He was not mistaken. In truth, Rampal was a little suspicious of that hiding-place, which was too well known, he thought, and to which he could easily be traced. He often slept in the neighborhood, ready to take refuge in the cul-de-sac, if it should become necessary, but he preferred, meanwhile, to feel at liberty, with plenty of open space about him.

Renaud remounted Prince, and crossed the Rhône again an hour later.

That night he lay in one of the great cabins which serve as stables—winter jasses—for the droves of mares, in those months when the weather is so bad that the bulls can find no pasturage except by breaking the ice with their horns.

The next day, an hour before noon, he saw before him the church of Saintes-Maries standing out like a lofty ship against the blue background of the sea.

Little black curlews were flying hither and thither around it, mingled with a flock of great sea-gulls with gracefully rounded wings.

A cart was moving slowly over the sandy road.

“Good-day, Renaud.”

“Good-day, Marius. Where are you going?”

“To carry fish to Arles.”

Marius raised the branches which apparently made up his load, but which were simply used to shade a dozen or more baskets and hampers. Well pleased with his freight, he put aside the cloth that was spread over his treasure under the branches. Baskets and hampers were filled to the brim with fish taken in the ponds and the sea. There were mullet and bream, still alive, animated prisms with mouths and gills wide open like bright red marine flowers amid a mass of dark-blue, olive-green, and gleaming gold. There were enormous eels, too, caught for the most part in the canals of Camargue, which are veritable fish-preserves.

The dark-hued, slippery creatures twisted in and out, tying and untying endless slip-knots with their snake-like bodies. By the livid spots upon some of the great eels, Renaud recognized them as murænæ, possessors of voracious mouths, well stocked with sharp teeth.

“See how they all keep moving!” said Marius.

At that moment, as if to justify his words, a great flat fish flapped out of one of the baskets and fell to the ground.

With the end of his three-pronged spear the mounted drover nailed him to the earth to prevent his leaping into the ditch, filled with water, that ran along the road.

“Hallo!” said he in surprise, “isn’t that a cramp-fish. When I spear one of them with my regular fish-spear, which is longer than this three-pronged one, it gives me a shock I didn’t feel at all to-day.”

“That’s because the fish is in the water then, and your spear is damp,” said Marius, laughing. “But let the fellow stay there,” he added. “He isn’t worth much. The snakes will have a feast on him.”

Thereupon, horseman and fisherman went their respective ways.

The drover’s thoughts wandered from the cramp-fish and the murænæ to the electric fish of America, of which old sailors had spoken to him. They had told him that it was charged with electricity like the cramp-fish, but resembled the conger more in shape, and that it could, with its overpowering current, kill a horse; in order to make it exhaust its stock of electricity, so that it can safely be taken, it is customary to send wild horses into the water against it; they receive the first shock, and sometimes die from the effects.

As he rode on toward Saintes-Maries, Renaud mused in a vague way upon the miracles of life, which there is naught to explain.

XII

A SORCERESS

When Renaud left her, at sunset, all naked on the beach, she had slowly stretched her sun-burned arms, taking pleasure in the sense of being naked in the open air, of feeling the caressing breath of the sea-breeze that dried the great drops of water rolling down her body. Then, still slowly, she had dressed herself,—very slowly, in order to postpone as long as possible the renewed subjection to the annoyance of clothes, in order to enjoy unrestricted freedom of movement, like a wild beast.

She had then walked along the beach, leaving the imprint of her bare, well-shaped foot in the sand, covered at intervals by a shallow wave that gradually washed away the mark.

The last kiss of the sea upon her feet, to which a bit of sparkling sand clung, delighted her. She laughed at the water, played with it, avoiding it sometimes with a sudden leap, and sometimes going forward to meet it, teasing it.

She fancied that she could see, in the undulating folds of the wavelets, the tame snakes which she sometimes charmed with the notes of a flute, and which would thereupon come to her and twine about her arms and neck, and which were at that moment waiting for her, lying on their bed of wool at the bottom of their box in her wagon.

She had already ceased to think of Renaud. She was always swayed by the dominating thought of the moment, never feeling regret or remorse for what was past,—having no power of foresight, except by flashes, at such times as passion and self-interest bade her exert it. Her reflection was but momentary, by fits and starts, so to speak; and her depth, her power, the mystery that surrounded her, were due to her having no heart, and, consequently, no conscience.

The men and women who approached her might hope or fear something at her hands, imagine that she had determined upon this or that course, and try to defeat her plan; but she never had any plan, which fact led them astray beforehand.

She routed her enemies and triumphed over them, first of all, by indifference; and then she would abruptly cast aside her indolence, like an animal, at the bidding of a passion or a whim, and would still render naught every means of defence—her attack, her decisions, her clever wiles, being always spontaneous, born of circumstances as they presented themselves.

No: she made no plans beforehand, in cold blood; she never concocted any complicated scheme; but she could, at need, invent one on the spur of the moment and carry it out instantly, at a breath,—or perhaps she would begin to execute it in frantic haste, and abandon it almost immediately from sheer ennui, to think no more of it until the day that some burst of passion should suddenly bring it back to her mind.

She was like a spider spinning its whole web in the twinkling of an eye to catch the fly on the wing; or she would spin the first thread only, and forget it until something happened to remind her to spin a second.

Thus constituted, she was at the same time better and worse than other women, because she was more changeable than the surface of the water,—because she was of the color of the moment.

Being a fatalist, the gipsy said to herself that whatever is to happen, happens, and she had never taken the trouble to devise a scheme of revenge. She would simply utter a threat, knowing well that the terror inspired by a prediction is the first calamity that prepares the way for others, by disturbing the mind and heart and judgment. And then, something always goes wrong in the course of a year, collaborating, so to speak, with the sorcerer, and attributed by the victim to the “evil spell” cast upon him. It is upon him, in reality, because he believes that it is. In short, if opportunity offered, she would assist the mischievous propensities of fate, with a word, a gesture, a trifle—and, if opportunity did offer, it was because it was decreed long ages ago, written in the book of destiny that so it should be!

A true creature of instinct, the gipsy had no other secret than that she had none.

