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BIBLIOTHEQUE
DES CHEFS-D'OEUVRE
DU ROMAN
CONTEMPORAIN
_KING OF CAMARGUE_
JEAN AICARD
PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY BY
GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PHILADELPHIA
COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY GEORGE BARRIE & SON
THIS EDITION OF
KING OF CAMARGUE
HAS BEEN COMPLETELY TRANSLATED
BY
GEORGE B. IVES
THE ETCHINGS ARE BY
LOUIS V. RUET
AND DRAWINGS BY
GEORGE ROUX
CHEFS-D'OEUVRE
DU
ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN
ROMANCISTS
THIS EDITION
DEDICATED TO THE HONOR OF THE
ACADEMIE FRANCAISE
IS LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND NUMBERED AND REGISTERED
SETS, OF WHICH THIS IS
NUMBER 358
THE ROMANCISTS
JEAN AICARD
KING OF CAMARGUE
[Illustration: Chapter VI
_This woman had a way of looking at people that disconcerted
them. You would say that a sharp, threatening flame shot from
her eyes. It penetrated your being, searched your heart, and
you were powerless against it._]
TO EMILE TRELAT
My Very Dear Friend:
Permit me to dedicate this book to you, whose incomparable friendship
has been to the poet, obstinate in his idealism, of hourly assistance,
a constant proof of the reality of true generosity and kindness of
heart.
Jean Aicard.
_La Garde, near Toulon, April 11, 1890._
Contents
PAGE
I LIVETTE AND ZINZARA 3
II IN CAMARGUE 13
III THE DROVERS 21
IV THE SEDEN 27
V THE LOVERS 39
VI RAMPAL 51
VII THE MEETING 57
VIII ON THE BENCH 73
IX THE PRAYER 83
X THE TERRACE 91
XI THE HIDING-PLACE 99
XII A SORCERESS 121
XIII THE SNAKE-CHARMER 143
XIV JOUSTING 165
XV MONSIEUR LE CURE'S ARCHAEOLOGY 177
XVI ON THE ROOF OF THE CHURCH 205
XVII THE OLD WOMAN 219
XVIII THE BLESSED RELICS 231
XIX THE BRANDING 247
XX THE SNARE 261
XXI HERODIAS 279
XXII IN THE NEST 291
XXIII THE PURSUIT 303
XXIV IN THE GARGATE 323
XXV THE PHANTOM 331
NOTES 345
List of Illustrations
KING OF CAMARGUE
PAGE
RAMPAL AND THE GIPSY _Fronts._
RENAUD IN THE TOILS OF THE QUEEN 64
LIVETTE AND RENAUD 88
LIVETTE WATCHES ON THE CHURCH ROOF 216
THE GIPSY'S COUCH 312
KING OF CAMARGUE
I
LIVETTE AND ZINZARA
A shadow suddenly darkened the narrow window. Livette, who was running
hither and thither, setting the table for supper, in the lower room of
the farm-house of the Chateau d'Avignon, gave a little shriek of
terror, and looked up.
The girl had an instinctive feeling that it was neither father nor
grandmother, nor any of her dear ones, but some stranger, who sought
amusement by thus taking her by surprise.
Nor a stranger, either, for that matter,--it was hardly possible!--But
how was it that the dogs did not yelp? Ah! this Camargue is frequented
by bad people, especially at this season, toward the end of May, on
account of the festival of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, which attracts,
like a fair, such a crowd of people, thieves and gulls, and so many
mischievous gipsies!
The figure that was leaning on the outside of the window-sill,
shutting out the light, looked to Livette like a black mass, sharply
outlined against the blue sky; but by the thick, curly hair,
surmounted by a tinsel crown, by the general contour of the bust, by
the huge ear-rings with an amulet hanging at the ends, Livette
recognized a certain gipsy woman who was universally known as the
Queen, and who, for nearly two weeks, had been suddenly appearing to
people at widely distant points on the island, always unexpectedly, as
if she rose out of the ditches or clumps of thorn-broom or the water
of the swamps, to say to the laborers, preferably the women: "Give me
this or that;" for the Queen, as a general rule, would not accept what
people chose to offer her, but only what she chose that they should
offer her.
"Give me a little oil in a bottle, Livette," said the young gipsy,
darting a dark, flashing glance at the pretty girl with the fair,
sun-flecked hair.
Livette, charitable as she was at every opportunity, at once felt that
she must be on her guard against this vagabond, who knew her name. Her
father and grandmother had gone to Arles, to see the notary, who would
soon have to be drawing up the papers for her marriage to Renaud, the
handsomest drover in all Camargue. She was alone in the house.
Distrust gave her strength to refuse.
"Our Camargue isn't an olive country," said she curtly, "oil is scarce
here. I haven't any."
"But I see some in the jar at the bottom of the cupboard, beside the
water-pitcher."
Livette turned hastily toward the cupboard. It was closed; but, in
truth, the stock of olive oil was there in a jar beside the one in
which they kept Rhone water for their daily needs.
"I don't know what you mean," said Livette.
"The lie came from your mouth like a vile black wasp from a
garden-flower, little one!" said the motionless figure, still leaning
heavily on the window-sill, evidently determined to remain. "The oil
is where I say it is, and more than twenty-five litres too; I can see
it from here. Come, come, take a clean bottle and the tin funnel and
give me quickly what I want. I'll tell you, in exchange, what I see in
your future."
