Bernadette! Apolline! What a strange
association, what an unexpected reincarnation at thirty years' distance!
And, all at once, with this Apolline, who was so flightily merry and
careless, and in regard to whom there were so many odd rumours, new
Lourdes rose before his eyes: the coachmen, the candle-girls, the persons
who let rooms and waylaid tenants at the railway station, the hundreds of
furnished houses with discreet little lodgings, the crowd of free
priests, the lady hospitallers, and the simple passers-by, who came there
to satisfy their appetites. Then, too, there was the trading mania
excited by the shower of millions, the entire town given up to lucre, the
shops transforming the streets into bazaars which devoured one another,
the hotels living gluttonously on the pilgrims, even to the Blue Sisters
who kept a /table d'hote/, and the Fathers of the Grotto who coined money
with their God! What a sad and frightful course of events, the vision of
pure Bernadette inflaming multitudes, making them rush to the illusion of
happiness, bringing a river of gold to the town, and from that moment
rotting everything. The breath of superstition had sufficed to make
humanity flock thither, to attract abundance of money, and to corrupt
this honest corner of the earth forever. Where the candid lily had
formerly bloomed there now grew the carnal rose, in the new loam of
cupidity and enjoyment. Bethlehem had become Sodom since an innocent
child had seen the Virgin.
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