horse.
What right had he, the drover, to ruin the favorite steed of his
darling fiancee in the service of his passion for a witch?
So Renaud dismounted, removed Blanchet's saddle and bridle, and said
to him: "Go! do what you will." Then he cut a bundle of reeds with
which he made himself a bed, and lay upon his back, with his saddle
under his head and a handkerchief over his face, waiting for dawn.
He fell into a heavy sleep, during which his trouble swelled and
burst within him, forced its way out, and took on form and
feature.--The same vision constantly returned.
When he awoke, two hours later, he found his cheeks wet with tears and
his hands over his face. Then he took pity upon himself, and, having
begun to weep in his dream, he let the tears flow freely that he would
have forced back had they sought an outlet on the previous day.
He deemed himself a miserable wretch, and wept over his fate, at first
madly, convulsively, and then with joy, as if, in weeping, he had
poured out all his sorrow forever. He wept to think that he was
caught, powerless, between two contrary, irreconcilable things: that
he wished for the one, and thirsted, against his will, for the other.
He beat his hands upon the ground; he tore his cravat, which strangled
him; he ground the reeds with his teeth, and cried aloud like a
child,--he, an orphan:
"O God! my mother!"
And he would have wept on for a long while, perhaps, and emptied the
springs of bitterness in his heart, had he not suddenly felt a warm
caress--two soft, warm, moist caresses upon his cheek, his forehead,
his closed eyes.
He half opened his eyelids and saw Blanchet standing beside him,
touching his face with his pendant lip as he used to touch Livette's
hand when in search of a bit of sugar.
Another animal had imitated Blanchet; it was the _dondaire_, Le Doux,
the drover's favorite, the leader of his drove of wild bulls and cows,
whose bell he had not heard, but who had recognized his master.
The compassion of these two dumb animals aggravated Renaud's bitter
grief at first. Like children, who begin to howl as soon as you
sympathize with them, he, when he found he was so wretched as to
arouse the pity of beasts, cried aloud in his heart, but stifled the
cry at his throat; then, touched at the sight of their kindly faces,
and distracted thereby from his own thoughts, he became suddenly calm,
sat up, put out his hand toward the muzzles of the powerful yet docile
creatures, and spoke to them:
"Good fellows, good fellows! oh! yes, good fellows!"
Day began to break. And the great black bull and the white horse,
both, as if in answer to the man and in answer likewise to the first
gleam of returning day, which sent a thrill of delight over all the
plain, stretched out their necks toward the east; and the neighing of
the horse arose, loud and shrill as a flourish of trumpets, sustained
by the bass of the bull's bellowing.
Instantly a chorus of neighs and bellows arose on all sides of Renaud.
His free drove had passed the night in the neighborhood. He was
surrounded by the familiar forms of his own beasts.
They came at the call of Blanchet and Le Doux and the drover's voice.
The mares were white as salt. Some of them came trotting up, some
galloping, some followed by their foals; and passed their heads
between the reeds, peered curiously in, and stood there,--or else,
with a cunning air, set off again, as who should say: "There's the
tamer, let us be off!" And there was a great kicking and flinging of
heels away from the man's side.
Some bulls, thin, nervous black fellows, whipping their sides with
their long tails, also came up, took alarm, remembering that they had
been punished for some shortcoming, and, turning tail, decamped in the
same way, and when they were out of sight, suddenly stopped.
But as the _dondaire_ remained there, few of the horses and cattle
left the spot.
Some, the oldest or the wisest, slowly assumed a kneeling posture, as
if to resume their interrupted repose, then, scenting the approaching
sun, wound their tongues about the tufts of salt grass, drew them into
their mouths and chewed placidly, while the silvery foam fell from
their muzzles.
Others, in the same posture, lazily licked their sides. A mother,
nursing her calf, watched him with a calm, gentle eye.
Here a stallion drew near a mare, reached her side in two bounds, with
tail in air and bristling mane, and bold, sonorous, trumpet-like
call--then reared, and when the mare leaped aside, bit at her and with
a sudden sidewise movement dodged the kick she aimed at him.
More than one bull, too, paid court to the other sex, rose clumsily
on his hind legs, only to fall again on his four feet, with nothing
beneath him.
The awakening of the drove was not complete. The animals were still
dull and heavy. They were awaiting the coming of the sun.
