King of Camargue

There was no wrath left in Renaud; he had no feeling but fear mingled with amazement. The woman’s performance seemed to him in very truth surprising, diabolical. In coloring, bearing, expression, and audacity, she was the sorceress to the life. A strange terror took possession of him. Perhaps he would have gone astray gaily, without remorse, with any other than this ill-omened gipsy, who terrified him. He was especially alarmed for Livette. He felt that she, and he himself with her, were threatened by some mysterious, obscure disaster; and the thought of being unfaithful to her filled him with dismay, as the beginning of the end. He was afraid of himself; afraid, for Livette, of this unforeseen, inexplicable creature, who rose up before him, challenging him to contend with her, for what?—Thus, malignity and hatred brought the woman to him as love would not have done!—He was bewildered. He simply waited till his rein should be let go, ready to start off at a gallop, feeling no longer in his heart the wrath a man must feel in order to ride down any woman, though she were a witch, and trample her beneath his horse’s feet, at the risk of killing her.

But why was he no longer angry? Because his eyes, against his will, followed every movement of that body with its weird beauty,—the body of an enemy.

“You would like to fly like a coward, would you?” she suddenly cried. “You shall not go until I choose!”

Profiting by the horseman’s open-mouthed stupor, she had seized with her teeth a hanging end of the lasso that was coiled about the horse’s neck, and with the assistance of one hand—the other still holding the rein—had swiftly passed it about the nostrils and tied it in a cruel knot. With a fierce pull upon this instrument of torture, she held the beast fast just where she wished him to be.

“You must wait until your comrades pass!” she said. “They must see a bull-tamer tamed by a woman!”

“Upon my word,” thought Renaud, “that would be, as she says, a very absurd thing!” And he drew his horse back a little, thinking he might release him, but the horse stretched out his head and neck, balked, dropped his tail, and stiffened his four legs, as if he were tied to a wall. The gipsy did not stir. She laughed, showing an unbroken set of small, white, pretty, formidable teeth.

“Take care!” said Renaud at last, “I am going to ride my horse upon you!”

“I defy you to do it!” she replied tranquilly.

She saw with her unerring glance signs of confusion in the drover’s eyes: the charm was working! Through a mist he now gazed upon this woman, whose captive he was, by virtue of a burning curiosity already closely akin to love. She smiled.

This lasted some time. At last, Renaud felt that his wits were leaving him. To remain faithful to Livette, whom he could not betray with the very woman upon whom he had promised to avenge her, he must not dismount from his horse, for as soon as he put his foot to the ground he would have become the stronger of the two! To remain faithful he must have courage to remain vanquished in this struggle of beauty against strength. And he waited.

She surprised the drover glancing for an instant toward the moor.

“Aha! you are afraid some one will see you, coward! but never fear! Every one shall know what has happened to you, all the same. I will take care of that! Some day you shall come and tell me what your pale-faced, white-blooded blonde had to say to it!”

Humiliated at being forced thus to obey a woman, but rendered wavering and weak by the physical delight she caused him to feel, he remained where he was! His horse, as he irritated without maddening him, tried several times to free himself, but without success. Renaud looked on. Slight, supple as a tiger’s whelp, active and strong, and accustomed to contend with horses, the gipsy, still holding the cruel cord in her left hand, had seized the long mane and wound it about her right hand, and when the horse reared, she being thus made fast to him, allowed herself to be raised from the ground, standing erect upon the tips of her rigid toes—or else she would twine her feet about the rider’s leg, clinging to him as the polypus clings, with its tendons to the rock, and laughing always, with a wicked, obstinate, triumphant air.

“You shall never be rid of me again!”

At last, becoming more and more alarmed, he came to have a horror of her, as of a poisonous insect, seen in a dream, a spider or a dragon-fly, that follows you obstinately, or of an adder that conceives a strange, almost human hatred for you, persists in following your footsteps, with unwearying patience, and becomes an object of terror, despite his puny size, because of his supernatural tenacity.

And in very truth the fierce resolution, the malevolent perseverance, the demoniacal obstinacy of the woman, protected as she was by her beauty and her weakness, were terrifying.

But the play of the muscles, causing that gleaming flesh, now moist with perspiration, to throb and undulate, aroused the man’s interest, in spite of everything, and pleased him more and more. Desire awoke in him. And instantly he refused to accept his defeat, and rebelled.

“Look out!” he cried, and he urged his horse forward, driving his spurs into his sides; but the beast, held fast by the nostrils, gave but three leaps and then stopped short, breathing fire. Poor Blanchet, who was used to his young mistress’s caresses and sweetmeats! he was learning now to know woman’s true nature.

At last, the gipsy released her double prey.

“Go! you have looked at me enough!” she suddenly exclaimed.

Renaud gazed at her an instant longer, without speaking or moving. The strength and chaotic character of his temptations held him fast there for another moment. So this extraordinary experience (which would never be repeated!) was ended at last!—Mad thoughts, each clear enough in itself, but confused by their great number, jostled one another in his brain. Why had he not sooner put an end to this conflict? What would people say of him when it was known? How could it be that he, the king of the moor, had not stooped to pick up this joy?—But Livette?—ah, yes! Livette!

He buried his spurs in Blanchet’s flanks, and the beast flew away toward Saintes-Maries.

The gipsy stood on the shore a long while, looking after the fugitive. She smiled. She reviewed in her mind the varying fortunes of the battle, and gauged the extent of her victory. She recalled, one by one, to enjoy them to the full, the thoughts that had passed through her mind when she was wading toward the shore.

She had not premeditated her assault, as she made it—her first idea had been to pick up some stones and throw them at Renaud’s head, being an adept in the art. But she could find none. So she had continued her forward movement, not knowing what she would do, but certain that she must do something to punish the insolent Christian.

But when she felt the cool air blowing upon her bare breast, she had said to herself in her mysterious language, full of cabalistic words and images, that if a saint had been able to recompense a boatman—her good friend—simply by revealing to him her beauty all unclothed, a heathen might, by similar means, chastise a brutal drover; for love is the magician’s herb, the bitter-sweet, the plant with two savors, balm and poison at once; and woman is bitter as the salt sea water, frightful as death,—her hands are chains stronger than iron, and her whole being is as much to be dreaded as an army!

