bearers, the priests, and the ailing ones themselves had just
intonated a canticle, the song of Bernadette, and all rolled along amid
the besetting "Aves," so that the little carts, the litters, and the
pedestrians descended the sloping road like a swollen and overflowing
torrent of roaring water. At the corner of the Rue Saint-Joseph, near the
Plateau de la Merlasse, a family of excursionists, who had come from
Cauterets or Bagneres, stood at the edge of the footway, overcome with
profound astonishment. These people were evidently well-to-do
_bourgeois_, the father and mother very correct in appearance and
demeanour, while their two big girls, attired in light-coloured dresses,
had the smiling faces of happy creatures who are amusing themselves. But
their first feeling of surprise was soon followed by terror, a growing
terror, as if they beheld the opening of some pesthouse of ancient times,
some hospital of the legendary ages, evacuated after a great epidemic.
The two girls became quite pale, while the father and the mother felt icy
cold in presence of that endless _defile_ of so many horrors, the
pestilential emanations of which were blown full in their faces. O God!
to think that such hideousness, such filth, such suffering, should exist!
Was it possible--under that magnificently radiant sun, under those broad
heavens so full of light and joy whither the freshness of the Gave's
waters ascended, and the breeze of morning wafted the pure perfumes of
the mountains!

When Pierre, at the head of the _cortege_, reached the Plateau de la
Merlasse, he found himself immersed in that clear sunlight, that fresh
and balmy air. He turned round and smiled affectionately at Marie; and as
they came out on the Place du Rosaire in the morning splendour, they were
both enchanted with the lovely panorama which spread around them.

In front, on the east, was Old Lourdes, lying in a broad fold of the
ground beyond a rock. The sun was rising behind the distant mountains,
and its oblique rays clearly outlined the dark lilac mass of that
solitary rock, which was crowned by the tower and crumbling walls of the
ancient castle, once the redoubtable key of the seven valleys. Through
the dancing, golden dust you discerned little of the ruined pile except
some stately outlines, some huge blocks of building which looked as
though reared by Cyclopean hands; and beyond the rock you but vaguely
distinguished the discoloured, intermingled house-roofs