In this vast, flat region, the mind and the eye fall into the habit of looking always to the horizon, embracing as much space as possible in the hope of finding some inequality.

But they cannot escape the unchanging monotony, even less varied than the monotony of the sea, for the sea changes color, and is by turns black, blue, pale-green, dark-purple, or golden.

In our desert there are everywhere the same tamarisks, the same reeds, and—round about the six thousand hectares covered by the waters of the Vaccarès—always the same horizon lines, nowhere absolutely unbroken, but almost everywhere festooned with clumps of tamarisks; the mirage will always show you a pond gleaming in some spot of the plain where none is to be found; and the fisherman, walking along the shore, increases enormously in size as he recedes, because of the refraction.

Sometimes the month of May is as hot in Camargue as August.

Livette was dazzled by the glare, and lowered her eyes to scan, with her keen glance, the most distant clumps of tamarisks, to follow the almost invisible ribbon of the cart-road that leads from the Vaccarès to Saintes-Maries. Her eyes are tired, and scorching in her head. There is nothing in the landscape to give them rest.

Everywhere the treeless soil exhales a burning breath that rises in visible vibrations. The spirit of the earth breaks its bonds and hovers over her. She can see it ascending in hot waves. Her eyes perceive the transparent undulations, the heat trembling in the cool air, the very soul of the interior fire that trembles so to the sight that one fancies he can hear it rustle. It is the never-ceasing dance of the reflected light.

Weary of the glare of the plain, Livette turned toward the sea, but the sea was simply an immense burnished mirror which flashed back at the eyes, from the countless facets of its swiftly moving fragments, the glow of the blazing sky multiplied beyond expression.

When she looked down once more upon the plain, she saw, about a league away, a horseman trotting briskly toward the Saintes-Maries. By an indefinable something in the bearing of that tiny speck she recognized her Renaud.

So no harm had come to him!

She was on the point of going down again, when suddenly she forced herself to bide a little there, to see what he would do when he arrived.

He was already passing the public spring. He turned to the left, and disappeared for a moment behind the houses. He was coming toward the church.

From embrasure to embrasure she ran, to follow him with her eyes; and in a few seconds he rode out into the square in front of the church, at the foot of the Calvary erected there.

She leaned over and watched him. Where was he going? He had stopped. His tired horse was standing quite still, simply moving his long tail from side to side to drive away the gnats and gadflies that were riddling his bleeding flanks with wounds, for, after the mistral, the gadflies dance! And then? Nothing. Absolute silence in the vast glowing expanse. Livette instinctively noticed that the horse’s dark shadow, clearly marked upon the ground, was already elongated, indicating that it was four o’clock.

She continued to question herself as to Renaud’s attitude—what was he doing there, standing still like that?—when suddenly the sound of a woman’s voice singing floated up to her ears.

In the perfect silence, that voice, clear as a bell, poured forth outlandish words that neither Renaud nor Livette could understand.

The zingara sang:

“Allow the romichâl, the tzigane, to pass. He is the spectre of a true king. Kingly is his tattered cloak. A saddle is his throne. Is the whole earth thy kingdom, Romichâl?

“At Bœrenthal they speak the language of the Zend. Oh! the Çoudra would become pope! Thinkst thou it was the evil-doer who invented evil? Nay, nay; put not thy trust in God, and remain free, Romichâl!

“The Rhine, too, is a Nile. And the Rhône likewise. But thy mare prefers to drink in the river of Châl! The Nile alone can make thy hope neigh aloud, O Romichâl!”

With her eye, like a migratory bird’s, Zinzara had long before spied Livette perched up aloft between the crenelles of the church-roof, and, seeing Renaud riding toward her, she, in joyous mood as always, had begun to sing, from mere caprice and bravado, within the circle of the echo of the lofty walls.

Like the serpents at the sound of her flute, Renaud was fascinated. The gipsy suspected as much.

And when she had finished her song she showed herself.

“Surely thou hast killed thy foe, romi?” she said. “But how is it that I do not see his heart at the point of thy spear? Thy maiden whose blood is like snow will ask thee for it ere long. Ah! that was a kiss well avenged—for a Christian! For if thy foe still sat in his saddle, thou wouldst not be in thine, I suppose? Listen, then, my beauty—although it be, in very truth, a crime for us zingari women to deem a Christian fair to look upon, I must tell thee, none the less: On the honor of a queen, romi, thou art handsome as a son of my own race, brave as a highwayman, as fine a horseman as the best of us, proud as a free man! I regret neither my anger of the other day, nor my song of a moment ago, nor the compliment I pay thee now: for I never do aught save that which pleases me! and my very anger does me better service than reflection! Adieu, romi, may thy God guard thee, if He knows me!”

Livette had heard nothing but the sharp, incisive tone in which the gipsy spoke; she could not distinguish her words.

But as Zinzara went away, she took good care, before she disappeared at the corner of the square, to send a kiss to the drover with her finger-tips—a kiss which seemed to him, because he could see her smile, a bit of raillery, but which was in Livette’s eyes a token of requited love. Renaud thereupon admitted to himself that he had returned to Saintes-Maries in quest of nothing else than this compliment from the gipsy—something that drew him nearer to the seductive creature!

XVII

THE OLD WOMAN

He believed that he had finally formed, in spite of everything, a fairly accurate estimate of the gipsy’s character—a fact that pleased him. He had simply said to himself that she was an uncivilized creature, since she could forget all shame of her nakedness in her haste to punish as best she could a man she deemed overbold. From her very immodesty, from the arrogance and malignity she had exhibited at their first meeting, he had, strangely enough, evolved a proof of chastity so sure of itself, so disdainful of peril, that the shameless creature seemed to him only the more desirable.

