It is, then, with these thoughts of death and the great mysteries of religion we enter the miraculous chapel around which we have so long lingered with awe. The season of pilgrimages has not yet fairly opened, and we find it quiet and unoccupied except by a stray peasant or two, and a few Sisters of Calvary with sweet, gentle faces. We hasten to drop our feeble round of prayer into the deep well fed by the devotion of centuries. Over the altar is the famous statue of Our Lady of Roc Amadour in a golden niche—black as ebony, perhaps from the smoke of the candles and the incense of centuries, and dressed in a white muslin robe spangled with gold. It is by no means a work of high art. Perhaps it is as ancient as this place of pilgrimage. Tradition says it was executed by the pious hands of St. Amadour himself, who was doubtless incapable of expressing the devout sentiments that animated him. It is carved out of a single piece of wood, and is now greatly decayed. The Virgin is stiff in attitude. Her hair floats on her shoulders. Her hands rest on the arms of the chair in which she is sitting, leaving the divine Child, enthroned on her knee, with no support but that of his inherent nature. A silver lamp, shaped like a fortress, with towers for the lights, hangs before her, and beneath is a blazing stand of candles. The profusion of lights in the chapels of popular devotion throughout France is truly remarkable. It was the same in the middle ages. The old chronicles tell us how the mother who sought the cure of a beloved child sometimes sent his weight in wax to be burned before the powerful Virgin of Roc Amadour. Others brought candles of the size of the limb they wished to be healed. And those who had already obtained some supernatural favor generally sent a candle once a year in token of gratitude. So numerous were the lights formerly given to this chapel that there was scarcely room for them. Poets even celebrated this profusion. Gauthier de Coinsy, one of the most celebrated _cantadours_ of the thirteenth century, among other poems has left one entitled _Du cierge que Notre Dame de Roc Amadour envoya sur la vièle du ménestrel qui vièlait et chantait devant sy image_, relating how our benign Lady accorded one of these votive candles to a pious minstrel as he was singing her praises: Pierre de Sygeland was in the habit of entering every church he passed to offer a prayer and sing a song of praise to the sound of his viol. One day, as he was prolonging his pious exercises before the altar of Notre Dame de Roc Amadour, drawing every one in the church around him, both “_clerc et lai_,” by the melody of his voice, he raised his eyes to the sacred image of Mary and thus sang: “O sovereign Lady, _Dame de toute courtoisie_, if my hymn and the sound of my viol be acceptable to thee, be not offended at the guerdon I venture to implore: bestow on me, O peerless Lady! one of the many tapers that burn at thy sacred feet.”