She followed her impulses, satisfied her desire for revenge, her love or her hate, without stopping to consider anything or anybody; and, like the wild beast, she, a human being, became an object of dread to civilized people, as nature itself is. Such creatures are implacable. The gipsy loved life, and lived as animals live, without reflection. It was the paltry yet profound mystery of the sphinx repeated. Her actions were those of a brute, not far removed from the lower types of mankind, notwithstanding her lovely human face, in which the eyes, like Pan’s, not clear, seemed veiled with falsehood because they were veiled to their own sight with their own lack of knowledge, their uncertainty and suspense. Look at the eyes of a goat or a heifer. They are as deep as Bestiality, cunning and strong, cowering in the shadow of the sacred wood. Life longs to live. It is lying in ambush there. It is sure of her and bides its time. The human beast not only has more craft than the fox or tiger, but has the power of speech as well. Nothing is more horrible than words without a conscience.

After all, Zinzara was always sincere, although she never appeared so, because her versatility placed her from moment to moment in contradiction with herself.

The caress and the wound that one received from her in rapid succession did not prove that she had feigned love or hate. She did, in fact, love and hate by turns, from moment to moment, or rather, without loving or hating, she acted in accordance with her own fancy, sincere in her contradictions—and very artlessly withal.

She bore some resemblance to the ape, as it sits among the branches, softly rocking its little one in its arms with an almost human air, then suddenly relaxes its hold and lets its offspring fall, forgotten, to the ground, in order to pluck a fruit that hangs near by.

She was a personage of importance in her own eyes, and she saw nobody but herself at all times and under all circumstances.

The gipsy was formidable, as a spirit concealed in an element whose slave it should be. She had the force of a thunderbolt, of an earthquake, of any fatal occurrence impossible to foresee or to ward off.

The viper is not evil-minded. He does not prepare his own venom. He finds it all prepared. Disturb him, and he bites before he makes up his mind to do it.

Like the cramp-fish or the electric eel, the gipsy could discharge a fatal current of electricity as soon as you approached her,—by virtue of the very necessity of existence. It might happen to her also to indulge in the sport of exerting her malignant power around her, for no reason, simply to watch its effects, because it was her day and her hour, her whim.

She had the same means of defence and amusement.

It was not in her nature to be malignant. It simply was not necessary for her to think of you, that was all. As a matter of fact, a man was fortunate if she did not look at him.

Although born of a race that holds chastity in high esteem, she was not chaste; not that she loved debauchery above everything else, but she used it as a means of domination,—the more unfailing because she made little account of it. Always superior, in her coldness, to the passion she inspired, it was in that more than all else that she really felt herself a queen, a sorceress—aye, a goddess, by favor of the devil! The caress of the water in which she bathed afforded her more pleasure than it afforded others. She was like the female plant of the lambrusque, which is fertilized by the wind.

Like the mares of Camargue, that often assemble on the shore to breathe the fresh sea air,—when she opened her lips to the salty breeze, on those fine May evenings, she was happier than any man’s kiss could make her. The wandering spirit of her race breathed upon her lips, in the air, with the freedom of the boundless waste—a vague hope, vain and unending.

Being thus constituted, she knew that she exercised a disturbing influence upon others, and that she was herself protected by something that relieved her of responsibility. That thought filled her with pride. There was a reflection of that pride in her smile. There was also the constant remembrance of the sensations she had experienced, known to her alone, and a certain number of men, who knew nothing of one another.

Their ignorance, which was her work, also made her smile. And that smile was a mixture of irony and contempt. She knew her own strength and their weakness. So she was always smiling.

With no other policy than this, she reigned over her nomadic tribe, changing her favorite, like a genuine queen, as chance or her own impulses willed, but giving each one of them to believe that he was the only man she had ever really loved, even if he were not her first lover.

To deceive the zingari—that was a notable triumph for a zingara!

Among the fifteen or twenty children in her party, there was a young dauphin, the queen’s offspring; but since he had left her breast, she had bestowed no more care upon him than the bitch bestows upon her puppy some day to become her mate.

When she came near her camping-ground, excited by her recent contact with the waves and the salt, which, as it dried upon her, pressed against her soft, velvety flesh, the gipsy, tingling with warmth in every vein, cast a sidelong glance at one of the male members of the tribe, a young man with a bronzed skin and thin, curly beard.

And, in the darkness,—when they had eaten the soup cooked in the kettle that hung from three stakes in the open air,—the zingaro glided to the zingara’s side.

At that very moment, by her fault, two human beings were suffering in the inmost recesses of their consciences, where Livette and Renaud were gazing at each other with eyes in which there was no look of recognition.

The betrothed lovers, her victims, were struggling under the evil spell cast upon them by her glance, at the moment that that glance seemed to grow tender in response to that with which her lover enveloped her, on the edge of the ditch, beneath the feeble light of the stars.

Renaud at that moment was dreaming that he had seen the naked gipsy again and triumphed over her, and was asking himself, at the memory of that robust, youthful form, if she were not a virgin, even though a child of the high-road; recalling confusedly a strange, overpowering, absolute passion, the triumphal possession of a new being, a heifer hitherto wild and vicious, even to the bulls; of a mare that had never known bit or saddle, and had maintained a rebellious attitude in presence of the stallion.

Renaud was dreaming all that, but Renaud no longer existed for Zinzara.

Zinzara, just at that moment, in the dew-drenched grass, was writhing about like the legendary conger-eel, that comes out of the sea to abandon itself to the labyrinthine caresses of the reptiles on the shore.

Two days Livette waited, wondering what was taking place. Weary at last of seeking without finding, she set out for Saintes-Maries on the morning of the third day.

“There,” she thought, “I may, perhaps, hear some news.”

Her father saddled an honest old horse for her use.

“You must go to Tonin the fisherman’s at noon,” said he, “and eat your bouille-abaisse. Send him word, when you arrive, with a good-day from me.”

Livette, as she rode along, looked about her at the peaceful green fields, joyous and bright in the light that fell from the sky and the light that rose on all sides from the water.

