Some of the sufferers were
dreaming aloud, giving vent to bursts of laughter which unconscious moans
interrupted. Perhaps they beheld the Archangels opening their flesh to
wrest their diseases from them. Others, restless with insomnia, turned
over and over, stifling their sobs and gazing fixedly into the darkness.
And, with a shudder born of all the mystery he had evoked, Pierre,
distracted, no longer master of himself in that delirious sphere of
fraternal suffering, ended by hating his very mind, and, drawn into close
communion with all those humble folks, sought to believe like them. What
could be the use of that physiological inquiry into Bernadette's case, so
full of gaps and intricacies? Why should he not accept her as a messenger
from the spheres beyond, as one of the elect chosen for the divine
mystery? Doctors were but ignorant men with rough and brutal hands, and
it would be so delightful to fall asleep in childlike faith, in the
enchanted gardens of the impossible. And for a moment indeed he
surrendered himself, experiencing a delightful feeling of comfort, no
longer seeking to explain anything, but accepting the Visionary with her
sumptuous /cortege/ of miracles, and relying on God to think and
determine for him. Then he looked out through the window, which they did
not dare to open on account of the consumptive patients, and beheld the
immeasurable night which enwrapped the country across which the train was
fleeing. The storm must have burst forth there; the sky was now of an
admirable nocturnal purity, as though cleansed by the masses of fallen
water.
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