Lourdes

t out quickly, a little after seven, and up to the Rosary Church to get some pious objects blessed. It was useless: I could not find the priest of whom I had been told, whose busines

ion I could, standing there; and thanked God and His Mother for this unexpected opportunity of saying good-bye in the best way-for I was as sad as a school-boy going the rounds of the house on Black Monday-and after a quarter of an hour or so I was

lieved that I could have become so much attached to a place in three summer days. As I have said before, everything was against it. There was no leisure, no room to move, no silence, no sense of famili

hotel, we had only commonplace streets, white houses, shops, hotels and crowds; and soon we had passed from the very outskirts of the town

was the ring of the eternal hills, blue against the blue summer sky, with their shades of green beneath sloping to the valleys, and the

telling us that if health is a gift of God, it is not the greatest; that the Physician of souls, who healed the sick, and without whom

we wheeled a corner,

led, that he feared that in these times the pilgrims did not pray so much as they once did, and that this was a bad sign. He spoke also of France as a whole, and its fall. My friend

NAD

tude that Christian Englishmen take up with regard to France. It is true that in many districts religion is on a downward course, that the churches are neglected, and that even infidelity is becoming a fashion;7 but I wonder very much whether, on the whole, taking Lourdes into account, the average piety of France

ly home, and draws her children after her, standing there with her back to the wall. I do not think this is fanciful. That which is beyond time and space must communicate with us in those terms; and we can only speak of these things in the same terms. Huysmans expresses

d it in as my contribution. It is this, that Lourdes is soaked, saturated and kindled by the all but sensible presence of the Mother of God. I am quite aware of all that can be said about

The Mother of God-the Second Eve, the Immaculate Maiden Mother, who, as if to balance Eve at the Tree of Death, stood by the Tree of Life-in popular non-Catholic theology is banished, with the rest of those who have passed away, to a position of complete insignificance.

ve as her Divine Son, to understand the sincerity of those to whom she is no more than a phantom, and who yet profess and call themselves Christians. Why, at Lourdes Mary is seen to stand, to all but outward eyes, in exactly that positi

us personage-Regina C?li as well as Consolatrix Afflictorum-one who says "No" as well as "Yes," and with the same serenity; yet with the "No" gives strength to receive it. I have heard it said that the greatest miracle of all at Lourdes is the peace and resign

the broken sufferer to crawl across France to her feet-and then to crawl back again. She is one of the Maries of Chartres, that reveals herself here, dark, mighty, dominant, and all but inexorable; not the Mary

rom the piscines in agony, yet with the faces of those who come down from the altar after Holy Communion. The whole place is alive with Mary and the love of God-from the inadequate statue at the Grotto to the brazen garlands in the square, even as far as the illuminated castle and the rockets that burst and bang against the steady stars. If I were sick of some deadly disease, and it were reveale

ty and romantic dreaming? Wel

TNO

t this was written six year