Bernadette was
the sole labourer and creatress; and yet this room, whence she had set
out on the day she beheld the Virgin, this cradle, indeed, of the miracle
and of all the marvellous fortune of the town, was disdained, left a prey
to vermin, good only for a lumber-room, where onions and empty barrels
were put away.
Then the other side of the question vividly appeared in Pierre's mind,
and he again seemed to see the triumph which he had just witnessed, the
exaltation of the Grotto and Basilica, while Marie, dragging her little
car, ascended behind the Blessed Sacrament, amidst the clamour of the
multitude. But the Grotto especially shone out before him. It was no
longer the wild, rocky cavity before which the child had formerly knelt
on the deserted bank of the torrent; it was a chapel, transformed and
enriched, a chapel illumined by a vast number of candles, where nations
marched past in procession. All the noise, all the brightness, all the
adoration, all the money, burst forth there in a splendour of constant
victory. Here, at the cradle, in this dark, icy hole, there was not a
soul, not a taper, not a hymn, not a flower. Of the infrequent visitors
who came thither, none knelt or prayed. All that a few tender-hearted
pilgrims had done in their desire to carry away a souvenir had been to
reduce to dust, between their fingers, the half-rotten plank serving as a
mantelshelf. The clergy ignored the existence of this spot of misery,
which the processions ought to have visited as they might visit a station
of glory.
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