He knew that the gipsy women esteem thieves, but not prostitutes, and he had enjoyed seeing in Zinzara a sort of savage virgin, ferocious as a wild beast of the Orient, over whom he, the tamer of beasts, would be the first to enjoy the pride of triumph. And, lo! she suddenly aroused in him a feeling of repulsion which he could not explain. Simply because he had heard her pronounce a few words, of obscure meaning, like all gipsy words, and threatening in tone as he ought to expect,—more amiable, in point of fact, than he had any right to hope,—he believed her, as if it had been revealed to him in a dream, capable of anything, a wicked woman! He felt that the devil was in her.

He had no precise knowledge as to her age. Was she seventeen or twenty-five? The swarthy tint of her impassive yet smiling face told nothing, hid blushes and pallor alike.

Her face was extremely young, and its expression was of no age. Renaud had undergone the inexplicable fascination of that face, whereon the malignity born of a woman’s experience of the world, false for the sake of omnipotence, was mingled with something child-like.

Stronger men than he would have been caught in the snare. Neither king nor priest could have escaped the evil fascination of the gitana! She would have had but to will. The very things that repelled one were attractive!

So Renaud was caught, and his manner showed it. Sitting upon his tired horse, upon the stallion whose fiery nature was subdued by so much hard riding in all directions, and who carried his head less high, the drover, supporting the head of his spear upon his stirrup while the handle rested against his arm, seemed like a vanquished king, humiliated by the feeling that he was a prisoner in the free air.

He found Bernard at the Ménage, in the huge room on the lower floor, like those in all the farm-houses of the province, with the high mantelpiece, the long massive table in the centre, the kneading-trough of well-waxed walnut, the carved bread-cupboard with little columns, fastened to the wall like a cage, and the shining copper pans. Upon the whitewashed wall a few colored pictures were hanging: the Saintes-Maries in their boat; Napoléon I. on the Bridge of Arcola, and Geneviève de Brabant, with the roe, in the depths of a forest.

An old shepherd was seated at the table, beside Bernard, slowly eating his slice of bread.

“Is it you, king?” said he as Renaud entered. “I have seen you hold your head higher! What’s the matter with you? you look downhearted. Aren’t you still a cattle-herder, my boy? A shepherd’s virtue, young man, is patience, remember that. What you can’t find in a day you may find in a hundred years.”

“Ah! there you are, Sigaud, eh?” Renaud replied, without answering his questions. “When do you start for the Alps?”

“Right away, my son. We are behindhand this year. I am just getting ready.”

Nothing more was said. When they had eaten in silence their bread and sheep’s-milk cheese, and drunk a cup of sour wine made from the wild grape, they rose.

The shepherd threw his cloak over his arm, took his staff from a corner, and having doffed his broad-brimmed hat before an old image of the Nativity, that hung on the wall, embellished with a branch laden with cocoons, and beneath which, on a carved oak stand, stood a little lamp, long unlighted, he went slowly from the room.

When Renaud, mounted upon Prince and leading Blanchet, left the Ménage, he rode some time with the shepherds, by the side of the enormous flock on their way to the Alps, where they were to pass the summer season.

Two thousand sheep, led by the rams, and arranged in battalions and companies, under the care of several shepherds of whom old Sigaud was the chief, were trotting along the road with hanging heads, making with their eight thousand feet a dull, smothered pattering, as of falling hailstones, in the dense clouds of dust. The Labry dogs ran to and fro along the edges of the flock, full of business, but frequently turning their eyes toward their master.

A few asses scattered among the different companies bore upon their backs, jolting about in double wicker-baskets, the sleepy, bleating lambs.

Old Sigaud was in high feather, thinking of the cool, fresh air of the Alps, where the grass is green and the water pure, and where he could gaze in peace every night at Cassiopeia’s Chair and the Three Kings and the Pleiades in the heavens studded with myriads of stars.

“Adieu, Sigaud,” said Renaud, drawing rein when the time came for him to part from the flock and its guardians.

Sigaud also stopped in front of him.

“Adieu, Renaud,” said he gravely. “There must be a woman at the bottom of your trouble. You are too sad. But we called you King to do honor to your courage, you mustn’t forget that. Remember, too, that everything is of some use, my boy, and that good may come out of evil. It takes all kinds to make the world!”

Renaud found Livette sitting on the stone bench in front of the door of the château. He had not leaped down from Prince before she was covering Blanchet with kisses. Audiffret was very glad to learn that the stolen horse had returned to the drove, but when Renaud explained that he had come, on this occasion, to return Blanchet, Livette showed some feeling.

“So you are not satisfied with what he has done for you?” said she. “Such a pretty horse! and so clever!—or perhaps you are tired of teaching him for me, of preventing him from learning bad tricks in the stable, of training him so that I can have the pleasure of seeing him return a winner from the races at Béziers, where my father is anxious to send him next month?”

“Certainly, Renaud,” said Audiffret, “you ought to keep him. He gets rusty here in the stable. But I am surprised at what Livette says. Why, would you believe that she was regretting him this very morning, saying that she proposed to ask you to bring him back to-day. And now she doesn’t want him!—It takes a very shrewd man to understand these girls!”

But what Audiffret could not understand, Renaud, for his part, understood very well. The lovelorn damsel said to herself that, by returning the horse, her fiancé would rid himself of a reminder of her, which was a cause of remorse to him perhaps—whereas, he ought, like a jealous lover, to have wanted to look after Blanchet, and take care of him for her, as long as possible.

Renaud resisted as best he could. He would have a deal of hard riding to do at the time of the fêtes, he said, and he did not want to overwork Blanchet or to leave him with the drove to become wild again.

Thereupon, Audiffret, easily influenced by the last who spoke, agreed with Renaud.

While the discussion was in progress, Renaud had put up both horses in the stable. That done, he went slowly up to the hay-loft, whence he threw down an armful of hay into the racks through the openings in the floor.

