wed by Madame Vigneron and Madame Chaise, who
dragged their weary legs; whilst little Gustave, quite worn out, kept on
tapping the sanded path with his crutch, his right hand covered meantime
with all the wax that had dripped upon it. Every sufferer who could walk
was there, among others Elise Rouquet, who, with her bare red face,
passed by like some apparition from among the damned. Others were
laughing; Sophie Couteau, the little girl who had been miraculously
healed the previous year, was quite forgetting herself, playing with her
taper as though it were a switch. Heads followed heads without a pause,
heads of women especially, more often with sordid, common features, but
at times wearing an exalted expression, which you saw for a second ere it
vanished amidst the fantastic illumination. And there was no end to that
terrible march past; fresh pilgrims were ever appearing. Among them
Pierre and Marie noticed yet another little black shadowy figure, gliding
along in a discreet, humble way; it was Madame Maze, whom they would not
have recognised if she had not for a moment raised her pale face, down
which the tears were streaming.

"Look!" exclaimed Pierre; "the first tapers in the procession are
reaching the Place du Rosaire, and I am sure that half of the pilgrims
are still in front of the Grotto."

Marie had raised her eyes. Up yonder, on the left-hand side of the
Basilica, she could see other lights incessantly appearing with that
mechanical kind of movement which seemed as though it would never cease.
"Ah!" she said, "how many, how many distressed souls there are! For each
of those little flames is a suffering soul seeking deliverance, is it
not?"

Pierre had to lean over in order to hear her, for since the procession
had been streaming by, so near to them, they had been deafened by the
sound of the endless canticle, the hymn of Bernadette. The voices of the
pilgrims rang out more loudly than ever amidst the increasing vertigo;
the couplets became jumbled together--each batch of processionists
chanted a different one with the ecstatic voices of beings possessed, who
can no longer hear themselves. There was a huge indistinct clamour, the
distracted clamour of a multitude intoxicated by its ardent faith. And
meantime the refrain of "Ave, ave, ave Maria!" was ever returning,
rising, with its frantic, importunate rhythm, above everything else.

All at once Pierre and Marie, to their great surprise, saw M. de
Guersa