"--"Gratitude to Mary for the birth of Antoinette, whom I
dedicate, like myself and all my kin, to Her."--"P. D., three years old,
has been preserved to the love of his parents." And then came the cry of
the wives, the cry, too, of the sick restored to health, and of the souls
restored to happiness: "Protect my husband; grant that my husband may
enjoy good health."--"I was crippled in both legs, and now I am
healed."--"We came, and now we hope."--"I prayed, I wept, and She heard
me." And there were yet other cries, cries whose veiled glow conjured up
thoughts of long romances: "Thou didst join us together; protect us, we
pray Thee."--"To Mary, for the greatest of all blessings." And the same
cries, the same words--gratitude, thankfulness, homage,
acknowledgment,--occurred again and again, ever with the same passionate
fervour. All! those hundreds, those thousands of cries which were forever
graven on that marble, and from the depths of the crypt rose clamorously
to the Virgin, proclaiming the everlasting devotion of the unhappy beings
whom she had succoured.
Pierre did not weary of reading them, albeit his mouth was bitter and
increasing desolation was filling him. So it was only he who had no
succour to hope for! When so many sufferers were listened to, he alone
had been unable to make himself heard! And he now began to think of the
extraordinary number of prayers which must be said at Lourdes from one
end of the year to the other. He tried to cast them up; those said during
the days spent at the Grotto and during the nights spent at the Rosary,
those said at the ceremonies at the Basilica, and those said at the
sunlight and the starlight processions.
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