Renaud approached a half-broken stallion he had sometimes ridden, and
threw over his neck the _seden_ he had just coiled for that
purpose--Livette's _seden_ and Blanchet's, all stained with mud from
having brought so many beasts to earth.
He gave sugar to the wild creature, who allowed himself to be saddled
without overmuch resistance, desirous, perhaps, to enjoy for a day the
abundant supply of hay in the stables of the chateau, which he had not
forgotten.
"Go and rest, old fellow!" said Renaud to Blanchet.
And he set off on his fresh steed, spear in hand, with the idea of
seeking Rampal.
The stallion he rode was his favorite, the one he had named Prince.
And he felt a thrill of honest satisfaction as he said to himself that
at all events Livette's horse would not have to put up with his whims
and follies as a lover any more. He felt highly pleased at that
thought, being lightened of a threefold responsibility, as rider,
drover, and lover.
Prince seemed disappointed when Renaud compelled him to turn his back
on the Chateau d'Avignon.
He rode in the direction of the cabin mentioned by Audiffret. It was
very possible, after all, that Rampal had taken up his quarters there,
and he proposed to find out. Now, as this cabin was, as we have seen,
not in Camargue, but in Crau, not far from the Icard farm, between
nine and ten leagues to the eastward, it was necessary to cross the
main stream of the Rhone. But, in that vast plain, men rode long
distances for a _yes_ or a _no_, and thirty or forty kilometres had no
terrors for Renaud.
From his present position, it seemed to him that his shortest road
would be to skirt the southern shore of the Vaccares.
The cool, fresh morning air drove away all his black thoughts, his
visions and nightmares; he felt something like tranquillity. Moreover,
he was so overdone with weariness that he seemed half-asleep, and the
feeling was delicious. He no longer had the strength to follow his
thoughts, still less to guide them, so that he was submissive as a
blade of grass, as any inanimate thing, to the passing breeze, to the
sun's rays.
The hour and the coloring of the earth and sky were in very truth
enough to rejoice the heart, and physical gaiety took possession of
him, as he had ceased to reflect.
A fresh breeze, smelling of the sea, sent a shiver over the water and
the grass. The sun was rising. A moment more and he would appear to
cast his net of gold horizontally over the plain. He appeared. The
vague murmurs became distinct sounds; reflection changed to brilliant
light, drowsiness to activity.
Renaud, who was galloping along with his spear resting in his stirrup,
his head leaning heavily on the arm that held it and his eyes closed,
under the influence of the rocking motion of the horse, suddenly
reopened them, and looked about with the joyous glance of a king.
He paused a moment to gaze at a huge plough drawn by several horses,
which was transforming a wretched stony field into cleared land ready
for the vine.
The phylloxera, which has done so much harm in rich and healthy
districts, affords Camargue a new opportunity to fight the fever and
to gain ground on the swamp. The sand is, in fact, very favorable to
the vine and very unfavorable to the parasitic insect, and this watery
country will gradually become, please God, a genuine land of the vine!
Renaud watched the ploughman with a feeling of delight at the thought
of his native country being enriched by honest toil; and with a
confused feeling of regret, too, for he preferred that the moor should
remain uncultivated and wild and free. The idea of a flat plain,
tilled from end to end, where no room was left for the straying feet
of horses as God made them--that idea saddened him.
He would always say to himself as he rode through more civilized
regions: "Now there, you know, a man can neither live nor die."
The fields of wheat or oats, even in the summer season when they have
such a lovely reddish tinge, so like the overheated earth, so like the
turbid, gleaming waters of the Rhone, had no attraction for him. They
gave him the impression of an obstacle that he must ride his horse
around, and Renaud did not recognize the respectability of any
obstacle--except the sea!