When he went down again, Blanchet was standing alone in front of the mangers, nibbling at the hay.—Renaud ran to the door. Livette, having removed Prince’s halter, was shouting at him and waving her pretty arms to drive him away, naked and free. Honest Audiffret, delighted at his daughter’s cunning, laughed and laughed. And Prince, overjoyed to return to the desert after these few days of slavery, thinking no more of the oats to be had at the château, stood erect like a goat, neighed shrilly with delight, shook his luxuriant mane, flung up his tail and thrashed the air, alive with the flies he had driven from his flanks—and darted away toward the horizon through the lane between the trees in the park.

Renaud had no choice but to submit with an affectation of gratitude, and to laugh with the rest;—but it was more distasteful to him than ever to ride a horse that belonged to him less than any other in the drove, a horse that was his fiancée’s.

Thereupon, Audiffret went about his various tasks; and, two hours later, when they were all assembled in the lower room of the farm-house, Renaud, being suddenly seized with ennui at the thought that he was likely at any moment to have to endure an embarrassing tête-à-tête with this same Livette whose company he had so ardently desired a few days before, spoke of taking his leave. Audiffret remonstrated, and invited him to supper. They would drink a glass in honor of his victory. Renaud refused awkwardly, conscious how lacking in courtesy such an utterly motiveless refusal was.

But when the grandmother, who hardly ever spoke, urged him to stay, he stayed.

The old woman rarely spoke, for her thoughts were always with the dead and gone grandfather, who had been the faithful companion of her toilsome life. She was slowly drying up, like wood that is sound in all its fibres, but has lost its sap. Hers was a lovely old age, such as are seen in the land of the grasshopper, where people live sober lives, preserved by the light. Already advanced in years when she came to Camargue, she had never suffered from the malevolence of the swamps. It was too late. The cypress-tree does not allow the worms to draw their lines upon its surface.

She was patiently awaiting death, sometimes mumbling paters upon her rosary of olive-nuts, gazing fearlessly, with her dimmed eyes, straight before her at the vague shadow wherein her departed old man, her good, faithful Tiennet, was waiting for her;—Tiennet, who had never, in forty years, caused her a pang, and whom she had never wronged by a smile, even in the days of her gayest youth. Tiennet, from the depths of the shadow, sometimes called to her softly, and then the old woman would be heard to murmur, in a dreamy voice: “I am coming, good man! I am coming!”

Being left alone for a moment with Livette, just before supper, Renaud did not know what to say. Nor did she. He did not dare to lie, and she hoped that he would open his heart and confess. At one moment, she felt that the very fact of his silence was sufficient proof of his treachery, and the next moment, on the contrary, she said to herself: “If there was an understanding between them, he would not be here! I was mad! He loves me.”

At supper, he was very talkative, told about his battles and his hunting exploits; how, the year before, with that rascal of a Rampal, he had beaten up two coveys of partridges, on horseback, in a single morning. They had taken twenty-eight, more than twenty being killed on the wing at a single casting of their staves, Arab-fashion.

Audiffret, overjoyed at the recovery of a horse he had thought lost forever, drew from under the woodpile an old-fashioned bottle, a gift from the masters, those masters who are always absent—like all the landowners of Camargue, who prefer to dwell in cities,—Paris, Marseilles, or Montpellier,—leaving the desert to their bailiffs.

“Ah! the masters in old times!” said Audiffret, “they had more courage and were better served and better loved!” Renaud, becoming more and more animated, stood up for the times we live in. The grandmother, grave and serious as always, said once to Audiffret at table, speaking of Renaud: “Wait upon your son, my son.” Well, well, he was decidedly one of the family.

And that certainty, which it behooved him to retain at any price, instead of moving his heart to gratitude, led him on to play the hypocrite. He was ready to betray Livette, without renouncing her, for he loved her so dearly, so sincerely, that he felt that he was ready, on the other hand, to renounce the gitana, without too great a pang, if circumstances should make it necessary. He laughed a great deal, raising his glass with great frequency, and winking involuntarily at Audiffret, as if to say: “We are sly fellows!” But honest Audiffret could not detect his excitement. He had never interested himself in anything except the farm accounts. He had never divined anything in all his life, not he!—As far as the gipsy was concerned, she certainly would not leave Saintes-Maries before the fête, that is to say, for a week or more. After that, she could go where she chose! it would make little difference to him. What could he hope for from a wandering creature like that? An hour’s meeting at the cross-roads on the way to Arles! Nothing more!

As to Zinzara, he had hopes; as to Livette, he had certainty. And he was very light of heart.

So it was, that, when the time came for him to take his leave, he indulged in an outburst of affection toward his new family, quite contrary to his usual habit, and to the habit of all drovers, who are rough-mannered by profession.

You must know that the peasants, in general, do not kiss except on great occasions—weddings or baptisms. Only the mothers kiss their young children. The man of the soil is of stern mould.

“Audiffret,” the grandmother suddenly said to her son, laying her knitting on the table and her spectacles on her knitting;—“Audiffret, every day brings me a little nearer the end, and I would like to see this marriage take place before I die. You must hurry it as much as possible, now that it’s decided on. And if I can’t be present on the wedding-day, don’t forget, my children, that the old woman blessed you from the bottom of her heart to-night.”

And, without another word, she calmly took up the stockings and needles.

She had spoken almost without inflection, in a grave, calm tone, moving her lips only.

Every one was deeply moved. Livette looked at Renaud. He, carried away by his emotion, forgot everything except this new family that offered itself to him, the orphan. Livette saw it and was grateful to him for it. She felt that he was won back, like the stolen horse, and she sprang to her feet in a burst of enthusiasm.

“Kiss me, my betrothed!” said she proudly.

He kissed her with heartfelt sincerity.

The father and the grandmother looked on with eyes that gradually became dim with tears.

When he had pressed the father’s hand, Renaud turned to the grandmother, as she stuck her knitting-needle into the white hair that fluttered about her temples.

“Kiss me, grandmother!” he said, with a smile.

The old woman gave a leap, then stood erect, recoiling a little as if in fear:

“Since my husband died, no man has ever kissed me,” she said, “not even my son there! Let young people kiss. Life is before them. I,” she added, “am already with the dead.”

