"Oh! how wicked I was, my friend," she said.

"It was through hearing you relate how that Prefect and those magistrates sinned through pride, that I understood my transgression.

One must believe, my friend; there is no happiness outside faith and love." Then, as Pierre wished to break off at the point which he had reached, they all began protesting and calling for the continuation of his narrative, so that he had to promise to go on to the triumph of the Grotto.
Its entrance remained barred by the palisade, and you had to come secretly at night if you wished to pray and carry off a stolen bottle of water.

Still, the fear of rioting increased, for it was rumoured that whole villages intended to come down from the hills in order to deliver God, as they naively expressed it.

It was a _levee en masse_ of the humble, a rush of those who hungered for the miraculous, so irresistible in its impetuosity that mere common sense, mere considerations of public order were to be swept away like chaff.