The Cathedral | Page 2

and thankful; merciful to the woes She alleviated, and
thankful to them too. She was indeed our debtor for our sins, since, but
for the wickedness of man, Jesus would never have been born under the
corrupt semblance of our image, and She would not have been the
immaculate Mother of God. Thus our woe was the first cause of Her
joy; and this supremest good resulting from the very excess of Evil, this
touching though superfluous bond, linking us to Her, was indeed the
most bewildering of mysteries; for Her gratitude would seem unneeded,
since Her inexhaustible mercy was enough to attach Her to us for ever.
Thenceforth, in Her immense humility, She had at various times
condescended to the masses; She had appeared in the most remote
spots, sometimes seeming to rise from the earth, sometimes floating
over the abyss, descending on solitary mountain peaks, bringing
multitudes to Her feet, and working cures; then, as if weary of
wandering to be adored, She wished--so it had seemed--to fix the
worship in one place, and had deserted Her ancient haunts in favour of
Lourdes.
That town was the second stage of Her progress through France in the
nineteenth century. Her first visit was to La Salette.
This was years ago. On the 19th of September, 1846, the Virgin had
appeared to two children on a hill; it was a Saturday, the day dedicated
to Her, which, that year, was a fast day by reason of the Ember week.
By another coincidence, this Saturday was the eve of the Festival of
Our Lady of Seven Dolours, and the first vespers were being chanted
when Mary appeared as from a shell of glory just above the ground.
And she appeared as Our Lady of Tears in that desert landscape of
stubborn rocks and dismal hills. Weeping bitterly, She had uttered
reproofs and threats; and a spring, which never in the memory of man
had flowed excepting at the melting of the snows, had never since been
dried up.

The fame of this event spread far and wide; frantic thousands
scrambled up fearful paths to a spot so high that trees could not grow
there. Caravans of the sick and dying were conveyed, God knows how,
across ravines to drink the water; and maimed limbs recovered, and
tumours melted away to the chanting of canticles.
Then, by degrees, after the sordid debates of a contemptible lawsuit, the
reputation of La Salette dwindled to nothing; pilgrims were few,
miracles were less often proclaimed. The Virgin, it would seem, was
gone; She had ceased to care for this spring of piety and these
mountains.
At the present day few persons climb to La Salette but the natives of
Dauphiné, tourists wandering through the Alps, or invalids following
the cure at the neighbouring mineral springs of La Mothe. Conversions
and spiritual graces still abound there, but bodily healing there is next
to none.
"In fact," said Durtal to himself, "the vision at La Salette became
famous without its ever being known exactly why. It may be supposed
to have grown up as follows: the report, confined at first to the village
of Corps at the foot of the mountain, spread first throughout the
department, was taken up by the adjacent provinces, filtered over all
France, overflowed the frontier, trickled through Europe, and at last
crossed the seas to land in the New World which, in its turn, felt the
throb, and also came to this wilderness to hail the Virgin.
"And the circumstances attending these pilgrimages were such as might
have daunted the determination of the most persevering. To reach the
little inn, perched on high near the church, the lazy rumbling of slow
trains must be endured for hours, and constant changes at stations; days
must be spent in the diligence, and nights in breeding-places of fleas at
country inns; and after flaying your back on the carding-combs of
impossible beds, you must rise at daybreak to start on a giddy climb, on
foot or riding a mule, up zig-zag bridle-paths above precipices; and at
last, when you are there, there are no fir trees, no beeches, no pastures,
no torrents; nothing--nothing but total solitude, and silence unbroken
even by the cry of a bird, for at that height no bird is to be found.

"What a scene!" thought Durtal, calling up the memories of a journey
he had made with the Abbé Gévresin and his housekeeper, since
leaving La Trappe. He remembered the horrors of a spot he had passed
between Saint Georges de Commiers and La Mure, and his alarm in the
carriage as the train slowly travelled across the abyss. Beneath was
darkness increasing in spirals down to the vasty deeps; above, as far as
the eye could reach, piles of mountains invaded