
who had come with the pilgrimage and who could be recognised by their air
of assurance and their clean cassocks; poor village priests who were far
more timid and badly clothed, and who, after making sacrifices in order
that they might indulge in the journey, would return home quite scared
and, finally, there was the whole crowd of unattached ecclesiastics who
had come nobody knew whence, and who enjoyed such absolute liberty that
it was difficult to be sure whether they had even said their mass that
morning. They doubtless found this liberty very agreeable; and thus the
greater number of them, like Abbe des Hermoises, had simply come on a
holiday excursion, free from all duties, and happy at being able to live
like ordinary men, lost, unnoticed as they were in the multitude around
them. And from the young, carefully groomed and perfumed priest, to the
old one in a dirty cassock and shoes down at heel, the entire species had
its representative in the throng--there were corpulent ones, others but
moderately fat, thin ones, tall ones and short ones, some whom faith had
brought and whom ardour was consuming, some also who simply plied their
calling like worthy men, and some, moreover, who were fond of intriguing,
and who were only present in order that they might help the good cause.
However, Pierre was quite surprised to see such a stream of priests pass
before him, each with his special passion, and one and all hurrying to
the Grotto as one hurries to a duty, a belief, a pleasure, or a task. He
noticed one among the number, a very short, slim, dark man with a
pronounced Italian accent, whose glittering eyes seemed to be taking a
plan of Lourdes, who looked, indeed, like one of those spies who come and
peer around with a view to conquest; and then he observed another one, an
enormous fellow with a paternal air, who was breathing hard through
inordinate eating, and who paused in front of a poor sick woman, and
ended by slipping a five-franc piece into her hand.
Just then, however, M. de Guersaint returned: "We merely have to go down
the boulevard and the Rue Basse," said he.
Pierre followed him without answering. He had just felt his cassock on
his shoulders for the first time that afternoon, for never had it seemed
so light to him as whilst he was walking about amidst the scramble of the
pilgrimage. The young fellow was now living in a state of mingled
unconsciousness and dizziness, ever hoping that faith would fall upon him
like a lightning flash, in spite of all the vague uneasiness which was
growing within him at sight of the things which he beheld. However, the
spectacle of that ever-swelling stream of priests no longer wounded his
heart; fraternal feelings towards these unknown colleagues had returned
to him; how many of them there must be who believed no more than he did
himself, and yet, like himself, honestly fulfilled their mission as
guides and consolers!
"This boulevard is a new one, you know," said M. de Guersaint, all at
once raising his voice. "The number of houses built during the last
twenty years is almost beyond belief. There is quite a new town here."
The Lapaca flowed along behind the buildings on their right and, their
curiosity inducing them to turn into a narrow lane, they came upon some
strange old structures on the margin of the narrow stream. Several
ancient mills here displayed their wheels; among them one which
Monseigneur Laurence had given to Bernadette's parents after the
apparitions. Tourists, moreover, were here shown the pretended abode of
Bernadette, a hovel whither the Soubirous family had removed on leaving
the Rue des Petits Fosses, and in which the young girl, as she was
already boarding with the Sisters of Nevers, can have but seldom slept.
At last, by way of the Rue Basse, Pierre and his companion reached the
Place du Marcadal.
This was a long, triangular, open space, the most animated and luxurious
of the squares of the old town, the one where the cafes, the chemists,
all the finest shops were situated. And, among the latter, one showed
conspicuously, coloured as it was a lively green, adorned with lofty
mirrors, and surmounted by a broad board bearing in gilt letters the
inscription: "Cazaban, Hairdresser".
M. de Guersaint and Pierre went in, but there was nobody in the salon and
they had to wait. A terrible clatter of forks resounded from the
adjoining room, an ordinary dining-room transformed into a /table
d'hote/, in which some twenty people were having /dejeuner/ although it
was already two o'clock. The afternoon was progressing, and yet people
were still eating from one to the other end of Lourdes. Like every other
householder in the town, whatever his religious convictions might be,
Cazaban, in the pilgrimage season, let his bedrooms, surrendered his
dining-room, end sought refuge in his cellar, where, heaped up with his
family, he ate and slept, although this unventilated hole was no more
than three yards square. However, the passion for trading and moneymaking
carried all before it; at pilgrimage time the whole population
disappeared like that of a conquered city, surrendering even the beds of
its women and its children to the pilgrims, seating them at its tables,
and supplying them with food.
"Is there nobody here?" called M. de Guersaint after waiting a moment.
At last a little man made his appearance, Cazaban himself, a type of the
knotty but active Pyrenean, with a long face, prominent cheek-bones, and
a sunburned complexion spotted here and there with red. His big,
glittering eyes never remained still; and the whole of his spare little
figure quivered with incessant exuberance of speech and gesture.
"For you, monsieur--a shave, eh?" said he. "I must beg your pardon for
keeping you waiting; but my assistant has gone out, and I was in there
with my boarders. If you will kindly sit down, I will attend to you at
once."