Could not she, brown as she was, almost black beside the white-skinned blondes, domineer over the pale-faced Livette’s lover, if she chose? Indeed, what more need she do, to make him unfaithful to his fair fiancée, than show herself to him, and could she not do it without seeming to intend it? As she had, beyond question, been insulted by this Christian, she could pretend to forget her nudity in her wrath, and thus attack him with that same nudity!—No, no, there was no need of philters, magic incantations, or fires lighted at night when the moon is young, under tripods on which marsh-water, filled with snakes, is boiling—no need of such things to bewitch this fellow! She would come forth from the water, naked and lovely as she was, and the devil, at her command, would do the rest! What were the stones she might throw at a young man, compared with the power that exhaled from herself? Yes, therein lay the charm of charms. She knew it,—being a witch like every other woman! Lust for her body was what she would throw at him like an evil destiny; with that she would poison his life—and then, she would calmly watch the ravages of the poison.

And so she had come forward, small but formidable—the queen! She knew also that in former times, in the days of pagan Europe, an immortal goddess had issued from the sea, had sprung forth, fair and naked, like a marvellous flower, and, standing on the blue waves, her feet resting in a shell of mother-of-pearl, had long held sway over men—before the reign of Jesus Christ.

Renaud, turning in his saddle, saw the gipsy standing there, still naked, waving her arms in the sunlight, as if she wished still, from afar, to hold Livette’s betrothed spellbound and fascinated by her beauty.

The sun disappeared below the horizon, and the naked woman’s figure, even more mysterious in the gathering twilight, was outlined in black against a coppery red sky.

VIII

ON THE BENCH

“Ah! good-evening, Jacques.”

“Good-evening, all.”

“What brings you so late? You have dined, of course?”

“I ate some anchovies at the Saintes——”

“They’re good for nothing but to give you an appetite. Would you like something else? you have only to speak.”

“Thanks, Master Audiffret. I’ll just go and look after Blanchet in the stable and then come back. I won’t go to the jass to-night. I’ll sleep in the hay-loft with the horses.”

Master Audiffret, with his pipe between his lips, rose and followed Renaud as far as the door of the stable, and from there watched him rub down his horse.

“Whenever you please, Master Audiffret, you can take him back for Livette. I don’t find any faults in him; far from it. He is a good horse, and very gentle.”

“He is quiet with you because you tire him out, you see; but she didn’t use him every day, not by any means; I am always afraid for her. If she takes a fancy to ride him sometimes, you can lend him to her, and take the first horse that comes along for yourself. By the way, I hope you will soon have your Cabri again. Somebody saw Rampal yesterday in Crau. He was riding your horse, so he hasn’t sold him, at all events. It’s fair to suppose he means to bring him back to you.”

“Oh! I will go to meet him,” said Jacques, “for as to thinking he will bring him back to me—oh! no; he would have done that before now!—Can you tell me, Audiffret, where Rampal was seen yesterday?”

“Between Tibert’s farm and Icard’s in Crau. Right there, as you know, in the middle of a bog, is a hut you can only get to by a plank walk built on piles and covered by the water—you can only tell where it is, when you know the place, by stakes sticking up at intervals the whole length of the walk. I have an idea he means to go in hiding there, the beggar, like the deserter who went there to pass his time of service——”

“Aha! he has gone to the Conscript’s Hut, has he? Very good; I will go to see him there, never fear!” said Renaud.

Blanchet, having been well rubbed down, was grinding the good lucern between his teeth. Renaud went out of the stable, and with Audiffret sat down beside Livette and the grandmother.

All four kept silence for a long moment. Nothing could be heard but the unceasing, melancholy croaking of the frogs, and beneath it, but indistinguishable, the dull murmuring of the two Rhônes and the sea.

The sky was swarming with innumerable tiny stars, which seemed to answer the various noises of the palpitating moor; and, just as the waters of the Rhône, after it rushes into the blue ocean, pursue their own course for a long while therein, unmingled, without losing their earthy color; so the Milky-Way, made of a dust of stars, pursued its course, easily distinguishable, through the ocean of starry worlds.

Renaud had a feeling of constraint.

When he joined his fiancée, he did not feel all that he ordinarily felt—a joyful impulse to run to meet her, a sort of oppression at the pit of the stomach, a sudden delicious rush of the blood to the throbbing heart!—And Livette, too, so soon, was conscious of a vague inexplicable feeling at the bottom of her heart that something was wrong. There was something between them! Indeed, he had, for the first time, something to conceal from her; and, thinking that it might, that it must be apparent, he suddenly said:

“I am not well to-night.”

“Look out for the fever!” said Audiffret. “I know it is not as frequent or as dangerous as it used to be, but you must be on your guard, all the same! Be on your guard, and take the remedy. Up in the pharmacy of the château are the registers of the time the land was first exploited—the time when the Château d’Avignon people were gaining a little arable land from the swamps every day. Why, men went to the hospital, fifteen, twenty a day. And such doses of quinine, my children! It is all written down in the Livre de Raison up there. In those days, all the farms hereabout had the same kind of a book, called by the same name, just as sailors have a log-book. Those were the days of good order and gallantry. The peasant-women in those days didn’t try to copy Parisian bourgeoises,—eh, grandmamma?—by wearing dresses that didn’t suit them, instead of the old-fashioned gowns that made them attractive because they were so becoming.”

“Yes,” sighed the grandmother, “this is the age of pride, and my time has gone by.”

That is the common remark of all our old peasants.

“People didn’t read so many newspapers in those days,” continued Audiffret, “they didn’t worry so much about the affairs of the whole world, and every man paid much more attention to his own affairs. Things went better for it. Landowners lived on their estates and raised families, instead of going to Paris and dying there, of pride or debt or something else. The Livre de Raison up yonder describes our ancestors’ battles with the swamps and the fever. The pharmacy is still in good order, with the scales and the jars in the pigeon-holes, under the dust. And the book tells everything, diseases and deaths. To-day, hardly any one dies of the fever in our neighborhood. It is dying out. The dikes and canals have done good service, and this Cochin China of France, as that sailor called it that I took to see the Giraud rice-fields, this Camargue of ours is as healthy to-day as Crau!—However, be on your guard, I tell you, and take the remedy! don’t wait till to-morrow; Livette will give you what you need. Now, I am going to bed. Stay up a little longer, young people, if you choose. Are you coming, grandma?”

