The driver, who had jumped from his box, and was now walking slowly by
the side of his thin horses, waking them up every moment by a cut of the
whip, or a coarse oath, pointed to the top of the hill, where the
windows of a solitary house, in which the inhabitants were still up,
although it was very late and quite dark, were shining like yellow
lamps, and said to me:
"One gets a good drop there, Monsieur, and well served, by George."
And his eyes flashed in his thin, sunburnt face, which was of a deep
brickdust color, while he smacked his lips like a drunkard, who
remembers a bottle of good liquor that he has lately drunk, and drawing
himself up in a blouse like a vulgar swell, he shivered like the back of
an ox, when it is sharply pricked with the goad.
"Yes, and well served by a wench who will turn your head for you before
you have tilted your elbow and drank a glass!"
The moon was rising behind the snow-covered mountain peaks, which looked
almost like blood under its rays, and which were crowned by dark, broken
clouds, which whirled about and floated, and reminded the passenger of
some terrible Medusa's head. The gloomy plains of Capsir, which were
traversed by torrents, extensive meadows in which undefined forms were
moving about, fields of rye, like huge golden table-covers, and here and
there wretched villagers, and broad sheets of water, into which the
stars seemed to look in a melancholy manner, opened out to the view.
Damp gusts of winds swept along the road, bringing a strong smell of
hay, of resin of unknown flowers, with them, and erratic pieces of rock,
which were scattered on the surface like huge boundary stones, had
spectral outlines.
The driver pulled his broad-brimmed felt hat over his eyes, twirled his
large moustache, and said in an obsequious voice:
"Does Monsieur wish to stop here? This is the place!"
It was a wretched wayside public-house, with a reddish slate roof, that
looked as if it were suffering from leprosy, and before the door there
stood three wagons drawn by mules, and loaded with huge stems of trees,
and which took up nearly the whole of the road; the animals, which were
used to halting there, were dozing, and their heavy loads exhaled a
smell of a pillaged forest.
Inside, three wagoners, one of whom was an old man, while the other two
were young, were sitting in front of the fire, which cackled loudly,
with bottles and glasses on a large round-table by their side, and were
singing and laughing boisterously. A woman with large round hips, and
with a lace cap pinned onto her hair, in the Catalan fashion, who looked
strong and bold, and who had a certain amount of gracefulness about her,
and with a pretty, but untidy head, was urging them to undo the strings
of their great leather purses, and replied to their somewhat indelicate
jokes in a shrill voice, as she sat on the knee of the youngest, and
allowed him to kiss her and to fumble in her bodice, without any signs
of shame.
The coachman pushed open the door, like a man who knows that he is at
home.
"Good evening, Glaizette, and everybody; there is room for two more, I
suppose?"
The wagoners did not speak, but looked at us cunningly and angrily, like
dogs whose food had been taken from them, and who showed their teeth,
ready to bite, while the girl shrugged her shoulders and looked into
their eyes like some female wild beast tamer; and then she asked us with
a strange smile:
"What am I to get you?"
"Two glasses of cognac, and the best you have in the cupboard,"
Glaizette, the coachman replied, rolling a cigarette.
While she was uncorking the bottle I noticed how green her eyeballs
were; it was a fascinating, tempting green, like that of the great green
grasshopper; and also how small her hands were, which showed that she
did not use them much; how white her teeth were, and how her voice,
which was rather rough, though cooing, had a cruel, and at the same
time, a coaxing sound. I fancied I saw her, as in a mirage, reclining
triumphantly on a couch, indifferent to the fights which were going on
about her, always waiting--longing for him who would prove himself the
stronger, and who would prove victorious. She was, in short, the
hospitable dispenser of love, by the side of that difficult, stony road,
who opened her arms to poor men, and who made them forget everything in
the profusion of her kisses. She knew dark matters, which nobody in the
world besides herself should know, which her sealed lips would carry
away inviolate to the other world. She had never yet loved, and would
never really love, because she was vowed to passing kisses which were so
soon forgotten.
I was anxious to escape from her as soon as possible; no longer to see
her pale, green eyes, and her mouth that bestowed caresses from pure
charity; no longer to feel the woman with her beautiful, white hands, so
near one; so I threw her a piece of gold and made my escape without
saying a word to her, without waiting for any change, and without even
wishing her good-night, for I felt the caress of her smile, and the
disdainful restlessness of her looks.
The carriage started off at a gallop to Formiguéres, amidst a furious
jingling of bells. I could not sleep any more; I wanted to know where
that woman came from, but I was ashamed to ask the driver and to show
any interest in such a creature, and when he began to talk, as we were
going up another hill, as if he had guessed my sweet thoughts, he told
me all he knew about Glaizette. I listened to him with the attention of
a child, to whom somebody is telling some wonderful fairy tale.
She came from Fontpédrouze, a muleteers' village, where the men spend
their time in drinking and gambling at the inn when they are not
traveling on the high roads with their mules, while the women do all the
field work, carry the heaviest loads on their back, and lead a life of
pain and misery.
Her father kept an inn; the girl grew up very happy; she was courted
before she was fifteen, and was so coquettish that she was certain to be
almost always found in front of her looking-glass, smiling at her own
beauty, arranging her hair, trying to make herself like a young lady on
the _prado_. And now, as none of the family knew how to keep a
halfpenny, but spent more than they earned, and were like cracked jugs,
from which the water escapes drop by drop, they found themselves ruined
one fine day, just as if they had been at the bottom of a blind alley.
So on the "Feast of Our Lady of Succor," when people go on a pilgrimage
to Font Romea, and the villages are consequently deserted, the
inn-keeper set fire to the house. The crime was discovered through _la
Glaizette_, who could not make up her mind to leave the looking-glass,
with which her room was adorned, behind her, and so had carried it off
under her petticoat.
The parents were sentenced to many years' imprisonment, and being let
loose to live as best she could, the girl became a servant, passed from
hand to hand, inherited some property from an old farmer, whom she had
caught, as if she had been a thrush on a twig covered with bird-lime,
and with the money she had built this public-house on the new road which
was being built across the Capsir.
"A regular bad one, Monsieur," the coachman said in conclusion, "a vixen
such as one does not see now in the worst garrison towns, and who would
open the door to the whole fraternity, and not at all avaricious, but
thoroughly honest...."
I interrupted him in spite of myself, as if his words had pained me, and
I thought of those pale green eyes, those magic eyes, eyes to be dreamt
about, which were the color of grasshoppers, and I looked for them, and
saw them in the darkness; they danced before me like phosphorescent
lights, and I would have given then the whole contents of my purse to
that man if he would only have been silent and urged his horses on to
full speed, so that their mad gallop might carry me off quickly, quickly
and far, and continually further from that girl.