Page:A book of the Pyrenees.djvu/186

150 to something over 600,000, and the affluence increases every year. Trainloads of sick people leave Paris in the month of August, when the principal pilgrimage takes place. But all the festivals of the Blessed Virgin, and that of the Apparition, inserted in the calendar with proper Mass, give occasion to solemnities of exceptional grandeur, the most imposing feature of which is the night processions so beautifully described by Zola. Hideous and vulgar are basilica and chapel of the Rosary that have been erected over and by the cave. The situation is exceptionally beautiful, and would lend itself to a stately and well-proportioned church and pile of buildings; but it has been used as an occasion for the display of architectural ineptitude. Grotto and church are crowded with ex votos memorials of cures wrought there, cures that are reputed miraculous. But who is to decide where the natural ends and the miraculous begins? In the present condition of science we cannot draw the line between the natural and the supernatural. None can plant his walking-stick at a certain point and say that he has reached "ubi defuit or bis," and no man can declare the exact point "ubi defuit scientia." We know that the Maladetta is in Spain, and that the Vingemale is in France, because the mountain chain has been surveyed, and the line of demarcation drawn between Spain and France. Such a tree, such a rock, such a hamlet, we know for certain is in one or other of these countries. But there is no such boundary in Nature. Where does the vegetable realm end and the animal kingdom begin? Psychology and physiology overlap and interpenetrate one another. The body acts on the mind, and the mind on the body. Those who come to Lourdes come in a condition of nervous exaltation, in a fever of faith and hope; not only so, but they come in crowds, and