This grand procession of more than thirty thousand people proceeded with the utmost order, to the sound of chants, instrumental music, and salutes from cannon from time to time, to the square in front of the new church, where, before an altar erected at the foot of S. Vincent’s oak, they were addressed by Père Etienne in an eloquent, thrilling discourse, admirable in style and glowing with imagery, suited to the fervid nature of this southern region. He spoke of S. Vincent, not only as the man of his age with a providential mission, but of a type suited to all ages.
The man who loved his brethren, reconciled enemies, brought the rich and poor into one common field imbued with a common idea of sacrifice and devotion, fed the orphan, aided the needy, and wiped away the tears of the sufferer, is the man of all times, and especially of an age marked by the fomentation of political passions.
The old oak was gay with streamers, the hollow was fitted up as an oratory, before which Cardinal Donnet said Mass in the open air, after which thousands of voices joined in the solemn Te Deum Laudamus, and the thirteen prelates terminated the grand ceremony by giving their united benediction to the kneeling crowd.
A whole flock of Sisters of Charity, with their dove-like plumage of white and gray, took the same train as ourselves the pleasant September morning we left Bayonne for the birth-place of S. Vincent of Paul. They seemed like birds of good omen. They were also going to the Berceau (cradle), as they called it, not on a mere pilgrimage, but to make their annual retreat. What for, the saints alone know; for they looked like the personification of every amiable virtue, and quite ready to spread their white wings and take flight for heaven. It was refreshing to watch their gentle, unaffected ways, wholly devoid of those demure airs of superior sanctity and repulsive austerity so exasperating to us worldly-minded people. They all made the sign of the cross as the train moved out of the station—and a good honest one it was, as if they loved the sign of the Son of Man, and delighted in wearing it on their breast. Some had come from St. Sebastian, others from St. Jean de Luz, and several from Bayonne; but they mingled like sisters of one great family of charity. Some chatted, some took out their rosaries and went to praying with the most cheerful air imaginable, as if it were a new refreshment just allowed them, instead of being the daily food of their souls; and others seemed to be studying with interest the peculiar region we were now entering. For we were now in the Landes—low, level, monotonous, and melancholy. The railway lay through vast forests of dusky-pines, varied by willows and cork-trees, with here and there, at long distances, an open tract where ripened scanty fields of corn and millet around the low cottages of the peasants. The sides of the road were purple with heather. The air was full of aromatic odors. Each pine had its broad gash cut by some merciless hand, and its life-blood was slowly trickling down its side. Passing through this sad forest, one could not help thinking of the drear, mystic wood in Dante’s Inferno, where every tree encloses a human soul with infinite capacity of suffering, and at every gash cut, every branch lopped off, utters a despairing cry:
“Why pluck’st thou me?
Then, as the dark blood trickled down its side,
These words it added: Wherefore tear’st me thus?
Is there no touch of mercy in thy breast?
Men once were we that now are rooted here.”
Though the sun was hot, the pine needles seemed to shiver, the branches swayed to and fro in the air, and gave out a kind of sigh which sometimes increased into an inarticulate wail. We look up, almost expecting to see the harpies sitting