But, in Bernadette's time, it had become a mere
dismantled, ruined pile, at the entrance of a road leading nowhere.
Modern life found its march stayed by a formidable rampart of lofty,
snow-capped peaks, and only the trans-Pyrenean railway--had it been
constructed--could have established an active circulation of social life
in that sequestered nook where human existence stagnated like dead water.
Forgotten, therefore, Lourdes remained slumbering, happy and sluggish
amidst its old-time peacefulness, with its narrow, pebble-paved streets
and its bleak houses with dressings of marble. The old roofs were still
all massed on the eastern side of the castle; the Rue de la Grotte, then
called the Rue du Bois, was but a deserted and often impassable road; no
houses stretched down to the Gave as now, and the scum-laden waters
rolled through a perfect solitude of pollard willows and tall grass. On
week-days but few people passed across the Place du Marcadal, such as
housewives hastening on errands, and petty cits airing their leisure
hours; and you had to wait till Sundays or fair days to find the
inhabitants rigged out in their best clothes and assembled on the Champ
Commun, in company with the crowd of graziers who had come down from the
distant tablelands with their cattle. During the season when people
resort to the Pyrenean-waters, the passage of the visitors to Cauterets
and Bagneres also brought some animation; /diligences/ passed through the
town twice a day, but they came from Pau by a wretched road, and had to
ford the Lapaca, which often overflowed its banks.
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