Read "The Three Cities, Lourdes Volume I" by Émile Zola online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
THE pilgrims and patients, closely packed on the hard seats of a third-class carriage, were just finishing the "Ave maris Stella," which they had begun to chant on leaving the terminus of the Orleans line, when Marie, slightly raised on her couch of misery and restless with feverish impatience, caught sight of the Paris fortifications through the window of the moving train.
"Ah, the fortifications! " she exclaimed, in a tone which was joyous despite her suffering. "Here we are, out of Paris; we are off at last!"