merly dreamt of making at Lourdes. In
fact, this was one of the reasons which had induced him to accompany
Marie on her journey. And he was now conscious of an awakening of all his
curiosity respecting the Visionary, whom he loved because he felt that
she had been a girl of candid soul, truthful and ill-fated, though at the
same time he would much have liked to analyse and explain her case.
Assuredly, she had not lied, she had indeed beheld a vision and heard
voices, like Joan of Arc; and like Joan of Arc also, she was now, in the
opinion of the devout, accomplishing the deliverance of France--from sin
if not from invaders. Pierre wondered what force could have produced
her--her and her work. How was it that the visionary faculty had become
developed in that lowly girl, so distracting believing souls as to bring
about a renewal of the miracles of primitive times, as to found almost a
new religion in the midst of a Holy City, built at an outlay of millions,
and ever invaded by crowds of worshippers more numerous and more exalted
in mind than had ever been known since the days of the Crusades?

And so, ceasing to read the book, Pierre began to tell his companions all
that he knew, all that he had divined and reconstructed of that story
which is yet so obscure despite the vast rivers of ink which it has
already caused to flow. He knew the country and its manners and customs,
through his long conversations with his friend Doctor Chassaigne. And he
was endowed with charming fluency of language, an emotional power of
exquisite purity, many remarkable gifts well fitting him to be a pulpit
orator, which he never made use of, although he had known them to be
within him ever since his seminary days. When the occupants of the
carriage perceived that he knew the story, far better and in far greater
detail than it appeared in Marie's little book, and that he related it
also in such a gentle yet passionate way, there came an increase of
attention, and all those afflicted souls hungering for happiness went
forth towards him. First came the story of Bernadette's childhood at
Bartres, where she had grown up in the abode of her foster-mother, Madame
Lagues, who, having lost an infant of her own, had rendered those poor
folks, the Soubirouses, the service of suckling and keeping their child
for them. Bartres, a village of four hundred souls, at a league or so
from Lourdes, lay as it were in a desert oasis, sequestered amidst
greenery, and