miracles, in the hands of the hospitallers
of either sex.

"But you need only have applied to your parish priest, madame," Pierre
explained. "This poor child is deserving of all sympathy. She would have
been immediately admitted."

"I did not know it, monsieur l'Abbe."

"Then how did you manage?"

"Why, Monsieur l'Abbe, I went to take a ticket at a place which one of my
neighbours, who reads the newspapers, told me about."

She was referring to the tickets, at greatly reduced rates, which were
issued to the pilgrims possessed of means. And Marie, listening to her,
felt great pity for her, and also some shame; for she who was not
entirely destitute of resources had succeeded in obtaining
_hospitalisation_, thanks to Pierre, whereas that mother and her sorry
child, after exhausting their scanty savings, remained without a copper.

However, a more violent jolt of the carriage drew a cry of pain from the
girl. "Oh, father," she said, "pray raise me a little! I can't stay on my
back any longer."

When M. de Guersaint had helped her into a sitting posture, she gave a
deep sigh of relief. They were now at Etampes, after a run of an hour and
a half from Paris, and what with the increased warmth of the sun, the
dust, and the noise, weariness was becoming apparent already. Madame de
Jonquiere had got up to speak a few words of kindly encouragement to
Marie over the partition; and Sister Hyacinthe moreover again rose, and
gaily clapped her hands that she might be heard and obeyed from one to
the other end of the carriage.

"Come, come!" said she, "we mustn't think of our little troubles. Let us
pray and sing, and the Blessed Virgin will be with us."

She herself then began the rosary according to the rite of Our Lady of
Lourdes, and all the patients and pilgrims followed her. This was the
first chaplet--the five joyful mysteries, the Annunciation, the
Visitation, the Nativity, the Purification, and Jesus found in the
Temple. Then they all began to chant the canticle: "Let us contemplate
the heavenly Archangel!" Their voices were lost amid the loud rumbling of
the wheels; you heard but the muffled surging of that human wave,
stifling within the closed carriage which rolled on and on without a
pause.

Although M. de Guersaint was a worshipper, he could never follow a hymn
to the end. He got up, sat down again, and finished by resting his elbow
on the partition and conversing in an undertone with a patient who sat
again