“No, I’ll stay out a moment longer with the young folks,” said the old woman.

Audiffret knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the corner of the bench, and having put it in his pocket, went up to bed.

Silence reigned upon the bench.

The grandmother was tired and sleepy: every little while she would raise her head as if suddenly awakened,—then it would begin to fall forward again, slowly, slowly——

“A heavy dew is falling,” observed Livette, suddenly.

“Yes, demoiselle.”

“See!” said she ingenuously, holding out her arm so that he could feel the dampness on the sleeve of her dress. But he did not put out his hand. He was not all Livette’s that evening, as usual. Strangely enough, she did not frighten him that evening. He was not, as usual, overcome with diffidence in her presence. She no longer dominated him. And he was angry with himself. He suffered. He realized that his thoughts were more frequently busied with the memory of the day than with his sweetheart, who was sitting so near him.

“What are you thinking about?” said Livette, who had had her eyes upon him for a moment past, as if she could see his face distinctly, although they were sitting in the shadow. Beyond question, she felt that his thoughts were elsewhere. There is nothing more subtle than a lover’s divination.

“I am thinking,” said Renaud, a long minute after the question, “about my horse, which I propose to take back from Rampal to-morrow if he can be found in Camargue or Crau.”

“And then?”

“And then?” he repeated—“I was thinking of the Conscript’s Hut, where he is at this moment, perhaps,—in hiding.”

“And of what else?” Livette insisted.

“Oh! how do I know! of the fever—of all we have just been saying——”

“Alas!” said the maiden, “and not at all of me, Renaud? do you not think of me any more?”

Her voice was sad.

He shuddered, and the movement did not escape the little one’s notice. It seemed to him, as Livette uttered that reproach, that he saw the gipsy again as he had seen her in the afternoon, standing before him, near at hand, all naked and so brown! as if she were accustomed to pass her days naked in the sun, and were tanned from head to foot by his rays. And how lithe and sinewy the wild creature was! A genuine animal, a little Arabian mare, of much finer breed than the Camargue stock. Alas! for too long a time, through fidelity to his fiancée, he had been as virtuous as a girl, and now the hot-blooded fellow’s continence was taking its revenge upon him, a cruel revenge, arousing mad, amorous longings that were not for Livette. And so his very respect for her—poor child!—turned against her!

“Jacques?” said Livette, in the hardly audible tone the sentiment of love imparts to the lover’s voice, a soft, veiled tone, heard by the heart rather than by the ear.

Renaud did not hear her. He saw.—He saw the gipsy as plainly as if she were there before him, even more plainly. In the darkness of the night, her body, brown as before, seemed luminous, like an opaque substance giving forth a pale light. Her naked figure, obscure and bright at the same time, was standing motionless before his eyes—then it moved—and he fancied that he saw the gipsy bathing in the phosphorescent water peculiar to the summer months,—when swimmers cause a cold, liquid light to dart hither and thither through the dark water, following and marking the outlines of their forms, from which it seems to radiate.

“Have I the fever?” he said to himself.

As if in answer to the unspoken question, Livette took his hand. She felt it from wrist to finger-ends, to see if it were dry and hot.

“Yes,” said she, “you must look out; father was right, you have a touch of fever. Come up and find the medicine.”

“Come on,” said he, glad of the diversion.

“Come,” she repeated, “but move softly: grandma has fallen asleep!”

The old lady was asleep, as she said. She was leaning against the wall, perfectly motionless. The white handkerchief, tied in the Arlesian fashion, instead of covering her chignon only, enveloped almost her whole head, allowing two tufts of coarse, white hair, all in disorder, to protrude, like mist, on each side of her face.

She was asleep, her mouth partly open, a ray of light shining through upon her teeth, which were still beautiful.

They left her there.

IX

THE PRAYER

He held the iron lamp, hanging at the end of its hooked stick; and to relieve his conscience, to do his duty as a lover, and perhaps in that way to change the current of his thoughts, perhaps to set at rest the amorous anxiety with which he was assailed,—to force himself to return, heart and soul, to Livette, and, who knows?—so hard to fathom is man with his background of devil!—perhaps, with her and unknown to her, to satisfy to some extent the passion kindled by the other—for all these reasons together, more inextricably mingled than the twigs of the climbing rose-bushes, he said to himself: “I will kiss her!” He had never done that thing,—except in the presence of the old people,—but the Renaud of that evening was not the Renaud of other days, in his feeling for Livette. The powerful leaven of his wild nature was swelling his veins to bursting. In very truth, he had the fever,—at all events, a species of fever. All his nerves were overstrained; in his eyes, even the most indifferent objects wore an unusual look. And in Livette he saw, in spite of himself, reproaching himself bitterly therefor, things which ordinarily he refused to see. And as, being always dressed in the Arlesian fashion, she wore the fichu of white muslin crossed upon her breast so low as to afford a glimpse, beneath the gold chain and cross, of the white throat, above the meeting of the stiff folds, laid neatly one upon another, his passionate gaze fell upon that spot, amid the modest arrangement of muslin, prettily called “the chapel.”

In his left hand was the lamp, which he held shoulder-high, and as far away as possible, to avoid the drops of oil,—and he wound his right arm about Livette’s waist as she placed her hand upon the iron rail.

At every step they climbed, he felt the play of the muscles of his fiancée’s youthful frame, imparting to the arm about her waist a soothing languor that ran through his whole being,—and yet his heart did not rejoice thereat; and he realized that, ordinarily, if the end of the velvet ribbon in Livette’s head-dress touched his face, it caused a sweeter thrill of pleasure in his blood, and more than all else, a pleasure which there was no mistaking. And, thereupon, he grew vexed with himself as for a failure of duty, he was oppressed by a presentiment of disaster, vague but inevitable. And she felt more and more keenly the rebound of his emotions. She was conscious that her peace of mind was endangered. Something certainly was against her. The arm, which had sometimes been about her waist as now, no longer seemed to be her lover’s arm, but a mere ordinary man’s. She suffered, and did not understand. The look she saw in his eyes was a strange look from him, without affection, without pity even. She knew him well, honest Renaud, her promised husband, and yet she was afraid of him as of a stranger!

