laid down his arms, but
had joined the Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation as a sort of protest,
repairing year after year to Lourdes in order to "demonstrate"; convinced
as he was that the pilgrimages were both disagreeable and hurtful to the
Republic, and that God alone could re-establish the Monarchy by one of
those miracles which He worked so lavishly at the Grotto. Despite all
this, however, Berthaud possessed no small amount of good sense, and
being of a gay disposition, displayed a kind of jovial charity towards
the poor sufferers whose transport he had to provide for during the three
days that the national pilgrimage remained at Lourdes.

* The parliamentary revolution of May, 1873, by which M. Thiers
was overthrown and Marshal MacMahon installed in his place with
the object of restoring the Monarchy in France.--Trans.

** M. Grevy's decree by which the Jesuits were expelled.--Trans.

"And so, my dear Gerard," he said to the young man seated beside him,
"your marriage is really to come off this year?"

"Why yes, if I can find such a wife as I want," replied the other. "Come,
cousin, give me some good advice."

Gerard de Peyrelongue, a short, thin, carroty young man, with a
pronounced nose and prominent cheek-bones, belonged to Tarbes, where his
father and mother had lately died, leaving him at the utmost some seven
or eight thousand francs a year. Extremely ambitious, he had been unable
to find such a wife as he desired in his native province--a
well-connected young woman capable of helping him to push both forward
and upward in the world; and so he had joined the Hospitality, and betook
himself every summer to Lourdes, in the vague hope that amidst the mass
of believers, the torrent of devout mammas and daughters which flowed
thither, he might find the family whose help he needed to enable him to
make his way in this terrestrial sphere. However, he remained in
perplexity, for if, on the one hand, he already had several young ladies
in view, on the other, none of them completely satisfied him.

"Eh, cousin? You will advise me, won't you?" he said to Berthaud. "You
are a man of experience. There is Mademoiselle Lemercier who comes here
with her aunt. She is very rich; according to what is said she has over a
million francs. But she doesn't belong to our set, and besides I think
her a bit of a madcap."

Berthaud nodded. "I told you so; if I were you I should choose little
Raymonde, Mademoisell