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 rail