und, and the rails were nailed to the
crossbars, no little labour being performed to shut off the Mystery, in
order to bar access to the Unknown, and put the miracles in prison. And
the civil authorities were simple enough to imagine that it was all over,
that those few bits of boarding would suffice to stay the poor people who
hungered for illusion and hope.

* Both of these accidents were interpreted as miracles.--Trans.

But as soon as the new religion was proscribed, forbidden by the law as
an offence, it began to burn with an inextinguishable flame in the depths
of every soul. Believers came to the river bank in far greater numbers,
fell upon their knees at a short distance from the Grotto, and sobbed
aloud as they gazed at the forbidden heaven. And the sick, the poor
ailing folks, who were forbidden to seek cure, rushed on the Grotto
despite all prohibitions, slipped in whenever they could find an aperture
or climbed over the palings when their strength enabled them to do so, in
the one ardent desire to steal a little of the water. What! there was a
prodigious water in that Grotto, which restored the sight to the blind,
which set the infirm erect upon their legs again, which instantaneously
healed all ailments; and there were officials cruel enough to put that
water under lock and key so that it might not cure any more poor people!
Why, it was monstrous! And a cry of hatred arose from all the humble
ones, all the disinherited ones who had as much need of the Marvellous as
of bread to live! In accordance with a municipal decree, the names of all
delinquents were to be taken by the police, and thus one soon beheld a
woeful _defile_ of old women and lame men summoned before the Justice of
the Peace for the sole offence of taking a little water from the fount of
life! They stammered and entreated, at their wit's end when a fine was
imposed upon them. And, outside, the crowd was growling; rageful
unpopularity was gathering around those magistrates who treated human
wretchedness so harshly, those pitiless masters who after taking all the
wealth of the world, would not even leave to the poor their dream of the
realms beyond, their belief that a beneficent superior power took a
maternal interest in them, and was ready to endow them with peace of soul
and health of body. One day a whole band of poverty-stricken and ailing
folks went to the Mayor, knelt down in his courtyard, and implored him
with sobs to allow the Grotto