The gnats danced merrily in the sunbeams. When the gnats dance, they furnish the music for the ball with their wings, and on calm days there is a sound like the strumming of a guitar on the golden strings of light over all the plain. There were also in the air long, slender threads,—the “threads of the Virgin,” or gossamer,—come from no one knows where, which waved gently to and fro, as if some of the fragile strings of the invisible instrument on which the little musicians of the air perform, being broken, had become visible, and were floating away at the pleasure of a breath.

It may be that those threads came from a long distance. It may be that the toiling spiders who patiently spun them lived in the forests of the Moors, in Estérel. A breath of air had taken them up very gently, and now they were on their travels.

Livette watched them floating quietly by, and thought of a tale her grandmother had told her. According to the grandmother, the threads came from the cloaks spread to the wind as sails by the three holy women. The wind, as it filled them, had unravelled them a little, very carefully; and the slender threads, taken long ago from the woof of the miraculous cloaks, hover forever above the sands of Camargue, where stands the church of the holy women.—Above the strand they hover night and day, as so many tokens of God’s blessing; but they are rarely visible, and if, by chance, on a fine day, you do see them, it means that some great good fortune is in store for you.

In the transparent azure of the morning sky Livette’s heart clung to each of the passing threads; but the child tried in vain to acquire confidence,—her heart was too heavy to remain long attached to the fleeting things. She was afraid, poor child, and felt influences at work against her that she could not see.

Alas! while the golden threads floated over her head, the black spider was weaving his web somewhere about, to catch her like a fly.

Still musing, Livette rode on, and could distinguish at last, far before her, the swallows and martins soaring above the steeple. They were so far away you would have said they were swarms of gnats. And with the swallows and martins were numberless sea-mews. This host of wings, large and small, now dark as seen from below, now bright and gleaming as seen from above, turned and twirled and gyrated in countless intricate, interlacing circles. Instinct with the spirit of the spring-time and the morning, they were frolicking in the fresh, clear air.

It occurred to Livette to ride by the public spring in quest of news, for it was the hour when the women and maidens of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer go thither to procure their daily supply of water.

As she entered the village, she noticed the gipsy camp at her right hand, but turned her head.

At that moment, she met two women on their way to the spring, walking steadily between the two bars, the ends of which they held in their hands, and from which, exactly in the middle, the water-jug was suspended by its two ears.

“It is just the time for the spring,” said Livette to herself, and she followed them at a foot-pace.

“Good-day, mademoiselle,” the women said as they passed, for the pretty maiden of the Château d’Avignon was known to everybody.

There was as yet no one at the spring. The two women waited, and Livette with them.

“How do you happen to be riding about so early, mademoiselle? Are you looking for some one?”

“I am out for a ride,” said Livette, “and as it’s the time for drawing water, I thought I would stop here a moment. My friends will surely come sooner or later.”

No more was said, and Livette, having nothing else to do, looked closely for the first time at the carved stone escutcheon in the centre of the high arched wall above the spring. It is the town crest, and it is needless to say that it includes a boat, a boat without mast or oars, in which the two Maries—Jacobé and Salomé—are standing.

“I have often wondered,” said Livette, “why they put only the figures of two holy women in the boat. For haven’t our mothers always told us there were three of them? Were there three or not?”

“Certainly there were three, my pretty innocent,” said the older of the two women, “but Sara was the servant, and no honor is due to her.”

“If the third was Saint Sara, then there were not three Marys, eh? But I have always heard it said that the Magdalen was there, and that she went away from here and died at Sainte-Baume.”

“Yes, so she was, and many others besides! Lazarus was in the boat, too, but when they were once on shore, every one went his own way: Magdalen went to Baume, and the two Maries and Sara remained with us. That was when a spring came out of the sand, by the favor of our Lord. When they built the church, they walled in the spring in the centre of it.”

“Faith, they would have done well to leave the spring outside the church!”

“Why so? is the water spoiled by it?”

“It’s only good on the fête-day.”

“After so many years! And there’s so little of it!”

“We ought to have asked the saints to make it pure and abundant. If we had all set about it with our prayers, they would have done it for us.”

“One miracle more or less!”

“The miracles, my dear, are only for strangers.”

“And that is just what we need, neighbor. If it wasn’t so, you see, strangers wouldn’t come any more—and without them what would the country live on? poor we! Where are our harvests? Where are our wheat and our grain, good people, tell me that? If it wasn’t for the saints, this would be a cursed country! One fête-day a year, and the pilgrims—God bless them!—fill our purses for us.”

“Miracle days are only too few and far between. We ought to have two fête-days a year!”

“What are you saying, you foolish woman? Two fête-days a year! Mother of God! That would mean death to pilgrimages. To keep the custom going, everything must be just as it is and nothing change at all. Our men know that well enough. Remember the visit the Archbishop of Aix and those great ladies paid us twenty years ago.”

And once more the story was told of the visit of the Archbishop of Aix to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer twenty or thirty years before.

On a certain 24th of May the archbishop arrived at Saintes-Maries with several elderly ladies of the nobility of Aix. But it so happened that that 24th of May was the evening of the 25th! Anybody may be mistaken!—So that, instead of being lowered at four o’clock, the reliquaries were raised again on that day, and when monseigneur entered the church with his fair companions, it was good-by, saints! They had already been hoisted up at the end of their ropes to the lofty chapel, amid the singing of canticles.

“Oh! well!” said the archbishop to the curé, “they must come down again for us.”

The curé was about to obey, but a rumor of what was going on had already spread through the village!—Ah! bless my soul, what a commotion!

“What!” said the old villagers. “They would lower the reliquaries on some other day than the 24th, would they? Why, if it is such a simple thing and can be done so often, why do you make the poor devils from every corner of Provence and all the rest of the world come hurrying to us on a special day? No, no, it would be the ruin of the country, that is certain!”

To make a long story short, the people of Saintes-Maries took their guns, and under arms, in the church itself, compelled the prince of the Church to respect the sovereign will of the people of the town.

And they did very well, for rarity is the quality by virtue of which miracles retain their value.

One of the women having told this anecdote, which was perfectly well known to them all, they began, as soon as she had finished, to make up for their long silence by loud talk, vying with one another in their approval of the villagers’ revolt against the bishops, who would have abused the good-will of the two Maries.

