h. And with the
narratives of one and all was blended a thought of the sufferer's own
ailment, a belief that he or she would also be cured, since a malady of
the same description had vanished like an evil dream beneath the breath
of the Divinity.

"Ah!" stammered Madame Vetu, her articulation hindered by her sufferings,
"there was another one, Antoinette Thardivail, whose stomach was being
eaten away like mine. You would have said that dogs were devouring it,
and sometimes there was a swelling in it as big as a child's head.
Tumours indeed were ever forming in it, like fowl's eggs, so that for
eight months she brought up blood. And she also was at the point of
death, with nothing but her skin left on her bones, and dying of hunger,
when she drank some water of Lourdes and had the pit of her stomach
washed with it. Three minutes afterwards, her doctor, who on the previous
day had left her almost in the last throes, scarce breathing, found her
up and sitting by the fireside, eating a tender chicken's wing with a
good appetite. She had no more tumours, she laughed as she had laughed
when she was twenty, and her face had regained the brilliancy of youth.
Ah! to be able to eat what one likes, to become young again, to cease
suffering!"

"And the cure of Sister Julienne!" then exclaimed La Grivotte, raising
herself on one of her elbows, her eyes glittering with fever. "In her
case it commenced with a bad cold as it did with me, and then she began
to spit blood. And every six months she fell ill again and had to take to
her bed. The last time everybody said that she wouldn't leave it alive.
The doctors had vainly tried every remedy, iodine, blistering, and
cauterising. In fact, hers was a real case of phthisis, certified by half
a dozen medical men. Well, she comes to Lourdes, and Heaven alone knows
amidst what awful suffering--she was so bad, indeed, that at Toulouse
they thought for a moment that she was about to die! The Sisters had to
carry her in their arms, and on reaching the piscina the
lady-hospitallers wouldn't bathe her. She was dead, they said. No matter!
she was undressed at last, and plunged into the water, quite unconscious
and covered with perspiration. And when they took her out she was so pale
that they laid her on the ground, thinking that it was certainly all over
with her at last. But, all at once, colour came back to her cheeks, her
eyes opened, and she drew a long breath. She was cured; she dressed
her