This
is Huysmans' account of an extended visit to the great Marian shrine at
Lourdes, intended, no doubt, as a counterpoint to Zola's work on the
same subject. In contrast to Zola, who famously declared that even if
he saw a miracle firsthand, he would not believe it, Huysmans multiplies
accounts of miraculous healings even while frowning upon hysteria and
popular fervor. Utilizing the same powers of description he uses to
powerfully evoke medieval artwork in his novels, he presents the hopeful
as a cavalcade of human horrors, a veritable Mutter Museum of
deformities. Meanwhile, he turns his jaundiced eye towards the art and
architecture of the shrine, and ends by concluding these so debased as
to form evidence of a demonic plot against the Virgin.
He does not spend much time relating the story of St
Bernadette, except a brief description of her life and character as a
pious, but unintelligent and unimaginative peasant girl. Repeatedly,
Huysmans ponders why some find cures at Lourdes while others do not, and
he never discovers a satisfactory answer. The greatest of the miracles
he finds at Lourdes, rather, is the spirit of the place itself, the
continuing unseen presence there of the Mother of God:
"In this city of our Lady there is a return to the
earliest ages of Christianity, a flowering of loving care that will last
as long as people are beneath her spell in this haven of her own. Here
you get an idea of a people made up of various fragments, and yet so
united as never any people was; they will be broken up tomorrow by
departures, but unity will be restored by the arrival of fresh
constituents, brought hither by fresh trains, and nothing will be
changed; there will be the same devotion and the same patience and
faith."
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