Lourdes. There were the heads eaten away by eczema, the foreheads crowned
with roseola, and the noses and mouths which elephantiasis had
transformed into shapeless snouts. Next, the dropsical ones, swollen out
like leathern bottles; the rheumatic ones with twisted hands and swollen
feet, like bags stuffed full of rags; and a sufferer from hydrocephalus,
whose huge and weighty skull fell backwards. Then the consumptive ones,
with livid skins, trembling with fever, exhausted by dysentery, wasted to
skeletons. Then the deformities, the contractions, the twisted trunks,
the twisted arms, the necks all awry; all the poor broken, pounded
creatures, motionless in their tragic, marionette-like postures. Then the
poor rachitic girls displaying their waxen complexions and slender necks
eaten into by sores; the yellow-faced, besotted-looking women in the
painful stupor which falls on unfortunate creatures devoured by cancer;
and the others who turned pale, and dared not move, fearing as they did
the shock of the tumours whose weighty pain was stifling them. On the
benches sat bewildered deaf women, who heard nothing, but sang on all the
same, and blind ones with heads erect, who remained for hours turned
toward the statue of the Virgin which they could not see. And there was
also the woman stricken with imbecility, whose nose was eaten away, and
who laughed with a terrifying laugh, displaying the black, empty cavern
of her mouth; and then the epileptic woman, whom a recent attack had left
as pale as death, with froth still at the corners of her lips.

But sickness and suffering were no longer of consequence, since they were
all there, seated or stretched with their eyes upon the Grotto. The poor,
fleshless, earthy-looking faces became transfigured, and began to glow
with hope. Anchylosed hands were joined, heavy eyelids found the strength
to rise, exhausted voices revived as the priest shouted the appeals. At
first there was nothing but indistinct stuttering, similar to slight
puffs of air rising, here and there above the multitude. Then the cry