Inside La Basilica, the same air of bigness; people coming and going; benediction in French or in English; the great altar at Mass, a concentration of flowers and—light; the sun itself throwing through the beautiful stained-glass windows a rich amethystine ray on the priestly robes, on the altar linen, on the purple and white Campanulas.
A thousand votive candles burn in the side chapels. Processions of the lame, the halt, the blind, creep faltering in step though bold in spirit to kiss the relic. Till ten o’clock at night the great doors stand open. In the Sacristy are the gifts that came dripping like dewdrops from the hands and hearts of the Pilgrims of the Ages and of the day. Things of inestimable intrinsic value rub edges with the intrinsically valueless—the gift of a poor servant girl with the handiwork of Anne of Austria. La Basilica! La Basilica!
Habitants of the Côté looked down upon it with the utmost satisfaction. If La Basilica were the Shrine of all America, to them it was intimate—their dear Parish-Church, the Church where Mass for the Parish was said every Sunday morning. When any of them were sick, out of its great doors came the Blessed Sacrament in the hand of their Priest, heralded through the streets of the village by one of their boys, an acolyte with the bell. When any of them were to be married so early in the morning almost before the sun was up, was it not to La Basilica Cecile or Angelique, Henri or François repaired with their families for the ceremony? And when the Angel of Death flew low over the Côté was it not to La Basilica that all that was mortal of Madame or M’sieu went out to the last Mass?
Built in 1876 it was woven deep into the hearts of people widely scattered in habitat, widely removed from each other in wealth and social standing, antipodal in learning. It was the Mecca of the faithful, the objective of many an idle sightseer.
Built in 1876, for forty-six years it had been a landmark of the Beaupré countryside. Its tall shining towers were as channel-marks to the wood-boats a-wash on their way to Quebec. Chevals of distant farms knew the road to its door almost by heart. Old women from ’tite de Cap and Saint Feréol coming in to sell their quarts of wild framboise or the new pommes des terres crossed themselves, passing hurriedly to supply the hungry tables of les Pensions.
The blind beggar who lost his sight in its building gathered his pennies in his little tin cup at the gate. The old fellow with the row of empty bottles by the Steps of Scala Sancta eked out a living and sent a wave of cheer to many a poor sufferer in remote villages who wiping his face with a dash of water from Saint Anne’s well felt in body and soul a little—refreshment.
Then one morning a short while ago, a little tongue of fire, out-of-bounds, caught up in the palm of one of those gales brewed in the cauldron of the mountains to the north and northeast, as it played with wild fierceness down over the Côté and licked up the Saint Lawrence from the east, threw its lurid veil through the sacristy. Inch by inch, then suddenly, foot by foot, the servant, that was Light, became a master of destruction. The Brothers did their best from the first. But the fire driven by the gale was soon out of hand.
It swept into the church carrying all the great building before it. The fire department came with apparatus from Quebec. But in a few hours the Basilica was but a heap of smouldering ruins.
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