"It's a deadly sin to seek to know what God doesn't wish us to know,"
said Livette, "and you can guess that oil is kept in cupboards and
still be no more of a sorceress than I am. Go about your business,
good-wife. I can give you some of this bread, fresh baked last night,
if you wish, but I tell you I haven't any oil."
"And why do they call you Livette," said the Queen calmly, "if it
isn't on account of the field of old olive-trees--the oldest and
finest in the country--owned by your father, near Avignon? There you
were born. There you remained until you were ten years old, and at
that age--seven years ago, a mystic number--you came here, where your
father was made farmer, overseer of drovers, manager of everything, by
the Avignonese master of this 'Chateau d'Avignon,' the finest in all
Camargue.--'Livettes! livettes!' that's the way you used to ask for
_olivettes_, olives, when you were a baby. You were very fond of them,
and the nickname clung to you. A pretty nickname, on my word, and one
that suits you well, for if you're not dark like the ripe olive,
you're fair as the virgin oil, a pearl of amber in the sunlight, and
then you are not yet ripe. Your face is oval, and not stupidly round
like a Norman apple. You have the pallor of the olive-leaves seen from
below.--And that you may soon see them so, little one, is the blessing
I ask for you, as the cures of your chapels say, where they take us in
for pity. Be compassionate as they are, in the name of your Lord Jesus
Christ, and give me some oil quickly, I say--in the name of extreme
unction and the garden of agony!"
The gipsy had said all this without stopping to breathe, in a dull,
monotonous, muffled voice, but she added abruptly in loud, piercing,
incisive tones: "Do you understand what I say?" imparting to those
simple words an extraordinarily imperious and violent expression.
Livette hastily crossed herself.
"Come, enough of this!" said she, "I have nothing here for you, and we
keep the oil of extreme unction for better Christians! Begone, pagan,
begone!" she added, trying to counterfeit courage.
"Of the three holy women," continued the gipsy, "who took ship, after
the death of Jesus Christ, to escape the crucifying Jews, one was
like myself, an Egyptian and a fortune-teller. She knew the science of
the Magi, of those with whom great Moses contended for mastery in
witchcraft. She could, at will, order the frogs to be more numerous
than the drops of water in the swamps, and she held in her hand a rod
which, at her word, would change to a viper. Before Jesus she bowed,
as did Magdalen, and Jesus loved her too. In the tempest, as they were
crossing the sea, her wand pointed out the course to follow, and, to
do that with safety, had no need to be very long. Must you have more
pledges of my power and my knowledge? What more must I tell you to
induce you to give me the oil I need so much? If you were a man, I
would say: 'Look! I am dark, but I am beautiful! I am a descendant of
that Sara the Egyptian who, when the boat of the three holy women drew
near the sands of Camargue, paid the boatman by showing him her
undefiled body, stripped naked, with no thought of evil and without
sin, but knowing well that true beauty is rare and that the mere sight
of it is better than all the treasures of Solomon. So be it!'"
Livette was thoroughly alarmed. The gipsy's assurance, her hollow,
penetrating voice, imperious by fits and starts, these strange tales
filled with evil words on sacred subjects, this devilish mixture of
things pagan and things mystic, the consciousness of her own
loneliness, all combined to terrify her. She lost her head.
"Away with you, away with you," she cried, "queen of robbers! queen
of brigands! away with you, or I will call for help!"
"Your drover won't hear you; he's tending his drove to-day beside the
Vaccares. Come, give me the oil, I say, or I'll throw this black wand
on the ground, and you will see how snakes bite!"
But Livette, brave and determined, said: "No!" shuddering as she said
it, and, to glean a little comfort, cast a glance at the low beam
along which her father's gun was hanging. The gipsy saw the glance.
"Oh! I am not afraid of your gun," said she, "and to prove it--wait a
moment!"
She left the window. The light streamed into the room, bringing a
little courage to Livette's terrified heart, as she followed the gipsy
with her eyes. In the bright light of that beautiful May evening, the
gipsy woman stood out, a tall figure, against the distant, unbroken
horizon line of the Camargue desert, which could be seen through a
vista between the lofty trees of the park.
Livette felt a thrill of joy as she saw a troop of mares trotting
along the horizon, followed by their driver, spear in air--Jacques
Renaud, her fiance, without doubt.--But how far away he was! the
horses, from where she stood, looked smaller than a flock of little
goats. And her eyes came back to the gipsy queen. A few steps from the
farm-house, in front of the seigniorial chateau, a huge square
structure, with numerous windows, long closed,--a structure of the
sort that arouses thoughts of neglect and death and the grave,--the
gipsy stood on tiptoe, drawing down the lowest branch of a thorn-tree.
The thorns were long, as long as one's finger. With a twig of a tree
of that species the crown of the Crucified One was made.
She broke off a twig thickset with thorns, bent it into a circle,
twisting the two ends together like serpents, and returned to the
window.
Livette noticed at that moment that the two watch-dogs were following
the gipsy, with their tails between their legs, their noses close to
her heels, with little affectionate whines. And she, the gipsy Queen,
as slender as haughty, erect upon her legs, in a ragged skirt with
ample folds through the holes in which could be seen a bright red
petticoat, her bust enveloped in orange-colored rags crossed below her
well-rounded breasts, her amulets tinkling at her ears, medallions
jangling on her forehead, which was encircled by a gaudy fillet of
copper,--she, the Queen, came forward, holding in her hand the crown
of long stiff thorns, to which a few tiny green leaves clung in
quivering festoons;--and in a low, very low tone, she murmured the
same caressing plaint that the two great cowed dogs were murmuring,
saying to them, in their own language, mysterious things they
understood.
