should stay until the Monday, we went down to the Bureau. At first there
were difficulties made, as the doctors were not come; and I occupied a
little while in watching the litters unloaded from the wagonettes that
brought them gently down to within a hundred yards of the Grotto. Once
indeed I was happy to be able to fit a _brancardier's_ straps into the
poles that supported a sick woman. It was all most terrible and most
beautiful. Figure after figure was passed along the seats--living
crucifixes of pain--and lowered tenderly to the ground, to lie there a
moment or two, with the body horribly flat and, as it seemed, almost
non-existent beneath the coverlet; and the white face with blazing eyes
of anguish, or passive and half dead, to show alone that a human
creature lay there. Then one by one each was lifted and swung gently
down to the gate of the _piscines_.

At about three o'clock, after an hour's waiting, I succeeded in getting
a certain card passed through the window, and immediately a message came
out from Dr. Cox that I was to be admitted. I passed through a barrier,
through a couple of rooms, and found myself in the Holy Place of
Science, as the Grotto is the Holy Place of Grace.

It is a little room in which perhaps twenty persons can stand with
comfort. Again and again I saw more than sixty there. Down one side runs
a table, at one end of which sits Dr. Cox; in the centre, facing the
room, is the presiding doctor's chair, where, as a rule, Dr. Boissarie
is to be found. Dr. Cox set me between him and the president, and I
began to observe.

At the farther end of the room is a long glazed case of photographs hung
against the wall. Here are photographs of many of the most famous
patients. The wounds of Marie Borel are shown there; Marie Borel herself