PREFACE |
THE FIRST DAY |
I. PILGRIMS AND PATIENTS |
II. PIERRE AND MARIE |
III. POITIERS |
IV. MIRACLES |
V. BERNADETTE |
BEFORE perusing this work, it is as well that the reader should understand M.Zola’s aim in writing it, and his views—as distinct from those ofhis characters—upon Lourdes, its Grotto, and its cures. A short timebefore the book appeared M. Zola was interviewed upon the subject by his friendand biographer, Mr. Robert H. Sherard, to whom he spoke as follows:
“‘Lourdes’ came to be written by mere accident. In 1891 Ihappened to be travelling for my pleasure, with my wife, in the Basque countryand by the Pyrenees, and being in the neighbourhood of Lourdes, included it inmy tour. I spent fifteen days there, and was greatly struck by what I saw, andit then occurred to me that there was material here for just the sort of novelthat I like to write—a novel in which great masses of men can be shown inmotion—/un grand mouvement de foule/—a novel the subject of whichstirred up my philosophical ideas.
“It was too late then to study the question, for I had visited Lourdeslate in September, and so had missed seeing the best pilgrimage, which takesplace in August, under the direction of the Peres de la Misericorde, of the Ruede l’Assomption in Paris—the National Pilgrimage, as it is called.These Fathers are very active, enterprising men, and have made a great successof this annual national pilgrimage. Under their direction thirty thousandpilgrims are transported to Lourdes, including over a thousand sick persons.
“So in the following year I went in August, and saw a nationalpilgrimage, and followed it during the three days which it lasts, in additionto the two days given to travelling. After its departure, I stayed on ten ortwelve days, working up the subject in every detail. My book is the story ofsuch a national pilgrimage, and is, accordingly, the story of five days. It isdivided into five parts, each of which parts is limited to one day.
“There are from ninety to one hundred characters in the story: sickpersons, pilgrims, priests, nuns, hospitallers, nurses, and peasants; and thebook shows Lourdes under every aspect. There are the piscinas, the processions,the Grotto, the churches at night, the people in the streets. It is, in oneword, Lourdes in its entirety. In this canvas is worked out a very delicatecentral intrigue, as in ‘Dr. Pascal,’ and around this are manylittle stories or subsidiary plots. There is the story of the sick person whogets well, of the sick person who is not cured, and so on. The philosophicalidea which pervades the whole book is the idea of human suffering, theexhibition of the desperate and despairing sufferers who, abandoned by scienceand by man, address themselves to a higher Power in the hope of relief; aswhere parents have a dearly loved daughter dying of consumption, who has beengiven up, and for whom nothing remains but death. A sudden hope, however,breaks in upon them: ‘supposing that after all there should be a Powergreater than that of man, higher than that of science.’ They will hasteto try