"Take this," said the gipsy, "let your kind heart be rewarded as it
deserves! Misfortune, which is at work for you, will soon make itself
known to you. How, may God tell you! In love, the wind that blows for
you is poisoned by the swamps. The charity your God enjoins is, so
they say, another form of love that brings true love good fortune. And
here is my queenly gift!"
She threw the crown of thorns through the window at Livette's feet.
"Madame!" exclaimed Livette in dismay.
But the gipsy had disappeared.
Infinite distress filled the poor child's heart. With her eyes fixed
on the crown, Livette recalled the legends in which the good Lord
Jesus appears disguised as a beggar--and in which He rewards those who
have received Him with sweet compassion.
In one of those legends, the Poor Man, welcomed with harsh words,
subjected to mockery and cowardly insults, struck with staves and
goblets and bottles thrown by drunken revellers--at last, standing
against the wall, begins to be transformed into a Christ upon the
Cross, bleeding at the holes in his hands and feet!--And, sick with
terror, she asked herself if she had not received with unkindness one
of the three holy women who, after the death of Jesus, crossed the sea
in a boat to the shores of Camargue, using their skirts for sails, and
assisted by the oars of a boatman, whom one of their number, Sara the
Egyptian, paid in heathen coin, by allowing him to see, as the price
of a Christian action, her undefiled body, entirely naked, upon the
self-same spot on which the church stands to-day.
Slowly she picked up the crown and threw it into the fire over which
the soup was stewing. Before it melted into ashes, the crown of thorns
seemed for a moment to be pure gold.
II
IN CAMARGUE
Every year, at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the village that stands at
the southern end of Camargue, above the marshes, on a sand beach, the
line of which is constantly changed by the action of the waves and
high winds, every year, the feast of Saintes-Maries is celebrated on
May 24th; and at the time of that festival the gipsies flock to
Camargue in large numbers, impelled by a curious sort of piety,
mingled with a desire to pilfer the pilgrims.
Legends, like trees, spring from the soil,--are its expression, so to
speak. They are also its essence. At every step in Camargue, you find
the everlasting legend of the holy women, just as you everlastingly
see there the same tamarisk-trees, confused, against the horizon, with
the same mirages.
The two Marys, so runs the legend, Jacobe, Salome, and--according to
some authorities--Magdalen, and with them their bondwomen, Marcella
and Sara, adrift on the sea in a boat without masts or sails, pursued
by the accursed Jews, after the Saviour's death, spread to the breeze
strips of their skirts and their long, thin veils, and the wind
carried them to this beach at Camargue.
There a church was built. The sacred bones, found by King Rene, were
enclosed in a reliquary, which has never ceased to perform miracles.
And every year, from every corner of Provence, from the Comtat and
from Languedoc, the last of the believers throng to the spot, bringing
their aspirations and their prayers, dragging with them their sick
friends and kindred, or their own wretchedness, their wounds and their
lamentations.
Nothing more strange can be imagined than this land of desolation,
traversed every year by a multitude of cripples on their way to hope!
From afar, at the end of the desert tract, can be seen the
battlemented church that tells of the wars of long ago, of Saracen
invasions, of the precarious life led by the poor in the Middle Ages.
It stands there with its turrets and its bell-tower, which, like the
stumps of gigantic masts, tower above the cluster of houses grouped
about it; and the village, cut at about mid-height of the lower houses
by the horizon line of the sea, seems drifting like a phantom ship
among the billows of sand, like the boat of the holy women of the
olden time, doomed to founder at last in the desolation of the desert.
In this Camargue everything is strange. There are ponds like the huge
central pond, the Vaccares, in the centre of which one can wade with
ease; there are tracts of land where the pedestrian sinks out of sight
and is drowned. Here deception is easy. Yonder green slime that you
take for a level plain--beware!--men are drowned therein; those vast
stretches of water which seem to you small seas--return that way
to-morrow; they will have evaporated, leaving only a mirror of white
salt that crackles beneath your feet. Yonder, do you see the calm,
deep water? and trees on the shore? Ah! no, you can run along the
surface of that water; it is dry land; the mirage alone formed those
trees, just as it showed you the little child walking a league away,
apparently near at hand and very tall. A land of visions, dreams, and
hard work. A land of sedentary folk, who inhabit a vast space on the
shore of endless waters, with an infinity of variations of mirages,
sunbeams, reflections, and bright colors. A land of fever, where
strong men daily bring wild bulls to earth. A land of leave-takings,
for it is on the confines of an almost uninhabited land, on the shore
of that great blue and white thoroughfare, the sea; just at the point
where the Rhone, coming from the mountains, sets out upon its long
journey to the bottomless waters, where the sun will take it up again
to restore it to its source. An impressive land, which one feels to be
the end of so many things; of the great city-making river, of the
great expiring Faith, which flies to the sands to breathe its last,
with its dying waves beating at the foundations of a poor
battlemented church, amid the psalms, mingled with lamentations of a
dying race.
The ceremony of May 24th, at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, is
unquestionably one of the most barbarous spectacles which men of
modern times are permitted to witness.
