There was another, one of those which came very seldom, which brought something deeper than pain or joy. This was the recollection of an instant, just one instant, of the day when Maman let Sœur Ste. Lucie take her to Lourdes. It was the feast of St. Louis, and Sœur Ste. Lucie always went every year then. She had been awfully nice and jolly, the way she always was with Marise, and it was fun to start off with her early in the morning, at dawn, in the special excursion train. At Lourdes it was fun, too, really exciting to be in such a monstrously big crowd, oh, what a crowd! She heard somebody tell Sœur Ste. Lucie that there were thirty thousand pilgrims there that day. It amused Marise very much to hear them called pilgrims and to think that she and Sœur Ste. Lucie were counted as pilgrims, too. She had always thought of "pilgrims" as people who landed on a stern and rock-bound coast and began to fight with Indians; and nothing could be more unlike that than the crowd at Lourdes, swimming in the dusty, yellow sunshine, everybody dressed up in his best, walking around in groups, talking and singing. Marise held on to the Sister's nice, soft, old hand and followed her around from one thing to another, taking a good big drink of the water, and kneeling down whenever Sœur Ste. Lucie stopped to pray before a shrine. Marise didn't pray much, but watched the crowd, the endless crowd shuffling slowly past. She was proud to be kneeling there beside a Sister, who had the right of entrance everywhere, who opened any gate in any railing she liked, and walked right in to say a prayer where the common run of people didn't dare go.
At noon, after three hours of this, Sœur Ste. Lucie took her charge off up along the bright, quick-flowing stream, off into the real country, till finally they came to a field that wasn't too thick with people. There they sat down on the grass, under a tree. Sœur Ste. Lucie got out the pasteboard shoe-box they had taken turns carrying around all the morning and they ate their lunch. Marise was simply starving by that time and anything would have tasted good. But that lunch would have made a stone statue eat, it was so good. Cold roast chicken, plenty of it, big slices cut recklessly right off the breast, tender and juicy and flavored; and crispy, crunchy rolls and fresh butter; and little radishes and green onions and salt, and a half bottle of the best white wine, which they watered down in their cups with Lourdes water. Sœur Ste. Lucie laughed over this as she poured it out and said they ought to be saints at least for a day or so, after drinking Lourdes water with their lunch, oughtn't they? She was as jolly as could be, anyhow, and was enjoying herself so much that she kept Marise laughing at her jokes all the time. One of those numerous friends of hers turned up here too, a stout, red-faced farmer's wife, who shouted with pleasure at seeing Sœur Ste. Lucie, and came over from the other side of the field to bring her lunch and eat with them. She and Sœur Ste. Lucie got into gales of laughter in which Marise joined with all her heart although she didn't always quite see what the joke was. Then they had their dessert, a triangle of creamy Camembert cheese, spread on the crust end of their roll, and after this a great golden pear apiece, so full of sweet juice that you couldn't take a bite of it without its running down your chin, so you had to lean way forward, to the tune of everybody laughing at you, and doing the same thing themselves.
After they had packed up what was left, and the farmer woman had gone back to her family, Sœur Ste. Lucie got very quiet and still, pulled out her rosary and began to murmur her prayers in a very fast, low tone, her eyes almost shut up. Marise sat beside her in the grass, watched the crowds beginning to turn back towards the Basilica, and a couple of little gnats dancing round and round each other in the air. The murmur of the prayers was like a bee-hum in her ears. She leaned back against the tree and drew a long breath, and the next thing she knew it was hours later, and Sœur Ste. Lucie was shaking her gently and saying she'd better wake up because it was time to go back if they were going to get a place to see the blessing of the sick.
After that ceremony was over, everybody was perfectly worn out and almost starved. Sœur Ste. Lucie went to one of the convents for supper, where the good Sisters took care of hundreds of the pilgrims, and looked as tired as Marise felt, and walked as though their feet hurt as hers did. But there was still one more Lourdes sight to see, the procession of the lights in the evening. When they came out of the convent, they found the weather changed, the wind blowing hard and a light rain falling and not a bit of light coming from the black, black sky. The damp was bad for rheumatism, and Sœur Ste. Lucie's knee began to pain her, so that she said they would not march in the procession but go up along the side of the high horse-shoe staircase, where they could see on both sides and along the esplanade. How black and empty that looked, that enormous stretch of pavement, like a great empty hole, outlined by the street lights on all four sides of it. Back of it, down towards the Grotto, there seemed to be millions of people, judging by the lights which danced around, every way at once; and through the wind and the rain and the darkness, Marise and Sœur Ste. Lucie could hear snatches of singing, the chant which fairly rings from the stones and walls of Lourdes.
A-ve! A-ve! A-ve Ma-ri-a! A-ve! A-ve! A-ve Ma-ri-a!
Then as Marise stuck her head through the railing to watch what went on there, far, far below them, she saw the lights begin to straighten out into two long lines and start streaming up the lower part of the horse-shoe staircase where she and Sœur Ste. Lucie stood. The procession had started; two by two they were marching up towards the blaze of light at the top where the door of the upper church stood open. The sound of their voices grew louder and louder and there they were! The first ones were a mother and her little girl; after them a couple of working men; after them a man and his wife; after them a priest and a soldier; after them—after them—Marise lost count, she felt her head whirl, she couldn't see the people any more, only the little dancing, quivering lights they were carrying, candle-flames, scarcely at all protected from the wind by a bit of card-board, or a hand curved about them.
They kept going by and going by, those little flames, until Marise's eyes ached. And yet she couldn't look at anything else, she couldn't stop staring at those flickering, swaying little flames.
After a long time she was able to pull her eyes away from them, to look past them down at the great esplanade—and oh! now it was not a black and empty hole; it was all full, full of lights, a million little marching and singing flames, in endless lines, ordered, purposeful, marching to and fro. So small, so tiny and feeble each one, but enough all together to make a great light in the blackness, to fill all the emptiness with glory.