All these thoughts passed very quickly through their minds, the more quickly because they were simply conscious of them, and did not stop to try to analyze them. The all-powerful human electricity, less known than the other variety, was playing its game, impossible to follow, in their hearts, with its vast net-work of currents and connections. In these two creatures of instinct, the ever-recurring prodigy of love, of natural affinity—of the sympathies and their opposite—was seen once more, as mysterious, as marvellous, as profound as ever. So far as nature is concerned, there are two beings: man and woman; there are no subdivisions. At the basis of humanity, all life is the same, all passion is the same. The student of the higher races labors incessantly to perfect his reasoning and his powers of expression, but there is more overflowing, complicated life in the heart of his ignorant brother than in the heads of the philosophers, who, by dint of self-analysis, have lost the faculty of emotion. They who deem themselves most skilful in discovering the real man in themselves, do not perceive that they pervert the secret impulses of their hearts by keeping too close a watch upon them. The light of their miner’s lamp changes the psychological conditions, just as constant light would modify the physiological condition of human beings and plants. And, meanwhile, love and death repeat, in the eternal darkness of their simple hearts, their unwitnessed miracles.

They had reached the landing on the first floor—as large as an ordinary room. At the last step, Renaud, almost lifting Livette to the landing, tried to draw her to him, but she was seized with an impulse to resist, and he with a sudden impulse to resist himself; separately, the two impulses would have had no effect; but combined, they exerted sufficient force to place an obstacle between them, as if by mutual consent. That force was the witchery at work.

As they did not exchange a word, their embarrassment increased.

Hastily, to escape the constraint each imposed upon the other, she ran to the door at the right and entered. And he, well pleased to be able to do or say something to bring them nearer together, called out:

“Wait for the light, Livette! I am coming.”

But Livette had suddenly remembered the gipsy’s threat. “It is fate,” she said to herself, “I see it now!” And she felt herself grow pale.

Then she had an inspiration.

“Follow me, Renaud.”

They passed through rooms where furniture of the time of the Empire was sleeping beneath its covers, and the long hangings falling from the ceiling in broad, stiff folds, and withered, as it were, by time; rooms seldom visited by the master, but kept in order by Livette and her grandmother.

At last, Renaud and Livette reached an apartment with bare, whitewashed walls, once used as a chapel.

A wooden altar, entirely devoid of fittings and ornament, stood at one end of the room. Before the white and gold door of the tabernacle the sacred stone was missing, leaving a square hole in the wood-work of the altar.

But Livette opened a broad door flush with the wall. It opened into a closet in the wall. When the door was thrown wide open, they could see, below a shelf about level with their heads, chasubles and stoles hanging straight and stiff—with great crosses in heavy gold embroidery—suns from which the dove came forth; and mystic triangles, and Agnus Deis. Among all the others were vestments for use in mourning ceremonies,—black, with bones and executioners’ ladders, hammers and nails, in heavy white embroidery; and—to Livette’s amazement—there, in the centre of a stole, on silk as black as night, was worked a crown of thorns in silver, which, in the lamplight, seemed to emit bright rays.

On the shelf, above all these priestly vestments—which were arranged with the backs outward, hung in such fashion that you seemed to be looking at the priests standing at the altar—on the shelf, between the goblet and the pyx, shone the consecrated host, a radiant sun, mounted upon a pedestal like a candelabrum; and in the centre of its rays was a gleaming circle of plain glass, which also reflected, in fantastic guise, the flame of the lamp.

“Kneel, Renaud!” said Livette. “Prayer is the cure for what is happening to us. Kneel and let us pray!”

The drover obeyed. He understood that Livette’s purpose was to exorcise fate.

She prayed in silence fervently. He, marvelling, unwonted to the attitude of prayer, and striving to keep himself in countenance, looked from time to time at the lamp he held in his hand, raised it to get a better view of the ecclesiastical treasures, and, diverted for the moment, by constant effort, from the perplexity that weighed upon his heart, he was the more wretched when his mind suddenly reverted to Livette.

Thereupon he said to himself that she certainly had guessed the truth; that there was, in fact, a spell upon him, and, in his heart, he implored the merciful God of the Cross, the mystic triangle, the symbolical bird and lamb, to come to his aid.

X

THE TERRACE

Both of them, one after the other, mechanically struck the bell with their foot, as it lay there on its side. It gave forth a short, plaintive note, quickly stifled by contact with the flag-stones. It was like the sigh of a mystery-haunted soul.

With hearts as sad as the bell, they leaned on the stone parapet in presence of the night.

Livette and Renaud loved each other, but affection was no longer enough for him. The sap of the spring-time, boiling in his veins in lustful desire, gave birth, in Livette’s heart, to sweet flowers of reverie.

The swarming of the stars above their heads was beyond comprehension. They were as many as the gadflies and frogs in the desert, or the waves of the sea. They seemed to open and half close, like flowers in a meadow, waved to and fro by a light, quickly-passing breath, like eyelids making signs.

They seemed to have something to say, to move like lips speaking a living language, telling of something of great moment that must be known at once—but no sound coming from them reaches the ears of men, for human hearing is not keen enough. Nor is the human sight keen enough to see that the dust of the Milky-Way (pale as the pollen of flowers) is also made of stars. Though men have seen it with a different sight, afforded by man’s inventive genius, that sight is powerless to pierce farther and deeper—to learn all there is to know.

Moreover,—and Renaud himself had heard the story from the shepherds who pass the winter in Camargue and Crau, and spend their nights in summer counting the stars upon the summits of the Alps,—there are, in space, beyond the skies visible to our eyes, fires alight so far away from us, so far away that their light, now on its way toward our earth, will not reach us for centuries to come. The men who follow us centuries hence will see twinkling stars that even in our day were lighted and making signs we could not see. And in those days ideas, which are already kindled in men’s minds, and are seen to-day by none save those in whom their light is shed, will shine for all, and one of them will be, for every mortal, the love and pity of the world.

