lessly fastened together and looking like
cabbages. "A bouquet, madame!" was the cry. "A bouquet for the Blessed
Virgin!" If the lady escaped, she heard muttered insults behind her.
Trafficking, impudent trafficking, pursued the pilgrims to the very
outskirts of the Grotto. Trade was not merely triumphantly installed in
every one of the shops, standing close together and transforming each
street into a bazaar, but it overran the footways and barred the road
with hand-carts full of chaplets, medals, statuettes, and religious
prints. On all sides people were buying almost to the same extent as they
ate, in order that they might take away with them some souvenir of this
holy Kermesse. And the bright gay note of this commercial eagerness, this
scramble of hawkers, was supplied by the urchins who rushed about through
the crowd, crying the "Journal de la Grotte." Their sharp, shrill voices
pierced the ear: "The 'Journal de la Grotte,' this morning's number, two
sous, the 'Journal de la Grotte.'"

Amidst the continual pushing which accompanied the eddying of the
ever-moving crowd, Gerard's little party became separated. He and
Raymonde remained behind the others. They had begun talking together in
low tones, with an air of smiling intimacy, lost and isolated as they
were in the dense crowd. And Madame Desagneaux at last had to stop, look
back, and call to them: "Come on, or we shall lose one another!"

As they drew near, Pierre heard the girl exclaim: "Mamma is so very busy;
speak to her before we leave." And Gerard thereupon replied: "It is
understood. You have made me very happy, mademoiselle."

Thus the husband had been secured, the marriage decided upon, during this
charming promenade among the sights of Lourdes. Raymonde had completed
her conquest, and Gerard had at last taken a resolution, realising how
gay and sensible she was, as she walked beside him leaning on his arm.

M. de Guersaint, however, had raised his eyes, and was heard inquiring:
"Are not those people up there, on that balcony, the rich folk who made
the journey in the same train as ourselves?--You know whom I mean, that
lady who is so very ill, and whose husband and sister accompany her?"

He was alluding to the Dieulafays; and they indeed were the persons whom
he now saw on the balcony of a suite of rooms which they had rented in a
new house overlooking the lawns of the Rosary. They here occupied a
first-floor, furnished with all the luxury that Lourd