hospital, the men being sent to the former and the women to the latter
institution.

That morning at sunrise great confusion prevailed in the sand-covered
courtyard of Our Lady of Dolours, at the door of which a couple of
priests were mounting guard. The temporary staff, with its formidable
supply of registers, cards, and printed formulas, had installed itself in
one of the ground-floor rooms on the previous day. The managers were
desirous of greatly improving upon the organisation of the preceding
year. The lower wards were this time to be reserved to the most helpless
sufferers; and in order to prevent a repetition of the cases of mistaken
identity which had occurred in the past, very great care was to be taken
in filling in and distributing the admission cards, each of which bore
the name of a ward and the number of a bed. It became difficult, however,
to act in accordance with these good intentions in presence of the
torrent of ailing beings which the white train had brought to Lourdes,
and the new formalities so complicated matters that the patients had to
be deposited in the courtyard as they arrived, to wait there until it
became possible to admit them in something like an orderly manner. It was
the scene witnessed at the railway station all over again, the same
woeful camping in the open, whilst the bearers and the young seminarists
who acted as the secretary's assistants ran hither and thither in
bewilderment.

"We have been over-ambitious, we wanted to do things too well!" exclaimed
Baron Suire in despair.

There was much truth in his remark, for never had a greater number of
useless precautions been taken, and they now discovered that, by some
inexplicable error, they had allotted not the lower--but the