Her eyes were dazzled by
the splendour of the Grotto; it seemed to her as if a hundred thousand
tapers were burning there behind the railing, filling the low entrance
with the glow of a furnace and illuminating, as with star rays, the
statue of the Virgin, which stood, higher up, at the edge of a narrow
ogive-like cavity. And for her, apart from that glorious apparition,
nothing existed there, neither the crutches with which a part of the
vault had been covered, nor the piles of bouquets fading away amidst the
ivy and the eglantine, nor even the altar placed in the centre near a
little portable organ over which a cover had been thrown. However, as she
raised her eyes above the rock, she once more beheld the slender white
Basilica profiled against the sky, its slight, tapering spire soaring
into the azure of the Infinite like a prayer.
"O Virgin most powerful--Queen of the Virgins--Holy Virgin of Virgins!"
Pierre had now succeeded in wheeling Marie's box to the front rank,
beyond the numerous oak benches which were set out here in the open air
as in the nave of a church. Nearly all these benches were already
occupied by those sufferers who could sit down, while the vacant spaces
were soon filled with litters and little vehicles whose wheels became
entangled together, and on whose close-packed mattresses and pillows all
sorts of diseases were gathered pell-mell. Immediately on arriving, the
young priest had recognised the Vignerons seated with their sorry child
Gustave in the middle of a bench, and now, on the flagstones, he caught
sight of the lace-trimmed bed of Madame Dieulafay, beside whom her
husband and sister knelt in prayer.
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