He was more inclined to look favorably upon the vine, because it
seemed to him that it was a glorious thing for his country to produce
wine, just at the time when other districts in France had exhausted
their producing power. And then, the Rhone, the _mistral_, horses,
bulls, and wine, all seemed to him to go together, as things that told
of holiday-making, of manly strength and courage and joy. They knew
how to drink, never fear, did the men of Saint-Gilles and Arles and
Avignon. Renaud had attended wedding-parties more than once on the
island of Barthelasse in the middle of the Rhone, opposite Avignon,
and there he had tasted a red wine whose color he could still see. It
was an old Rhone wine, so they had told him, and he remembered that,
being desirous to do honor to the wine as well as to the bride, and
being a little exhilarated, he had solemnly thrown his cup into the
Rhone after the last bumper. There are, at the bottom of the Rhone,
many such cups, dead but not broken, from which joy was quaffed but
yesterday. They go gently down, turning over and over, through the
water to its sandy bed. There they sleep, covered with sand, and two
or three thousand years hence--who knows?--the venerable scholars of
that day will discover them, as they are discovering amphorae of baked
earth at Trinquetaille to-day, and now and then beside them a glass
urn, wherein all the colors of the rainbow chase one another about as
soon as its robe of dust is removed.
Who can say that Renaud's brittle glass, from which he drank the best
wine of his youth, will not remain for ages full of the sand and water
of the Rhone, and that--in days to come--other youths will not find
therein the same delight? For everything begins anew.
Thus did the wanderer's thoughts wander from point to point, from vine
to glass. Ah! that glass of his, thrown into the Rhone! His mind
recurred once more to that memory of a debauch. It seemed to him now,
that, by throwing it into the river on the wedding-day, he had
foretold his own destiny, and that he, Livette's fiance, would never
be married! He would drink no more from the discarded glass.
The first impulse of delight that came to him with the newness of the
morning had already passed; his sadness had returned as the day lost
the charm that attaches to a thing just beginning.
Dreaming thus, Renaud rode across the marshes, Prince splashing
through the water up to his thighs.
Yes, my friends, he forgave the vine, did Renaud, for invading
Camargue.
Moreover, after the harvest was gathered, did not the red and white
vineyards afford excellent pasturage for the bulls? There are some
that are all red in the autumn, and others all white, or of a light
golden yellow--as if the vines had amused themselves by reproducing
the two colors of the wine under the gorgeous sunsets. He has seen
nothing who has not seen the beams of the setting sun, in November,
now yellow as gold, now red as blood, spreading over a field of red
vines, over a field of yellow vines, which themselves spread out as
far as the eye can reach. Indeed, is not Camargue the home of the
_lambrusque_? The _lambrusque_ is the wild, Camarguese vine, different
from our cultivated vines in that the male and female are on separate
plants. The grapes that grow on the female _lambrusque_ make a
somewhat tart but pleasant wine, and the shoots of the vine make
light, stout staves for the hand.
Arrived at Grand Patis, Renaud swam the Rhone three times, from
Camargue to Ile Mouton, from Ile Mouton to Ile Saint-Pierre, and from
Ile Saint-Pierre to the mainland.
He was now in the swamps of Crau, a stony desert adjoining Camargue,
which is a desert of mud.
To the eye these two deserts seem to join hands across the Rhone. From
Aigues-Mortes to the pond of Berre is a pretty stretch of flat
country, my friends, and the sea-eagle, try as he may, cannot make it
less than twenty good leagues in a straight line! And that is the
kingdom of King Renaud.
Camargue has its saltwort, its grain and plantains and burdocks,
growing in small clumps, with sandy intervals between; it has its
_gapillons_, which are green rushes split into bouquets, with
thousands of sharp points finer than needles; and here and there
tamarisk-trees; and, on the banks of the two Rhones, great elms, so
often cut and hacked to procure wood to burn, that they resemble huge
caterpillars sitting erect upon their tails, their short hair
bristling as if in anger.
Crau is a land of naked plains and heather. It is, to tell the truth,
a veritable field of stones. They have come, people say, from Mont
Blanc, all the stones that now lie sleeping there. The Rhone and the
Durance have borne them down, then changed their beds, after having
jousted together on the vast space at the foot of the little Alps.
From beneath the stones of Crau, in May, there springs a rare,
delicate plant, the _paturin_, or dog's tooth. The sheep push the
stone away with their noses and browse upon the slender stalks while
the shepherd stands and dreams in the wind and sun.
But this stony Crau is farther away, beyond the pond of Ligagnou,
which skirts the river. Here, in the Crau that lies along the banks of
the Rhone, we are in the midst of the marshes, which are dry during
the greater part of the year; some of them, however, are very
treacherous, and one should know them well.
Renaud rode in a northeasterly direction, and soon reached the
neighborhood of the Icard farm.