Certain it is, that neither Renaud nor Livette could fathom those infinite depths; but from the vast expanse of heaven, swarming with tiny lights, a nameless emotion stole into their hearts, made up of all their hopes to come.

Future worlds, lovelier than this of ours, were dreaming in them, with them.

In them, too, because they were young and human, there was a share in the future. In them, too, was the responsibility for future lives. In them, too, lurked the mystery of generations to be born, for whom a single couple, surviving the wreck of the demolished world, would be enough to bestow upon them the desire to live and the power.

A spark is the basis of all fire. A man and a woman are the basis of all love. Infinity is no greater than the number two. And that is why the great scholars, who figure like Barrême, know no more of life and the heart than Livette and Renaud—who knew nothing at all.

They knew naught save that they were alive and that they wished to love each other and that they sought and shunned each other at the same moment—but they did not ask each other why. They said nothing. They felt. They could not say to each other that rivalry and jealousy, that is to say grief, serve the designs of nature, whose purpose doubtless is, by arousing those emotions, to quicken desire, so that creation may be assured by outbursts of passion, and the future of mankind by the imperious need of pleasure.

What does the law care for the weak and the vanquished? the strong alone, they say, it wishes to perpetuate.

Pity and justice are human inventions, and will never triumph until they have been slowly assimilated by the human mind to the matter of which it is made.

They suffered, they longed for happiness—beneath that mystery-laden spring sky. They awaited the coming of their joy, they summoned their every hope, and they gazed at the dark horizon, at the desert, where the tracts of sand shone like mirrors among the dark reeds, and the ponds glistening with salt between the black lines of tamarisks. They gazed upon the boundless expanse in which they seemed lost, and where, nevertheless, they felt that they alone were an epitome of everything; they listened, without hearing them, to the unending noises of the island,—the murmuring of the water, the rustling of the reeds, the waving foliage, the growling of wandering beasts, the distant roaring of two rolling rivers and a restless sea;—and this combined voice of the whole island formed a fitting accompaniment, by reason of the extent and number of the sounds that composed it, to the silent twinkling of the stars, that no one hears.

There was in the park, invisible to them at that hour, a foreign tree, on which the flowers could be seen, by daylight, opening with a slight noise. They sometimes amused themselves by watching that tree, said to have come from Syria. A slight report, as if muffled, and a tiny cloud, of very powerful odor, would issue from the bursting cell. The tree continued, during the night, to send out its dust of passions in quest of prey, and its strange perfume was wafted upward to the lovers.

They trembled with joy at the slightest contact with each other. Ah! if she could but have given him, on that beautiful May evening, all the love his lusty youth demanded; if he could but have felt her clinging lips melt beneath his burning ones, upon that lofty terrace overlooking the rounded tops of the huge trees in the park, beneath that dark star-spangled sky, doubtless his little betrothed would have remained sole mistress of his heart!

But there were too many obstacles between Livette and Renaud; and as he struggled virtuously to keep away from her, his thoughts flew off to the other.

And Livette was already conscious of the heartache of the deserted lover. All the broad expanse of level country that her eyes knew so well, and that she felt about her in the darkness, suddenly seemed empty to her, a desert in very truth, and thereby to resemble her own heart. And softly, silently, she began to weep,—whereupon one of the great farm dogs, her favorite, who had been seeking her in every direction, came up to her and licked her hand as it hung at her side.

And down yonder, far down above the dark line of the sea, Renaud, meanwhile, fancied that he saw a naked woman’s form emerge from the water, and await his coming, suspended in mid-air, or standing on the surface of the waves.

“Livette! Livette!”

It was the grandmother’s voice calling.

They went down without exchanging a word.

“Good-night, Monsieur Jacques,” said the maiden.

“Good-night, mademoiselle,” Renaud replied.

So they called each other monsieur and mademoiselle that night, and, a moment after they had parted, Renaud took his horse from the stable in perfect silence, and rode away.

His heart did not tell him that Livette, at her window, watched him depart, her eyes filled with tears.

“Where is he going?”

She followed for a moment with her glance the luminous point (the reflection of a star upon the head of the drover’s spear) dancing about in the darkness among the trees like a will-o’-the-wisp,—and when that spark went out, she no longer saw the stars.

XI

THE HIDING-PLACE

Love guided him as he himself guided his horse. He was the rider of his own steed, and at the same time the accursed steed of the passion that impelled him, spurred him on, shouted to him: “Forward!” guided this way and that, without purpose, his mad race across the moor. He, too, was mounted, harassed, bridled, whipped, bit in mouth, raging and powerless. And the horse shared the mad humor of his master, who was under the spell of love, so that Blanchet, wearied though he was by his day’s labor, having had but a very brief rest, was wild with excitement none the less. Fortunately, he knew all the ditches and canals and bogs, and, in his rapid flight with the reins lying on his neck, he chose his own road. Sometimes he would slacken his pace on approaching a ditch, in order to walk down into it, head first, compelling his rider to stand in his great stirrups, with his back touching the croup: sometimes he leaped them at full speed.

Drunken, bareheaded,—his hat having blown away somewhere in the darkness,—the wind whistling through his hair, Renaud rode, for the sake of riding, because the violence of his pace corresponded to the violence of the passions that were raging within him. He tore along as a beast does in the rutting season, from its mad desire to be alone.

And he said to himself that it was abominable to think of the other, when he had for his own that flower of beauty, chastity and sweetness; but he was thirsting for something very different; and he was conscious of an intensely bitter taste in his mouth, a clinging, dry saliva, a moisture that made his thirst the more unbearable.

Powerless to devise a means of escape from all the evil impulses in his heart, he rode on confessing to two longings: either to meet Rampal and take vengeance upon him for everything, or else to fall over backward into a ditch and rise no more, thus giving a different turn to his evil destiny;—and a third longing which he did not admit even to himself: to meet the gipsy at daybreak, begging at the door of some farm.—And then?—He did not know!

Suddenly he thought that he heard a beating of hoofs behind him, the echo of his own gallop; he turned and saw—he saw in very truth!—pursuing him at full speed, the naked gipsy, sitting firmly astride her saddle, man-fashion, upon a shadowy horse whose feet did not touch the ground.