“We are very lucky, all the same,” said one of the old women, “to have a good well with good stone walls instead of the brackish spring the saints had to get their drinking-water from. I can remember the time when we got our water from the pousaraque (artificial pond), as the people on our farms do to-day. The Rhône water that was brought into them through the canals was always so thick and muddy you could cut it with a knife!”

“Bah! it had time enough to settle in our jars.”

“It is funny, though, to be so hard up for water in such a wet country!” said a young woman who had just arrived. “This water is a nuisance! Saint Sara, the servant, ought to have known from experience that a woman has enough work to do at home without wasting her time waiting in front of closed spigots. Saint Sara, protect us, and make them turn on the water!”

The women began to laugh.

Almost all the housekeepers of Saintes-Maries had assembled by this time. A last group arrived upon the scene. Some carried jars, without handles, upon their heads, balancing them by a graceful swaying of the whole body. With their hands upon their hips, they themselves were not unlike living amphoræ. Others, having one jug upon the head, carried another in each hand—the stout dourgue, with handle and mouth; others had wooden pails, others, glass jars, each having selected a larger or smaller vessel, according to the necessities of her household.

“What sort of a pot have you there, Félicité?”

Whereat there was a general laugh.

She to whom the question was directed, replied:

“I broke my jug, poor me! And, as I had to have some water, I took an old thing I found that has always been standing behind the door at our house since I can remember. If it will hold water, it will do for me to-day, my dear!”

“Take it to monsieur le curé for his library; it’s an antique, and is worth money!”

Félicité had, in fact, come to the spring with a genuine Roman amphora, found in the sandy bed of the Rhône—a jar two thousand years old and hardly chipped!

Each family at Saintes-Maries is entitled to one or two jars of water each day, according to the number of its members.—The water had not begun to flow.

Livette, sitting upon her horse, thoughtful and sad amid the chatter, was still awaiting her friends.

“What were you saying just now?” asked some late comers.

And having been informed, each one of them proceeded to expound her ideas upon the subject of the saints and Sara the bondwoman, paying no heed to what the others were saying—so that the jabbering of the women and girls seemed like a Ramadan of magpies and jays assembled in one of the isolated clumps of pines so often seen in Camargue.

“I would like to know if it’s fair,” cried one of the women, “not to put in Saint Sara’s portrait, too! A saint’s a saint, and where there’s a saint there isn’t any servant!”

“The saints aren’t proud! and Saint Sara cares mighty little whether her picture’s there or not!”

“She may not care, but it was an insult to her!”

“Oh!” said another, “good King René and the Pope knew what they were doing when they arranged things so. Sara was Pontius Pilate’s wife, and she was the one who advised her husband to wash his hands of the heathens’ crime!”

A murmur of reproof ran from mouth to mouth among the gossips.

“Ah! here’s old Rosine, she’ll set us right.”

Motionless upon her horse Livette listened vaguely. She was absent-minded, yet interested.

When old Rosine, who was very deaf, had finally been made to understand what was wanted of her, and that she was expected to give her views concerning Sara the bondwoman, she began:

“Ah! my children, God knows his own, and Sara was a great saint, for sure——”

Here Rosine crossed herself, and was at once imitated by all the old women.

“But,” added Rosine, “Sara was a heathen woman from Egypt, and not a Jewess of Judea; and the heathens, you see, come a long way after the Jews in the world’s esteem. Don’t you see that the Jews are scattered all over the world, but they stay everywhere, and become masters by force of avarice. That is their way of being blessed by their Lord. But the heathens of Egypt, on the contrary, are wanderers and poor, although they are thieves, and more scattered and more accursed than the Jews. Well, you see, my children, Saint Sara is their saint, the saint of the Egyptian heathens! She wasn’t a very good Catholic saint, to pay the boatman for her passage by a sight of her naked body—with the indifference of an old sinner, I fancy! So it is right that she should come after the two Marys, for there are different ranks in heaven. And that is why Saint Sara’s bones are not between the boards of the great shrine in the church, but under the glass of the little shrine in the crypt—or the cellar, you might say. The cellar is a good enough place—under the feet of Christians—for miserable gipsies! And it is right that it should be so.”

“What Rosine says is true!” cried one of the women. “These frequent visits of the gipsies are the ruin of the country. When our pilgrims come, rich and poor, do you suppose they like to find all these scamps, who are so clever at stealing folks’ handkerchiefs and purses, settled here before them? Don’t you suppose that drives people away from us? How many there are who would like to come, but don’t care to compromise themselves by being found in such company!”

“Bah! such nonsense!” said a humpbacked woman; “those who have faith don’t stop half-way for such a small matter! And those who have some troublesome disease and hope to cure it here aren’t afraid of the thieves nor their vermin. Take away my hump, mighty saints, and I will undertake to get rid of my lice and my fleas one by one, without any assistance!”

This speech was greeted by a roar of laughter, which stopped abruptly, as if by enchantment. The little gate to the spring was opened at last, and, at the sound of the water rushing from the pipe, all the women ran to take their places in the line—not without some trifling disputes for precedence.

At last, some of Livette’s girl friends arrived. Spying them at some little distance, she went to meet them.

“What brings Livette here so early, on horseback?” said the women, when she had moved away.

“Why, she’s looking for her rascal of a Renaud, of course!” said the hunchback. “That fellow isn’t used to being tied like a goat to a stake, and the little one will have a hard time to keep him true to her, for all her fine dot!—The other day, Rampal—you know, the drover, a good fellow—saw him at a distance on the beach talking with a gipsy who wasn’t dressed for winter!”

“Not dressed for winter? what do you mean?”

“She wore no furs, nor cloak, nor anything else, poor me! She was taking a bath as God made her. The plain isn’t a safe place for that sort of thing. You think you can’t be seen because you think you can see a long distance yourself, but a tuft of heather is enough for the lizard to hide his two eyes behind while he looks.”

Again the women began to chuckle and laugh, but for a moment only.

Meanwhile, Livette’s friends were saying to her:

“No, we haven’t seen your sweetheart, my dear; but they are already putting the benches in place against the church for the branding, and he can’t fail to be here soon.”

At that moment, a strain of weird music arose not far away. It was produced by a flute, and the notes, softly modulated at first, were abruptly changed to heart-rending shrieks. A strange, dull, monotonous accompaniment seemed to encourage the sick heart, that called for help with piercing cries.