And with that, the old peasant-woman, straight and stiff and withered,—the image of a by-gone time, when it was deemed a praiseworthy thing to remain true to a single sentiment,—sought the bed of her old age, which was soon to see her lying dead, with the tranquillity of a simple, loving, faithful heart upon her parchment-like face.

XVIII

THE BLESSED RELICS

Around the little town, the hundreds of vehicles constitute a roving town of their own, resting there like a flock of birds of passage around a swamp.

And on all sides naught can be seen but tattered, crippled, hunchbacked, deformed, blind, or one-eyed creatures, broken in health, lame, maimed, scrofulous, and paralytic, dragging themselves along or dragged by others, carried in men’s arms or on litters, some with bandages over their faces, others displaying unhealed wounds from which one turns aside in horror.

Here a poor fellow who has been bitten by a mad dog wanders about with gloomy brow, tormented by insane anxiety and hope, for a pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries is especially efficacious against hydrophobia.

All varieties of misfortune are represented. All the children of Job and Tobias have journeyed hither to find the healing angel and the miraculous fish.

A motley crowd swarms upon the public square in the bright sunlight, and in the narrow streets, under the luminous shadow of the awnings. From time to time, it parts, with loud shouts, before a drover, who rides proudly by, his sweetheart en croupe with her arms about his waist.

Here and there flat baskets laden with rosaries, sacred images, Catalan knives, and handkerchiefs of brilliant hue stand out like islets in the midst of the sea of promenaders, and all the merchandise displayed for sale takes on a pink or pale-blue tint through the great stationary umbrellas that shield it from the sun.

Amid the fantastic piercing notes of a galoubet, or high-pitched flute, tambourines can be heard humming in cadence in the interior of a wine-shop, where young girls of the province are dancing in Provençal costume, dark-skinned girls with white teeth beneath their sensuous lips; very like Moors they are, the descendants of some Saracen pirate who ravaged the Ligurian shore.

The town is flooded with joyous light. Everybody is in his Sunday dress. Upon the fever-haunted strand, whither a whole people flocks to pray to the Saintes Maries for bodily health, that joyous sun is dangerous. The whole scene has the appearance of a hospital ball, a fête given by dying men. The devil wields the bâton, it may be. One would think it, to see the faces of the gipsies, whose expression, notwithstanding certain cunning leers, is and remains undecipherable.

In the church with the black, dirt-begrimed walls, filled with a fetid odor by such an accumulation of misery, diseased flesh, and perspiring humanity, the people crowd about the iron balustrade of the little well, as if it were the Fountain of Youth. The poor, green, dilapidated pitcher humbly descends at the end of its cord to bring up from the sand below brackish water that to-day seems sweet.

Keep faith with them, O saints!—Faith gives what one wishes.

They are waiting for four o’clock, the hour at which the relics descend.

At four o’clock precisely, the shutter of the high window up yonder, under the ogive arch of the nave, will open. The relics will come down toward the outstretched arms. The little children will be lifted up toward them. The dead arms of the paralytics will be raised toward them. The blind will turn toward them their sightless eyes, or their empty, blood-stained orbits.

Meanwhile, Livette, who is standing there in the centre of the crowd, directly in front of the altar, facing the grated door through which you go down into the crypt, is preparing to sing the solo of invocation. Her fresh, pure voice is to be the voice of all these wretched creatures, crushed under the weight of impurity and disease.

Just below the high altar, which is studded with tapers, the gipsies are huddled together in their crypt, with tapers in their hands, invoking Saint Sara. The vault is dark. The gipsies are black. The little glass shrine of Saint Sara has become black under the accumulated filth of years. From the centre of the church you can see through the grated opening, which resembles an air-hole of hell, the innumerable twinkling lights of the tapers below, waving to and fro in the hands that hold them. A muffled sound of praying comes up through the opening.

In the church, every hand now has its taper, and they are rapidly lighted one from another. The lights dance about in the air. But the interior of the nave is dark. The high walls, pierced by narrow windows, are grimy with age. And all this obscurity, where suffering and misery crawl and cower, is studded with stars like heaven. To the gipsies in the crypt, who will not see the blessed relics descend, the body of the church, which they can see from below through the air-hole, is a heaven beyond their reach, the world of the elect.

But the elect, alas! are damned. Their heaven is the chapel up yonder, in which the power they invoke lies sleeping, beneath the stained wood of the boxes, like to a double coffin—the power that may remain deaf, the all-powerful power that will never perhaps awaken for any one, the marvellous power upon which cures depend and which withholds happiness!

Such was the interior of the three-storied church of Saintes-Maries on that day. And above the lofty chapel, there was the bell-tower overlooking the whole country-side. Surrounded by endless numbers of swallows and sea-gulls, for centuries past it has looked upon the glistening desert, the dazzling sea, the dumb infinitude of space, which could explain things if it would, but only beams and laughs.

The hour drew near. The crowd was panting with heat and hope and fear.

Renaud was not there.

“Remember—we promised to burn three tapers each before the relics,” Livette had said to him.

“I will come to-night,” was his reply. “There’s the branding to-day. I have to look after my bulls.”

So Livette was a little distraught. She was thinking of joining Renaud, of being present at the branding, of keeping an eye on her betrothed. Where was he?

But Monsieur le curé made a sign: Livette began to sing. Alas! why was not her lover there? Her voice, which she knew was pleasant to the ear, might have some effect on him. How eagerly he listened to the gipsy’s singing the other day!—Livette sang, and the buzzing of prayers and litanies and invocations of all sorts, that every one was indulging in on his or her own account, subsided as her clear, pure voice arose. O God! what is this humanity of ours? It is vile and abject, but it has some sense of shame. The basest know how to pray that they may be cured of their baseness. And, however much they may have rolled in the mire of their natural inclinations, a time comes when they set the flame alight, when they burn incense, and when all keep silent to listen to the voice ascending to Heaven, imploring for them a grace that no one knows, that perhaps does not exist, but that every one imagines and desires!