She flew through the air, laughing in mockery as she cried to him:

“Stop, coward!”

He said to himself that it was not real, but he did not say to himself that it was a vision; he thought: “It is witchcraft!” and fear seized upon him, fear as powerful as his desire, and he fled from the image of her he sought.

He turned to look no more; he fled. He heard the double gallop still: his own and the other’s. He rode through the transparent mist that hovered over the damp, salt sand; and as he cut through those crawling clouds it seemed to him as if he were riding through the sky, above the higher clouds. In very truth, his brain was wandering, for love will be obeyed, and his youthful passion was like insanity.

Suddenly Blanchet’s four legs, as he flew over the ground, became motionless and rigid as stakes, and his shoeless feet began to slide over an absolutely smooth surface of clay, hard as iron and as slippery as if it had been soaped. Swiftly the horse slid along, digging furrows with his hoofs upon the polished surface, and when he lost his acquired momentum, he stopped, tried to resume his former pace, raised one foot and fell heavily to the ground, exhausted, his mouth and nostrils breathing despair.

In an instant, Renaud, leaning on his spear, which he had not let go, stood at his horse’s head, struggling to lift him up, and encouraging him with his voice. Blanchet, supported by the rein in his master’s hand, regained his feet after two fruitless slides.

Renaud looked about: there was nothing to be seen save darkness, the desert, the stars,—tatters of pallid mist that strayed hither and thither, as if clinging to a bush, a tamarisk, a clump of rushes,—and assumed, from time to time, the shape of fantastic animals.

Renaud mounted Blanchet once more, but he was moved to pity for him. And the horse, sometimes letting himself slide upon his shoeless feet, his four legs perfectly stiff, sometimes putting one foot before the other, testing the ground, which was firm and hard beneath his weight, but soft beneath his sharp, scaly hoof, carried him at last away from the clayey tract.

Pity and remorse at once were awakened in Renaud’s heart by Livette’s horse.

What right had he, the drover, to ruin the favorite steed of his darling fiancée in the service of his passion for a witch?

So Renaud dismounted, removed Blanchet’s saddle and bridle, and said to him: “Go! do what you will.” Then he cut a bundle of reeds with which he made himself a bed, and lay upon his back, with his saddle under his head and a handkerchief over his face, waiting for dawn.

He fell into a heavy sleep, during which his trouble swelled and burst within him, forced its way out, and took on form and feature.—The same vision constantly returned.

When he awoke, two hours later, he found his cheeks wet with tears and his hands over his face. Then he took pity upon himself, and, having begun to weep in his dream, he let the tears flow freely that he would have forced back had they sought an outlet on the previous day.

He deemed himself a miserable wretch, and wept over his fate, at first madly, convulsively, and then with joy, as if, in weeping, he had poured out all his sorrow forever. He wept to think that he was caught, powerless, between two contrary, irreconcilable things: that he wished for the one, and thirsted, against his will, for the other. He beat his hands upon the ground; he tore his cravat, which strangled him; he ground the reeds with his teeth, and cried aloud like a child,—he, an orphan:

“O God! my mother!”

And he would have wept on for a long while, perhaps, and emptied the springs of bitterness in his heart, had he not suddenly felt a warm caress—two soft, warm, moist caresses upon his cheek, his forehead, his closed eyes.

He half opened his eyelids and saw Blanchet standing beside him, touching his face with his pendant lip as he used to touch Livette’s hand when in search of a bit of sugar.

Another animal had imitated Blanchet; it was the dondaïre, Le Doux, the drover’s favorite, the leader of his drove of wild bulls and cows, whose bell he had not heard, but who had recognized his master.

The compassion of these two dumb animals aggravated Renaud’s bitter grief at first. Like children, who begin to howl as soon as you sympathize with them, he, when he found he was so wretched as to arouse the pity of beasts, cried aloud in his heart, but stifled the cry at his throat; then, touched at the sight of their kindly faces, and distracted thereby from his own thoughts, he became suddenly calm, sat up, put out his hand toward the muzzles of the powerful yet docile creatures, and spoke to them:

“Good fellows, good fellows! oh! yes, good fellows!”

Day began to break. And the great black bull and the white horse, both, as if in answer to the man and in answer likewise to the first gleam of returning day, which sent a thrill of delight over all the plain, stretched out their necks toward the east; and the neighing of the horse arose, loud and shrill as a flourish of trumpets, sustained by the bass of the bull’s bellowing.

Instantly a chorus of neighs and bellows arose on all sides of Renaud. His free drove had passed the night in the neighborhood. He was surrounded by the familiar forms of his own beasts.

They came at the call of Blanchet and Le Doux and the drover’s voice. The mares were white as salt. Some of them came trotting up, some galloping, some followed by their foals; and passed their heads between the reeds, peered curiously in, and stood there,—or else, with a cunning air, set off again, as who should say: “There’s the tamer, let us be off!” And there was a great kicking and flinging of heels away from the man’s side.

Some bulls, thin, nervous black fellows, whipping their sides with their long tails, also came up, took alarm, remembering that they had been punished for some shortcoming, and, turning tail, decamped in the same way, and when they were out of sight, suddenly stopped.

But as the dondaïre remained there, few of the horses and cattle left the spot.

Some, the oldest or the wisest, slowly assumed a kneeling posture, as if to resume their interrupted repose, then, scenting the approaching sun, wound their tongues about the tufts of salt grass, drew them into their mouths and chewed placidly, while the silvery foam fell from their muzzles.

Others, in the same posture, lazily licked their sides. A mother, nursing her calf, watched him with a calm, gentle eye.

Here a stallion drew near a mare, reached her side in two bounds, with tail in air and bristling mane, and bold, sonorous, trumpet-like call—then reared, and when the mare leaped aside, bit at her and with a sudden sidewise movement dodged the kick she aimed at him.

More than one bull, too, paid court to the other sex, rose clumsily on his hind legs, only to fall again on his four feet, with nothing beneath him.

The awakening of the drove was not complete. The animals were still dull and heavy. They were awaiting the coming of the sun.