“Hark! there are the gipsies and their devil’s music, Livette. Just go and look—it is such an amusing sight. We will join you in a little while.”

“What about my horse?” said Livette.

“If you haven’t come to stay, there’s a heavy iron bracelet just set into the wall of the church to hold the bars of the enclosure for the branding. Tie your horse to that, and don’t be afraid that he will disappear. Every one will know he’s yours by those pretty letters in copper nails you have had put on your saddle-bow.”

Livette fastened her horse to the ring in the church-wall, and walked in the direction of the gipsy music. It seemed to her that she might probably learn something there.

Now, Zinzara the Egyptian had seen Livette ride into the village, and her music had no other purpose than to attract her, and Renaud, her fiancé, with her, if he were there. Why? to see;—to bring together for an instant, with no fixed purpose, upon the same point of the vast world through which she wandered, two of the personages with whom she “beguiled her time;” to look on at the comedy of life, and to watch the sequel, with the inclination to give an evil turn to it, chance aiding. She loved the anomalies that result from the chaotic jumbling together of circumstances.

Zinzara was turning a kaleidoscope whose field was vast like the horizon of her never-ending travels, and whose bits of glass, multicolored, were living souls.—She turned the wheel to see what calamity destiny, with her assistance, would bring to pass. The amusement of a woman, of a sorceress.

XIII

THE SNAKE-CHARMER

That there are two ends to the ladder is certain. Day is not night, and one does not exist without the other. There are joy and sorrow, health and sickness, happiness and unhappiness, life and death—in a word, good and evil, for the beast of flesh and bone. This is a good man, that a bad. Religion and morals have nothing to do with it, and afford no explanation; but little children know that it is so, and fools know it likewise. They who undertake to reason the thing out learnedly, befog it. They who pull the thread break it. There is some one and there is something. Nothing is null, I tell you, my good friends, and yonder drivelling old idiot, sitting on the stone at the foot of the Calvary before the church, and holding out his hand to Livette, knows two things better than we—good and evil. The idiot, when he passed the gipsies’ wagons in the morning, talked amicably, yes, he talked for some minutes with two or three gaunt dogs chained up under the wagons; but when he saw Zinzara, the queen, fix her eyes upon him, the idiot was afraid and limped away as fast as he could. He was afraid because there was, in Zinzara’s look, something not good.

And now Livette, as she passes by, glances at him, and the idiot—poor human worm—smiles and holds out to her a glass pearl,—a treasure in his eyes,—which he found that morning in the filth of the gutter near by. The pearl glistens. It is bright blue. The idiot sees beauty in it, and offers it to the pretty girl passing by. Livette smiles at him, and he, the drivelling idiot, the cripple who drags himself along the ground, laughs back at Livette. He laughs and feels his man’s heart vaguely opening within him—why?—because of something good in Livette’s eyes.

God is above us, and the devil beneath us. God? what do you mean by God? Kindly humanity, which is above us and toward which we are ascending; the ideal, evolved from ourselves which, by dint of declaring itself and compelling love, will be realized in our children. The devil? what is that? the obscure beast, the ravenous, blind worm, which we were, and from which we are moving farther and farther away.

There is something nearer the mystery than the mind, and that something is the instinct. Certainly we are nearer to our origin than to our end, and instinct almost explains the origin because it is still near at hand, but the mind cannot explain the end because it is still so far away! Whence come we? The crawling beast may suspect.—Whither go we? How can the beast tell, when he cannot fly?

The bond that binds us fast to earth is not cut. Man bears forever the scar of his birth. He has, therefore, always before him evidence of how he is connected with infinity behind him; but how he is connected, by death, with the life everlasting, before him, he does not see.

Instinct, like a glow-worm, lights up the depths from which man comes forth, but intelligence casts no light into the boundless expanse on high, wherein it loses itself, just at the point where God begins.—Ah! how mysterious is God!

Yes, between the intelligence and man’s origin, instinct stretches like a bridge. Between the intelligence and man’s end, there is a yawning chasm. The reason cannot cross it. There is no way but to leap. Man finds it easy to imagine what lies below; his own weight draws him down to a point where he can understand it.

To understand what is above, it is essential to have a power of lightening one’s self, a wing which man has not. Here instinct acts upon the mind in a direction opposed to mental effort.

To some minds this faculty of rising sometimes comes, but man’s conceptions depend upon his experiences, and the time has passed when reliance was placed upon the “wise men,” upon those whose conceptions far outran their experiences. Perhaps it is better so. Perhaps every man ought to form his ideas for himself and no one will know anything for good and all until he has earned the right.

Sometimes, for a moment, especially in dreams, but occasionally in his waking hours, man knows. He has profound intuition; but nothing is more fleeting than this sudden glimpse of eternity.

The best of us are blind men haunted by the memory of a flash of light.

Which of us has not known, by personal experience, how a man can fly away from himself? The sense of mystery, scarcely detected, has escaped us, but who has not been conscious of it for a second?

Truth, like love, reveals itself for a second only, but we must believe in it—forever.

These thoughts are properly presented here, for everything is in everything. One man studies the hyssop, another the oak; Cuvier the mastodon, and Lubbock the ant, but they all arrive at the same point, a point which includes everything.

Do you know why the gipsies, Bohemians, gitanos, zincali, zingari, zigeuners, zinganes, tziganes, romani, romichâl,—all different appellations of the same wandering race,—arouse such intense interest on the part of civilized peoples?

There are two reasons.

The first is, that the gipsy, being very primitive and wild, appears among civilized beings as the image of themselves in the past. It is as if they were our own ghosts.

When we see them among us, we amuse ourselves, in the shelter of our established homes, by thinking regretfully that we no longer have before us the broad plains so dear to the beasts we are; that we are no longer in constant contact with the earth, the plants, the animals, which are the mothers that bore us, and whom we love for that reason. They have remained what we were when we left them, and that touches us.

The second reason is that they really discovered long ago something of the meaning of life.

It is certain that they are magicians. They have seen the hidden spring and have a vague remembrance of it; they have retained its dark reflection in their glance.

