Foreign News: Le Voyage de la Vierge

Through the drab streets of Paris’ Red Belt the grim word flashed: “Comrades, to the barricades! The Virgin of Boulogne is coming!”

Factory and tenement poured forth their faithful proletarians. No one sang the Ça ira, no one screamed, “à la lanterne!” But horny fists were raised and Marxist throats intoned the Internationale. At Ivry-sur-Seine, across the high road from the south, rose a barrier of cars, trucks and packing boxes.

Save France! Up from the vernal south the gold-and-plaster Virgin moved triumphantly. Twentieth-Century France hailed the religious procession, a war-delayed commemoration of the Virgin’s 1,300th anniversary. The faithful were as reverent now as on that miraculous Sunday in 638 when the fishermen of Boulogne found the Virgin, then a prow on an unmanned ship that sailed to anchor despite the harbor’s shoals. They were as ardent now as when mighty Charlemagne, or splendid Francis I, or Sun King Louis XIV made pilgrimage to her shrine.

In Nice, the Virgin passed through a shower of mimosa, roses and carnations. In Antibes, barefoot sailors escorted her to the parish church. Everywhere provincial roads resounded with the prayers of kneeling suppliants: “Virgin, our hope, save France. . . .” And now, borne forward on a peasant’s cart by sweating seminarists, the Virgin of Boulogne came to the Red Belt barricades.

No Opium! Behind the rampart, the Marxists of Ivry truculently cried: “We want no opium for the people! Down with the Church!” Before the rampart, young acolytes swung their censers, priests muttered Ave Marias, the Virgin serenely waited. Suddenly a handful of police appeared, led the Virgin to a safe night’s rest in the Church of Ivry.

Next day the Virgin rolled deeper into the Red Belt. But the tocsin had sounded. When she came to Thiais, the proletarians were gathered, several thousand strong. For Marx and Mary, fists flew, clubs thudded. Again police broke up the fray. Out of the melee they yanked six Communists, three seminarists and one priest to spend the night in jail.

Arise! Awake! From red Thiais the road led on to red Charenton. The Virgin faced it, undaunted and yet unscarred. But the police, now alarmed and mobilized in strength, would not face it. They snatched the Virgin from her cart, dumped her on a truck, whisked her at 40 miles an hour to the Charenton church.

On foot the Catholic faithful followed. A gantlet of Marxists thundered their anthem:

Arise, ye prisoners of starvation . . .

Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall . . .

The Catholics shouted Liberté! Liberté! as revolutionaries had once chanted it in those same suburbs. Then they burst into the Marseillaise, which for 150 years was anathema to conservative clerics but had now become an answer to the Internationale.

Ye sons of France, awake to glory . . .

Shall . . . hireling hosts, a ruffian band,

Affright and desolate the land. . . .

Through every one of the 100 suburbs of Paris the Catholics planned to carry the Virgin of Boulogne.