feeling of anger, was irritated by those words. Certainly he had
forgotten none of Livette's grievances against the gipsy. Not a week
had passed since her threatening visit to the Chateau d'Avignon. But,
in that beautiful evening light, Renaud's heart felt at peace, and he
had recognized the gipsy queen without emotion. It may be that
curiosity was dominant in his heart, and urged him toward this
mysterious being, surprised in her bath, in the utter solitude of the
desert at evening; the curiosity of a traveller to examine a strange
animal, of a Christian to investigate a heathen woman. "Go your way!"
This command, hurled at him from afar by a woman's voice, wounded him
in that part of his heart where the memory of the gipsy's threat
against Livette was stored away.
"Ah! it's you," he cried, "you, who go about and stand in doorways to
frighten young girls when they happen to be left alone! who tell lies
and play monkey-tricks to make them give you what they refuse to give!
Don't let it happen again, thief! or you'll find out how the pitchfork
and the goad feel!"
The insulted queen was absolutely convulsed with furious rage. If she
had been near the drover, she would have jumped straight at his
throat, as the serpent straightens itself out like an arrow and darts
at its prey. She felt that she grew pale, a shiver ran through her
whole body, and swaying a little, like the adder about to spring, with
her head thrown slightly back, she walked toward the horseman--but how
far away he was!
"Aha!" he cried, "you are coming near to hear better! Come on, you
heathen, come! I will explain it all to you!"
As he remembered how the woman had threatened Livette, his wrath rose
within him. They were not Christians, these Bohemian creatures, but
thieves, bandits, one and all. Why, it was said that they ate human
flesh, child's flesh, when they could find nothing better. If that
were not true, how would they have whole quarters of bleeding flesh in
their kettles so often? Ah! a race of wolves, of accursed foxes!
"Come on!" he cried again.
She came on, but not without difficulty, having to force her way step
by step through the resisting waves. Her shoulders were not yet
visible, and she was accelerating her speed by using her arms under
the water. She could have made the same distance more quickly by
swimming, but she did not even think of that. She was thinking of
something very different!
Renaud mechanically cast his eye along the shore, behind him, and saw,
a few steps away, the gipsy's clothes lying in a heap out of reach of
the waves,--and her tambourine on top of them; then he looked around
once more at the woman coming toward him. The water was now up to her
armpits, and not until then did he see that she was entirely naked.
Her bust slowly emerged from the water. At a hundred paces from the
shore, the water reached only to her knees. She was beautiful. Her
slender, well-knit body was very youthful. She stood very erect, and
seemed as if she were going into battle without any thought of shame.
She had been assailed: she was rushing at her assailant, that was the
whole of it. Her fists were clenched, her arms slightly bent, her head
still thrown back a little. Her whole attitude was threatening. The
water was rolling down in glistening pearls from her neck to her feet,
over every part of her swarthy, bronzed body. Her swelling chest
seemed to be put forward, as if it were ready, like a magic buckler,
to receive the blows that would be powerless to injure it.
The drover sat still in speechless amazement. He gazed at the
approaching woman, who, as he saw her, springing from the water,
surrounded by white foam, with her unusual coloring, appeared to him
like a supernatural being.
What was she there for? She came forward, boldly aggressive; and her
witch's mind was revolving many evil schemes, no doubt.
Did she not bend over a moment, as if to pick up pebbles from beneath
the water, with which to stone her enemy? Was she not holding them now
in her clenched fists. No: the sands of Camargue stretch very far
beneath the water, sloping very gradually, and not the tiniest pebble
meets the swimmer's bare foot.
What was she doing then?
And now she was close beside the horseman, whose curiosity constantly
increased. But he had ceased questioning himself. He simply stared at
her, stupefied and enchanted.
He followed her with his eyes, fascinated, forgetting his spear
resting upon his stirrup, forgetting his horse, forgetting everything.
And now she was within three paces of him, standing perfectly
straight, insolent in her whole bearing, in every undulation of her
figure, looking him in the face, with eyes from which a steely flame
shot forth, and which no other eye could penetrate. And as she
presented her profile to him for a second, he had a swift, hardly
conscious thought that the lower part of the face--from below the
nostrils to the base of the chin--resembled the head of the lizard of
the sand, and the turtles and snakes of the swamp. There was the same
vertical line, broken by thin, slightly-receding lips, whence he
expected to see a forked, vibrating tongue come forth, as in a dream
of the devil.