Since science made the conquest of men's minds, the faith of the last
believers has changed. The most bigoted know, of course, that God can
manifest Himself when and how He pleases, but they also know that He
never pleases, in our positive days, to modify the movements of the
vast mechanism of His creation, not even for the lowly pleasure of
proving His existence to His creatures. The faith of civilized men no
longer expects anything from Heaven in this world.
Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, on the 24th of May, is the rendezvous of the
last savages of the Faith.
They who come to pray to the holy women for health of body and of
heart are unpolished creatures of a primitive belief. They believe,
and that is the whole of it. A cry, a prayer, and, in reply, the
saints can give them what they have not: eyes, legs, arms, life! And
they ask them to perform a miracle as artlessly as a condemned man
implores his pardon from the head of the State. That their prayers
should be granted is quite as possible, almost more probable, for the
saints have more pity. The few thousands of believers--it is long
since their numbers have been added to--who pay a visit to the saints
every year, see one or two miracles on each occasion. When the priest,
coming from the church, followed by a procession, stretches out toward
the sea the _Silver Arm_ which contains the relics, they see the sea
recede! That happens every year. Imagine, then, how strenuously they
importune the saints who can do so much with so little exertion! with
what energy they hurry to the spot! with what sighs they pour out
their hearts! with what a howling they utter their prayers! with what
fervor they raise their eyes, stretch out their necks and their arms!
All, all in vain. The last posturings of the great, fruitlessly
imploring sorrow are to be seen there, in that desert corner of
France, between the arms of that dying stream, on the shore of the sea
that is eating away the island; beneath the arches of yonder church,
so white without, so black within, wherein every hand holds a taper,
flickering like a star of human misery, which burns for God and
greases the fingers, and for which the beggar, whose heart would be
made glad by a single sou, must pay five sous.
The whole region seems to be at once the highway to exile, and a wild
place of refuge. Therefore, the gipsies love it. It is one of the main
cross-roads of their interlacing highways which envelop the whole
world; it is one of the favorite countries of the race that has no
country.
And every year, the gipsies come to Camargue to enjoy their very
ancient privilege of occupying a black crypt or underground chapel,
under the choir of the church, consecrated to Saint Sara the Egyptian.
In that cavern they can be seen crouching at the foot of an altar
whereon is a little shrine--Saint Sara's--all filthy from much
kissing, while above, in the church, the great shrines of the two
Marys are lowered from the vaulted roof amid vociferous prayers.
There, in the crypt, the gipsies sit upon their haunches,
curly-headed, hot-lipped, sweating profusely, amid hundreds of
candles, which exude tallow and overheat the stifling oven, telling
their greasy beads, exhaling an odor similar to that of wild beasts in
their den, emitting from time to time a hoarse appeal to Saint Sara,
wearing the smile of premeditated crime upon their faces mingled with
the grimace due to remorse that may be sincere; looking with envious
eye at every sou, pilfering handkerchiefs, scratching their wounds,
swarming in a mysterious dunghill, where one feels, in spite of
everything, that some mystic flower is springing into life, the
involuntary aspiration of depravity toward purity.
Early in May of this year, the band of gipsies had brought with them
to the saints a young woman whom they called their "Queen."
This "Queen," pending the arrival of the approaching fete-day, passed
part of her time seated on the wooden bench under the canopy of
thorn-broom erected by the customs' officers between two tamarisks, on
the sand-dune just in front of the village; and there she sat and
gazed at the sea.
Her name was Zinzara.
Her thick, black, wavy hair was twisted carelessly into a mass on top
of her head. Two locks came forward to her temples, which were sunken
and filled with shadows. Her piercing black eyes gleamed from beneath
her thick arching eyebrows. A copper circlet with sequins hanging from
it was placed upon her forehead, slightly at one side, after the
manner of a crown.
The glaringly bright materials in which she enveloped her figure
revealed the outline of her powerful chest, and her hips that swayed
at every step she took. And the fragment that formed her skirt fell in
graceful folds, beneath which her naked foot peeped out, glistening
with sand.
Evening surprised her upon her bench beneath the broom, looking out
upon the sea. The sun tinged the waves and the sand with golden
yellow, then with red. The night wind made the reeds and rushes
quiver. Slowly the gipsy drew a bright-colored handkerchief from her
girdle and arranged it on her head. She put it over her face to tie
the ends together behind the mass of hair, then raised it and threw it
over her head, so that it fell upon her back. Thus arranged as a
head-dress, it framed the face in stiff, broad folds, falling on both
sides,--and the Egyptian, her hands spread out upon her knees, her
eyes fixed on the horizon, resembled some figure of Isis, while about
her a flock of red flamingoes or a solitary ibis, in hieroglyphic
cries, told the sands of Camargue and the rushes of the Rhone tales of
the sands of Libya and the lotus-trees of the Nile.
III
THE DROVERS
Jacques Renaud, Livette's lover, was employed as drover of bulls and
horses in this strange Camargue country, on the estate of the Chateau
d'Avignon.
The _manades_, or droves, of Camargue bulls and mares live at liberty
in the vast moor, leaping the ditches, splashing through the swamps,
browsing on the bitter grass, drinking from the Rhone, running,
jumping, wallowing, neighing and lowing at the sun or the mirage,
lashing vigorously with their tails the swarms of gadflies clinging to
their sides, then lying down in groups on the edge of the swamp, knees
doubled under their bulky bodies, tired and sleepy, their dreamy eyes
fixed vaguely on the horizon.