Renaud approached a half-broken stallion he had sometimes ridden, and threw over his neck the séden he had just coiled for that purpose—Livette’s séden and Blanchet’s, all stained with mud from having brought so many beasts to earth.

He gave sugar to the wild creature, who allowed himself to be saddled without overmuch resistance, desirous, perhaps, to enjoy for a day the abundant supply of hay in the stables of the château, which he had not forgotten.

“Go and rest, old fellow!” said Renaud to Blanchet.

And he set off on his fresh steed, spear in hand, with the idea of seeking Rampal.

The stallion he rode was his favorite, the one he had named Prince. And he felt a thrill of honest satisfaction as he said to himself that at all events Livette’s horse would not have to put up with his whims and follies as a lover any more. He felt highly pleased at that thought, being lightened of a threefold responsibility, as rider, drover, and lover.

Prince seemed disappointed when Renaud compelled him to turn his back on the Château d’Avignon.

He rode in the direction of the cabin mentioned by Audiffret. It was very possible, after all, that Rampal had taken up his quarters there, and he proposed to find out. Now, as this cabin was, as we have seen, not in Camargue, but in Crau, not far from the Icard farm, between nine and ten leagues to the eastward, it was necessary to cross the main stream of the Rhône. But, in that vast plain, men rode long distances for a yes or a no, and thirty or forty kilomètres had no terrors for Renaud.

From his present position, it seemed to him that his shortest road would be to skirt the southern shore of the Vaccarès.

The cool, fresh morning air drove away all his black thoughts, his visions and nightmares; he felt something like tranquillity. Moreover, he was so overdone with weariness that he seemed half-asleep, and the feeling was delicious. He no longer had the strength to follow his thoughts, still less to guide them, so that he was submissive as a blade of grass, as any inanimate thing, to the passing breeze, to the sun’s rays.

The hour and the coloring of the earth and sky were in very truth enough to rejoice the heart, and physical gaiety took possession of him, as he had ceased to reflect.

A fresh breeze, smelling of the sea, sent a shiver over the water and the grass. The sun was rising. A moment more and he would appear to cast his net of gold horizontally over the plain. He appeared. The vague murmurs became distinct sounds; reflection changed to brilliant light, drowsiness to activity.

Renaud, who was galloping along with his spear resting in his stirrup, his head leaning heavily on the arm that held it and his eyes closed, under the influence of the rocking motion of the horse, suddenly reopened them, and looked about with the joyous glance of a king.

He paused a moment to gaze at a huge plough drawn by several horses, which was transforming a wretched stony field into cleared land ready for the vine.

The phylloxera, which has done so much harm in rich and healthy districts, affords Camargue a new opportunity to fight the fever and to gain ground on the swamp. The sand is, in fact, very favorable to the vine and very unfavorable to the parasitic insect, and this watery country will gradually become, please God, a genuine land of the vine!

Renaud watched the ploughman with a feeling of delight at the thought of his native country being enriched by honest toil; and with a confused feeling of regret, too, for he preferred that the moor should remain uncultivated and wild and free. The idea of a flat plain, tilled from end to end, where no room was left for the straying feet of horses as God made them—that idea saddened him.

He would always say to himself as he rode through more civilized regions: “Now there, you know, a man can neither live nor die.”

The fields of wheat or oats, even in the summer season when they have such a lovely reddish tinge, so like the overheated earth, so like the turbid, gleaming waters of the Rhône, had no attraction for him. They gave him the impression of an obstacle that he must ride his horse around, and Renaud did not recognize the respectability of any obstacle—except the sea!

He was more inclined to look favorably upon the vine, because it seemed to him that it was a glorious thing for his country to produce wine, just at the time when other districts in France had exhausted their producing power. And then, the Rhône, the mistral, horses, bulls, and wine, all seemed to him to go together, as things that told of holiday-making, of manly strength and courage and joy. They knew how to drink, never fear, did the men of Saint-Gilles and Arles and Avignon. Renaud had attended wedding-parties more than once on the island of Barthelasse in the middle of the Rhône, opposite Avignon, and there he had tasted a red wine whose color he could still see. It was an old Rhône wine, so they had told him, and he remembered that, being desirous to do honor to the wine as well as to the bride, and being a little exhilarated, he had solemnly thrown his cup into the Rhône after the last bumper. There are, at the bottom of the Rhône, many such cups, dead but not broken, from which joy was quaffed but yesterday. They go gently down, turning over and over, through the water to its sandy bed. There they sleep, covered with sand, and two or three thousand years hence—who knows?—the venerable scholars of that day will discover them, as they are discovering amphoræ of baked earth at Trinquetaille to-day, and now and then beside them a glass urn, wherein all the colors of the rainbow chase one another about as soon as its robe of dust is removed.

Who can say that Renaud’s brittle glass, from which he drank the best wine of his youth, will not remain for ages full of the sand and water of the Rhône, and that—in days to come—other youths will not find therein the same delight? For everything begins anew.

Thus did the wanderer’s thoughts wander from point to point, from vine to glass. Ah! that glass of his, thrown into the Rhône! His mind recurred once more to that memory of a debauch. It seemed to him now, that, by throwing it into the river on the wedding-day, he had foretold his own destiny, and that he, Livette’s fiancé, would never be married! He would drink no more from the discarded glass.

The first impulse of delight that came to him with the newness of the morning had already passed; his sadness had returned as the day lost the charm that attaches to a thing just beginning.

Dreaming thus, Renaud rode across the marshes, Prince splashing through the water up to his thighs.

Yes, my friends, he forgave the vine, did Renaud, for invading Camargue.

Moreover, after the harvest was gathered, did not the red and white vineyards afford excellent pasturage for the bulls? There are some that are all red in the autumn, and others all white, or of a light golden yellow—as if the vines had amused themselves by reproducing the two colors of the wine under the gorgeous sunsets. He has seen nothing who has not seen the beams of the setting sun, in November, now yellow as gold, now red as blood, spreading over a field of red vines, over a field of yellow vines, which themselves spread out as far as the eye can reach. Indeed, is not Camargue the home of the lambrusque? The lambrusque is the wild, Camarguese vine, different from our cultivated vines in that the male and female are on separate plants. The grapes that grow on the female lambrusque make a somewhat tart but pleasant wine, and the shoots of the vine make light, stout staves for the hand.