But this impression was but momentary, and he saw naught but the
woman, young, fair, unclothed, seemingly offering herself voluntarily
to his savage lust, in the security of that deserted shore, amid the
plashing of the waves, in the fresh breeze blowing from the sea, and
the evening sunlight, which, with the salt water, coursed in streams
over the whole lovely body.
Dazzled, blinded, drunken with the waves of blood, which from his
heart, whither it had rushed at first, suffocating him and making him
waver in his saddle,--now poured back to his brain, suffusing his face
and bull-like neck with red,--he was about to leap down from his
horse, or perhaps to stoop over only, snatch up the creature--a mere
feather in his hands--by strength of wrist, and centaur-like carry her
away _en croupe_,--when she, more prompt to act, darted forward,
stretching out her arms, and with her left hand seized and pulled
back with all her strength the double rein of Renaud's horse, making
him rear and fall back. And with her right hand she struck the
creature's face!
[Illustration: Chapter VII
_He saw naught but the woman, young, fair, unclothed,
seemingly offering herself voluntarily to his savage lust,
*** when she, more prompt to act, darted forward, stretching
out her arms, and with her left hand seized and pulled back
with all her strength the double rein of Renaud's horse,
making him rear and fall back._]
"Go, dog! go and tell your people that a woman has revenged herself
upon you and has struck the horseman on his horse's face! Coward! Vile
neat-herd! Go and tell it to your sweetheart! Go, tell her that when I
struck you, you knew not what to do or say!"
There was no wrath left in Renaud; he had no feeling but fear mingled
with amazement. The woman's performance seemed to him in very truth
surprising, diabolical. In coloring, bearing, expression, and
audacity, she was the sorceress to the life. A strange terror took
possession of him. Perhaps he would have gone astray gaily, without
remorse, with any other than this ill-omened gipsy, who terrified him.
He was especially alarmed for Livette. He felt that she, and he
himself with her, were threatened by some mysterious, obscure
disaster; and the thought of being unfaithful to her filled him with
dismay, as the beginning of the end. He was afraid of himself; afraid,
for Livette, of this unforeseen, inexplicable creature, who rose up
before him, challenging him to contend with her, for what?--Thus,
malignity and hatred brought the woman to him as love would not have
done!--He was bewildered. He simply waited till his rein should be let
go, ready to start off at a gallop, feeling no longer in his heart the
wrath a man must feel in order to ride down any woman, though she
were a witch, and trample her beneath his horse's feet, at the risk of
killing her.
But why was he no longer angry? Because his eyes, against his will,
followed every movement of that body with its weird beauty,--the body
of an enemy.
"You would like to fly like a coward, would you?" she suddenly cried.
"You shall not go until I choose!"
Profiting by the horseman's open-mouthed stupor, she had seized with
her teeth a hanging end of the lasso that was coiled about the horse's
neck, and with the assistance of one hand--the other still holding the
rein--had swiftly passed it about the nostrils and tied it in a cruel
knot. With a fierce pull upon this instrument of torture, she held the
beast fast just where she wished him to be.
"You must wait until your comrades pass!" she said. "They must see a
bull-tamer tamed by a woman!"
"Upon my word," thought Renaud, "that would be, as she says, a very
absurd thing!" And he drew his horse back a little, thinking he might
release him, but the horse stretched out his head and neck, balked,
dropped his tail, and stiffened his four legs, as if he were tied to a
wall. The gipsy did not stir. She laughed, showing an unbroken set of
small, white, pretty, formidable teeth.
"Take care!" said Renaud at last, "I am going to ride my horse upon
you!"
"I defy you to do it!" she replied tranquilly.
She saw with her unerring glance signs of confusion in the drover's
eyes: the charm was working! Through a mist he now gazed upon this
woman, whose captive he was, by virtue of a burning curiosity already
closely akin to love. She smiled.
This lasted some time. At last, Renaud felt that his wits were leaving
him. To remain faithful to Livette, whom he could not betray with the
very woman upon whom he had promised to avenge her, he must not
dismount from his horse, for as soon as he put his foot to the ground
he would have become the stronger of the two! To remain faithful he
must have courage to remain vanquished in this struggle of beauty
against strength. And he waited.
