Of the more obvious invalids there were none, as far as I could see, who stood the smallest chance of benefiting, in a material sense, from their visit to Lourdes. There were two blind girls, both cases of congenital organic disease—and who both chanced, by the way, to be among the very few sufferers from sea-sickness. There was a little boy from a Sussex village, a case of infantile paralysis, brought by his mother in the fervent hope, as she told me, that Our Lady would use him as a means to convert an extremely Nonconformist community. There was an older girl, similarly affected; and an elderly man, travelling quite alone, in almost the last stages of cancer of the throat. With this poor fellow, who was almost too weak to stand unaided, I had a long and very pathetic conversation. He knew himself to be past all human aid, and was journeying from his home on the east coast to the shrine upon the Gave as to his last anchorage upon life. And I doubt, even so, if he had any real belief in its efficacy for himself. But his journey, a really enormous effort for a man in his condition, would at any rate show that he had had courage enough to make the trial. His is the only case that has given me cause for any immediate anxiety, and were it not for his extraordinary pluck and will-power I should be more than doubtful about getting him home alive.
Of the other invalids, none were sufficiently apparent to disclose themselves to me in a cursory tour round the ship with Bettany; and after making the poor cancer patient as cosy as possible in the special train that was waiting for us at Boulogne, I repaired to the very comfortable carriage reserved for us, and shared an excellent lunch with Bettany, his lady secretary, and another member of the committee. The journey to Paris was uneventful, and after manœuvring round its southern suburbs, we found ourselves about seven o'clock in the Gare d'Orléans, where a portion of the refreshment-room had been reserved for our dinner. During this meal I was introduced by Bettany to the Bishop who is leading the pilgrimage—one of those rare men of whose essential saintliness one becomes instantly aware, yet a man, too, of abundant strength, and one, as I have since found out, capable of ensuring, with the profoundest personal humility, the utmost tribute of respect to the high office that he represents. I suppose every Church contains such men. It is at any rate pleasant to think so. But not all are wise enough to make them bishops—and missionary bishops at that.
The same train left Paris with us about nine o'clock on the long journey to Lourdes; and after some desultory conversation we made ourselves comfortable for the night. Fortunately, since our train was not of the corridor type, the sick persons seemed to settle down pretty easily, and the chief impressions that remain to me of the journey are a peep into a cool and cloudless sunrise over some vineyards between Poitiers and Angoulême and a very satisfactory café complet at Bordeaux. Two or three times during the morning, both before and after reaching this place, we were jeered at by onlookers at various wayside stations, who had read the inscription Pèlerinage upon our carriage; and one or two of these had even gone so far as to throw stones. They were reminders, I suppose, that here in Lourdes seem almost incredible, of the enormous extent to which the anti-clerical movement has permeated elsewhere in France. The latter part of our journey, climbing slowly into the Pyrenees, was enlivened for us by the presence of the Bishop, who had given up his own carriage to some indignant Irish pilgrims that had been so unfortunate as to have spent a sleepless night. Haymaking was already in full swing in these steaming valleys, with men and boys and bare-legged, brown-faced women all backs down over what seems to be a very plentiful crop.
I have just here been tapped on the shoulder by an immaculately apparelled American Catholic, who has just joined the pilgrimage from Florence. He had learned, he told me, that I was a physician willing to oblige. He suffered a little from gout, he said, and then proceeded to pose me with the rather difficult question as to how often he ought to take the waters.
I explained to him that, as far as I knew, these have none but an ethical value—a reply that obviously puzzled him.
"You mean," he inquired at last, "that it's ENtirely a matter of faith?"
"Precisely," I answered, and his brow cleared a little.
"Do you think I might have a Seidlitz powder to go on with?" he asked.