"Ah!" she said, "how many, how many distressed souls there are! For each
of those little flames is a suffering soul seeking deliverance, is it
not?"

Pierre had to lean over in order to hear her, for since the procession
had been streaming by, so near to them, they had been deafened by the
sound of the endless canticle, the hymn of Bernadette. The voices of the
pilgrims rang out more loudly than ever amidst the increasing vertigo;
the couplets became jumbled together--each batch of processionists
chanted a different one with the ecstatic voices of beings possessed, who
can no longer hear themselves. There was a huge indistinct clamour, the
distracted clamour of a multitude intoxicated by its ardent faith. And
meantime the refrain of "Ave, ave, ave Maria!" was ever returning,
rising, with its frantic, importunate rhythm, above everything else.

All at once Pierre and Marie, to their great surprise, saw M. de
Guersaint before them again. "Ah! my children," he said, "I did not want
to linger too long up there, I cut through the procession twice in order
to get back to you. But what a sight, what a sight it is! It is certainly
the first beautiful thing that I have seen since I have been here!"
Thereupon he began to describe the procession as he had beheld it from
the Calvary height. "Imagine," said he, "another heaven, a heaven down
below reflecting that above, a heaven entirely filled by a single immense
constellation. The swarming stars seem to be lost, to lie in dim faraway
depths; and the trail of fire is in form like a monstrance--yes, a real
monstrance, the base of which is outlined by the inclined ways, the stem
by the two parallel paths, and the Host by the round lawn which crowns
them. It is a monstrance of burning gold, shining out in the depths of
the darkness with a perpetual sparkle of moving stars. Nothing else seems
to exist; it is gigantic, paramount. I really never saw anything so