thereupon offered to go and fetch him.

"No, no, thank you," replied the Baron. "I shall manage to find him
myself."

Whilst this was happening, Berthaud, who had just seated himself on a
bench at the other end of the station, was talking with his young friend,
Gerard de Peyrelongue, by way of occupation pending the arrival of the
train. The superintendent of the bearers was a man of forty, with a
broad, regular-featured, handsome face and carefully trimmed whiskers of
a lawyer-like pattern. Belonging to a militant Legitimist family and
holding extremely reactionary opinions, he had been Procureur de la
Republique (public prosecutor) in a town of the south of France from the
time of the parliamentary revolution of the twenty-fourth of May* until
that of the decree of the Religious Communities,** when he had resigned
his post in a blusterous fashion, by addressing an insulting letter to
the Minister of Justice. And he had never since laid down his arms, but
had joined the Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation as a sort of protest,
repairing year after year to Lourdes in order to "demonstrate"; convinced
as he was that the pilgrimages were both disagreeable and hurtful to the
Republic, and that God alone could re-establish the Monarchy by one of
those miracles which He worked so lavishly at the Grotto. Despite all
this, however, Berthaud possessed no small amount of good sense, and
being of a gay disposition, displayed a kind of jovial charity towards
the poor sufferers whose transport he had to provide for during the three
days that the national pilgrimage remained at Lourdes.

* The parliamentary revolution of May, 1873, by which M. Thiers
was overthrown and Marshal MacMahon installed in his place with
the object of restoring the Monarchy in France.--Trans.