The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Volume 4Zola, Émile
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The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Volume 4
Zola, Émile
Catholics -- Fiction; Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages -- Fiction; Clergy -- Fiction; Lourdes (France) -- Fiction
IMMEDIATELY afterwards, as they descended the steps, Doctor Chassaigne
said to Pierre: "You have just seen the triumph; I will now show you two
great injustices."
And he conducted him into the Rue des Petits-Fosses to visit Bernadette's
room, that low, dark chamber whence she set out on the day the Blessed
Virgin appeared to her.
The Rue des Petits-Fosses starts from the former Rue des Bois, now the
Rue de la Grotte, and crosses the Rue du Tribunal. It is a winding lane,
slightly sloping and very gloomy. The passers-by are few; it is skirted
by long walls, wretched-looking houses, with mournful facades in which
never a window opens. All its gaiety consists in an occasional tree in a
courtyard.
"Here we are," at last said the doctor.
At the part where he had halted, the street contracted, becoming very
narrow, and the house faced the high, grey wall of a barn. Raising their
heads, both men looked up at the little dwelling, which seemed quite
lifeless, with its narrow casements and its coarse, violet pargeting,
displaying the shameful ugliness of poverty. The entrance passage down
below was quite black; an old light iron gate was all that closed it; and
there was a step to mount, which in rainy weather was immersed in the
water of the gutter.
"Go in, my friend, go in," said the doctor. "You have only to push the
gate."
The passage was long, and Pierre kept on feeling the damp wall with his
hand, for fear of making a false step. It seemed to him as if he were
descending into a cellar, in deep obscurity, and he could feel a slippery
soil impregnated with water beneath his feet. Then at the end, in
obedience to the doctor's direction, he turned to the right.
"Stoop, or you may hurt yourself," said M. Chassaigne; "the door is very
low. There, here we are."
The door of the room, like the gate in the street, stood wide open, as if
the place had been carelessly abandoned; and Pierre, who had stopped in
the middle of the chamber, hesitating, his eyes still full of the bright
daylight outside, could distinguish absolutely nothing. He had fallen
into complete darkness, and felt an icy chill about the shoulders similar
to the sensation that might be caused by a wet towel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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