Thereupon, deigning to operate in person, Cazaban began to stir up the
lather and strop the razor. He had glanced rather nervously, however, at
the cassock worn by Pierre, who without a word had seated himself in a
corner and taken up a newspaper in the perusal of which he appeared to be
absorbed.
A short interval of silence followed; but it was fraught with suffering
for Cazaban, and whilst lathering his customer's chin he began to
chatter: "My boarders lingered this morning such a long time at the
Grotto, monsieur, that they have scarcely sat down to /dejeuner/. You can
hear them, eh? I was staying with them out of politeness. However, I owe
myself to my customers as well, do I not? One must try to please
everybody."
M. de Guersaint, who also was fond of a chat, thereupon began to question
him: "You lodge some of the pilgrims, I suppose?"
"Oh! we all lodge some of them, monsieur; it is necessary for the town,"
replied the barber.
"And you accompany them to the Grotto?"
At this, however, Cazaban revolted, and, holding up his razor, he
answered with an air of dignity "Never, monsieur, never! For five years
past I have not been in that new town which they are building."
He was still seeking to restrain himself, and again glanced at Pierre,
whose face was hidden by the newspaper. The sight of the red cross pinned
on M. de Guersaint's jacket was also calculated to render him prudent;
nevertheless his tongue won the victory. "Well, monsieur, opinions are
free, are they not?" said he. "I respect yours, but for my part I don't
believe in all that phantasmagoria! Oh I've never concealed it! I was
already a republican and a freethinker in the days of the Empire. There
were barely four men of those views in the whole town at that time. Oh!
I'm proud of it."
He had begun to shave M. de Guersaint's left cheek and was quite
triumphant. From that moment a stream of words poured forth from his
mouth, a stream which seemed to be inexhaustible. To begin with, he
brought the same charges as Majeste against the Fathers of the Grotto. He
reproached them for their dealings in tapers, chaplets, prints, and
crucifixes, for the disloyal manner in which they competed with those who
sold those articles as well as with the hotel and lodging-house keepers.
And he was also wrathful with the Blue Sisters of the Immaculate
Conception, for had they not robbed him of two tenants, two old ladies,
who spent three weeks at Lourdes each year? Moreover you could divine
within him all the slowly accumulated, overflowing spite with which the
old town regarded the new town--that town which had sprung up so quickly
on the other side of the castle, that rich city with houses as big as
palaces, whither flowed all the life, all the luxury, all the money of
Lourdes, so that it was incessantly growing larger and wealthier, whilst
its elder sister, the poor, antique town of the mountains, with its
narrow, grass-grown, deserted streets, seemed near the point of death.
Nevertheless the struggle still continued; the old town seemed determined
not to die, and, by lodging pilgrims and opening shops on her side,
endeavoured to compel her ungrateful junior to grant her a share of the
spoils. But custom only flowed to the shops which were near the Grotto,
and only the poorer pilgrims were willing to lodge so far away; so that
the unequal conditions of the struggle intensified the rupture and turned
the high town and the low town into two irreconcilable enemies, who
preyed upon one another amidst continual intrigues.
"Ah, no! They certainly won't see me at their Grotto," resumed Cazaban,
with his rageful air. "What an abusive use they make of that Grotto of
theirs! They serve it up in every fashion! To think of such idolatry,
such gross superstition in the nineteenth century! Just ask them if they
have cured a single sufferer belonging to the town during the last twenty
years! Yet there are plenty of infirm people crawling about our streets.
It was our folk that benefited by the first miracles; but it would seem
that the miraculous water has long lost all its power, so far as we are
concerned. We are too near it; people have to come from a long distance
if they want it to act on them. It's really all too stupid; why, I
wouldn't go there even if I were offered a hundred francs!"
Pierre's immobility was doubtless irritating the barber. He had now begun
to shave M. de Guersaint's right cheek; and was inveighing against the
Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, whose greed for gain was the one
cause of all the misunderstanding. These Fathers who were at home there,
since they had purchased from the Municipality the land on which they
desired to build, did not even carry out the stipulations of the contract
they had signed, for there were two clauses in it forbidding all trading,
such as the sale of the water and of religious articles. Innumerable
actions might have been brought against them. But they snapped their
fingers, and felt themselves so powerful that they no longer allowed a
single offering to go to the parish, but arranged matters so that the
whole harvest of money should be garnered by the Grotto and the Basilica.
And, all at once, Cazaban candidly exclaimed: "If they were only
reasonable, if they would only share with us!" Then, when M. de Guersaint
had washed his face, and reseated himself, the hairdresser resumed: "And
if I were to tell you, monsieur, what they have done with our poor town!
Forty years ago all the young girls here conducted themselves properly, I
assure you. I remember that in my young days when a young man was wicked
he generally had to go elsewhere. But times have changed, our manners are
no longer the same. Nowadays nearly all the girls content themselves with
selling candles and nosegays; and you must have seen them catching hold
of the passers-by and thrusting their goods into their hands! It is
really shameful to see so many bold girls about! They make a lot of
money, acquire lazy habits, and, instead of working during the winter,
simply wait for the return of the pilgrimage season. And I assure you
that the young men don't need to go elsewhere nowadays. No, indeed! And
add to all this the suspicious floating element which swells the
population as soon as the first fine weather sets in--the coachmen, the
hawkers, the cantine keepers, all the low-class, wandering folk reeking
with grossness and vice--and you can form an idea of the honest new town
which they have given us with the crowds that come to their Grotto and
their Basilica!"
