"I know of a Madame Maze who must be lodging with the Sisters of the
Immaculate Conception, the Blue Sisters as people call them here, I
think."

The postman thanked him for the information and went off, but a somewhat
bitter smile had risen to Majeste's lips. "The Blue Sisters," he
muttered, "ah! the Blue Sisters." Then, darting a side glance at Pierre's
cassock, he stopped short, as though he feared that he might say too
much. Yet his heart was overflowing; he would have greatly liked to ease
his feelings, and this young priest from Paris, who looked so
liberal-minded, could not be one of the "band" as he called all those who
discharged functions at the Grotto and coined money out of Our Lady of
Lourdes. Accordingly, little by little, he ventured to speak out.

"I am a good Christian, I assure you, Monsieur l'Abbe," said he. "In fact
we are all good Christians here. And I am a regular worshipper and take
the sacrament every Easter. But, really, I must say that members of a
religious community ought not to keep hotels. No, no, it isn't right!"

And thereupon he vented all the spite of a tradesman in presence of what
he considered to be disloyal competition. Ought not those Blue Sisters,
those Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, to have confined themselves
to their real functions, the manufacture of wafers for sacramental
purposes, and the repairing and washing of church linen? Instead of that,
however, they had transformed their convent into a vast hostelry, where
ladies who came to Lourdes unaccompanied found separate rooms, and were
able to take their meals either in privacy or in a general dining-room.
Everything was certainly very clean, very well organised and very
inexpensive, thanks to the thousand advantages which the Sisters enjoyed;
in fact, no hotel at Lourdes did so much business. "But all the same,"