She surprised the drover glancing for an instant toward the moor.
"Aha! you are afraid some one will see you, coward! but never fear!
Every one shall know what has happened to you, all the same. I will
take care of that! Some day you shall come and tell me what your
pale-faced, white-blooded blonde had to say to it!"
Humiliated at being forced thus to obey a woman, but rendered wavering
and weak by the physical delight she caused him to feel, he remained
where he was! His horse, as he irritated without maddening him, tried
several times to free himself, but without success. Renaud looked on.
Slight, supple as a tiger's whelp, active and strong, and accustomed
to contend with horses, the gipsy, still holding the cruel cord in
her left hand, had seized the long mane and wound it about her right
hand, and when the horse reared, she being thus made fast to him,
allowed herself to be raised from the ground, standing erect upon the
tips of her rigid toes--or else she would twine her feet about the
rider's leg, clinging to him as the polypus clings, with its tendons
to the rock, and laughing always, with a wicked, obstinate, triumphant
air.
"You shall never be rid of me again!"
At last, becoming more and more alarmed, he came to have a horror of
her, as of a poisonous insect, seen in a dream, a spider or a
dragon-fly, that follows you obstinately, or of an adder that
conceives a strange, almost human hatred for you, persists in
following your footsteps, with unwearying patience, and becomes an
object of terror, despite his puny size, because of his supernatural
tenacity.
And in very truth the fierce resolution, the malevolent perseverance,
the demoniacal obstinacy of the woman, protected as she was by her
beauty and her weakness, were terrifying.
But the play of the muscles, causing that gleaming flesh, now moist
with perspiration, to throb and undulate, aroused the man's interest,
in spite of everything, and pleased him more and more. Desire awoke in
him. And instantly he refused to accept his defeat, and rebelled.
"Look out!" he cried, and he urged his horse forward, driving his
spurs into his sides; but the beast, held fast by the nostrils, gave
but three leaps and then stopped short, breathing fire. Poor Blanchet,
who was used to his young mistress's caresses and sweetmeats! he was
learning now to know woman's true nature.
At last, the gipsy released her double prey.
"Go! you have looked at me enough!" she suddenly exclaimed.
Renaud gazed at her an instant longer, without speaking or moving. The
strength and chaotic character of his temptations held him fast there
for another moment. So this extraordinary experience (which would
never be repeated!) was ended at last!--Mad thoughts, each clear
enough in itself, but confused by their great number, jostled one
another in his brain. Why had he not sooner put an end to this
conflict? What would people say of him when it was known? How could it
be that he, the king of the moor, had not stooped to pick up this
joy?--But Livette?--ah, yes! Livette!
He buried his spurs in Blanchet's flanks, and the beast flew away
toward Saintes-Maries.
The gipsy stood on the shore a long while, looking after the fugitive.
She smiled. She reviewed in her mind the varying fortunes of the
battle, and gauged the extent of her victory. She recalled, one by
one, to enjoy them to the full, the thoughts that had passed through
her mind when she was wading toward the shore.
She had not premeditated her assault, as she made it--her first idea
had been to pick up some stones and throw them at Renaud's head, being
an adept in the art. But she could find none. So she had continued her
forward movement, not knowing what she would do, but certain that she
must do something to punish the insolent Christian.
But when she felt the cool air blowing upon her bare breast, she had
said to herself in her mysterious language, full of cabalistic words
and images, that if a saint had been able to recompense a boatman--her
good friend--simply by revealing to him her beauty all unclothed, a
heathen might, by similar means, chastise a brutal drover; for love is
the magician's herb, the bitter-sweet, the plant with two savors, balm
and poison at once; and woman is bitter as the salt sea water,
frightful as death,--her hands are chains stronger than iron, and her
whole being is as much to be dreaded as an army!
Could not she, brown as she was, almost black beside the white-skinned
blondes, domineer over the pale-faced Livette's lover, if she chose?