“Eat your excrement, dog!” say the gipsies; “what care I? There is a light in the dog’s eye that is not often seen in the eyes of kings.”

Livette sang. The curé said to himself:

“O my God, mayhap this child of Thine will obtain favor in Thy sight!”

Livette’s voice was as fresh as the water of salvation for which the assembled multitude thirsted. And how intently they listened! But, at the end of each stanza, weary of restraining their tumultuous ejaculations of hope, they sent up from thousands of throats an inarticulate roar in which only the two words: Saintes Maries! could be distinguished.

Livette sang:

“Saintes Maries!” roared the people; uttered at the same moment by a thousand voices acting upon a common impulse, the frenzied appeal was like an explosion.

Every one shouted with all his strength, for the saints must be made to hear! Every one shouted with all his lungs, with all his heart, with all his body, one might say. Heaven is so far away! Open-mouthed, their faces twitching convulsively, they gazed upward. The veins in their necks were swollen to the bursting-point. The muscles swelled and thickened in faces to which the blood rushed in torrents. The brothers, lovers, husbands, mothers, fathers, of the sufferers, availed themselves of their own strength to call for help, howling like wounded wild beasts turned toward the dawn. All this suffering multitude, all this swarming heap of tainted, diseased flesh, uttered the terrifying roar of a monster in pain—and still the preternaturally shrill shriek of some doting mother would soar above the horrid uproar. And all around the church, filled with the nameless appeals of these damned of earth, lay the calm, silent desert, the blue, foam-flecked sea, the brilliant sunlight, insensible to everything.

“Saintes Maries!” roared the people, and each time the shout burst forth from thousands of throats, suddenly and at the same instant, with the effect of a strange kind of explosion.

“Saintes Maries!” the people roared again. And the appealing cry, made up of so many cries, burst forth with a sound like that made by a great wave that breaks against a cliff and is instantly scattered about in foam! And again the young girl’s voice arose above all the vociferating, grinning creatures. Might not one fancy that he saw a sea-swallow, white as the dove of the Ark, soaring over a bottomless abyss?

And for the last time, the deafening, harsh cry arose:

“Saintes Maries!”

Oh! the thousand, two thousand ejaculations of insane longing that flew upward, at a single flight, flapping all their wings at once, to fall back, dead, upon themselves.

It is very certain that there was in that frenzied appeal all the madness of suffering, all the wrath of unsatisfied longing, and rage as of unchained beasts, against the very beings they implored.

Meanwhile, the double shutter up above had not yet been thrown open. And Livette, in accordance with the curé’s instructions, was to repeat the last verse.

So she began again:

But these first words had hardly passed her lips when her voice faltered and died away. For a few seconds there was a silence as of utter amazement in the church. Of what was Livette thinking? Of what?—For the last minute, just God! her eyes had been obstinately fixed upon the black opening leading to the crypt. In that opening, on a level with the floor of the church, she had seen a head: it was the gipsy queen, who had come up from the crypt, in mischievous mood, curious to see Livette singing. Immediately below the great altar she emerged from the dark depths of the cellar amid the ascending smoke of the tapers. She came from her kingdom below, and with her copper crown and gleaming ear-rings, her swarthy skin and her fiery black eyes, she seemed to Livette a genuine devil from hell.

Zinzara ascended two steps more and her bust appeared. She darted a keen, penetrating glance at Livette. That is why Livette was confused, and why she called with all her strength upon the women of compassion, the holy women above, for help against this woman from the chapel below.

But the shutters that concealed the shrines were opened at last. And slowly, very slowly, they descended, swinging from side to side, with a slight jerky movement, at the ends of the two ropes, embellished here and there with little bunches of flowers.

Is not this the image of every life? Is there aught else in the world? Something descends from heaven, something ascends from hell; and we suffer with hope and fear.

“Saintes Maries!”

Amid the vociferations of the crowd, Livette lost her head, she forgot to sing, and, carried away by the prevailing excitement, hope, and terror, she began to cry aloud with all the rest, like a lost soul, while Zinzara, from below, continued to gaze fixedly at her.

What would you say, Monsieur le curé, to Livette’s thoughts, who,—poor creature of the world we live in!—between the holy women and the woman devil, no longer knew which way to turn? Had she not reason to tremble? For the shrines descend to no purpose, they bring us naught but dead relics—while the sorceress is a creature of flesh and blood, whose feet walk, whose eyes see!

Far away from us, in the land of dreams, of supernatural hopes, above the sky and the stars, are the sainted souls that have pity for mankind; as far from man as Paradise itself are the chaste women who embalm the crucified ones in herbs and spices, while she is close at hand, always ready, always armed against the repose of Christian souls, she, queen of diabolic love, who, seeking only to gratify her caprice, makes sport of everything!

Livette became more and more confused beneath Zinzara’s steadfast glance, and she tried in vain, after silence had at last been restored, to resume the invocation. She faltered and stopped again.

Thereupon there was great confusion among the waiting multitude. All those men and women who were holding their peace in order to listen to the outpouring of their own souls in the maiden’s voice, to the pure, unspoken prayer which was in their hearts, but which they could not put in words, had been thrown back once more, and more despairingly than ever, upon themselves, upon their own helplessness, when Livette’s voice died away. Just at the decisive moment, their interpreter failed them! They were afraid of their profound silence, so contrary to the impulses of their hearts. In order to be heard on high, their prayer must be offered; and, seized by the same thought, every one began to shout or sing on his own account, some beginning again at the very beginning, others taking the stanza they knew by heart or had before them in a book, others repeating at random bits of the litanies, one the credo, another the pater, and never did prayers offered up to God create such a hellish uproar, since the discordant cries of all the sorrows of mankind ascended to Heaven.

Stronger women than Livette would have been disturbed as she was, would have felt their powers failing. She put her hand to her forehead to detain her mind that seemed to be making its escape. Was not she the cause of all this trouble? What would become of her, in this state? She was afraid and ashamed at once.

