I explained to him that, as far as I knew, these have none but an ethical value--a reply that obviously puzzled him. "You mean," he inquired at last, "that it's ENtirely a matter of faith?" "Precisely," I answered, and his brow cleared a little. "Do you think I might have a Seidlitz powder to go on with?" he asked. * * * * * We arrived at Lourdes at about four o'clock on Saturday afternoon, after just thirty hours' travelling, and landed into a seething tumult of departing pilgrims, bullock-wagons, carriages, and electric trams. Losing sight of Bettany, I found myself looking vaguely round for some kind of conveyance, in company with the Bishop and his chaplain; and between us we managed to secure also a seat for our poor fellow-traveller from Essex, for whom we afterwards discovered a moderately quiet bedroom in our hotel. After tea, the Bishop asked me to accompany him in a stroll round the town and shrine, during which I learned a little about Lourdes, and a good deal about my companion. Half-way between the plains and the higher ranges of the Pyrenees, Lourdes itself lies in a valley, bisected by the Gave, a tumbling mountain stream that supplies the holy water to the grotto and the _piscines_, or invalid baths. The town itself, with its narrow, winding streets, strung, as it were, between the fourteenth-century château on the one side and the nineteenth-century church that surmounts the shrine, on the other, is quite the most remarkable combination of mediævalism and modernity that I have seen; while its crowded, ever-changing population must be, I suppose, the saddest, oddest, and perhaps the most unique in both the hemispheres. As we walked down towards the shrine, we met returning most of those who had gathered round the great square for the daily blessing of the sick; and passing through them we must have heard, I should think, almost every dialect of Europe, Flemish perhaps predominant, since this was the last day of a great Belgian pilgrimage, but German, Italian, English, Spanish, and of course French, at nearly every step. Every now and again, too, some ardent man or woman, seeing the big amethyst ring on my friend's finger, would kneel down to kiss it and receive his blessing, caring nothing for his difference of language and nationality, and everything for his holy office in their common church. Once or twice he smiled gently when they had gone their fervent way, clasping their votive candles or little bottles of sacred mountain water, and once I ventured to press him a trifle as to his personal faith in the Lourdes miracles. But he was a statesman, as I discovered, no less than a saint, and would confess to no more than a belief that these dear people obtained perhaps a score of spiritual to each merely temporal favour. And surely these were after all the better?