Books: The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Vol. 4
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Emile Zola >> The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Vol. 4
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At last Doctor Chassaigne spoke: "Ah!" he said, "when one thinks that
fifty thousand francs would have sufficed to prevent such a disaster!
With fifty thousand francs the roof could have been put on, the heavy
work would have been saved, and one could have waited patiently. But they
wanted to kill the work just as they had killed the man." With a gesture
he designated the Fathers of the Grotto, whom he avoided naming. "And to
think," he continued, "that their annual receipts are eight hundred
thousand francs. However, they prefer to send presents to Rome to
propitiate powerful friends there."
In spite of himself, he was again opening hostilities against the
adversaries of Cure Peyramale. The whole story caused a holy anger of
justice to haunt him. Face to face with those lamentable ruins, he
returned to the facts--the enthusiastic Cure starting on the building of
his beloved church, and getting deeper and deeper into debt, whilst
Father Sempe, ever on the lookout, took advantage of each of his
mistakes, discrediting him with the Bishop, arresting the flow of
offerings, and finally stopping the works. Then, after the conquered man
was dead, had come interminable lawsuits, lawsuits lasting fifteen years,
which gave the winters time to devour the building. And now it was in
such a woeful state, and the debt had risen to such an enormous figure,
that all seemed over. The slow death, the death of the stones, was
becoming irrevocable. The portable engine beneath its tumbling shed would
fall to pieces, pounded by the rain and eaten away by the moss.
"I know very well that they chant victory," resumed the doctor; "that
they alone remain. It is just what they wanted--to be the absolute
masters, to have all the power, all the money for themselves alone. I may
tell you that their terror of competition has even made them intrigue
against the religious Orders that have attempted to come to Lourdes.
Jesuits, Dominicans, Benedictines, Capuchins, and Carmelites have made
applications at various times, and the Fathers of the Grotto have always
succeeded in keeping them away. They only tolerate the female Orders, and
will only have one flock. And the town belongs to them; they have opened
shop there, and sell God there wholesale and retail!"
Walking slowly, he had while speaking returned to the middle of the nave,
amidst the ruins, and with a sweeping wave of the arm he pointed to all
the devastation surrounding him. "Look at this sadness, this frightful
wretchedness! Over yonder the Rosary and Basilica cost them three
millions of francs."*
* About 580,000 dollars.
Then, as in Bernadette's cold, dark room, Pierre saw the Basilica rise
before him, radiant in its triumph. It was not here that you found the
realisation of the dream of Cure Peyramale, officiating and blessing
kneeling multitudes while the organs resounded joyfully. The Basilica,
over yonder, appeared, vibrating with the pealing of its bells, clamorous
with the superhuman joy of an accomplished miracle, all sparkling with
its countless lights, its banners, its lamps, its hearts of silver and
gold, its clergy attired in gold, and its monstrance akin to a golden
star. It flamed in the setting sun, it touched the heavens with its
spire, amidst the soaring of the milliards of prayers which caused its
walls to quiver. Here, however, was the church that had died before being
born, the church placed under interdict by a mandamus of the Bishop, the
church falling into dust, and open to the four winds of heaven. Each
storm carried away a little more of the stones, big flies buzzed all
alone among the nettles which had invaded the nave; and there were no
other devotees than the poor women of the neighbourhood, who came thither
to turn their sorry linen, spread upon the grass.
It seemed amidst the mournful silence as though a low voice were sobbing,
perhaps the voice of the marble columns weeping over their useless beauty
under their wooden shirts. At times birds would fly across the deserted
apse uttering a shrill cry. Bands of enormous rats which had taken refuge
under bits of the lowered scaffoldings would fight, and bite, and bound
out of their holes in a gallop of terror. And nothing could have been more
heart-rending than the sight of this pre-determined ruin, face to face
with its triumphant rival, the Basilica, which beamed with gold.
Again Doctor Chassaigne curtly said, "Come."
They left the church, and following the left aisle, reached a door,
roughly fashioned out of a few planks nailed together; and, when they had
passed down a half-demolished wooden staircase, the steps of which shook
beneath their feet, they found themselves in the crypt.
It was a low vault, with squat arches, on exactly the same plan as the
choir. The thick, stunted columns, left in the rough, also awaited their
sculptors. Materials were lying about, pieces of wood were rotting on the
beaten ground, the whole vast hall was white with plaster in the
abandonment in which unfinished buildings are left. At the far end, three
bays, formerly glazed, but in which not a pane of glass remained, threw a
clear, cold light upon the desolate bareness of the walls.