The mounted drovers leave them at liberty, but keep a watchful eye on
their freedom; and according to the time of year and the condition of
the pasturage, "round up" their herds, keep them together, and direct
their movements.
In the distance, as they sit motionless, and straight as arrows, on
their saddles _a la gardiane_, astride their white horses, with the
spear-head resting on the closed stirrup, they resemble knights of the
Middle Ages, awaiting the flourish of the herald's trumpet to enter
the lists.
The Camargue horse, with his powerful hind-quarters, stout shoulders,
head a little heavy,--an excellent beast withal,--is descended from
Saracen mares and the palfrey of the Crusades. He still wears antique
trappings. Huge closed stirrups strike against his sides; the broad
strap of the martingale passes through a heart-shaped piece of leather
on his chest, and the saddle is an easy-chair, wherein the rider sits
between two solid walls, the one in front as high as that at his back.
At certain times, when the best pasturage is on the other bank of the
Rhone, the drovers drive their _manades_ toward the river. When they
reach the shore, they press close upon them to force them in. The
earth-colored water of the river flows bubbling by. The beasts
hesitate. Some slowly put their heads down to the stream and drink,
not knowing what is required of them. Others suddenly show signs of
life at the "singing" of the water, stretch their necks, breathe
noisily, and low and neigh. A horse, urged forward by a drover, rebels
and rushes back, then rears and falls backward into the water, which
splashes mightily under the weight of his great body; but he has made
a start; he swims, and all the others follow. Muzzles and nostrils,
manes and horns, wave wildly about above the river, which is now a
swarm of heads. They blow foam and air and water all around. More than
one, in jovial mood, bites at a neighboring rump. Feet rise upon
backs, to be shaken off again with a quick movement of the spinal
column, and thrown back into the waves. Sometimes a frightened beast,
confused by the plunging and kicking, tries to return to the bank,
and, being driven in once more by the drovers, loses his head, follows
the current, sails swiftly seaward, feels his strength failing,
drinks, struggles, turns over and over, plunges, drinks again,
founders at last like a vessel and disappears.
Finally the bulk of the drove has reached the opposite bank, and there
they shake themselves in the sunlight, snort with delight, and caper
over the fields. Tails lash sides and buttocks. Some young horses,
excited by their bath, scamper away, side by side, toward the horizon,
biting at the long hairs of each other's flying manes.
Then it is the turn of the drovers. Some ride their horses into the
river. Others, in the midst of the rearguard of the _manade_, guide,
with the paddle, a flat-bottomed boat that a blow of the foot would
shatter, and their horses, held by their bridles, swim behind.
At other times, the drovers are employed driving from the plains of
Meyran or Arles, Avignon, Nimes, Aigues-Mortes to the branding-places
at Camargue the bulls that are to take part in the sports at the
latter place.
These bulls sometimes travel in captivity, in a sort of high
enclosure, without a floor, mounted on wheels and drawn by horses; the
bulls walk along the ground, beating their horns against the resonant
wooden walls.
Generally the bulls go to the games unconfined, but under the eye of
mounted drovers, spear in hand.
These journeys are made at night. As they pass through the villages,
the people rush to their windows. The young men are on the watch for
the "cattle" and try to drive them out of the circle of drovers, who
lose their temper, and swear and strike: that sport is called the
_abrivade_. In Arles, if the bulls happen to arrive by daylight, the
drovers have a hard task, for all the young men in the city do their
utmost to break the line of horsemen, in order to cut out one bull, or
several, if possible, and then drive them through the city. The city
assumes a posture of defence. Overturned carts barricade the ends of
the streets. Shops are closed. The bull, in a frenzy, rushes here and
there, stands musing for a moment at the corners, decides to take a
certain direction, rushes at a passer-by, knocks him down, and
generally selects the shop of a dealer in crockery and glassware in
which to make merry, amid the shouts of an excited populace.
The drovers are a free, fearless, savage race, a little contemptuous
of cities, devoted to their desert.
A drover is at home alike in sun and rain, in the wind from the land,
and the wind from the sea.
A drover knows how to deal blows and to receive them; he pursues a
bull at the gallop, and with a blow of the spear upon his flank,
judiciously selecting his time, "fells" him unerringly.
He knows the trick of pursuing a wild bull making for the open
country. His well-trained horse bites the furious beast on the
hind-quarters, and he turns. The drover, spear in rest, pricks the
bull in the nose as he rushes upon him, and checks him.
Sometimes a drover, on foot and alone, pursued by a cow with calf, and
apparently in imminent danger from the furious beast, will suddenly
turn about, and--with arm outstretched, as if he held his spear--point
his three fingers at the animal, separated so as to represent the
three points of the trident. In face of the motionless man, the cow,
seized with terror, recoils, pawing up the earth, with lowered head
and threatening horns; and, as soon as she thinks she is well out of
the man's reach, she turns and flies.
A common performance of the drover, when he is in good spirits, is
this: pursuing the bull, he passes beyond him some twenty or thirty
yards, then stops short and leaps down from his horse; the bull, taken
by surprise, rushes at the man, who has one knee on the ground. The
bull comes rushing on with lowered horns. Three sharp hand-claps: the
bull has stopped! His hot breath strikes the face of his subduer, who
has already seized him with both hands by the horns. The man,
springing instantly to his feet, struggles to throw the beast over to
the right. The bull, resisting, throws himself in the opposite
direction. The two forces neutralize each other for an instant, almost
equal, the result uncertain; then the man suddenly yields, and the
beast, unexpectedly impelled in the direction of his own efforts,
falls upon his side. Skill is seconded by the creature's whole
strength in its struggle for victory.
