volume, as nearer and nearer to the Grotto it bore that abominable
torrent of human wretchedness and pain, amidst all the fright and horror
of the passers-by, who stopped short, unable to stir, their hearts frozen
as this nightmare swept before their eyes.

Pierre and Marie were the first to pass under the lofty arcade of one of
the terraced inclines. And then, as they followed the quay of the Gave,
they all at once came upon the Grotto. And Marie, whom Pierre wheeled as
near to the railing as possible, was only able to raise herself in her
little conveyance, and murmur: "O most Blessed Virgin, Virgin most
loved!"

She had seen neither the entrances to the piscinas nor the twelve-piped
fountain, which she had just passed; nor did she distinguish any better
the shop on her left hand where crucifixes, chaplets, statuettes,
pictures, and other religious articles were sold, or the stone pulpit on
her right which Father Massias already occupied. Her eyes were dazzled by
the splendour of the Grotto; it seemed to her as if a hundred thousand
tapers were burning there behind the railing, filling the low entrance
with the glow of a furnace and illuminating, as with star rays, the
statue of the Virgin, which stood, higher up, at the edge of a narrow
ogive-like cavity. And for her, apart from that glorious apparition,
nothing existed there, neither the crutches with which a part of the
vault had been covered, nor the piles of bouquets fading away amidst the
ivy and the eglantine, nor even the altar placed in the centre near a
little portable organ over which a cover had been thrown. However, as she
raised her eyes above the rock, she once more beheld the slender white
Basilica profiled against the sky, its slight, tapering spire soaring
into the azure of the Infinite like a prayer.