The glance! they know its dormant and insinuating power. They know how to subdue weak minds by a glance.

The least skilled in magic among them still believe that the “secret” of things is hidden away somewhere under a stone, and in their travels through every country on earth they often raise heavy boulders, whose peculiar shapes seem to indicate that they may conceal the mystery. They never find under the boulders anything but toads and snakes and scorpions, but they are skilled at making powerful potions from the blood and venom of the reptiles.

They know, also, the secret properties of plants, and that the hemlock and belladonna vary in their effects when cut at certain times of the year and at certain hours, according to the influence of the seasons and the moon’s rays.

The gipsies are skilled in the science of poisons. Men and women—roms and juwas—excel in the art of giving diseases to cattle.

Their trades are only pretexts for calling at the houses they pass. They are coppersmiths simply because the art of subjecting metals to the action of fire was invented by the son of Cain, the progenitor of all accursed mortals. And they are saddlers because they like to be about horses, dear to all vagabonds.

The gipsies, who were originally worshippers of fire, and now have no religion of their own, but always adopt that of the country they are passing through, are to mankind what Lucifer is to the angels.

“We come from Egypt, if you please,” Zinzara would sometimes say to the people of her tribe. “Indeed, that is where we had our homes and were a powerful race in the days of Moses. Then our ancestors were magicians to the kings of Egypt, who overcame death; but our origin is higher and farther away.

“We come from a country where the Secret Power of the World was discovered: a dragon guards the mystery on the summit of a lofty mountain, in a cavern, out of reach of whatever floods may come.

“Our ancestor Çoudra learned from the high-priests the method of compelling the dragon to obey him. He entered the cavern and conceived the idea of universal knowledge, and resolved to avail himself of it in the outside world, in order that he might become a king and mighty among men—for why was he poor? Why does poverty exist, why death?

“He had no sooner conceived his project of justifiable rebellion than the dragon sought to devour him. Our ancestor eluded him, and believed that, by virtue of the secrets he had discovered, he would be omnipotent on earth, but suddenly he found that he had almost forgotten them all, as if by magic. He no longer remembered any of them except those that do harm, those that produce disease, sorrow, misery, and death—all the evils from which he would have liked to free himself.

“And the high-priests cursed him and his sons. Manou spoke against them thus: They shall dwell outside of cities; they shall possess none but broken vessels; they shall have nothing of their own, except it be an ass or a dog. They shall wear the clothes they steal from the dead; their plates shall be broken; their jewels shall be of iron. They shall journey, without rest, from place to place. Every man who is faithful to his duty shall hold himself aloof from them. They shall have no dealings except with one another. And they shall marry only in their own race.

“And the Tchandalas were able to flee the country, but not the sentence.

“And that is our present case.

“The crown of Çoudra is a broken ring—with sharp points, like a dog’s collar, and his sceptre is an iron staff, broken but formidable. For why does want exist, and pain and death? God is wicked!”

With this tale, set to music, the gipsy queen sometimes lulled her son to sleep.

And when, at the entrance to some château, she cast a long, malevolent glance upon a young mother, who, upon catching sight of her, quickly carried her little child within, such thoughts as these would run through Zinzara’s head: “The secrets that are known to our prophets, our dukes and princes and kings, will cause all your cities, your churches, and your thrones to tremble on their foundations, for why does want exist, and pain and death? The hour will come—we await it—when your nations will be scattered to the winds of wrath, unless the wise men who invoked a curse on us become their masters—but you are too far from their wisdom for that! You will be ours.

“Meanwhile, woe to those of you whom we find alone! We look fixedly at them, and the spirit of evil does the rest.”

And this is what little Livette saw when she approached the gipsy camp.

The whole tribe was there. Their numerous wagons were of different sizes, most of them being made in the shape of small oblong houses, with little windows, very like the Noah’s arks made for children in Germany. The gipsies had arranged their wagons side by side, in a line, each one opposite a house in the village. Thus the line of wheeled houses formed with the houses of the village a winding street, which, if prolonged, would have surrounded Saintes-Maries like a girdle. Thus, while their sojourn lasted, the gipsies could cherish the illusion that they were settled there, that they were inhabitants of the village, one dwelling opposite the baker, another opposite the wine-shop; but no one forgot that the gipsy houses were built upon wheels that turn and can make the tour of the world.

“I pity the tree,” says the gipsy, “it looks enviously at me as I pass. It is jealous of my ass’s feet.”

Most of the wagons were patched with boards of many colors, picked up or stolen here and there.

As a matter of fact, the wagons of the tribe were placed in the rear of the village houses, so that the occupants of those houses, the innkeeper or the baker, being busy in the front part of their establishments, could naturally dispense with a too frequent appearance in the gipsy street.

The nomads alone swarmed there undisturbed. They passed but little time in the wagons, except when they were on the road or tired or sick; their days were passed in the open air, squatting in the dust, or on the steps of the little ladders which they lowered from the doors of their wagons to the ground; or else they passed long hours lying in the shade under the wagon—smoking their pipes and dreaming.

For the moment, some of the women here and there through the camp were intent upon the same occupation: searching, in the bright morning light, for vermin among the matted hair of their children, whom they held tightly between their knees as in a vise.

From time to time, one of the little fellows would howl with pain, when his mother inadvertently pulled or tore out one of his wiry, coal-black hairs. Then he would wriggle and squirm to get away, but the vise formed by the knees would nip him again and hold him tight, and there would be a squealing as of sucking pigs loth to be bled. Then blows would rain down and the shrieks redouble. Suddenly the urchin that was howling most lustily would cease, and follow, with a lively interest, the movements of a chicken from some neighboring coop, or the antics of a hunting-dog that had wandered that way and was well worth stealing.

The mothers went through with their matutinal task in an automatic way that said as clearly as possible: “It is of no use to try to do this, for the vermin breed and always will breed; but we must do something. It is always a good thing to be busy; and then it makes an excellent impression, here under the eye of civilized people. They see that we are clean and neat.”

“Buy my dog,” said one of them with a leer to an open-mouthed villager. “You will be well satisfied with his fidelity. He is faithful, I tell you! so faithful that I have been able to sell him four times.—He always comes back!”