This is the method adopted at the _ferrades_, or brandings, where the
sport consists in branding the young animals with a red-hot iron.
For a drover, to seize a colt by the nose, and mount him bareback; to
roll with his steed at the bottom of a ditch and emerge firmly seated
in the saddle; to subdue stallions by fatigue, and, if dismounted and
wounded by a kick, to dress the wound as tranquilly as the cork-cutter
dresses the scratch made by his knife,--all this is mere child's-play.
A drover, caught between two horns--luckily well separated--and tossed
into the air, has but one thought when he picks himself up after
falling to the ground--a thought so surprising as not to be
ridiculous: to rearrange his breeches and readjust his belt.
A unique race it is, rough and brutal, which would be esteemed heroic,
like the Corsican race, if it had great affairs in which to display
its great qualities.
IV
THE SEDEN
Jacques Renaud, Livette's betrothed, was, as we have said, one of the
most fearless drovers in Camargue.
He could pursue and catch and subdue a wild horse, attack a rebellious
bull and master it, as no other could; he was the king of the moor.
For occasions of public rejoicing, at Nimes or Arles, he was always
sent for when they desired a really fine performance in the arena. And
he had so often called forth the exclamation, in all the arenas
throughout Provence: "Oh! that fellow is _the king_ of them all!" that
the name had clung to him. And he himself had given to his finest
stallion the name of "Prince."
Whatever feats of address and strength were performed by others, he
performed better than they.
And with it all he was a handsome fellow, not too tall or too short,
with a well-shaped head, clear, dark complexion, short, thick, matted
black hair, a well-defined moustache of the same devil's black as the
hair, and cheeks and chin always closely shaven, for this savage
always carried in the leather saddle-bags hanging at the bow of his
saddle a razor-edged knife, a stone to sharpen it upon, and a little
round mirror in a sheep-skin case.
And when, with his stout and shapely legs encased in heavy boots, his
feet in the closed stirrups, his long spear resting on his boot, he
sat erect and motionless in his high-backed saddle, his size
heightened by the refraction of the desert, amid his little tribe of
mares and wild bulls, wearing upon his head the round narrow-brimmed
hat that made for him a crown of gleaming golden straw, indeed the
drover did resemble the king of some outlandish race!
And yet it was not on the day of a _ferrade_, nor because of his great
deeds as tamer of wild beasts, that the gentle, fair-haired girl had
come to love him.
In the first place, she was accustomed to seeing many of these
drovers; and then, being the daughter of a rich intendant, she might
have been inclined rather to look down upon them a little, as mere
herdsmen. Indeed her father and grandmother did not readily agree to
give her hand to Renaud, who was poor and had no kindred; but Livette
was an only child, and had wept and prayed so hard, the darling, that
at last they had said _yes_.
And this is how it came to pass that the drover Renaud, who was used
to being run after by pretty girls, had taken Livette's trembling
little heart in his great hand.
It was one morning when he was making a new _seden_ for his horse,
who had lost his the night before, while bathing in the Rhone.
The _seden_, as it is called in Camargue, is a halter, but a halter
made of mares' hair braided, it being customary always to allow the
manes and tails of stallions to grow as long as they will, as a mark
of strength and pride. The _seden_ is generally black and white. It
is, in a word, a long rope, which hangs in a coil about the horse's
neck, and may serve, as occasion arises, many purposes, being
generally used as a halter, sometimes as a lasso.
But the _seden_, being a thing essentially Camarguese, should never go
from the province. Many a one does so, no doubt, but it is on account
of the contemptible greed of this or that drover, who snaps his
fingers at the old customs that were good enough for his ancestors.
Renaud, then, was making a _seden_. It was in front of one of the
farm-houses appertaining to the Chateau d'Avignon, a long, low
structure, rather a drover's cottage than a farm-house, lost in the
moor, and so squat that it had the appearance of not wanting to be
seen, like an animal burrowing in the ground.
It was October. The larks were singing merrily. Mounted upon Blanquet
(or Blanchet), her favorite horse, the little one, in obedience to her
father's orders, was out in search of Renaud, and she spied him at a
distance, walking backward, playing the rope-maker. From a piece of
canvas tied around his waist and swelling out in front of him, like an
apron turned up to make a great pocket, he was taking little bunches
of white and black hair alternately, braiding them together and
twisting them into a rope, which grew visibly longer. A child was
turning the thick wooden wheel upon which the _seden_, already of
considerable length, was wound; and Renaud--keeping time to the wheel,
which struck a dull blow against something or other at every
revolution--was singing a ballad which floated to Livette's ears on
the gentle breeze that was blowing, like a sweet, strong call from the
love of which she as yet knew nothing.
"N'use pas sur les routes
Tes souliers;
Descends plutot le Rhone
En bateau.
"Laisse Lyon, Valence,
De cote;
Salue-les de la tete
Sous les ponts."
He had a fine voice, smooth and clear, powerful without effort, and of
wide range.
"Avignon est la reine----
Passe encor;
Tu ne verras qu'en Arles
Tes amours----
"La plaine est belle et grande,
Compagnon----
Prends tes amours en croupe,
En avant!"[1]
Livette had stopped her horse, to hear better. It was in the morning.
In the light there was the reflection that tells that the day is
young, that makes hope dance in hearts of sixteen, and sows hope anew
even in the hearts of the old.
