Produced by Dagny [dagnypg@yahoo.com]
and David Widger [widger@cecomet.net]
IT was twenty minutes past three by the clock of the Lourdes railwaystation, the dial of which was illumined by a reflector. Under theslanting roof sheltering the platform, a hundred yards or so in length,some shadowy forms went to and fro, resignedly waiting. Only a red signallight peeped out of the black countryside, far away.
Two of the promenaders suddenly halted. The taller of them, a Father ofthe Assumption, none other indeed than the Reverend Father Fourcade,director of the national pilgrimage, who had reached Lourdes on theprevious day, was a man of sixty, looking superb in his black cloak withits large hood. His fine head, with its clear, domineering eyes and thickgrizzly beard, was the head of a general whom an intelligentdetermination to conquer inflames. In consequence, however, of a suddenattack of gout he slightly dragged one of his legs, and was leaning onthe shoulder of his companion, Dr. Bonamy, the practitioner attached tothe Miracle Verification Office, a short, thick-set man, with asquare-shaped, clean-shaven face, which had dull, blurred eyes and atranquil cast of features.
Father Fourcade had stopped to question the station-master whom heperceived running out of his office. "Will the white train be very late,monsieur?" he asked.
"No, your reverence. It hasn't lost more than ten minutes; it will behere at the half-hour. It's the Bayonne train which worries me; it oughtto have passed through already."
So saying, he ran off to give an order; but soon came back again, hisslim, nervous figure displaying marked signs of agitation. He lived,indeed, in a state of high fever throughout the period of the greatpilgrimages. Apart from the usual service, he that day expected eighteentrains, containing more than fifteen thousand passengers. The grey andthe blue trains which had started from Paris the first had alreadyarrived at the regulation hour. But the delay in the arrival of the whitetrain was very troublesome, the more so as the Bayonne express—whichpassed over the same rails—had not yet been signalled. It was easy tounderstand, therefore, what incessant watchfulness was necessary, not asecond passing without the entire staff of the station being called uponto exercise its vigilance.
"In ten minutes, then?" repeated Father Fourcade.
"Yes, in ten minutes, unless I'm obliged to close the line!" cried thestation-master as he hastened into the telegraph office.
Father Fourcade and the doctor slowly resumed their promenade. The thingwhich astonished them was that no serious accident had ever happened inthe midst of such a fearful scramble. In past times, especially, the mostterrible disorder had prevailed. Father Fourcade complacently recalledthe first pilgrimage which he had organised and led, in 1875; theterrible endless journey without pillows or mattresses, the patientsexhausted, half dead, with no means of reviving them at hand; and thenthe arrival at Lourdes,