All these women had a coppery, sun-burned, almost black skin, and hair of a peculiar, dull charcoal-like black.—Some wore it twisted in a heavy coil on top of the head. Several of the younger women let it hang in long, snake-like locks over their breasts and backs. Their eyes also were a curious shade of black, very bright, like black velvet seen through glass. Life shone but dully in them, without definite expression. Some mothers were attending to their duties with a child on their back, wrapped in a sheet which they wore bandoleer-fashion, with the ends knotted at the shoulder. The little one slept with his head hanging, tossed and shaken by every movement.

Red, orange, and blue were the prevailing colors of their tattered garments, but they were tarnished and faded and almost blotted out by layers of dust and filth;—a smoke-begrimed Orient.

Many of the women had short pipes between their teeth. The men who lay about here and there, with their elbows on the ground, were almost all smoking placidly, their Sylvanus-like eyes fixed on vacancy. They made a great show of pride under their rags. Some were asleep under the rolling cabins.

The line of wagons along the outskirts of the village was still in shadow, but at the head of the line, the first of the wagons, standing a little apart, beyond the line of the houses, was in the sunlight. This wagon, which was painted and kept up better than the others, was Zinzara’s, and a few of the villagers had collected in the sunshine in front of it, attracted by the notes of the flute and tambourine.

Livette, as she approached the group, had no suspicion that, in the wine-shop facing the wagon, behind the curtains of a window on the first floor, Renaud had stationed himself, there, at his ease, to watch the gipsy, who was playing the flute and dancing at the same time, her feet and arms bare.

Zinzara held the flute—a double flute with two reeds diverging slightly—with much grace, and blew upon it with full cheeks, raising and lowering her fingers to suit the requirements of a weird air, sometimes slow, sometimes furiously fast and jerky. Her head was thrown back, so that she appeared more haughty and aggressive than ever.

As she played upon her flute, Zinzara danced—a dance as mysterious as herself. With her bare feet she simply beat time on the ground. Her dance was naught but a play of attitudes, so to speak. She constantly varied the rhythmical undulations of her flexible, vigorous body, whose outline could be traced at every movement beneath the clinging material of her dress. When the movement quickened, she stamped her feet faster, still without moving from where she stood, as if in haste to reach a lover’s rendezvous, where languor would replace activity.

Seated a few steps from the dancer, a young gipsy, with a vague, dreamy expression, was pounding with his fist, thinking of other things the while, upon a large tambourine, to which amulets of divers kinds were attached,—Egyptian beetles, mother-of-pearl shells, finger-rings, and great ear-rings,—which danced up and down as he played.

And the tambourine seemed to say to the double flute:

“Never fear: your mate is watching over you. I am here, father or betrothed, I, your strong-voiced mate, and you can sing freely of your joy and sorrow; no one shall disturb you; I am on the watch, and for you my heart beats in my great, sonorous breast.”

But to the gipsy’s ear the music of the tambourine said something very different; and with a smile upon her lips, blowing into her flute with its diverging reeds, raising and lowering her slender fingers over the holes, Zinzara, exerting a subtle influence over all about her, dressed in soft rags that clung tightly to her form and marked the outlines of her hips and of her breast in turn; displaying her tawny calves beneath her skirts, which were lifted up and tucked into her belt,—Zinzara seemed not to see the spectators.

Twenty or thirty people were looking at her, and still she seemed to be dancing for her own amusement; but her witch’s eye followed, without seeming to do so, the slightest movement of Renaud’s head, the whole of which could be seen at times between the serge curtains with red borders, behind the windows of the wine-shop, under the eaves of the house across the way.

When she saw Livette approach, the dancer beat her feet upon the ground more rapidly, as if annoyed, and the flute emitted a cry, a shrill war-cry, like the sound made by tearing silk quickly.

Livette involuntarily shuddered, but she mingled with the group, momentarily increasing in size, and looked on.

Zinzara made a sign, and uttered some strange, guttural words between two loud notes—words that were, evidently, a precise command, for a gipsy child, who had come to her side a moment before, glided under the wagon, whence he emerged armed with a long white stick, with which he motioned to the spectators to fall back a little. Then he stationed himself in front of Zinzara, in the centre of the first row of spectators, and, turning toward them, enjoined silence upon them by placing his finger on his lips. The word was passed along, and the bystanders ceased their conversation, realizing that something was about to happen.

The dance was at an end.—The tambourine ceased to beat time. The flute alone sang on in Zinzara’s hands, as her fingers moved slowly up and down.—Now it gave forth a thin, clear note, like the prolongation of the sound made by a drop of water falling in a fountain; it was a sweet, insinuating appeal, as melancholy as the croaking of a frog at night, on the shores of a pond, at the bottom of an echoing, rocky valley.

And, with the end of his wand, the child pointed out to one of the spectators something that came crawling out from under the wagon. It was a tiny snake, with red and yellow spots, and it drew near, evidently attracted by the notes of the flute. Another followed, and soon there were several of them—five in all.

When they were in front of the flute-player, between her and the boy with the wand, they raised their heads and waved them back and forth, slowly at first, then more quickly, keeping time with the flute. The serpents danced, and the mind of every spectator involuntarily compared their dance with the woman’s that he had seen a moment before. There was the same undulating movement, the same evil charm, and every one was conscious of an uncomfortable feeling at the sight.

Livette, surprised and strangely moved, thought that she was dreaming. The spectacle before her was curiously, deplorably in accord with the state of her heart. She did not understand its hidden, intimate connection with her own destiny, but she felt its baleful effects. Zinzara’s glance, from time to time, swept over the girl’s face, but did not rest upon it. On the subject of her own influence, Zinzara knew what she knew.

Soft, soft as spun silk, the notes of the flute arose, very soft and prolonged, like threads extending from the instrument and winding about the necks of the little snakes; and the little snakes followed the notes of the flute, which drew them on and on. Zinzara walked backward. The little snakes followed her as if they were held fast by the notes of the flute as by silken threads. The gipsy stopped, and the notes grew shorter, so to speak, like the threads one winds about a bobbin. Then the snakes approached the sorceress, and as Zinzara stooped slowly over them, and put down her hands, still holding the flute, upon which she did not cease to play, the snakes twined themselves about her bare arms. Thence one of them climbed up and wound about her neck, letting his little head, with its wide open mouth and quivering tongue, hang down upon her swelling breast. And when she stood erect again, two others were seen at her ankles, above the rings she wore on her legs. Then she laid aside her flute and began to laugh. Her laugh disclosed her regular, white teeth.