A vague hope that is naught but the desire to love; but its loss,
bitterer than death, makes the thought of death a consolation!
"Prends tes amours en croupe----
En avant!"
the singer repeated, and the little one involuntarily urged her horse
toward the song that called to her to come.
"Aha!" said Renaud, pausing in his work, "aha! young lady! you are
astir early!--with a white horse that will soon be all red!"
"Yes," she said, laughing, "with gnats and gadflies; there are swarms
of them! too many, by my faith in God!"
"You are covered with them, young lady, as a bit of honey is covered
with bees, or a tuft of flowering genesta! But what brings you here?"
"I come from my father. You must come with me at once."
"But comrade Rampal borrowed my horse just now to go to Saintes. They
went off one upon the other."
"Take mine, then," said Livette.
"And what will you do, young lady?"
She was ashamed of her thoughtlessness, and blushed scarlet.
"I?" said she, and the words of the ballad rang in her heart:
"Prends tes amours en croupe,
En avant!"
"Unless," said he, laughing in his turn, "you care to take me _en
croupe_?"
"People would never stop talking about it all over our Camargue," said
she, with laughter in her voice. "A drover like you, the terror of
riders, _en croupe_ like a girl? No, no; no false shame, that is my
place. We will take off my saddle, and you can bring it to me
to-morrow."
"Very luckily," said Renaud, "Rampal didn't take mine, which I never
lend."
Livette jumped down from her horse; and at the breeze made by her
skirt a cloud of great flies and enormous mosquitoes rose and flew
buzzing about her. Blanchet's snow-white rump looked as if it were
covered with a net of purple silk, there was such a labyrinth of
little streams of blood crossing and recrossing one another. Another
instant, and gadflies and mosquitoes settled down again upon the
bleeding surface and dotted it with a myriad of black spots; but
Blanchet, albeit somewhat cross, was used to that annoyance.
Livette fastened him to one of the rings in the wall, and sat down
upon the stone bench, waiting until Renaud had finished his _seden_.
The wheel turned and turned, striking its dull blow with perfect
regularity at every turn.
"That was a pretty song, Renaud," said Livette suddenly, answering her
thoughts without intention; "that was a pretty song you were singing
just now."
"I learned it," said Renaud, "from a boatman, a friend of my father,
with whom I went up the Rhone as far as Lyon--and then came down
again----"
"And is all that country very beautiful up there?" said she.
"Yes," he answered, "it is beautiful."
And he said nothing more.
"You don't look as if you meant what you say, Renaud. Pray, didn't you
like the city of Lyon we hear so much about?"
There was a long silence, broken only by the monotonous rhythm of the
wheel.
"No sun!" said Renaud abruptly. "It's a city in a cold cloud!--The
Rhone isn't fine till you come down again," he added.
Livette looked at him, and her wide-open eyes seemed to say:
"Why is that?"
He answered her look.
"When one of us goes up yonder, young lady, you understand, he leaves
everything to go nowhere, and when he gets there, all he asks is to
start back again!--When he comes from there here, on the contrary, he
leaves nothing at all, and knows that, at the end of the journey, he
will have arrived somewhere! You see, young lady, the best horse must,
of necessity, stop at the sea--and that is the only place where I am
willing to consent to go no farther. Where the sea is not, you have
all the rest of the journey still to do.--Enough, my boy!" he added,
raising his voice.
The wheel stopped. He examined the _seden_. The rope, of black and
white strands in regular alternation, was finished.
"That's a good piece of work," said he; "look, young lady."
He leaned over, almost against her, to look at a point in the rope
which seemed to him defective; he leaned over, and a short black curl
touched lightly the disordered, almost invisible, locks that formed a
sort of fleecy golden cloud over Livette's forehead. And thereupon it
seemed to both of them--young as they were!--that their hair blazed up
and shrivelled softly, like the fine grass that takes fire in summer,
under the hot sun. Ah! holy youth!
Then, for the first time, Renaud thought of the girl. Hitherto he had
seen in Livette only the "young lady." They remained bending forward,
she over the rope which she seemed to be examining attentively, he
over Livette's hair. Livette wore her "morning head-dress," consisting
of a little white handkerchief which covered the _chignon_, and was
tied in such fashion that the two ends stood up like little hollow,
pointed ears on top of her head. When they are in full-dress, the
women of Camargue surround the high _chignon_, covered by a fine white
linen cap, with a broad velvet ribbon, almost always black, whose
long, unequal ends fall behind the head, a little at one side.
Renaud, then, was looking at Livette's clear flaxen hair,--in which
there was, here and there, a lock of a darker golden hue,--symmetrically
massed on top of her head, advancing in little waves toward her temples,
coquettishly arranged, but so short and fluffy that some few locks
escaped, here, there, and everywhere, enough to form the faint golden
mist above her head.
He looked at the pretty, round neck, whence the fair hair seemed to
spring, like a vigorous plant, so slender and so fine! so long, and
full of life! And the temptation to press his lips upon it drew him
on, as, after a long day's journey among dry, stony hills, the sight
of the water draws on the horses of Camargue, accustomed to moist
pasturage.
She felt that she was being stared at too long.
"Let us go!" she said, suddenly. "My father's orders were that you
should come as soon as possible."
Renaud felt as if he were waking from a long sleep and from a dream.
He jumped to his feet. Without a word, he went to Blanchet, took off
the woman's saddle and carried it into the house, placed his own upon
the beast, which the mosquitoes had at last made restive, and leaped
upon his back.
