ntly the singing grew loud again; the procession had turned the
corner and entered the square; and I could see the canopy moving quickly
down the middle toward the Rosary Church, for its work was done. The
Blessed Sacrament was now to be carried round the lines of the sick,
beneath an _ombrellino_.

I shall describe all this later, and more in detail; it is enough just
now to say that the Blessed Sacrament went round, that It was carried at
last to the steps of the Rosary Church, and that, after the singing of
the _Tantum Ergo_ by that enormous crowd, Benediction was given. Then
the Bureau began to fill, and I turned round for the scientific aspect
of the affair.

The first thing that I saw was a little girl, seeming eight or nine
years old, who walked in and stood at the other side of the table, to be
examined. Her name was Marguerite Vandenabeele--so I read on the
certificate--and she had suffered since birth from infantile paralysis,
with such a result that she was unable to put her heels to the ground.
That morning in the _piscine_ she had found herself able to walk
properly though her heels were tender from disuse. We looked at her--the
doctors who had begun again to fill the room, and myself, with three or
four more amateurs. There she stood, very quiet and unexcited, with a
slightly flushed face. Some elder person in charge of her gave in the
certificate and answered the questions. Then she went away.[2]

Now, I must premise that the cures that took place while I was at
Lourdes that August cannot yet be regarded as finally established, since
not sufficient time has elapsed for their test and verification.[3]
Occasionally there is a relapse soon after the apparent cure, in the
case of certain diseases that may be more or less affected by a nervous
condition; occasionally claimants are found not to be cured at all. For
scientific certainty, therefore, it is better to rely upon cures that
have taken place a year, or at least some months previously, in which
the restored health is preserved. There are, of course a large number of
such cases; I shall come to them presently.[4]

The next patient to enter the room was one Mlle. Bardou. I learned later
from her lips that she was a secularized Carmelite nun, expelled from
her convent by the French Government. There was the further pathos in
her case in the fact that her cure, when I left Lourdes, was believed to
be at least doubtful. But now she took her seat, with a r