Instead of looking up, instead of watching the blessed relics that had now accomplished half of their descent, she could not refrain from returning the fixed stare of the gipsy woman below, whose eyes seemed to pierce her soul.

Livette suffered keenly. The gipsy’s gaze entered into her very being, and she felt that she could do nothing. It seemed to her as if a sharp-toothed beast were gnawing at her heart. Instead of praying, she listened to the terrible thoughts within her. She fancied that she could feel the hatred go out from her with the glances that shot from her eyes! She tried to stab to the heart with it that creature who was defying her down there. Would not somebody kill the witch, who was the cause of everything? Ah! Saintes Maries! what thoughts for such a place! at such a time!

The relics slowly descended, and, amid the roars that greeted them, Livette, in her overwrought imagination, fancied that she saw herself clinging to Renaud, beseeching him to be faithful and kind to her, and not to go to that other woman; and when he refused and left her, she leaped at the gipsy’s face and scratched her and clawed at her like a cat.

Thus the sorceress’s soul passed into Livette. Already, without suspecting it, she had begun to resemble her enemy, the gitana who leaped at the nostrils of Renaud’s horse the other day. And yet this little fair-haired girl was not one of the dark-skinned maidens of Arles, who have African and Asian blood in their veins! No matter; she, too, has a wild beast’s fits of passion. Love and jealousy are at work making a woman’s soul.

The relics were still descending; and Livette feverishly told off paters and aves on her rosary.—Patience! on the day after the fête, the gipsies, she knows, will leave the town! Two more days and her agony will be at an end.

Meanwhile—she makes this vow in presence of the relics—she will not gratify Renaud by showing that she is jealous, as she is, and not until later—when Zinzara is far away, and there is no chance of her coming back—will she, perhaps, tell her promised husband that he lied to her, that he is a traitor, because, instead of avenging her upon the gipsy, he was false to his fiancée with her—for of course he is false to her, as he is not there!—She will tell him, then, not in a passion, but to punish him. It will be no more than justice.

By dint of uncoiling themselves by little jerks, the ropes have lowered the relics almost within reach of the hands stretched up to meet them. Thereupon the rabble of poor devils could contain itself no longer. Every one was determined to be the first to touch them. Those who were already in the choir, directly below the hanging relics, lost their footing, crowded as they were by those who were pressing in from the body of the church, jostling and crushing one another with a constant pressure. Livette was borne along on the wave, seeing nothing, and with but one thought in her mind—to touch the consecrated relics herself!—That she felt she must do, so that she might escape the influence of the glance the black woman had cast at her. She would seek to turn aside the fatal spell that had been upon her ever since her first meeting with the sorceress! But would she reach the shrines?—Livette felt that she was seized by two strong arms. She turned: it was Renaud! He had just entered the church with two other drovers, his friends. These three young men, glowing with the outside sunlight, healthy and strong, amid the lame and halt and blind, had the insolent bearing—cruel without meaning to be—of manly beauty, of life itself. They extricated the girl and made a ring about her. She was able to breathe.

“Would you like to touch the relics, demoisellette?”

Forcing their way before her, without great effort, but pitilessly, through the crowd of cripples, they cleared a passage for her. Livette walked quickly, she drew near the spot, and Renaud, seizing her around the waist, lifted her up like a child so that she touched the consecrated relics first of all!

Still with the three youths as a body-guard, before whom all were fain to stand aside, and without further thought—poor you! it is the law of the world—of the innumerable, nameless perils by which she was encompassed, she left the church content. Peace had found its way into her heart once more. Her Renaud was there by her side. Was all that she had dreaded a dream and nothing more?

“Ah! it is good to be outside!” he said, filling his lungs with the fresh air.

“Yes, but when will you light the tapers, Renaud, that you are to burn in the church as I promised for you?”

“Oh! I have a whole day before me,” he replied. “Now let us go to the races.”

XIX

THE BRANDING

Thus, beside the infirm and incurable, who know naught of the good things of life, love saucily sports and laughs, feels its own force, and seeks return. The incense in the church serves only to inflame its desire, and more than one youth offers his beloved a rosary, whose boxwood cross he has ardently kissed before her eyes, so that she may find the kiss with her lips.

All day long, the pilgrims and invalids enter the church. Many will pass the night there, keeping vigil with the tapers, on their knees or prostrate before the relics; and more than one, each in his turn, will lie down upon them, on cushions brought expressly for the purpose.

For the moment—it is the first day of the fête—nothing is talked about in the streets of the town save the bulls and the sports.

“Are you going to the races?”

“Yes.”

“Does Prince run? He’s the best horse in all the droves.”

“No, he won’t run; Renaud, who usually handles him, told me that he was too tired.”

“Pshaw! what a pity!”

“What about the bulls? Shall we have any that are a bit ugly?”

“There’s Sirous and Dogue and Mâchicoulis. I cut them out myself with Bernard and Renaud. They gave us a lot of trouble! They refused to leave the herd. As soon as we got them out, back they would go again. But we set Martin and Commetoi at them, two bull-dogs that can’t be matched anywhere; and even Mâchicoulis obeyed at last!”

“Martin and Commetoi?—Those are curious names for dogs!”

“It’s a joke. When any one asks: ‘How is your dog called?’[13] The dog’s master replies: ‘Commetoi!’ [Like yourself.] The other man gets angry, and it raises a laugh.”

“And what about the full-blooded Spanish bull, with the horns twisted like a lyre; shall we see him?”

“Angel Pastor? He is sick. I like our straight-horned bulls better. The important thing is that the horns should be far enough apart for a man’s body to go between them.”

“Are there any heifers?”

“One, a wicked one—Serpentine.”

“And bioulets?”

“Young bulls, do you mean? Renaud has kept six of them, expressly to give the strangers a chance to see a branding.”

“When will the branding come off?”

“In a moment. Suppose we go to see it.”

The gipsy was present at the branding.

The arena was against the church, at the end opposite the main entrance.