Arrived at Grand Pâtis, Renaud swam the Rhône three times, from Camargue to Ile Mouton, from Ile Mouton to Ile Saint-Pierre, and from Ile Saint-Pierre to the mainland.

He was now in the swamps of Crau, a stony desert adjoining Camargue, which is a desert of mud.

To the eye these two deserts seem to join hands across the Rhône. From Aigues-Mortes to the pond of Berre is a pretty stretch of flat country, my friends, and the sea-eagle, try as he may, cannot make it less than twenty good leagues in a straight line! And that is the kingdom of King Renaud.

Camargue has its saltwort, its grain and plantains and burdocks, growing in small clumps, with sandy intervals between; it has its gapillons, which are green rushes split into bouquets, with thousands of sharp points finer than needles; and here and there tamarisk-trees; and, on the banks of the two Rhônes, great elms, so often cut and hacked to procure wood to burn, that they resemble huge caterpillars sitting erect upon their tails, their short hair bristling as if in anger.

Crau is a land of naked plains and heather. It is, to tell the truth, a veritable field of stones. They have come, people say, from Mont Blanc, all the stones that now lie sleeping there. The Rhône and the Durance have borne them down, then changed their beds, after having jousted together on the vast space at the foot of the little Alps. From beneath the stones of Crau, in May, there springs a rare, delicate plant, the paturin, or dog’s tooth. The sheep push the stone away with their noses and browse upon the slender stalks while the shepherd stands and dreams in the wind and sun.

But this stony Crau is farther away, beyond the pond of Ligagnou, which skirts the river. Here, in the Crau that lies along the banks of the Rhône, we are in the midst of the marshes, which are dry during the greater part of the year; some of them, however, are very treacherous, and one should know them well.

Renaud rode in a northeasterly direction, and soon reached the neighborhood of the Icard farm.

He drew rein.

“Where is the hiding-place?” he muttered.

And he tried with all his eyes to pierce the thick underbrush of reeds, rushes, cat-tails, sedges, and bull-rushes, springing from the midst of a deep bog. This bog did not seem, to the eye, more formidable than another, but the bulls and mares feared it and carefully avoided it.

On the surface of the water was what looked like a thick crust of mouldy verdure. It was not, however, the leprous formation of duck-weed that lies sleeping on our stagnant ponds. It was a sort of felt-like substance, composed of dead rushes, roots, twined and twisted weeds, which made a solid but movable crust upon the water, swaying beneath the feet that ventured upon it, ready to bear their weight for a moment and ready to give way beneath them.

This crust (the transtaïère) was broken with fissures here and there, through which the water could be seen, dark as night, its surface flecked with transient specks of light, gleaming like a mirror of black glass. Around the edges, at the foot of the scattered tamarisks, grew reeds innumerable in thick clusters, always rustling against one another, and incessantly brushed, with a noise like rustling paper, by the slender wings of the dragon-flies with their monster-like heads.

Many of these canéous bear white flowers streaked with purple. As they rise above one another on the long stalks, you would take them for the flowers of a tall marsh-mallow. These reeds, with their long leaves, remind one of the thyrsi of antiquity, left standing there in the damp earth by bacchantes who have gone to rest somewhere near at hand in the shade of the tamarisks, or to abandon themselves to the centaurs. They make one think, also, of the wand of the fable, which, when planted in the ground, was at once covered with flowers, and thereby had power over marriages.

These thyrsi of the bog are reeds besieged by climbing plants. The convolvulus fastens itself to the reed, twines its arms about it, rises in a spiral course, seeks the sunlight at its summit, and robes the long murmuring stalk in brilliant and harmonious colors.

The sharp leaves of the young reeds stand erect like lance-heads. The older ones break off and fell at right angles. The delicate, graceful foliage of the tamarisks is like a transparent cloud, and their little pink flowers, hanging in clusters that are too heavy for the branches, especially before they open, cause the flexible plumes of the gracefully rounded tree-top to bend in every direction.

Through the reeds and tamarisks Renaud sought to discover the hut that he knew, and that Audiffret had spoken of to him the night before. But he could hardly distinguish the little inclined cross placed at the highest point of the roof of all the Camargue cabins, which are built of joists, boards, grayish mud (tape), and straw. The cabin was formerly entirely visible from the spot where he stood, but the reeds had grown so thickly on the islet on which it was built, that they completely hid it. The path leading to it was on the opposite side of the bog. He must make a wide détour in order to reach it, the bog de la Cabane, so called, being of a very erratic shape.

From the south side of the cabin he went around to the north side. He no longer had the transtaïère in front of him; but beneath the surface of the water, where reeds and thorn-broom flourish, was the gargate, the slime, wherein he who steps foot is quickly buried.

There are many other dangers in these accursed bogs. There are the lorons, a sort of bottomless well found here and there under the water, the location of which must be thoroughly understood. The mares and heifers know them and are clever in avoiding them, but now and then one of them falls in, and now and then a man as well. And he who falls in remains. No time for argument, my man! You are in—adieu!

The drovers will tell you, and it is the truth, that from every loron comes a little twisting column of smoke, by which those mouths of hell can be located. A hundred lorons, a hundred columns of smoke. There, my friends, is something to dream about, is it not, when the malignant fever, bred in the swamps, smites you on the hip?

Renaud was anxious to know if Rampal was occupying the cabin, but not to attack him there, for it is a treacherous spot. “If he is there, he will come out some time or other. I will wait for him on the solid ground. Ah! I see the path!”

It was a winding path hiding under a sheet of shallow water. The bed of the path was of stones, very narrow but very firm, the right edge being marked, as far as the cabin, by stakes at short intervals, just on a level with the water.

Renaud dismounted, and looked for the first stake, holding his horse by the rein. Although he knew its location, it took him some time to find it. With the end of his spear he put aside the grass, and when he discovered the stake, he felt for the solid road whose width it measured. Bending over, he gazed long and very closely at the grasses and the reeds, which met in places above the concealed pathway, and when he rose he was certain that it had not been used for some time.