affected. I have not contented myself with looking at them, for the eye may easily be deceived; but I have sounded them with an instrument, and felt of them carefully with my fingers. The œsophagus is covered with little swellings, and the passage has become so small that it is materially impossible for the boy to take any food whatever, except liquids, which can accommodate themselves to the size of the opening, and pass through the pin-hole, as I may call it, which still remains. If the enlargement of the tissues proceeds a few millimetres further, the patient cannot live. The beginning of the trouble, the alternations which characterized it, and its occasional interruptions also bear out the result of my examination. Your child, having once recovered, would have continued well if the difficulty had been in his imagination. Unfortunately, it is organic.’
“These remarks, which had been already made to me at Toulouse, but which I had gladly forgotten, were too conclusive not to convince me. I returned home, with death in my soul.
“What could now be done? We had applied to the most distinguished physicians both of Toulouse and Bordeaux, and all had been unavailing. The fatal evidence was before my eyes; our poor child was condemned, and that without appeal.
“But, monsieur, such cruel conclusions cannot easily remain in a father’s heart. I still tried to deceive myself; my wife and I continued to consult; I was thinking of hydropathy.
“It was in this desperate state of things that Jules said to his mother, with an air of confidence and absolute certitude which strongly impressed her:
“‘Mamma, neither Dr. Gintrac nor any other doctor can do anything for my trouble. It is the Holy Virgin who will cure me. Send me to the Grotto of Lourdes, and you will see that I shall be cured. I am sure of it.’
“My wife reported this proposal to me.
“‘We must not hesitate!’ cried I. ‘He must go to Lourdes. And that as soon as possible.’
“It was not, sir, that I was full of faith. I did not believe in miracles, and I hardly considered such extraordinary interventions of divine power as possible. But I was a father, and any chance, no matter how insignificant, seemed to me not to be slighted. Besides, I hoped that, without any supernatural occurrence, the possibility of which I did not wish to admit, this journey might have a salutary moral effect on the child. As for a complete cure, I did not entertain the slightest idea of such a thing.
“It was in winter, at the beginning of February; the weather was bad, and I wished to wait for a fine day, on Jules’s account.