The many-sided irregular enclosure was formed on one side by the high wall of the church; on another, by a house standing by itself, against which was a series of roughly made benches, one above another; on still another side by three or four small houses, each of whose windows formed a frame for a dozen or more heads of young men and women, crowded together and all laughing gaily. At the base of one of these houses was a café with a glass door opening on the arena and barricaded by tables and overturned chairs. On each side of the door was drawn, in deepest black, a silhouette of a bull of the Camargue type, that is to say, with straight horns of ample proportions.

On all sides of the enclosure where there were no stone walls, their place was supplied by wagons bound firmly together by their shafts.

At the corner of the wall of the church, there were three great iron rings one above another, and through them were thrust three wooden bars, which could be moved back and forth at will.

These bars were to be let down for the young bulls which were to be turned out of the arena, one by one, after they had been branded, to find their way alone to the desert. Outside the bars, a system of barricades closed the streets of the town to them, and—by compelling them to go behind the few houses facing the arena—guided them, whether they would or not, to the margin of the open plain in less than a hundred steps.

Zinzara was present, as we have said, standing in a wagon. She followed with impassive glance all the happenings within the arena, grotesque and heroic alike.

These duels between man and beast are grand or disgusting according to the character of the adversaries. It sometimes happens that the man attacks in a cowardly fashion, or that the beast, from astonishment it may be, or fatigue, turns about and tries to return to the stable. Fine contests are rare.

Sometimes a sharp stone is thrown from a safe distance by a disloyal foe. The surprised beast receives it full in the face; the blood flows in long streams from his nostrils to the ground. He looks straight before him, his great eyes filled with mirage, and does not budge, as if he were at once saddened and contemptuous.

Sometimes a mischievous rascal has the happy thought of coming very close to him and throwing sand in his eyes by the handful. Another, more mischievous than he, covers the bull with filth collected from the gutter! But the sand-thrower, being spattered thereby, himself picks up a handful, and the two heroes engage in a fierce battle with dung picked up smoking from the ground under the bull’s very tail, amid the laughter and applause of a whole population, until the champions, reeking with filth, are abruptly separated by the bull, who bestirs himself at last and charges them.

“This way! this way, Livette!”

Livette had just come into the arena. Her young friends called her and gladly moved closer together to make room for her on the benches.

A stable just beside the café had been transformed into a toril. Just above the door of the stable was the long window of the hay-loft, level with the floor. Two herdsmen, sitting in the window with their legs hanging outside, rose from time to time, and could be seen pricking the dondaïre, the beloved leader of the herd, through the holes in the floor above the hay-racks. The dondaïre would thereupon go out and lead the tired bull back to the stable. Every time that a new beast left the toril, or one that was tired out returned, a dexterous hand swiftly closed the door.

All these things, which were probably by no means new to the gipsy, who was doubtless familiar with the tragic entertainments of Madrid and Seville, left her unmoved. Her eye did not kindle; it was as dull and vague as a heifer’s.

The “amateurs” played with a few bulls. They were not ill-tempered. Somebody seized one of them by the tail. A whole party clung to his skirts, dancing the farandole—but were soon scattered. The performance thus far was not inspiriting, but it was amusing.

Behind the glass door of the café, which opened on the arena, some congenial spirits were emptying a bottle and smoking while they enjoyed the spectacle. The door was barricaded by a rampart of overturned tables, with their legs in the air and passed through a net-work of broken chairs.

Suddenly the bull, overturning tables and chairs, put the drinkers to flight: he had thrust his bulky head through a square of glass. The café rang with shouts of alarm mingled with amusement. The wagons in the arena shook with the joyous stamping of their occupants; the planks were torn off by excited hands; the people at the windows of the little houses rattled the shutters noisily in their delight. To see the crowds on the roofs laugh made one fear that they would fall in. Thus was the frolicsome bull applauded. The gipsy alone did not smile.

A great oat-bin stood in a corner of the arena, placed there purposely perhaps. A very old man,—not too old to play the merry-andrew,—armed with an old red umbrella, raised the lid, climbed into the bin, and opened his umbrella, which was of the most brilliant shade of red. The bull rushed at him—the old man let the lid fall. Bin and umbrella closed at the same moment upon the laughing bald head. The hilarity of the public was at its height. The gipsy did not seem amused by the old man’s drollery.—Nor did she laugh when a manikin was set up in the centre of the arena and the bull carried him off on his horns and hurled him into the midst of the spectators; and she did not even smile when, a window on the ground-floor of one of the houses being thrown open, a little child was seen in his mother’s arms, behind the iron bars, teasing the furious animal. Laughing with glee, he held a plaything out through the bars, a little pasteboard windmill, whose pink and blue wings were made to turn by the monster’s breath.

Then came a tragic episode. A man—an amateur—struck by the sharp horns; his thigh pierced from side to side; the first cowardly movement of flight on the part of the other contestants; the return of the valiant fellows, who diverted the bull’s attention and drew him off while the wounded man was removed, accompanied by the piercing shrieks of his wife and daughter.

At last, the serious business of the day began. It was announced that the branding was about to take place. Immediately thereafter would come the game of the “cockades,” which consists in snatching a cockade suspended between the bull’s horns by a thread. With his hand or with a hooked stick the rider breaks the thread, snatches the cockade—Crac! a quick recovery, and the victor has won the scarf!

The branding is hard work turned into a game; it consists in branding young bulls with a red-hot iron, with their owner’s cipher.

A young bull having been turned into the arena, Renaud walked up to him, and, as the beast made a rush, cleverly avoided him by turning upon his heel. The bull having, thereupon, stopped short, Renaud seized him by the horns.

