Her name was Vincent, and her husband, a gilder by trade, had been carried off by consumption.

Left alone with her little Rose, who was the passion of her heart, she had worked by day and night at her calling as a dressmaker in order to bring the child up.

But disease had come, and for fourteen months now she had had her in her arms like that, growing more and more woeful and wasted until reduced almost to nothingness.

She, the mother, who never went to mass, entered a church, impelled by despair to pray for her daughter's cure; and there she had heard a voice which had told her to take the little one to Lourdes, where the Blessed Virgin would have pity on her.

Acquainted with nobody, not knowing even how the pilgrimages were organised, she had had but one idea--to work, save up the money necessary for the journey, take a ticket, and start off with the thirty sous remaining to her, destitute of all supplies save a bottle of milk for the child, not having even thought of purchasing a crust of bread for herself.
"What is the poor little thing suffering from ?" resumed the lady.
"Oh, it must be consumption of the bowels, madame! But the doctors have names they give it.