As the crowd poured out through the narrow side-doors, another crowd was forcing its way in through the main entrance, making but slow progress,—two or three steps in a quarter of an hour,—all hot and perspiring, in a cloud of luminous dust.
Many young men were there, for the pleasure of being pressed by the crowd against the pretty girls, their sweethearts, whose sinuous bodies they could feel against their own, and who could not escape them there. How many hands and waists were squeezed which the mothers could not see!
And in undertones they said:
“I love you, Lionnette.”
“Fie, François!”
“Let me go, Tiennet!——”
Thus, beside the infirm and incurable, who know naught of the good things of life, love saucily sports and laughs, feels its own force, and seeks return. The incense in the church serves only to inflame its desire, and more than one youth offers his beloved a rosary, whose boxwood cross he has ardently kissed before her eyes, so that she may find the kiss with her lips.
All day long, the pilgrims and invalids enter the church. Many will pass the night there, keeping vigil with the tapers, on their knees or prostrate before the relics; and more than one, each in his turn, will lie down upon them, on cushions brought expressly for the purpose.
For the moment—it is the first day of the fête—nothing is talked about in the streets of the town save the bulls and the sports.
“Are you going to the races?”