prolonged, like threads extending from the instrument and winding
about the necks of the little snakes; and the little snakes followed
the notes of the flute, which drew them on and on. Zinzara walked
backward. The little snakes followed her as if they were held fast by
the notes of the flute as by silken threads. The gipsy stopped, and
the notes _grew shorter_, so to speak, like the threads one winds
about a bobbin. Then the snakes approached the sorceress, and as
Zinzara stooped slowly over them, and put down her hands, still
holding the flute, upon which she did not cease to play, the snakes
twined themselves about her bare arms. Thence one of them climbed up
and wound about her neck, letting his little head, with its wide open
mouth and quivering tongue, hang down upon her swelling breast. And
when she stood erect again, two others were seen at her ankles, above
the rings she wore on her legs. Then she laid aside her flute and
began to laugh. Her laugh disclosed her regular, white teeth.
"Now," said she, "if any one will give me his hand, I will tell his
fortune!"
But no hand was put forward to meet hers because of the little snakes.
Zinzara laughed aloud, and her laugh, in very truth, recalled certain
notes of her double flute.
At that moment, Livette started to walk away.
"Come, you!" said the gipsy quickly,--"you refused to listen to me
once, but to-day you must be very anxious to find out where your lover
is, my beauty! Give me your hand without fear, if you are worthy to
become the wife of a brave horseman."
Livette blushed vividly. Her two young friends arrived just then and
heard what was said. "Don't you do it!" said one of them in an
undertone, pulling Livette's skirt from behind; but, Livette, annoyed
by the gipsy's expression, in which she fancied that she could detect
a touch of mockery, put out her hand, not without a mental prayer for
protection to the sainted Marys. The gipsy took the proffered hand in
her own. The snakes put out their forked tongues. Livette was somewhat
pale.
They were both very small, the fortune-teller's hand and the maiden's.
Renaud looked on from above with all his eyes, greatly surprised and a
little disturbed in mind.
The gipsy held Livette's hand in her own a moment, exulting to feel
the palpitations of the bird she was fascinating. She had hoped to
intimidate Livette, and the courage the girl displayed annoyed her.
"Your future husband isn't far away, my beauty," said she, "but he is
not here on your account, never fear! On whose, then? That is for you
to guess!"
Livette, already somewhat pale, became as white as a ghost.
"That alone, I fancy, is of interest to you, my pretty sweetheart!
Then I'll say no more to you except this: Beware; the serpent on my
left wrist just whispered something to me. Look well to your love!"
A shudder ran through the spectators like a ripple over the surface of
a swamp. One of the snakes was, in fact, hissing gently.
The gipsy released Livette's hand; as the girl turned to go away, she
came face to face with Rampal. He had been wandering about the village
since early morning, and had just joined the group, unseen by any one,
even by Renaud.
Livette recoiled instinctively and in such a marked way that Rampal
might well have taken it for an affront. Unfortunately, having left
the front row, she was hemmed in by the crowd on all sides of her.
"Oho! young lady," said Rampal, "so we don't recognize our friends!"
"Good-day, good-day, Rampal," replied Livette, repeating the
salutation as the custom is in the province; "but let me pass! Make
room for me, I say!"
"_Sur le pont d'Avignon_," sang the gipsy, with a laugh, "_tout le
monde paye passage!_"[2]
Renaud, still behind his window, had at last recognized Rampal. Fuming
with rage, but naturally wary, he considered whether he should rush
down at once and attack him or wait until Livette had gone.
Rampal did not always need a pretext to kiss a pretty girl,--but here
was one ready-made for him!
"Do you hear, demoiselle?" said he. "You must pay the tollman of your
own accord, or else he will pay himself!"
He threw both arms about the poor child's waist. She bent back,
holding her body and her head as far away from him as possible, but
the rascal, hot of breath, holding her firmly and forcing her a little
closer, kissed her twice full upon the lips.
A fierce oath was uttered behind them in the air. Everybody turned,
and, looking up, discovered Renaud shaking the old-fashioned window,
which was reluctant to be opened. Two more wrenches and the window
yielded, flew suddenly open with a great noise of breaking glass, and
Renaud, standing on the sill, leaped to the ground.
"Ah! the beggar! the beggar! where is the vile cur?"
But Rampal had already leaped upon his horse that was hitched near by
to the bars of a low window, and was off at a gallop.
He rode as if he were riding a race, half-standing in his stirrups,
his body bent forward, and plying incessantly and very rapidly a thong
that was made fast to his wrist, and that drove his horse wild by the
way it whistled about his ears.
"Coward! coward!" one of the young men present could not refrain from
shouting after him.
"Coward? oh! no!" said Renaud--"simply a thief! for if he weren't
riding a horse he never intends to return, the fellow wouldn't run
away--I know him!"
He turned to poor, frightened Livette.
"Never fear, demoiselle," said he, "he shall not carry our horse to
paradise with him."
Was it Renaud's purpose, in saying this, to make the gipsy think that
he was bent upon taking vengeance for the theft of his horse rather
than for the insult put upon his fiancee? Perhaps so; but the devil is
so cunning that Renaud himself had no idea that he was capable of such
craft.
