iling face, the extremely long veil, the blue sash, and
the golden roses on the feet, there being, however, some slight
modification in each model so as to guarantee the copyright. And there
was another flood of other religious objects: a hundred varieties of
scapularies, a thousand different sorts of sacred pictures: fine
engravings, large chromo-lithographs in glaring colours, submerged
beneath a mass of smaller pictures, which were coloured, gilded,
varnished, decorated with bouquets of flowers, and bordered with lace
paper. And there was also jewellery: rings, brooches, and bracelets,
loaded with stars and crosses, and ornamented with saintly figures.
Finally, there was the Paris article, which rose above and submerged all
the rest: pencil-holders, purses, cigar-holders, paperweights,
paper-knives, even snuff-boxes; and innumerable other objects on which
the Basilica, Grotto, and Blessed Virgin ever and ever appeared,
reproduced in every way, by every process that is known. Heaped together
pell-mell in one of the cases reserved to articles at fifty centimes
apiece were napkin-rings, egg-cups, and wooden pipes, on which was carved
the beaming apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Little by little, M. de Guersaint, with the annoyance of a man who prides
himself on being an artist, became disgusted and quite sad. "But all this
is frightful, frightful!" he repeated at every new article he took up to
look at.

Then he relieved himself by reminding Pierre of the ruinous attempt which
he had made to improve the artistic quality of religious prints. The
remains of his fortune had been lost in that attempt, and the thought
made him all the more angry, in presence of the wretched productions with
which the shop was crammed. Had anyone ever seen things of such idiotic,
pretentious, and complicated ugliness! The vulgarity of the ideas and the
silliness of the expressions portrayed rivalled the commonplace character
of the composition. You were reminded of fashion-plates, the covers of
boxes of sweets, and the wax dolls' heads that revolve in hairdressers'
windows; it was an art abounding in false prettiness, painfully childish,
with no really human touch in it, no tone, and no sincerity. And the
architect, who was wound up, could not stop, but went on to express his
disgust with the buildings of new Lourdes, the pitiable disfigurement of
the Grotto, the colossal monstrosity of the inclined ways, the disastrous
lack of symmetry i