He drew rein.
"Where is the hiding-place?" he muttered.
And he tried with all his eyes to pierce the thick underbrush of
reeds, rushes, cat-tails, sedges, and bull-rushes, springing from the
midst of a deep bog. This bog did not seem, to the eye, more
formidable than another, but the bulls and mares feared it and
carefully avoided it.
On the surface of the water was what looked like a thick crust of
mouldy verdure. It was not, however, the leprous formation of
duck-weed that lies sleeping on our stagnant ponds. It was a sort of
felt-like substance, composed of dead rushes, roots, twined and
twisted weeds, which made a solid but movable crust upon the water,
swaying beneath the feet that ventured upon it, ready to bear their
weight for a moment and ready to give way beneath them.
This crust (the _transtaiere_) was broken with fissures here and
there, through which the water could be seen, dark as night, its
surface flecked with transient specks of light, gleaming like a mirror
of black glass. Around the edges, at the foot of the scattered
tamarisks, grew reeds innumerable in thick clusters, always rustling
against one another, and incessantly brushed, with a noise like
rustling paper, by the slender wings of the dragon-flies with their
monster-like heads.
Many of these _caneous_ bear white flowers streaked with purple. As
they rise above one another on the long stalks, you would take them
for the flowers of a tall marsh-mallow. These reeds, with their long
leaves, remind one of the _thyrsi_ of antiquity, left standing there
in the damp earth by bacchantes who have gone to rest somewhere near
at hand in the shade of the tamarisks, or to abandon themselves to the
centaurs. They make one think, also, of the wand of the fable, which,
when planted in the ground, was at once covered with flowers, and
thereby had power over marriages.
These _thyrsi_ of the bog are reeds besieged by climbing plants. The
convolvulus fastens itself to the reed, twines its arms about it,
rises in a spiral course, seeks the sunlight at its summit, and robes
the long murmuring stalk in brilliant and harmonious colors.
The sharp leaves of the young reeds stand erect like lance-heads. The
older ones break off and fell at right angles. The delicate, graceful
foliage of the tamarisks is like a transparent cloud, and their little
pink flowers, hanging in clusters that are too heavy for the branches,
especially before they open, cause the flexible plumes of the
gracefully rounded tree-top to bend in every direction.
Through the reeds and tamarisks Renaud sought to discover the hut that
he knew, and that Audiffret had spoken of to him the night before. But
he could hardly distinguish the little inclined cross placed at the
highest point of the roof of all the Camargue cabins, which are built
of joists, boards, grayish mud (_tape_), and straw. The cabin was
formerly entirely visible from the spot where he stood, but the reeds
had grown so thickly on the islet on which it was built, that they
completely hid it. The path leading to it was on the opposite side of
the bog. He must make a wide detour in order to reach it, the bog _de
la Cabane_, so called, being of a very erratic shape.
From the south side of the cabin he went around to the north side. He
no longer had the _transtaiere_ in front of him; but beneath the
surface of the water, where reeds and thorn-broom flourish, was the
_gargate_, the slime, wherein he who steps foot is quickly buried.
There are many other dangers in these accursed bogs. There are the
_lorons_, a sort of bottomless well found here and there under the
water, the location of which must be thoroughly understood. The mares
and heifers know them and are clever in avoiding them, but now and
then one of them falls in, and now and then a man as well. And he who
falls in remains. No time for argument, my man! You are in--adieu!
The drovers will tell you, and it is the truth, that from every
_loron_ comes a little twisting column of smoke, by which those mouths
of hell can be located. A hundred _lorons_, a hundred columns of
smoke. There, my friends, is something to dream about, is it not, when
the malignant fever, bred in the swamps, smites you on the hip?
Renaud was anxious to know if Rampal was occupying the cabin, but not
to attack him there, for it is a treacherous spot. "If he is there, he
will come out some time or other. I will wait for him on the solid
ground. Ah! I see the path!"
It was a winding path hiding under a sheet of shallow water. The bed
of the path was of stones, very narrow but very firm, the right edge
being marked, as far as the cabin, by stakes at short intervals, just
on a level with the water.
Renaud dismounted, and looked for the first stake, holding his horse
by the rein. Although he knew its location, it took him some time to
find it. With the end of his spear he put aside the grass, and when he
discovered the stake, he felt for the solid road whose width it
measured. Bending over, he gazed long and very closely at the grasses
and the reeds, which met in places above the concealed pathway, and
when he rose he was certain that it had not been used for some time.
