The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes

The Three Cities Trilogy:
Lourdes, entire

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes
by Emile Zola #22 in our series by Emile Zola
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: The Three Cities Trilogy: Lourdes, Complete
Author: Emile Zola
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8516] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 18, 2003]

Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE
CITIES: LOURDES ***

Produced by Dagny [[email protected]] and David Widger
[[email protected]]

THE THREE CITIES

LOURDES

BY
EMILE ZOLA

TRANSLATED BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY

PREFACE

BEFORE perusing this work, it is as well that the reader should
understand M. Zola's aim in writing it, and his views--as distinct from
those of his characters--upon Lourdes, its Grotto, and its cures. A short
time before the book appeared M. Zola was interviewed upon the
subject by his friend and biographer, Mr. Robert H. Sherard, to whom
he spoke as follows:
"'Lourdes' came to be written by mere accident. In 1891 I happened to
be travelling for my pleasure, with my wife, in the Basque country and
by the Pyrenees, and being in the neighbourhood of Lourdes, included
it in my tour. I spent fifteen days there, and was greatly struck by what
I saw, and it then occurred to me that there was material here for just
the sort of novel that I like to write--a novel in which great masses of
men can be shown in motion--/un grand mouvement de foule/--a novel

the subject of which stirred up my philosophical ideas.
"It was too late then to study the question, for I had visited Lourdes late
in September, and so had missed seeing the best pilgrimage, which
takes place in August, under the direction of the Peres de la
Misericorde, of the Rue de l'Assomption in Paris--the National
Pilgrimage, as it is called. These Fathers are very active, enterprising
men, and have made a great success of this annual national pilgrimage.
Under their direction thirty thousand pilgrims are transported to
Lourdes, including over a thousand sick persons.
"So in the following year I went in August, and saw a national
pilgrimage, and followed it during the three days which it lasts, in
addition to the two days given to travelling. After its departure, I stayed
on ten or twelve days, working up the subject in every detail. My book
is the story of such a national pilgrimage, and is, accordingly, the story
of five days. It is divided into five parts, each of which parts is limited
to one day.
"There are from ninety to one hundred characters in the story: sick
persons, pilgrims, priests, nuns, hospitallers, nurses, and peasants; and
the book shows Lourdes under every aspect. There are the piscinas, the
processions, the Grotto, the churches at night, the people in the streets.
It is, in one word, Lourdes in its entirety. In this canvas is worked out a
very delicate central intrigue, as in 'Dr. Pascal,' and around this are
many little stories or subsidiary plots. There is the story of the sick
person who gets well, of the sick person who is not cured, and so on.
The philosophical idea which pervades the whole book is the idea of
human suffering, the exhibition of the desperate and despairing
sufferers who, abandoned by science and by man, address themselves
to a higher Power in the hope of relief; as where parents have a dearly
loved daughter dying of consumption, who has been given up, and for
whom nothing remains but death. A sudden hope, however, breaks in
upon them: 'supposing that after all there should be a Power greater
than that of man, higher than that of science.' They will haste to try this
last chance of safety. It is the instinctive hankering after the lie which
creates human credulity.
"I will admit