Indeed, what more need she do, to make him unfaithful to his fair
fiancee, than show herself to him, and could she not do it without
seeming to intend it? As she had, beyond question, been insulted by
this Christian, she could pretend to forget her nudity in her wrath,
and thus attack him with that same nudity!--No, no, there was no need
of philters, magic incantations, or fires lighted at night when the
moon is young, under tripods on which marsh-water, filled with snakes,
is boiling--no need of such things to bewitch this fellow! She would
come forth from the water, naked and lovely as she was, and the devil,
at her command, would do the rest! What were the stones she might
throw at a young man, compared with the power that exhaled from
herself? Yes, therein lay the charm of charms. She knew it,--being a
witch like every other woman! Lust for her body was what she would
throw at him like an evil destiny; with that she would poison his
life--and then, she would calmly watch the ravages of the poison.
And so she had come forward, small but formidable--the queen! She knew
also that in former times, in the days of pagan Europe, an immortal
goddess had issued from the sea, had sprung forth, fair and naked,
like a marvellous flower, and, standing on the blue waves, her feet
resting in a shell of mother-of-pearl, had long held sway over
men--before the reign of Jesus Christ.
Renaud, turning in his saddle, saw the gipsy standing there, still
naked, waving her arms in the sunlight, as if she wished still, from
afar, to hold Livette's betrothed spellbound and fascinated by her
beauty.
The sun disappeared below the horizon, and the naked woman's figure,
even more mysterious in the gathering twilight, was outlined in black
against a coppery red sky.
VIII
ON THE BENCH
From Saintes-Maries, whither he went to ask how many bulls he was
expected to bring on the day of the fete, Renaud rode away at once to
the Chateau d'Avignon.
He was in haste to see Livette once more, and sitting by her side to
forget the scene of the afternoon, to which, despite his efforts, his
mind constantly reverted.
A ride of four or five leagues and he reached his destination.
Livette and her father and grandmother were sitting just outside the
farm-house, enjoying the fresh air on the stone bench against the
facade of the chateau, among the old climbing rose-bushes which frame
the windows above with their bunches of green leaves interspersed with
flowers.
This was also one of the favorite resorts of our lovers, who liked to
have above their heads the perfumed foliage, to which one of the
nightingales from the park often came to sing.
"Ah! good-evening, Jacques."
"Good-evening, all."
"What brings you so late? You have dined, of course?"
"I ate some anchovies at the Saintes----"
"They're good for nothing but to give you an appetite. Would you like
something else? you have only to speak."
"Thanks, Master Audiffret. I'll just go and look after Blanchet in the
stable and then come back. I won't go to the _jass_ to-night. I'll
sleep in the hay-loft with the horses."
Master Audiffret, with his pipe between his lips, rose and followed
Renaud as far as the door of the stable, and from there watched him
rub down his horse.
"Whenever you please, Master Audiffret, you can take him back for
Livette. I don't find any faults in him; far from it. He is a good
horse, and very gentle."
"He is quiet with you because you tire him out, you see; but she
didn't use him every day, not by any means; I am always afraid for
her. If she takes a fancy to ride him sometimes, you can lend him to
her, and take the first horse that comes along for yourself. By the
way, I hope you will soon have your Cabri again. Somebody saw Rampal
yesterday in Crau. He was riding your horse, so he hasn't sold him, at
all events. It's fair to suppose he means to bring him back to you."
"Oh! I will go to meet him," said Jacques, "for as to thinking he
will bring him back to me--oh! no; he would have done that before
now!--Can you tell me, Audiffret, where Rampal was seen yesterday?"
"Between Tibert's farm and Icard's in Crau. Right there, as you know,
in the middle of a bog, is a hut you can only get to by a plank walk
built on piles and covered by the water--you can only tell where it
is, when you know the place, by stakes sticking up at intervals the
whole length of the walk. I have an idea he means to go in hiding
there, the beggar, like the deserter who went there to pass his time
of service----"
"Aha! he has gone to the Conscript's Hut, has he? Very good; I will go
to see him there, never fear!" said Renaud.
Blanchet, having been well rubbed down, was grinding the good lucern
between his teeth. Renaud went out of the stable, and with Audiffret
sat down beside Livette and the grandmother.
All four kept silence for a long moment. Nothing could be heard but
the unceasing, melancholy croaking of the frogs, and beneath it, but
indistinguishable, the dull murmuring of the two Rhones and the sea.
