unknown colleagues had returned
to him; how many of them there must be who believed no more than he did
himself, and yet, like himself, honestly fulfilled their mission as
guides and consolers!

"This boulevard is a new one, you know," said M. de Guersaint, all at
once raising his voice. "The number of houses built during the last
twenty years is almost beyond belief. There is quite a new town here."

The Lapaca flowed along behind the buildings on their right and, their
curiosity inducing them to turn into a narrow lane, they came upon some
strange old structures on the margin of the narrow stream. Several
ancient mills here displayed their wheels; among them one which
Monseigneur Laurence had given to Bernadette's parents after the
apparitions. Tourists, moreover, were here shown the pretended abode of
Bernadette, a hovel whither the Soubirous family had removed on leaving
the Rue des Petits Fosses, and in which the young girl, as she was
already boarding with the Sisters of Nevers, can have but seldom slept.
At last, by way of the Rue Basse, Pierre and his companion reached the
Place du Marcadal.

This was a long, triangular, open space, the most animated and luxurious
of the squares of the old town, the one where the cafes, the chemists,
all the finest shops were situated. And, among the latter, one showed
conspicuously, coloured as it was a lively green, adorned with lofty
mirrors, and surmounted by a broad board bearing in gilt letters the
inscription: "Cazaban, Hairdresser".

M. de Guersaint and Pierre went in, but there was nobody in the salon and
they had to wait. A terrible clatter of forks resounded from the
adjoining room, an ordinary dining-room transformed into a _table
d'hote_, in which some twenty people were having _dejeuner_ although it
was already two o'clock. The afternoon was progressing, and yet people
were still eating from one to the other end of Lourdes. Like every other
householder in the town, whatever his religious convictions might be,
Cazaban, in the pilgrimage season, let his bedrooms, surrendered his
dining-room, end sought refuge in his cellar, where, heaped up with his
family, he ate and slept, although this unventilated hole was no more
than three yards square. However, the passion for trading and moneymaking
carried all before it; at pilgrimage time the whole population
disappeared like that of a conquered city, surrendering even the beds of
its women and its children to the pilgr