We stayed all night there, and the next mornin’ bright and early sot out agin. A little after noon we come to Pau. The train stopped down by the river Gave, a river that rushes right out of the mountains. Above that, a hundred feet high, on a terrace lookin’ south, stands the city.
And what a view busted onto my vision as I looked out of the winder at the hotel! Them gleamin’, silent peaks of snow are camped round Pau like tall, silent, white-robed pickets a-guardin’ Pau from danger.
What a sight! what a sight!
But Martin, anxious to see everything that could be seen, sot off most the first thing to see the castle—one of the grandest in France—where Henry IV. wuz born, and I spoze they enjoyed it, for Josiah went with him.
But what I wanted to see wuz the fountain of Lourdes. And though Martin and Josiah kinder made light of me, they seemed willin’ enough to go with me the next day. It is only a two hours’ ride from Pau to this most famous place of pilgrimage in Europe. And we sot off in good sperits. It lays down at the foot of the mountain, in a deep valley. At one end of the village is a grotto where a young girl, years ago, received a visit from the Virgin Mary, or she sez that she did. She told the story to her folks and to all the neighbors, and she stuck to the same story all her life till she died.
Of course ’em that went to the same place and didn’t see nothin’—they didn’t believe her.
I d’no as Abraham’s folks believed him when he sed that he had had a visit from angels. I dare presoom to say some of his relations didn’t—his cousins now, and his mother-in-law’s folks; I dare say they sed they wuz a-lookin’ right that way at the very time and didn’t see a thing—Abraham must have been mistaken; and they would add most probble—
“Abraham’s eyes are a-failin’; he ort to wear stronger specs.”
Not a-thinkin’ that their stronger specs could never give ’em a glimpse of the things that he see; for speritual things are speritually discerned, and we all have gifts differin’. Why should a propheysier try to dream dreams and see visions?
Wall, finally the priests gin out that the story wuz true, but whether their consciences wuz good in ginin’ it out I d’no—I don’t keep their consciences in a box in my bureau draw.