the thin white doctor's dress, with papers spread before them,
and a few strange instruments scattered here and there, leaning
forward or leaning back, but all intently listening to and
watching the Russian, who, still with closed eyes, answered the
short questions put to him continuously by the President. There
seemed no religious excitement even in the air; the atmosphere
was one, rather, of simple science.

There seemed something faintly familiar in all this to the man
who had lost his memory. . . . Certainly he had known of Lourdes
as soon as it was mentioned to him, and he seemed now to
remember that some such claim to be perfectly scientific had
always been made by the authorities of the place. But he had
supposed, somehow, that the claim was a false one. . . .

The Russian suddenly rose.

"Well!" whispered Monsignor sharply as the doctors began to talk.

The monk smiled.

"He's just said an interesting thing. The President asked him
just now whether he had seen anything of the crowds as he came
down this morning."

"Yes?"

"He said that people looked like trees moving about. . . . Oh no!
he didn't know he was making a quotation. Look! he's going down
to the grotto. He'll be back in half an hour to report."

Monsignor leaned back in his chair.

"And you tell me that the optic nerves were destroyed?"

The monk looked at him in wide-eyed wonder.

"Certainly. He was examined on Tuesday, when he came.
To-day's Friday."

"And you believe he'll be cured?"

"I shall be very much surprised if he's not."

There was a stir by the door as the Russian disappeared. A young,
bright-eyed doctor looked in and nodded, and the next instant a
brancardier appeared, followed by a litter.

"But how have you time to examine all these thousands of cases?"
asked the prelate, watching the litter advance.

"Oh, not one in a hundred comes through to us here. Besides,
this is only one of a dozen committee-rooms. It's only the most
sensational cases--where there's real organic injury of a
really serious kind--that ever come at all before the highest
courts. Cases, I mean, where, if there's a cure, the
publication of the miracle follows as a matter of course. . . .
What's this case, I wonder?" he ended sharply, glancing down at
the printed paper before him, and then up again at the litter
that was being arranged.

Monsignor looked too at the paper that lay before him. Some
thirty paragraphs, carefully numbered, dated,