Greatly struck by these remarks, Pierre had let his newspaper fall and
begun to listen. It was now, for the first time, that he fully realised
the difference between the two Lourdes--old Lourdes so honest and so
pious in its tranquil solitude, and new Lourdes corrupted, demoralised by
the circulation of so much money, by such a great enforced increase of
wealth, by the ever-growing torrent of strangers sweeping through it, by
the fatal rotting influence of the conflux of thousands of people, the
contagion of evil examples. And what a terrible result it seemed when one
thought of Bernadette, the pure, candid girl kneeling before the wild
primitive grotto, when one thought of all the naive faith, all the
fervent purity of those who had first begun the work! Had they desired
that the whole countryside should be poisoned in this wise by lucre and
human filth? Yet it had sufficed that the nations should flock there for
a pestilence to break out.
Seeing that Pierre was listening, Cazaban made a final threatening
gesture as though to sweep away all this poisonous superstition. Then,
relapsing into silence, he finished cutting M. de Guersaint's hair.
"There you are, monsieur!"
The architect rose, and it was only now that he began to speak of the
conveyance which he wished to hire. At first the hairdresser declined to
enter into the matter, pretending that they must apply to his brother at
the Champ Commun; but at last he consented to take the order. A
pair-horse landau for Gavarnie was priced at fifty francs. However, he
was so pleased at having talked so much, and so flattered at hearing
himself called an honest man, that he eventually agreed to charge only
forty francs. There were four persons in the party, so this would make
ten francs apiece. And it was agreed that they should start off at about
two in the morning, so that they might get back to Lourdes at a tolerably
early hour on the Monday evening.
"The landau will be outside the Hotel of the Apparitions at the appointed
time," repeated Cazaban in his emphatic way. "You may rely on me,
monsieur."
Then he began to listen. The clatter of crockery did not cease in the
adjoining room. People were still eating there with that impulsive
voracity which had spread from one to the other end of Lourdes. And all
at once a voice was heard calling for more bread.
"Excuse me," hastily resumed Cazaban, "my boarders want me." And
thereupon he rushed away, his hands still greasy through fingering the
comb.
The door remained open for a second, and on the walls of the dining-room
Pierre espied various religious prints, and notably a view of the Grotto,
which surprised him; in all probability, however, the hairdresser only
hung these engravings there during the pilgrimage season by way of
pleasing his boarders.
It was now nearly three o'clock. When the young priest and M. de
Guersaint got outside they were astonished at the loud pealing of bells
which was flying through the air. The parish church had responded to the
first stroke of vespers chiming at the Basilica; and now all the
convents, one after another, were contributing to the swelling peals. The
crystalline notes of the bell of the Carmelites mingled with the grave
notes of the bell of the Immaculate Conception; and all the joyous bells
of the Sisters of Nevers and the Dominicans were jingling together. In
this wise, from morning till evening on fine days of festivity, the
chimes winged their flight above the house-roofs of Lourdes. And nothing
could have been gayer than that sonorous melody resounding in the broad
blue heavens above the gluttonous town, which had at last lunched, and
was now comfortably digesting as it strolled about in the sunlight.
III
THE NIGHT PROCESSION
AS soon as night had fallen Marie, still lying on her bed at the Hospital
of Our Lady of Dolours, became extremely impatient, for she had learnt
from Madame de Jonquiere that Baron Suire had obtained from Father
Fourcade the necessary permission for her to spend the night in front of
the Grotto. Thus she kept on questioning Sister Hyacinthe, asking her:
"Pray, Sister, is it not yet nine o'clock?"
"No, my child, it is scarcely half-past eight," was the reply. "Here is a
nice woollen shawl for you to wrap round you at daybreak, for the Gave is
close by, and the mornings are very fresh, you know, in these mountainous
parts."
"Oh! but the nights are so lovely, Sister, and besides, I sleep so little
here!" replied Marie; "I cannot be worse off out-of-doors. /Mon Dieu/,
how happy I am; how delightful it will be to spend the whole night with
the Blessed Virgin!"
The entire ward was jealous of her; for to remain in prayer before the
Grotto all night long was the most ineffable of joys, the supreme
beatitude. It was said that in the deep peacefulness of night the chosen
ones undoubtedly beheld the Virgin, but powerful protection was needed to
obtain such a favour as had been granted to Marie; for nowadays the
reverend Fathers scarcely liked to grant it, as several sufferers had
died during the long vigil, falling asleep, as it were, in the midst of
their ecstasy.
"You will take the Sacrament at the Grotto tomorrow morning, before you
are brought back here, won't you, my child?" resumed Sister Hyacinthe.