Livette, assisted by the drover's strong hand, leaped to the croup
behind him with one spring; highly amused she was as she threw one arm
around Renaud's waist. It is the fashion among the Camarguese young
women, all of whom, on fete-days, ride to the plains of Meyran, or to
Saintes-Maries, "fitted" to the horses of their promised husbands.
The drover started Blanchet off at a gallop, gave him his head, and
let him take his own course. Blanchet left the travelled road, headed
straight for the chateau across the moor, through the sand thickly
sown with stiff, rounded clumps of saltwort at irregular intervals.
The good horse flew over these clumps, scarcely touching the tops,
landing always between them in the damp sand, from which, however, by
force of long habit, he withdrew his feet without effort, calculating
in advance the distance between the obstacles, galloping freely and
evenly, changing feet as he chose, making sport of his heavy burden,
happy at being left to himself.
And Livette must needs hold tight to the drover's waist; he was a
lithe, supple fellow, and swayed with the horse. And the swift
motion, the free air, youth and love, all combined to intoxicate the
two young people; and without meaning it, without thinking of it, the
horseman repeated his song of a few moments before, between his teeth,
but loud enough to be overheard by the girl:
"Prends tes amours en croupe!
En avant!"
And it seemed to them as if the whole horizon were theirs.
When they dismounted, in front of the farm-house of the chateau, they
had not spoken a word, but they had exchanged in silence the subtlest
and strongest part of themselves.
From that day, Renaud, being sincerely in love, exerted himself to
please. He was careful about his dress, paid more attention to the
adjustment of his neckerchief, shaved more closely, and had not a
single glance to spare for the other girls, even the prettiest of
them.
At last, he said to Livette one day:
"Your father will never be willing!"
Those were his first words of love.
"If I am willing, my father will be. And when my father is willing,
grandmother always is!"
"The good God grant it!" replied Jacques.
And it had happened as she said. For almost five months now they had
been betrothed.
The fascinating thing about Livette was that she was just the
opposite of Renaud, so slender and delicate, so fair and such a
child,--and, furthermore, that she loved him with all her might, the
sweetheart,--there was no mistake about that.
V
THE LOVERS
Livette was so fresh and sweet that people often repeated, in speaking
of her, the Provencal expression: "You could drink her in a glass of
water!"
In loving Livette, Renaud experienced the pleasant feeling, so dear to
the heart of strong men, of having some one to protect, a little wife,
who was no more than a child. Because of Livette's fragility and
slender stature, the rough drover, made for violent passions, the
horseman of the Camargue desert, the hard-fisted herdsman, the subduer
of mares and bulls, felt the love that is based upon sweet compassion,
upon respect for charming weakness; in a word, he learned the secret
of true tenderness which he could not have felt, perhaps, for one of
his own class.
It would never have occurred to him to tell her any of the vulgar
jests with a double meaning, with which he regaled the more robust
fair ones of his acquaintance on branding-days or on race-days. To do
that would have seemed to him to be a villainous misuse of his power
and his experience as a man. Still less did Livette cause him to feel
the fierce desire, well known to him, which sometimes, with other
girls, went to his brain like a rush of blood,--the desire to touch
with his hands, to take in his arms, to throw down into the ditch,
laughing at the gentle resistance, at the consent which repels a
little, at the equal struggle between the youth and the maiden, who
have, in reality, a tacit understanding to be robber and robbed. No:
in Livette's presence, Renaud felt that he was a new man. There came
to him, in regard to the little damsel with the golden hair, a
tranquillity of heart that surprised him greatly. Love has a thousand
forms. That which Renaud felt for Livette was a soothing emotion. He
"wished her well." That was what he kept repeating to himself as he
thought of her. And, as he desired all the others something after the
fashion of the bulls of his _manade_, in the season when the germs are
at work, it so happened that he seemed not to desire the only woman he
really loved.
There was a sweet fascination in the thought, which he relished like a
draught of pure water after a long day's walk through the dust in the
hot sun. He rejoiced inwardly in his love as in a halt for rest in the
shade of a great tree, beside a clear, cool spring, while the birds
sang their greeting to the morning. Sometimes, in the blazing heat of
midday, when he was riding across the mirror-like waste of sand and
salt and water, his horse plodding wearily along with hanging head,
the thought of Livette would steal softly into his mind, and it would
seem as if a cool breeze were blowing on his forehead, washing away,
in a sense, the dust and fatigue, like a bath. He would feel
refreshed, and a smile would come unbidden to his lips. His whole
being would thrill with pleasure, and, with renewed life, he would
imperceptibly, with hand and knee alike, order his horse to raise his
head. And the lover's steed would raise his head without further
bidding, and snort and toss his mane, scatter, with a sudden lash of
his tail, the gadflies that were streaking his sides with blood, and,
with quickened step, reach the shelter of the hawthorns and the
poplars on the Rhone bank--whose leaves forever quiver and rustle like
the water, like the heart of man, like everything that lives and hopes
and suffers and then dies!
Not only by her grace and weakness did she win his heart, strong and
rough as he was; but also by the care expended on her dress, by the
splendor of her surroundings, she, the wealthy farmer's daughter,
enchanted him, the poor drover; and she seemed to him a strange,
unfamiliar creature from another world. And so she was in fact. Of a
different quality, he said to himself: a being outside his sphere,
far, far above it.