Then, by an unconscious transition of ideas, Pierre recalled the remark
which the driver of the cabriolet had made a short time previously:
"Lourdes has caught on well, but the question is whether it will all last
long." That, in fact, was the question. How many venerated sanctuaries
had thus been built already, at the bidding of innocent chosen children,
to whom the Blessed Virgin had shown herself! It was always the same
story beginning afresh: an apparition; a persecuted shepherdess, who was
called a liar; next the covert propulsion of human misery hungering after
illusion; then propaganda, and the triumph of the sanctuary shining like
a star; and afterwards decline, and oblivion, when the ecstatic dream of
another visionary gave birth to another sanctuary elsewhere. It seemed as
if the power of illusion wore away; that it was necessary in the course
of centuries to displace it, set it amidst new scenery, under fresh
circumstances, in order to renew its force. La Salette had dethroned the
old wooden and stone Virgins that had healed; Lourdes had just dethroned
La Salette, pending the time when it would be dethroned itself by Our
Lady of to-morrow, she who will show her sweet, consoling features to
some pure child as yet unborn. Only, if Lourdes had met with such rapid,
such prodigious fortune, it assuredly owed it to the little sincere soul,
the delightful charm of Bernadette. Here there was no deceit, no
falsehood, merely the blossoming of suffering, a delicate sick child who
brought to the afflicted multitude her dream of justice and equality in
the miraculous.
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