gan rapidly to fill; but I
still watched the singing crowd outside. Among others I noticed a woman,
placid and happy--such a woman as you would see a hundred times a day in
London streets, with jet ornaments in her hat, middle-aged, almost
startlingly commonplace. No, nothing dramatic happened to her; that was
the point. But there she was, taking it all for granted, joining in the
_Magnificat_ with a roving eye, pleased as she would have been pleased
at a circus; interrupting herself to talk to her neighbour; and all the
while gripping in a capable hand, on which shone a wedding ring, the
bars of the Bureau window behind which I sat, that she might make the
best of both worlds--Grace without and Science within. She, as I, had
seen what God had done; now she proposed to see what the doctors would
make of it all; and have, besides, a good view of the _miracules_ when
they appeared.

I suppose it was her astonishing ordinariness that impressed me. It was
surprising to see such a one during such a scene; it was as incongruous
as a man riding a bicycle on the judgment Day. Yet she, too, served to
make it all real. She was like the real tree in the foreground of a
panorama. She served the same purpose as the _Voix de Lourdes_, a
briskly written French newspaper that gives the lists of the miracles.

When I turned round at last, the room was full. Among the people present
I remember an Hungarian canon, and the Brazilian Bishop with six others.
Dr. Deschamps, late of Lille, now of Paris, was in the chair; and I sat
next him.

The first patient to enter was Euphrasie Bosc, a dark girl of
twenty-seven. She rolled a little in her walk as she came in; then she
sat down and described the "white swellings" on her knee, with other
details; she told how she had been impelled to rise during the
procession just now. She was made to walk round the room to show her
state, and was then sent off, and told to return at another time.

Next came Emma Sansen, a pale girl of twenty-five. She had suffered from
endo-pericarditis for five years, as her certificate showed; she had
been confined to her room for two years. She told her story quickly and
went out.

There followed Sister Marguerite Emilie, an Assumptionist, aged
thirty-nine, a brisk, brown-faced, tall woman, in her religious habit.
Her malady had been _mal de Pott_, a severe spinal affliction,
accompanied by abscesses and other horrors. She, too, appeared in the
best of health.