was she not also the Health
of the weak, the Refuge of sinners, the Comforter of the afflicted?
France had ever been her well-loved country, she was adored there with an
ardent worship, the worship of her womanhood and her motherhood, the
soaring of a divine affection; and it was particularly in France that it
pleased her to show herself to little shepherdesses. She was so good to
the little and the humble; she continually occupied herself with them;
and if she was appealed to so willingly it was because she was known to
be the intermediary of love betwixt Earth and Heaven. Every evening she
wept tears of gold at the feet of her divine Son to obtain favours from
Him, and these favours were the miracles which He permitted her to
work,--these beautiful, flower-like miracles, as sweet-scented as the
roses of Paradise, so prodigiously splendid and fragrant.

* For the information of Protestant and other non-Catholic readers
it may be mentioned that all the titles enumerated in this passage
are taken from the Litany of the Blessed Virgin.--Trans.

But the train was still rolling, rolling onward. They had just passed
Contras, it was six o'clock, and Sister Hyacinthe, rising to her, feet,
clapped her hands together and once again repeated: "The Angelus, my
children!"

Never had "Aves" impregnated with greater faith, inflamed with a more
fervent desire to be heard by Heaven, winged their flight on high. And
Pierre suddenly understood everything, clearly realised the meaning of
all these pilgrimages, of all these trains rolling along through every
country of the civilised world, of all these eager crowds, hastening
towards Lourdes, which blazed over yonder like the abode of salvation for
body and for mind. Ah! the poor wretches whom, ever since morning, he had
heard groaning with pain, the poor wretches who exposed their sorry
carcasses to the fatigues of such a journey! They were all condemned,
abandoned by science, weary of consulting doctors, of having tried the
torturing effects of futile remedies. And how well one could understand
that, burning with a desire to preserve their lives, unable to resign
themselves to the injustice and indifference of Nature, they should dream
of a superhuman power, of an almighty Divinity who, in their favour,
would perchance annul the established laws, alter the course of the
planets, and reconsider His creation! For if the world failed them, did
not the Divinity remain to them? In