he
wretched to despair. Lourdes must be tolerated, in the same way that you
tolerate a falsehood which makes life possible. And, as he had already
said in Bernadette's chamber, she remained the martyr, she it was who
revealed to him the only religion which still filled his heart, the
religion of human suffering. Ah! to be good and kindly, to alleviate all
ills, to lull pain, to sleep in a dream, to lie even, so that no one
might suffer any more!

The train passed at full speed through a village, and Pierre vaguely
caught sight of a church nestling amidst some large apple trees. All the
pilgrims in the carriage crossed themselves. But he was now becoming
uneasy, scruples were tingeing his reverie with anxiety. This religion of
human suffering, this redemption by pain, was not this yet another lure,
a continual aggravation of pain and misery? It is cowardly and dangerous
to allow superstition to live. To tolerate and accept it is to revive the
dark evil ages afresh. It weakens and stupefies; the sanctimoniousness
bequeathed by heredity produces humiliated, timorous generations,
decadent and docile nations, who are an easy prey to the powerful of the
earth. Whole nations are imposed upon, robbed, devoured, when they have
devoted the whole effort of their will to the mere conquest of a future
existence. Would it not, therefore, be better to cure humanity at once by
boldly closing the miraculous Grottos whither it goes to weep, and thus
restore to it the courage to live the real life, even in the midst of
tears? And it was the same prayer, that incessant flood of prayer which
ascended from Lourdes, the endless supplication in which he had been
immersed and softened: was it not after all but puerile lullaby, a
debasement of all one's energies? It benumbed the will, one's very being
became dissolved in it and acquired disgust for life and action. Of what
use could it be to will anything, do anything, when you totally resigned
yourself to the caprices of an unknown almighty power? And, in another
respect, what a strange thing was this mad desire for prodigies, this
anxiety to drive the Divinity to transgress the laws of Nature
established by Himself in His infinite wisdom! Therein evidently lay
peril and unreasonableness; at the risk even of losing illusion, that
divine comforter, only the habit of personal effort and the courage of
truth should have been developed in man, and especially in the child.

Then a great brightness