“Now,” said she, “if any one will give me his hand, I will tell his fortune!”

But no hand was put forward to meet hers because of the little snakes.

Zinzara laughed aloud, and her laugh, in very truth, recalled certain notes of her double flute.

At that moment, Livette started to walk away.

“Come, you!” said the gipsy quickly,—“you refused to listen to me once, but to-day you must be very anxious to find out where your lover is, my beauty! Give me your hand without fear, if you are worthy to become the wife of a brave horseman.”

Livette blushed vividly. Her two young friends arrived just then and heard what was said. “Don’t you do it!” said one of them in an undertone, pulling Livette’s skirt from behind; but, Livette, annoyed by the gipsy’s expression, in which she fancied that she could detect a touch of mockery, put out her hand, not without a mental prayer for protection to the sainted Marys. The gipsy took the proffered hand in her own. The snakes put out their forked tongues. Livette was somewhat pale.

They were both very small, the fortune-teller’s hand and the maiden’s.

Renaud looked on from above with all his eyes, greatly surprised and a little disturbed in mind.

The gipsy held Livette’s hand in her own a moment, exulting to feel the palpitations of the bird she was fascinating. She had hoped to intimidate Livette, and the courage the girl displayed annoyed her.

“Your future husband isn’t far away, my beauty,” said she, “but he is not here on your account, never fear! On whose, then? That is for you to guess!”

Livette, already somewhat pale, became as white as a ghost.

“That alone, I fancy, is of interest to you, my pretty sweetheart! Then I’ll say no more to you except this: Beware; the serpent on my left wrist just whispered something to me. Look well to your love!”

A shudder ran through the spectators like a ripple over the surface of a swamp. One of the snakes was, in fact, hissing gently.

The gipsy released Livette’s hand; as the girl turned to go away, she came face to face with Rampal. He had been wandering about the village since early morning, and had just joined the group, unseen by any one, even by Renaud.

Livette recoiled instinctively and in such a marked way that Rampal might well have taken it for an affront. Unfortunately, having left the front row, she was hemmed in by the crowd on all sides of her.

“Oho! young lady,” said Rampal, “so we don’t recognize our friends!”

“Good-day, good-day, Rampal,” replied Livette, repeating the salutation as the custom is in the province; “but let me pass! Make room for me, I say!”

“Sur le pont d’Avignon,” sang the gipsy, with a laugh, “tout le monde paye passage!”[2]

Renaud, still behind his window, had at last recognized Rampal. Fuming with rage, but naturally wary, he considered whether he should rush down at once and attack him or wait until Livette had gone.

Rampal did not always need a pretext to kiss a pretty girl,—but here was one ready-made for him!

“Do you hear, demoiselle?” said he. “You must pay the tollman of your own accord, or else he will pay himself!”

He threw both arms about the poor child’s waist. She bent back, holding her body and her head as far away from him as possible, but the rascal, hot of breath, holding her firmly and forcing her a little closer, kissed her twice full upon the lips.

A fierce oath was uttered behind them in the air. Everybody turned, and, looking up, discovered Renaud shaking the old-fashioned window, which was reluctant to be opened. Two more wrenches and the window yielded, flew suddenly open with a great noise of breaking glass, and Renaud, standing on the sill, leaped to the ground.

“Ah! the beggar! the beggar! where is the vile cur?”

But Rampal had already leaped upon his horse that was hitched near by to the bars of a low window, and was off at a gallop.

He rode as if he were riding a race, half-standing in his stirrups, his body bent forward, and plying incessantly and very rapidly a thong that was made fast to his wrist, and that drove his horse wild by the way it whistled about his ears.

“Coward! coward!” one of the young men present could not refrain from shouting after him.

“Coward? oh! no!” said Renaud—“simply a thief! for if he weren’t riding a horse he never intends to return, the fellow wouldn’t run away—I know him!”

He turned to poor, frightened Livette.

“Never fear, demoiselle,” said he, “he shall not carry our horse to paradise with him.”

Was it Renaud’s purpose, in saying this, to make the gipsy think that he was bent upon taking vengeance for the theft of his horse rather than for the insult put upon his fiancée? Perhaps so; but the devil is so cunning that Renaud himself had no idea that he was capable of such craft.

As to the gipsy, she said to herself that Renaud, by jumping out of the window, instead of coming quietly down the stairs, had compromised his prospects of revenge for the satisfaction of exhibiting his gipsy-like agility to her. He did, in truth, jump like a wild cat, and rebound as if he were equipped with elastic paws! He was as agile as a true zingaro! He was as handsome and bold as a highwayman! They are gipsies, to all intents, these wandering guardians of mares and heifers!

Renaud, who had disappeared long enough to buckle his horse’s girth, rode by in a few moments upon Prince; the witnesses of the scene just enacted were still discussing it.

“Catch him! catch him! eat him, King!” cried twenty young men’s voices in chorus.

“With the King and the Prince arrayed against him, Rampal is a dead man,” some one remarked, with a laugh.

Renaud was already at a distance. He had not looked at the gipsy, but he felt that her eyes were upon him, and he felt now that they were following him from afar; and the feeling caused a pleasurable thrill, of which he was conscious, and for which he reproved himself vaguely on Livette’s account, but without seeking to repress it. Yes, as he galloped along in his wrath, he galloped in a particular way in order that his wrath might show to good advantage, so that he might appear a handsome and graceful horseman, as he was in fact. He was conscious of every movement that he made—he fancied that he could see himself, and was desirous to make a good appearance, he, the King!

The peacock, in the mating season, has more gorgeous plumage, and makes the greatest possible display of it. The nightingale and the redbreast have sweeter voices. All alike take pleasure in so arraying themselves as to give pleasure.

“Where are you going, Livette?” her two friends asked her.

“I am going to see monsieur le curé. I must have a talk with him, poor me! for it was a great sin to listen to that sorceress, you know!”