o is not quite a
gentleman; they are like a wedding guest; they are _haute-bourgeoise_,
they are not the nobility. It is a terrible pity, but I suppose it could
not be helped, since they were allowed so little time to grow. There is
no sense of reflectiveness about them, no patient growth of character,
as in those glorious cathedrals, Amiens, Chartres, Beauvais, which I had
so lately seen. There is nothing in reserve; they say everything, they
suggest nothing. They have no imaginative vista.

We said not one word to one another. We threaded our way across the
ground, diagonally, seeing as we went the Bureau de Constatations (or
the office where the doctors sit), contrived near the left arm of the
terraced steps; and passed out under the archway, to find ourselves with
the churches on our left, and on our right the flowing Gave, confined on
this side by a terraced walk, with broad fields beyond the stream.

The first thing I noticed were the three roofs of the _piscines_, on the
left side of the road, built under the cliff on which the churches
stand. I shall have more to say of them presently, but now it is enough
to remark that they resemble three little chapels, joined in one, each
with its own doorway; an open paved space lies across the entrances,
where the doctors and the priests attend upon the sick. This open space
is fenced in all about, to keep out the crowd that perpetually seethes
there. We went a few steps farther, worked our way in among the people,
and fell on our knees.

Overhead, the cliff towered up, bare hanging rock beneath, grass and
soaring trees above; and at the foot of the cliff a tall, irregular
cave. There are two openings of this cave; the one, the larger, is like
a cage of railings, with the gleam of an altar in the gloom beyond, a
hundred burning candles, and sheaves and stacks of crutches clinging to
the broken roofs of rock; the other, and smaller, and that farther from
us, is an opening in the cliff, shaped somewhat like a _vesica_. The
grass still grows there, with ferns and the famous climbing shrub; and
within the entrance, framed in it, stands Mary, in white and blue, as
she stood fifty years ago, raised perhaps twenty feet above the ground.

Ah, that image!... I said, "As she stood there!" Yet it could not have
been so; for surely even simple Bernadette would not have fallen on her
knees. It is too white, it is too blue; it is, like the three churches,
placed magnificently, yet no