Clinging to him with his hands, closed like knots of steel about the horns, the man was dragged for a moment, standing, over the ground, in which his thick soles dug ribbon-like furrows. The spectators clapped their hands. The bull lowered his head and stood still. Renaud, with his legs apart and bent a little, and his feet firmly planted in the ground, threw all his weight to the left. All the muscles of his chest and arms stood out beneath his shirt, which was glued to his skin by perspiration. The bull, with all his sluggish strength, tried to throw himself in the opposite direction. Suddenly Renaud gave way, and the bull, losing the support of his resistance, fell heavily before a sudden contrary effort. And there he lay at full length on the ground, gasping for breath.

The man, who had not released his hold, forced his head to the ground by sitting on it.

“Bravo, king! bravo, king!” cried the crowd.

Bernard took the red-hot iron from a brazier and carried it to Renaud, who, thereupon, let go one horn, and kneeling heavily upon the beast’s withers, seized the iron with his right hand and pressed it against his shoulder. The hair and flesh smoked and crackled. Renaud rose quickly, and the bull, springing suddenly to his feet, shook himself all over, lashed his sides with his tail, bellowed with anger, pawed the ground with his foot, and, amid the shouts of the crowd, darted through the barrier, which was opened at that moment. A moment later, he could be seen far away on the plain, galloping at full speed. He soon rejoined the drove which he or any of his fellows can readily find for themselves, even if it be on the other side of the Rhône, which they often swim.

Six bulls, one after another, were thus thrown down by Renaud.

The sport enlivened him, he was intoxicated by the consciousness of his great strength. Excited even more by the applause of the people, he trembled from head to foot. From time to time, he wiped the great beads of perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand.

A sunbeam fell across one side of the arena, which lay in the dark shadow of the high church-wall. Renaud ran thither, hatless, in shirt-sleeves and close-fitting red breechcloth, shaking the short curly locks of his thick, jet-black hair.

The girls applauded, I promise you, more loudly than the young men, who were somewhat jealous. Zinzara’s eye—her wagon was standing in the ray of sunlight—kindled at last.—And Livette, blushing deeply, was proud of her king.

When the sixth bull he had thrown was still under his knee, Renaud made a sign to Bernard. Bernard ran to him, knelt beside him, and seized the bull by the horns in his stead. Another drover came to help Bernard hold the beast, and Renaud rose.

He walked across the arena, and when he came to where Livette sat, beckoned to her. Everybody understood and applauded.

She walked forward to the edge of the platform on which the benches were built, and lightly placed her foot on the strong cross-bar that served as a support to the spectators in the front row; from there she jumped confidently into Renaud’s arms, who caught her about the waist and set her down as if she had been a little child.

He took her hand and led her toward the bull.

If Renaud had looked at Zinzara at that moment, he would have surprised in her eyes a gleam which she did her best to hide behind her half-closed lids. The smile vanished from her mocking lips.

But Livette and Renaud, the pair of comely lovers, were thinking of naught but the fête, of themselves, of this strange betrothal at which all their people were present, and the like of which not even princes could give, for it required rare strength and address on the part of the fiancé. It was, in very truth, the triumph of a manly king.

“Bravo, king! bravo, queen!”

As they passed the brazier in the centre of the arena, he stooped quickly, and seized with his free hand—without stopping or releasing Livette’s hand—the red-hot iron, which he handed to her as soon as they were beside the bull. She took it, and, leaning forward, branded the bull on the shoulder, and when they saw the flesh smoking under the iron she held in her strong little hand, when the bull began to quiver with wrath, the enthusiasm of the people burst forth. Hats and hands and scarfs were waved in the air.

“Bravo, king! bravo, queen!”

And Renaud, envied by all, escorted the maiden back to her place, while the bull, set free, rushed from the arena in his turn and out upon the plain. No, Zinzara no longer laughed.

The game of the “cockades” was next on the programme.

The first two or three were easily carried off—one from the head of Angel Pastor himself, the Spanish bull—by the young men of Saintes-Maries, and it had not occurred to Renaud to take part in the sport.

At last, Serpentine, a nervous little heifer, was let loose in the arena. Every one realized instantly that she was in a bad temper and would defend herself.

Several tried their fortune against her, but, just as they put out their hand to the cockade, Serpentine would turn about so quickly, and with such agility for a heifer, that they fled. Ah! the hussy! Zinzara suddenly became interested in the game. Renaud had gone down into the arena.

“The king! the king! bravo! king!” shouted the crowd.

And Renaud performed prodigies of skill.

Three times he placed his foot upon Serpentine’s lowered head, and allowed himself to be hurled into space, to fall again upon his elastic legs. And as soon as he reached the ground the third time, he turned like a flash, ran straight to the heifer, snatched away the cockade,—avoiding the blow she aimed at him with her horns in her rage,—and was calmly walking away, when the agile creature returned to the charge.

Renaud ran, as chance guided him, closely pursued by the beast, and when he had leaped upon the nearest wagon, he found himself beside the gipsy, whom he had instinctively seized around the waist.

The heifer had already turned her attention to some of the other contestants, and very fortunately, too,—for the gipsy, who was standing on the edge of her wagon, leaning against the insecure boarding, lost her balance, and leaped down, perforce, into the arena, carrying Renaud with her.

Livette turned pale as death.

The heifer came galloping back at full speed toward Renaud and Zinzara, the latter of whom, being entangled in the folds of her ragged finery, thought that she was lost.—Boldly she turned and faced the danger, too proud to fly, at least when to fly would be useless. But Renaud had already stepped in front of her to protect her, and, seized with some insane idea or other,—the bravado of a horse-breaker, or of a lover, if you choose,—instead of entering into a contest with the heifer, instead of seizing her by the horns or the legs, stopped, and, without taking his eyes from the beast’s face, quickly knelt upon one knee, squatted upon his heel, folded his arms, and, with his head thrown back, defied her. Like an experienced “trapper,” he counted upon the beast’s astonishment, and she did, in fact, stop short, and scrutinize him suspiciously. The gipsy, her lips pressed tightly together, having regained her place upon the wagon, looked back and saw her protector still in that singularly foolhardy attitude. As may be imagined, everybody was shouting: “Vive Renaud!” It seemed as if they would never weary of it.