The fact was that
in those ancient times the workmen had been true believers, had given
their whole souls and bodies and all the candour of their feelings to
their productions, just as M. de Guersaint said. But nowadays architects
built churches with the same practical tranquillity that they erected
five-storey houses, just as the religious articles, the chaplets, the
medals, and the statuettes were manufactured by the gross in the populous
quarters of Paris by merrymaking workmen who did not even follow their
religion. And thus what slopwork, what toymakers', ironmongers' stuff it
all was! of a prettiness fit to make you cry, a silly sentimentality fit
to make your heart turn with disgust! Lourdes was inundated, devastated,
disfigured by it all to such a point as to quite upset persons with any
delicacy of taste who happened to stray through its streets. It clashed
jarringly with the attempted resuscitation of the legends, ceremonies,
and processions of dead ages; and all at once it occurred to Pierre that
the social and historical condemnation of Lourdes lay in this, that faith
is forever dead among a people when it no longer introduces it into the
churches it builds or the chaplets it manufactures.
However, Marie had continued examining the shelves with the impatience of
a child, hesitating, and finding nothing which seemed to her worthy of
the great dream of ecstasy which she would ever keep within her.
"Father," she said, "it is getting late; you must take me back to the
hospital; and to make up my mind, look, I will give Blanche this medal
with the silver chain.
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