And there, in the middle, lay Cure Peyramale's corpse. Some pious friends
had conceived the touching idea of thus burying him in the crypt of his
unfinished church. The tomb stood on a broad step and was all marble. The
inscriptions, in letters of gold, expressed the feelings of the
subscribers, the cry of truth and reparation that came from the monument
itself. You read on the face: "This tomb has been erected by the aid of
pious offerings from the entire universe to the blessed memory of the
great servant of Our Lady of Lourdes." On the right side were these words
from a Brief of Pope Pius IX.: "You have entirely devoted yourself to
erecting a temple to the Mother of God." And on the left were these words
from the New Testament: "Happy are they who suffer persecution for
justice' sake." Did not these inscriptions embody the true plaint, the
legitimate hope of the vanquished man who had fought so long in the sole
desire of strictly executing the commands of the Virgin as transmitted to
him by Bernadette? She, Our Lady of Lourdes, was there personified by a
slender statuette, standing above the commemorative inscription, against
the naked wall whose only decorations were a few bead wreaths hanging
from nails. And before the tomb, as before the Grotto, were five or six
benches in rows, for the faithful who desired to sit down.
But with another gesture of sorrowful compassion, Doctor Chassaigne had
silently pointed out to Pierre a huge damp spot which was turning the
wall at the far end quite green. Pierre remembered the little lake which
he had noticed up above on the cracked cement flooring of the
choir--quite a quantity of water left by the storm of the previous night.
Infiltration had evidently commenced, a perfect stream ran down, invading
the crypt, whenever there was heavy rain. And they both felt a pang at
their hearts when they perceived that the water was trickling along the
vaulted roof in narrow threads, and thence falling in large, regular
rhythmical drops upon the tomb. The doctor could not restrain a groan.
"Now it rains," he said; "it rains on him!"
Pierre remained motionless, in a kind of awe. In the presence of that
falling water, at the thought of the blasts which must rush at winter
time through the glassless windows, that corpse appeared to him both
woeful and tragic. It acquired a fierce grandeur, lying there alone in
its splendid marble tomb, amidst all the rubbish, at the bottom of the
crumbling ruins of its own church. It was the solitary guardian, the dead
sleeper and dreamer watching over the empty spaces, open to all the birds
of night. It was the mute, obstinate, eternal protest, and it was
expectation also. Cure Peyramale, stretched in his coffin, having all
eternity before him to acquire patience, there, without weariness,
awaited the workmen who would perhaps return thither some fine April
morning. If they should take ten years to do so, he would be there, and
if it should take them a century, he would be there still. He was waiting
for the rotten scaffoldings up above, among the grass of the nave, to be
resuscitated like the dead, and by the force of some miracle to stand
upright once more, along the walls. He was waiting, too, for the
moss-covered engine to become all at once burning hot, recover its
breath, and raise the timbers for the roof. His beloved enterprise, his
gigantic building, was crumbling about his head, and yet with joined
hands and closed eyes he was watching over its ruins, watching and
waiting too.
In a low voice, the doctor finished the cruel story, telling how, after
persecuting Cure Peyramale and his work, they persecuted his tomb. There
had formerly been a bust of the Cure there, and pious hands had kept a
little lamp burning before it. But a woman had one day fallen with her
face to the earth, saying that she had perceived the soul of the
deceased, and thereupon the Fathers of the Grotto were in a flutter. Were
miracles about to take place there? The sick already passed entire days
there, seated on the benches before the tomb. Others knelt down, kissed
the marble, and prayed to be cured. And at this a feeling of terror
arose: supposing they should be cured, supposing the Grotto should find a
competitor in this martyr, lying all alone, amidst the old tools left
there by the masons! The Bishop of Tarbes, informed and influenced,
thereupon published the mandamus which placed the church under interdict,
forbidding all worship there and all pilgrimages and processions to the
tomb of the former priest of Lourdes. As in the case of Bernadette, his
memory was proscribed, his portrait could be found, officially, nowhere.
In the same manner as they had shown themselves merciless against the
living man, so did the Fathers prove merciless to his memory. They
pursued him even in his tomb. They alone, again nowadays, prevented the
works of the church from being proceeded with, by raising continual
obstacles, and absolutely refusing to share their rich harvest of alms.
And they seemed to be waiting for the winter rains to fall and complete
the work of destruction, for the vaulted roof of the crypt, the walls,
the whole gigantic pile to crumble down upon the tomb of the martyr, upon
the body of the defeated man, so that he might be buried beneath them and
at last pounded to dust!
"Ah!" murmured the doctor, "I, who knew him so valiant, so enthusiastic
in all noble labour! Now, you see it, it rains, it rains on him!"
Painfully, he set himself on his knees and found relief in a long prayer.
Pierre, who could not pray, remained standing. Compassionate sorrow was
overflowing from his heart. He listened to the heavy drops from the roof
as one by one they broke on the tomb with a slow rhythmical pit-a-pat,
which seemed to be numbering the seconds of eternity, amidst the profound
silence. And he reflected on the eternal misery of this world, on the
choice which suffering makes in always falling on the best. The two great
makers of Our Lady of Lourdes, Bernadette and Cure Peyramale, rose up in
the flesh again before him, like woeful victims, tortured during their
lives and exiled after their deaths. That alone, indeed, would have
completed within him the destruction of his faith; for the Bernadette,
whom he had just found at the end of his researches, was but a human
sister, loaded with every dolour. But none the less he preserved a tender
brotherly veneration for her, and two tears slowly trickled down his
cheeks.
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