He was not mistaken. In truth, Rampal was a little suspicious of that
hiding-place, which was too well known, he thought, and to which he
could easily be traced. He often slept in the neighborhood, ready to
take refuge in the _cul-de-sac_, if it should become necessary, but he
preferred, meanwhile, to feel at liberty, with plenty of open space
about him.
Renaud remounted Prince, and crossed the Rhone again an hour later.
That night he lay in one of the great cabins which serve as
stables--winter _jasses_--for the droves of mares, in those months
when the weather is so bad that the bulls can find no pasturage except
by breaking the ice with their horns.
The next day, an hour before noon, he saw before him the church of
Saintes-Maries standing out like a lofty ship against the blue
background of the sea.
Little black curlews were flying hither and thither around it, mingled
with a flock of great sea-gulls with gracefully rounded wings.
A cart was moving slowly over the sandy road.
"Good-day, Renaud."
"Good-day, Marius. Where are you going?"
"To carry fish to Arles."
Marius raised the branches which apparently made up his load, but
which were simply used to shade a dozen or more baskets and hampers.
Well pleased with his freight, he put aside the cloth that was spread
over his treasure under the branches. Baskets and hampers were filled
to the brim with fish taken in the ponds and the sea. There were
mullet and bream, still alive, animated prisms with mouths and gills
wide open like bright red marine flowers amid a mass of dark-blue,
olive-green, and gleaming gold. There were enormous eels, too, caught
for the most part in the canals of Camargue, which are veritable
fish-preserves.
The dark-hued, slippery creatures twisted in and out, tying and
untying endless slip-knots with their snake-like bodies. By the livid
spots upon some of the great eels, Renaud recognized them as _muraenae_,
possessors of voracious mouths, well stocked with sharp teeth.
"See how they all keep moving!" said Marius.
At that moment, as if to justify his words, a great flat fish flapped
out of one of the baskets and fell to the ground.
With the end of his three-pronged spear the mounted drover nailed him
to the earth to prevent his leaping into the ditch, filled with water,
that ran along the road.
"Hallo!" said he in surprise, "isn't that a cramp-fish. When I spear
one of them with my regular fish-spear, which is longer than this
three-pronged one, it gives me a shock I didn't feel at all to-day."
"That's because the fish is in the water then, and your spear is
damp," said Marius, laughing. "But let the fellow stay there," he
added. "He isn't worth much. The snakes will have a feast on him."
Thereupon, horseman and fisherman went their respective ways.
The drover's thoughts wandered from the cramp-fish and the _muraenae_ to
the electric fish of America, of which old sailors had spoken to him.
They had told him that it was charged with electricity like the
cramp-fish, but resembled the conger more in shape, and that it could,
with its overpowering current, kill a horse; in order to make it
exhaust its stock of electricity, so that it can safely be taken, it
is customary to send wild horses into the water against it; they
receive the first shock, and sometimes die from the effects.
As he rode on toward Saintes-Maries, Renaud mused in a vague way upon
the miracles of life, which there is naught to explain.
XII
A SORCERESS
Livette did not go to sleep. When Renaud had passed out of sight in
the darkness, she softly closed her windows, and, throwing herself on
the bed with her face buried in the pillow, wept in dismay.
Meanwhile,--while Livette was weeping and Renaud, bewitched, was
galloping over the moor, fancying that he was pursued by the
gipsy,--the gipsy herself was asleep.
The two beings whose lives she was beginning to destroy were already
suffering a thousand deaths, and she, lying, fully dressed, under one
of the carts of her tribe, in their regularly pitched camp outside the
village, was sleeping tranquilly, her pretty, puzzling face smiling at
the stars of that lovely May night.
When Renaud left her, at sunset, all naked on the beach, she had
slowly stretched her sun-burned arms, taking pleasure in the sense of
being naked in the open air, of feeling the caressing breath of the
sea-breeze that dried the great drops of water rolling down her body.
Then, still slowly, she had dressed herself,--very slowly, in order to
postpone as long as possible the renewed subjection to the annoyance
of clothes, in order to enjoy unrestricted freedom of movement, like a
wild beast.