The sky was swarming with innumerable tiny stars, which seemed to
answer the various noises of the palpitating moor; and, just as the
waters of the Rhone, after it rushes into the blue ocean, pursue their
own course for a long while therein, unmingled, without losing their
earthy color; so the Milky-Way, made of a dust of stars, pursued its
course, easily distinguishable, through the ocean of starry worlds.
Renaud had a feeling of constraint.
When he joined his fiancee, he did not feel all that he ordinarily
felt--a joyful impulse to run to meet her, a sort of oppression at the
pit of the stomach, a sudden delicious rush of the blood to the
throbbing heart!--And Livette, too, so soon, was conscious of a vague
inexplicable feeling at the bottom of her heart that something was
wrong. There was something between them! Indeed, he had, for the first
time, something to conceal from her; and, thinking that it might, that
it must be apparent, he suddenly said:
"I am not well to-night."
"Look out for the fever!" said Audiffret. "I know it is not as
frequent or as dangerous as it used to be, but you must be on your
guard, all the same! Be on your guard, and take the remedy. Up in the
pharmacy of the chateau are the registers of the time the land was
first exploited--the time when the Chateau d'Avignon people were
gaining a little arable land from the swamps every day. Why, men went
to the hospital, fifteen, twenty a day. And such doses of quinine, my
children! It is all written down in the _Livre de Raison_ up there. In
those days, all the farms hereabout had the same kind of a book,
called by the same name, just as sailors have a log-book. Those were
the days of good order and gallantry. The peasant-women in those days
didn't try to copy Parisian bourgeoises,--eh, grandmamma?--by wearing
dresses that didn't suit them, instead of the old-fashioned gowns that
made them attractive because they were so becoming."
"Yes," sighed the grandmother, "this is the age of pride, and my time
has gone by."
That is the common remark of all our old peasants.
"People didn't read so many newspapers in those days," continued
Audiffret, "they didn't worry so much about the affairs of the whole
world, and every man paid much more attention to his own affairs.
Things went better for it. Landowners lived on their estates and
raised families, instead of going to Paris and dying there, of pride
or debt or something else. The _Livre de Raison_ up yonder describes
our ancestors' battles with the swamps and the fever. The pharmacy is
still in good order, with the scales and the jars in the pigeon-holes,
under the dust. And the book tells everything, diseases and deaths.
To-day, hardly any one dies of the fever in our neighborhood. It is
dying out. The dikes and canals have done good service, and this
Cochin China of France, as that sailor called it that I took to see
the Giraud rice-fields, this Camargue of ours is as healthy to-day as
Crau!--However, be on your guard, I tell you, and take the remedy!
don't wait till to-morrow; Livette will give you what you need. Now, I
am going to bed. Stay up a little longer, young people, if you
choose. Are you coming, grandma?"
"No, I'll stay out a moment longer with the young folks," said the old
woman.
Audiffret knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the corner of the
bench, and having put it in his pocket, went up to bed.
Silence reigned upon the bench.
The grandmother was tired and sleepy: every little while she would
raise her head as if suddenly awakened,--then it would begin to fall
forward again, slowly, slowly----
"A heavy dew is falling," observed Livette, suddenly.
"Yes, demoiselle."
"See!" said she ingenuously, holding out her arm so that he could feel
the dampness on the sleeve of her dress. But he did not put out his
hand. He was not all Livette's that evening, as usual. Strangely
enough, she did not frighten him that evening. He was not, as usual,
overcome with diffidence in her presence. She no longer dominated him.
And he was angry with himself. He suffered. He realized that his
thoughts were more frequently busied with the memory of the day than
with his sweetheart, who was sitting so near him.
"What are you thinking about?" said Livette, who had had her eyes upon
him for a moment past, as if she could see his face distinctly,
although they were sitting in the shadow. Beyond question, she felt
that his thoughts were elsewhere. There is nothing more subtle than a
lover's divination.
"I am thinking," said Renaud, a long minute after the question, "about
my horse, which I propose to take back from Rampal to-morrow if he can
be found in Camargue or Crau."
"And then?"
"And then?" he repeated--"I was thinking of the Conscript's Hut, where
he is at this moment, perhaps,--in hiding."
"And of what else?" Livette insisted.
"Oh! how do I know! of the fever--of all we have just been saying----"
"Alas!" said the maiden, "and not at all of me, Renaud? do you not
think of me any more?"
Her voice was sad.