"Is not suffering the best awakener of souls?
This is the seventh year that I am going to Lourdes without despairing of cure.

This year the Blessed Virgin will cure me, I feel sure of it.

Yes, I expect to be able to walk about again; I now live solely in that hope." M.Sabathier paused, he wished his wife to push his legs a little more to the left; and Pierre looked at him, astonished to find such obstinate faith in a man of intellect, in one of those university professors who, as a rule, are such Voltairians.

How could the belief in miracles have germinated and taken root in this man's brain?
As he himself said, great suffering alone explained this need of illusion, this blossoming of eternal and consolatory hope.
"And my wife and I," resumed the ex-professor, "are dressed, you see, as poor folks, for I wished to go as a mere pauper this year, and applied for _hospitalisation_ in a spirit of humility in order that the Blessed Virgin might include me among the wretched, her children--only, as I did not wish to take the place of a real pauper, I gave fifty francs to the Hospitalite, and this, as you are aware, gives one the right to have a patient of one's own in the pilgrimage.

I even know my patient.