which they were determined not to spend foolishly upon meat, drink, and lodging, for the good of their souls was uppermost in their minds, and the length of their stay would depend upon their success in making the money last. By far the greater number were women, and the many bent backs and withered faces among them were a pretty safe sign that they had not all come to implore the aid of the Virgin in that special form of domestic trouble from which so many thousands have sought relief century after century in her sanctuary of Roc-Amadour.
The plain white linen coif—very ugly, but delightfully primitive—worn by a large proportion of these peasants showed that they had crossed the Dordogne from the Bas-Limousin. Many had come all the way on foot, taking a couple of days or more for the journey, and a few had trudged over the hot roads and stony causses[*] barefoot, just like pilgrims of the Middle Ages.
[*] This Languedocian word, which has come to be generally used in describing the limestone uplands, as distinguished from the valleys and gorges of a very extensive district of Southern France, is said to be a corruption of calx.
Indeed, these people were essentially the same in all social and mental characteristics as their predecessors of five or seven centuries ago; their faith was the same, their daily habits were the same, their language was the same, and their mode of dress, as far as the women were concerned, had scarcely changed. They came down the narrow street and under the old crumbling gateways in a continuous stream, holding their rosaries in their hands, together with their baskets and bundles, and praying aloud, even before they reached the foot of the steps. Arriving there, they dropped down upon their knees, and commenced the arduous ascent, interrupted by two hundred genuflexions, during which they repeated an Ave Maria and a special invocation to Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour. Although the stranger belonging to the outer world—so different in every way from that of these simple people—with his mind coloured by particular prejudices, habits of thought, religious or philosophical reasoning, may feel out of sympathy with such pilgrims, he cannot but recognise their sincerity and the serene fulness of their faith.
Above all the pious murmuring rise the harsh voices of those who have come to sell, and who, putting no restraint upon their eagerness to get money, thrust their rosaries and medals almost in the pilgrims' faces. Beggars squatting or lying against the wall on either side of the steps exhibit the bare stump of a leg that wofully needs washing, a withered arm, or the ravages of some incurable and gnawing disease. Yet are they all terribly energetic, wailing forth prayers almost incessantly, or screaming spasmodically an appeal to charity, and adding to the dreadful din by jingling coppers in tin cups. In the immediate precincts of the church, where the hurly-burly of piety, traffic, and mendicity reaches its climax, are the vendors of candles for the chapel and of food for the pilgrims, whose diet is chiefly melon and bread. Creysse, by the Dordogne, produces melons in abundance, which are brought to Roc-Amadour by the cartload, and sold for two or three sous apiece. And to see these pilgrims devour the fragrant fruit in the month of September makes one think that if Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour were not very pitiful the consequences would be disastrous to many.
There was a humorous beggar on the steps who amused me much, for I watched him more closely than he supposed. He had something the matter with his legs—paralyzed, perhaps—but the upper part of his body was sound enough. With one hand he shook the tin cup, but the other, which held a short pipe, he kept steadfastly behind his back. Now and again he turned his face to the wall, as if to drop a tear unseen, but really to take a discreet pull at the pipe. I think he must have swallowed the smoke. Then he would face the crowd again, and repeat his doleful cry:
'De la charité! de la charité! Chrétiens, n'oubliez pas le pauvre estropié! Le bon Dieu vous bénira.'
After all, why should not a beggar smoke? If tobacco is a blessing, why should a man be debarred from it because his legs are paralyzed, and he is obliged to live on charity?
As one of the first thoughts of every genuine pilgrim to this ancient sanctuary is to get shrived, the chaplains, who, with their Superior, are ten in number, have something to do to listen to the story of sins that is poured into their ears almost in a continuous stream during the eight days of the retreat. The rush upon the confessionals begins at five in the morning, and goes on with little intermission all day. The penitents huddle together like sheep in a snowstorm around each confessional, so that the foremost who is telling his sins knows that there is another immediately behind him who, whenever he stops to reflect, would like to give him a nudge m the back. The peasants, whether it be that they have never cultivated the habit of whispering, or whether their zeal be such as to chase from their minds all considerations of worldly shame and human respect, say what they have to say without regard to the rows of ears behind them, and what takes place at these times is almost on a par with the public confessions of the primitive Church.
It is at night, however, during the retreat that the visitor to Roc-Amadour will see the strangest sight if he gives himself the trouble, for then the church of St. Sauveur becomes a hospice where the weary may find the sleep that refreshes and restores the faculties after the work of the day, as sung by St. Ambrose. The church is filled with pilgrims lying upon the chairs, upon the bare stones that the feet of other pilgrims have worn into hollows, sitting with their backs against the walls and piers, snoring also in the confessionals—the most comfortable quarters. Some remain awake most of the night praying silently or aloud. This is how the peasantry of the Quercy and the Limousin enter into the spirit of the September pilgrimage to Roc-Amadour. It is not because they need the money to pay for accommodation in the inns that they use the church by night as well as by day, but because they wish to go through their devotional programme thoroughly. And those who go to the inns often make one room serve for a family of three or four grown-up persons. If there vis one person who does not belong to the family, the others see no harm in admitting him or her; indeed, they think that as Christians they are almost bound to do so.
On the night following the opening of the retreat, Roc-Amadour is illuminated, and the spectacle is one that renders the grandest illuminations in Paris mean and vulgar by comparison. It is not in the costliness of the display that its splendour lies; it is in what may almost be termed the zeal with which Nature works with art towards the same end. Without the rocks and precipices the spectacle would be commonplace; but the site being what it is, the scene has a strange and wonderful charm that may be called either fairylike or heavenly, as the imagination may prefer. The artistic means employed are simple enough—paper lanterns and little lamps of coloured glass; but what an effect is produced when chains of fire have been stretched across the gorge from the summits of the rocks on either side, when the long succession of zigzags reaching up the cliff, and forming the Way of the Cross, is also marked out with fire, when the ramparts on the brink of the precipice are ablaze with coloured lamps, recalling some old poetical picture of an enchanted castle, and a little to the right, on the summit of the cliff where the Via Crucis ends at Calvary, the great wooden cross which French pilgrims carried through the streets of Jerusalem stands against the calm starlit sky like a cross of blood-red flame!
A little below the summit of the cliff, from the large cavern which has been fashioned to represent the Holy Sepulchre, there issues a brilliant light, together with the sound of many voices singing the 'Tantum ergo.' A faint odour of incense wanders here and there among the shrubs, and mingles with the fragrance of flowers upon the terraces. Presently the clergy and the pilgrims come forth, and, forming a long procession, descend the Way of the Cross; and as the burning tapers that they carry shine and flash amongst the foliage, these words, familiar to every pilgrim to Roc-Amadour, sung by hundreds of voices, may be heard afar off in the dark desolate gorge:
'Reine puissante, Mère d'Amour,
Sois-nous compatissante,
O Vierge d'Amadour!'
It is now the vigil of All Souls—the 'Day of the Dead.' No more pilgrims come to Roc-Amadour. A breeze would send the sapless walnut-leaves whirling through the air, but there is no breeze; Nature
