When Pierre, at the head of the /cortege/, reached the Plateau de la
Merlasse, he found himself immersed in that clear sunlight, that fresh
and balmy air. He turned round and smiled affectionately at Marie; and as
they came out on the Place du Rosaire in the morning splendour, they were
both enchanted with the lovely panorama which spread around them.

In front, on the east, was Old Lourdes, lying in a broad fold of the
ground beyond a rock. The sun was rising behind the distant mountains,
and its oblique rays clearly outlined the dark lilac mass of that
solitary rock, which was crowned by the tower and crumbling walls of the
ancient castle, once the redoubtable key of the seven valleys. Through
the dancing, golden dust you discerned little of the ruined pile except
some stately outlines, some huge blocks of building which looked as
though reared by Cyclopean hands; and beyond the rock you but vaguely
distinguished the discoloured, intermingled house-roofs of the old town.
Nearer in than the castle, however, the new town--the rich and noisy city
which had sprung up in a few years as though by miracle--spread out on
either hand, displaying its hotels, its stylish shops, its lodging-houses
all with white fronts smiling amidst patches of greenery. Then there was
the Gave flowing along at the base of the rock, rolling clamorous, clear
waters, now blue and now green, now deep as they passed under the old
bridge, and now leaping as they careered under the new one, which the
Fathers of the Immaculate Conception had built in order to connect the
Grotto with the railway station and the recently opened Boulevard. And as
a background to this delightful picture, this fresh water, this greenery,
this gay, scattered, rejuvenated town, the little and the big Gers arose,
two huge ridges of bare rock and low herbage, which, in the projected
shade that bathed them, assumed delicate tints of pale mauve and green,
fading softly into pink.