Never
had a more impassionating romance been devised to exalt the souls of men
above the stern laws of life. To dream that dream, this was the great,
the ineffable happiness. If the Fathers of the Assumption had seen the
success of their pilgrimages increase and spread from year to year, it
was because they sold to all the flocking peoples the bread of
consolation and illusion, the delicious bread of hope, for which
suffering humanity ever hungers with a hunger that nothing will ever
appease. And it was not merely the physical sores which cried aloud for
cure, the whole of man's moral and intellectual being likewise shrieked
forth its wretchedness, with an insatiable yearning for happiness. To be
happy, to place the certainty of life in faith, to lean till death should
come upon that one strong staff of travel--such was the desire exhaled by
every breast, the desire which made every moral grief bend the knee,
imploring a continuance of grace, the conversion of dear ones, the
spiritual salvation of self and those one loved. The mighty cry spread
from pole to pole, ascended and filled all the regions of space: To be
happy, happy for evermore, both in life and in death!
And Pierre saw the suffering beings around him lose all perception of the
jolting and recover their strength as league by league they drew nearer
to the miracle. Even Madame Maze grew talkative, certain as she felt that
the Blessed Virgin would restore her husband to her. With a smile on her
face Madame Vincent gently rocked her little Rose in her arms, thinking
that she was not nearly so ill as those all but lifeless children who,
after being plunged in the icy water, sprang out and played.
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