The Cathedral. J.-K. Huysmans
her face hidden in her hands. Then the same Woman, standing up, her hands ecclesiastically shrouded in her sleeves, looks at the two children to whom she is speaking; Maximin, with hair curled like a poodle, twirling a cap like a raised pie, in his hand; Mélanie buried in a cap with deep frills and accompanied by a dog like a paper-weight—all in bronze. Finally the same Person, once more alone, standing on tip-toe, her eyes raised to heaven with a melodramatic expression.
"Never has the frightful appetite for the hideous that disgraces the Church in our day been so resolutely displayed as on this spot; and if the soul suffered in the presence of the obtrusive outrage of this degrading work—perpetrated by one Barrême of Angers and cast in the steam foundries of Le Creusot—the body too had something to endure on this plateau under the crushing mass of hills that shut in the view.
"And yet it was hither that thousands of sick creatures had had themselves hauled up to face the cruel climate, where in summer the sun burns you to a cinder while, two yards away, in the shade of the church, you are frozen.
"The first and greatest miracle accomplished at La Salette was that of bringing such an invasion to this precipitous spot in the Alps, for everything combines to forbid it.
"But crowds came there year after year, till Lourdes took possession of them; for it is since the apparition of the Virgin there that La Salette has fallen into disrepute.
"Twelve years after the vision at La Salette, the Virgin showed herself again, not in Dauphiné this time, but in the depths of Gascony. After the Mother of Tears, Our Lady of Seven Dolours, it was Our Lady of Smiles, of the Immaculate Conception, the Sovereign Lady of Joy in Glory, who appeared; and here again it was to a shepherdess that she revealed the existence of a spring that healed diseases.
"And here it is that consternation begins. Lourdes may be described as the exact opposite to La Salette; the scenery is magnificent, the hills in the foreground are covered with verdure, the tamed mountains permit access to their heights; on all sides there are shady avenues, fine trees, living waters, gentle slopes, broad roads devoid of danger and accessible to all; instead of a wilderness, a town, where every requirement of the sick is provided for. Lourdes may be reached without adventures in warrens of vermin, without enduring nights in country inns, or days of jolting in wretched vehicles, without creeping along the face of a precipice; and the traveller is at his destination when he gets out of the train.
"This town then was so admirably chosen for the resort of crowds, that it did not seem necessary that Providence should intervene with such strong measures to attract them.
"But God, who forced La Salette on the world without availing Himself of the means of fashionable notoriety, now changed His tactics; with Lourdes, advertisement appeared on the scene.
"This it is that confounds the mind: Jesus condescending to make use of the wretched arts of human commerce; adopting the repulsive tricks which we employ to float a manufacture or a business.
"And we wonder whether this may not be the sternest lesson in humility ever given to man, as well as the most vehement reproof hurled at the American abominations of our day—God reduced to lowering Himself once more to our level, to speaking our language, to using our own devices that He may make Himself heard and obeyed; God no longer even trying to make us understand His purpose through Himself, or to uplift us to that height.
"In point of fact, the way in which the Lord set to work to promulgate the mercies peculiar to Lourdes is astounding. To make them known He is no longer content to spread the report of its miracles by word of mouth; no, and it might be supposed that in His eyes Lourdes is harder to magnify than La Salette—He adopted strong measures from the first. He raised up a man whose book, translated into every language, carried the news of the vision to the most distant lands, and certified the truth of the cures effected at Lourdes.
"To the end that this work should stir up the masses, it was necessary that the writer destined to the task should be a clever organizer, and at the same time a man devoid of individuality of style and of any novel ideas. In a word, what was needed was a man devoid of talent; and that is quite intelligible, since from the point of view of appreciating art the Catholic public is still a hundred feet beneath the profane public. And our Lord did the thing well; he selected Henri Lasserre.
"Consequently the mine exploded as required, rending souls and bringing crowds out on to the road to Lourdes.
"Years went by. The fame of the sanctuary is an established fact. Indisputable cures are effected by supernatural means and certified by clinical authorities, whose good faith and scientific skill are above suspicion. Lourdes has its fill; and yet, little by little, in the long run, though pilgrims do not cease to flow thither, the commotion about the Grotto is diminishing. It is dying out, if not in the religious world, at any rate in the wider world of the careless or the doubting, who must be convinced. And our Lord thinks it desirable to revive attention to the benefits dispensed by His Mother.
"Lasserre was not such an instrument as could renew the half-exhausted vogue enjoyed by Lourdes. The public was soaked in his book; it had swallowed it in every vehicle and in every form; the end was achieved; this budding-knife of miracles was a tool that might now be laid aside.
"What was now wanted was a book entirely unlike his; a book that would influence the vaster public, whom his homely prosiness would never reach. Lourdes must make its way through denser and less malleable strata, to a public of higher class, and harder to please. It was requisite, therefore, that this new book should be written by a man of talent, whose style nevertheless should not be so transcendental as to scare folks. And it was an advantage that the writer should be very well known, so that his enormous editions might counterpoise those of Lasserre.
"Now in all the realm of literature there was but one man who could fulfil these imperative conditions: Émile Zola. In vain should we seek another. He alone with his battering push, his enormous sale, his blatant advertisement, could launch Lourdes once more.
"It mattered little that he would deny supernatural agency and endeavour to explain inexplicable cures by the meanest hypotheses; it mattered little that he mixed mortar of the medical muck of a Charcot to make his wretched theory hold together; the great thing was that noisy debates should arise about the book of which more than a hundred and fifty thousand copies proclaimed the name of Lourdes throughout the world.
"And then the very disorder of his arguments, the poor resort to a 'breath that heals the people,' invented in contradiction to all the data of positive science on which he prided himself, with the purpose of making these extraordinary cures intelligible—cures which he had seen, and of which he dared not deny the reality or the frequency—were admirable means of persuading unprejudiced and candid inquirers of the authenticity of the recoveries effected year after year at Lourdes.
"This avowed testimony to such amazing facts was enough to give a fresh impetus to the masses. It must be remarked, too, that the book betrays no hostility to the Virgin, of whom it speaks only in respectful terms on the whole; so is it not very credible that the scandal to which this work gave rise was profitable?
"To sum up: it may be asserted that Lasserre and Zola were both useful instruments; one devoid of talent, and for that very reason penetrating to the very lowest strata of the Catholic methodists; the other, on the contrary, making himself welcome to a more intelligent and cultivated public, by those splendid passages where the flaming multitude of processions moves on, and amid a cyclone of anguish, the triumphant faith of the white ranks is exultant.
"Oh, yes! She is fond of Her Lourdes, is Our Lady, and pets it. She seems to have centred all Her powers there, all Her favours; Her other sanctuaries are perishing that this one may live!
"Why?
"Why, above all, have created La Salette and then sacrificed it, as it were?
"That She should have appeared there is quite intelligible," thought Durtal, answering himself. "The Virgin is more highly venerated in Dauphiné than in any other province; chapels dedicated to Her worship swarm in those parts, and She meant perhaps to reward their zeal by Her gracious presence.
"On the other hand, She appeared