flesh, food for miracles, in the hands of the hospitallers of either sex. “But you need only have applied to your parish priest, madame,” Pierre explained. “This poor child is deserving of all sympathy. She would have been immediately admitted.” “I did not know it, monsieur l’Abbe.” “Then how did you manage?” “Why, Monsieur l’Abbe, I went to take a ticket at a place which one of my neighbours, who reads the newspapers, told me about.” She was referring to the tickets, at greatly reduced rates, which were issued to the pilgrims possessed of means. And Marie, listening to her, felt great pity for her, and also some shame; for she who was not entirely destitute of resources had succeeded in obtaining /hospitalisation/, thanks to Pierre, whereas that mother and her sorry child, after exhausting their scanty savings, remained without a copper. However, a more violent jolt of the carriage drew a cry of pain from the girl. “Oh, father,” she said, “pray raise me a little! I can’t stay on my back any longer.” When M. de Guersaint had helped her into a sitting posture, she gave a deep sigh of relief. They were now at Etampes, after a run of an hour and a half from Paris, and what with the increased warmth of the sun, the dust, and the noise, weariness was becoming apparent already. Madame de Jonquiere had got up to speak a few words of kindly encouragement to Marie over the partition; and Sister Hyacinthe moreover again rose, and gaily clapped her hands that she might be heard and obeyed from one to the other end of the carriage. “Come, come!” said she, “we mustn’t think of our little troubles. Let us pray and sing, and the Blessed Virgin will be with us.” She herself then began the rosary according to the rite of Our Lady of Lourdes, and all the patients and pilgrims followed her. This was the first chaplet—the five joyful mysteries, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Purification, and Jesus found in the Temple. Then they all began to chant the canticle: “Let us contemplate the heavenly Archangel!” Their voices were lost amid the loud rumbling of the wheels; you heard but the muffled surging of that human wave, stifling within the closed carriage which rolled on and on without a pause. Although M. de Guersaint was a worshipper, he could never follow a hymn to the end. He got up, sat down again, and finished by resting his elbow on the partition and conversing in an undertone with a patient who sat against this same partition in the next compartment. The patient in question was a thick-set man of fifty, with a good-natured face and a large head, completely bald. His name was Sabathier, and for fifteen years he had been stricken with ataxia. He only suffered pain by fits and starts, but he had quite lost the use of his legs, which his wife, who accompanied him, moved for him as though they had been dead legs, whenever they became too heavy, weighty like bars of lead.