The authorities required order, the respect of a discreet religion, the triumph of reason; whereas the need of happiness carried the people off into an enthusiastic desire for cure both in this world and in the next.

Oh! to cease suffering, to secure equality in the comforts of life; to march on under the protection of a just and beneficent Mother, to die only to awaken in heaven! And necessarily the burning desire of the multitude, the holy madness of the universal joy, was destined to sweep aside the rigid, morose conceptions of a well-regulated society in which the ever-recurring epidemical attacks of religious hallucination are condemned as prejudicial to good order and healthiness of mind.
The Sainte-Honorine Ward, on hearing the story, likewise revolted.

Pierre again had to pause, for many were the stifled exclamations in which the Commissary of Police was likened to Satan and Herod.

La Grivotte had sat up on her mattress, stammering: "Ah! the monsters! To behave like that to the Blessed Virgin who has cured me!" And even Madame Vetu--once more penetrated by a ray of hope amidst the covert certainty she felt that she was going to die--grew angry at the idea that the Grotto would not have existed had the Prefect won the day.
"There would have been no pilgrimages," she said, "we should not be here, hundreds of us would not be cured every year." A fit of stifling came over her, however, and Sister Hyacinthe had to raise her to a sitting posture.

Madame de Jonquiere was profiting by the interruption to attend to a young woman afflicted with a spinal complaint, whilst two other women, unable to remain on their beds, so unbearable was the heat, prowled about with short, silent steps, looking quite white in the misty darkness.