head to her shoulders. Nevertheless,
with her lovely fair hair crowning her like a helmet and her face beaming
brightly, she still marched on and on with such an awakening of will and
strength that, behind her, you could hear her car leap and rattle over
the rough slope of the flagstones, as though it had been a mere toy.

Near Marie was Pierre, still leaning on the arm of Father Massias, who
had not relinquished his hold. Lost amidst the far-spreading emotion, the
young priest was unable to reflect. Moreover his companion's sonorous
voice quite deafened him.

"_Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles_." "He hath put down the
mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble."

On Pierre's other side, the right, Berthaud, who no longer had any cause
for anxiety, was now also following the canopy. He had given his bearers
orders to break their chain, and was gazing with an expression of delight
on the human sea through which the procession had lately passed. The
higher they the incline, the more did the Place du Rosaire and the
avenues and paths of the gardens expand below them, black with the
swarming multitude. It was a bird's-eye view of a whole nation, an
ant-hill which ever increased in size, spreading farther and farther
away. "Look!" Berthaud at last exclaimed to Pierre. "How vast and how
beautiful it is! Ah! well, the year won't have been a bad one after all."

Looking upon Lourdes as a centre of propaganda, where his political
rancour found satisfaction, he always rejoiced when there was a numerous
pilgrimage, as in his mind it was bound to prove unpleasant to the
Government. Ah! thought he, if they had only been able to bring the
working classes of the towns thither, and create a Catholic democracy.
"Last year we scarcely reached the figure of two hundred thousand
pilgrims," he continued, "but we shall exceed it this year, I hope." And
then, with the gay air of the jolly fellow that he was, despite his
sectarian passions, he added: "Well, 'pon my word, I was really pleased
just now when there was such a crush. Things are looking up, I thought,
things are looking up."

Pierre, however, was not listening to him; his mind had been struck by
the grandeur of the spectacle. That multitude, which spread out more and
more as the procession rose higher and higher above it, that magnificent
valley which was hollowed out below and ever became more and more
extensive, displaying afar off its gorgeous horizon o