As to the gipsy, she said to herself that Renaud, by jumping out of
the window, instead of coming quietly down the stairs, had compromised
his prospects of revenge for the satisfaction of exhibiting his
gipsy-like agility to her. He did, in truth, jump like a wild cat, and
rebound as if he were equipped with elastic paws! He was as agile as a
true _zingaro_! He was as handsome and bold as a highwayman! They are
gipsies, to all intents, these wandering guardians of mares and
heifers!
Renaud, who had disappeared long enough to buckle his horse's girth,
rode by in a few moments upon Prince; the witnesses of the scene just
enacted were still discussing it.
"Catch him! catch him! eat him, King!" cried twenty young men's voices
in chorus.
"With the King and the Prince arrayed against him, Rampal is a dead
man," some one remarked, with a laugh.
Renaud was already at a distance. He had not looked at the gipsy, but
he felt that her eyes were upon him, and he felt now that they were
following him from afar; and the feeling caused a pleasurable thrill,
of which he was conscious, and for which he reproved himself vaguely
on Livette's account, but without seeking to repress it. Yes, as he
galloped along in his wrath, he galloped in a particular way in order
that his wrath might show to good advantage, so that he might appear a
handsome and graceful horseman, as he was in fact. He was conscious of
every movement that he made--he fancied that he could see himself, and
was desirous to make a good appearance, he, the King!
The peacock, in the mating season, has more gorgeous plumage, and
makes the greatest possible display of it. The nightingale and the
redbreast have sweeter voices. All alike take pleasure in so arraying
themselves as to give pleasure.
"Where are you going, Livette?" her two friends asked her.
"I am going to see monsieur le cure. I must have a talk with him, poor
me! for it was a great sin to listen to that sorceress, you know!"
XIV
JOUSTING
Both Renaud and Rampal had spears.
As he rode by the Neuf farm, half a league from Saintes-Maries,
Rampal, who owned nothing in the world but his saddle, and had no
spear, being at that time simply a drover out of a job, had spied one
leaning against a fig-tree, and had appropriated it without
dismounting, had "borrowed it without a word," thinking that he should
probably need it to defend himself.
Now he was galloping across the fields, leaning forward on his horse's
neck, with his thong in his boot and the spear resting in the stirrup.
Renaud had mistaken the road in his hot pursuit. Perhaps the gipsy was
the cause of it, for, in spite of himself, in order to remain within
her range of vision, Renaud had ridden straight toward the Vaccares,
while Rampal had just taken the road to Arles, avoiding stratagem in
order to mislead his pursuer more effectually, for he said to himself
that Renaud would surely argue that he had made for the middle of the
island to take refuge in some deserted _jass_.
Renaud divined Rampal's plan.
"He will keep to the road," he suddenly thought, and feeling certain
that he was right, he turned to the left and rode due west. Rampal,
having the start of him by a full league, drew rein in the vicinity of
Grandes-Cabanes, and having planted his spear-head in the ground,
rested both hands upon it, then placed his feet, one after the other,
on the hind-quarters of his horse, and stood there for some moments,
scanning the plain behind him. Between two clumps of tamarisks he
caught a glimpse of a horseman, like a flash of light, or like a
rabbit scuttling between two wild thyme bushes--Renaud, beyond
question! Rampal saw that Renaud, if it were he, was about to take to
the road, and he himself thereupon left it and rode in the opposite
direction on a line parallel to that his enemy was following in the
distance. When Renaud reached the road and turned into it, Rampal had
the Vaccares in front of him, and there he turned to the left and
followed the shore. His plan was to cross the main stream of the
Rhone, and reach the Conscript's Hut, in the middle of the _gargate_,
the spot where he was confident of finding safe shelter in times of
serious danger. Unluckily for him, he had been seen--when he was
standing on his horse watching his man--by a fisherman who was
crouching on the edge of the canal, fishing for eels with a reed and
a short line, at the end of which was a bunch of worms, strung and
twisted together.
"Have you seen Rampal, friend?" said Renaud, stopping his horse short
as soon as he saw the fisherman, who was just about changing his
place.
"Ah! King, are you the man who is looking for him?" said the
fisherman, an old man. "If he has kept to the road he took to get away
from you,--for I saw he was watching some one behind him,--he ought to
be on the shore of the Vaccares by this time, and from there, if he
doesn't go back to Saintes-Maries, he will surely go up toward
Notre-Dame-d'Amour. You have a good horse, and you can catch him
between the Vaccares and the Grand' Mar."
Renaud darted away as if he had wings.
After an hour and a half of furious riding,--he was wise enough,
however, to change his gait several times,-he drew rein, a little
discouraged; then, after a brief halt and a draught of brandy from the
flask that never left his holsters, he resumed his headlong race--but
not until he had thoughtfully allowed his horse to drink a swallow of
water from the canal.
When he was between the Grand' Mar swamp and the Vaccares, he found
his own drove taking their midday rest there, under the guidance of
Bernard, his young assistant.
Horses and bulls were lying motionless on the shore of the Vaccares,
in the twofold glare from sky and water, for it was well-nigh noon,
and the light was dazzling.
Bernard was resting likewise, lying on his back with his head on the
saddle, not far from his horse, which was fettered near by, learning
to amble.
In front of Renaud lay the pearl-gray Vaccares, gleaming like a huge
table of polished steel, in the centre of which a veritable white
islet of sea-mews were sleeping, motionless as statues.
Behind him stretched an ashen-gray plain, which could be seen only in
spots--where the salt emerged in efflorescent crystals--glistening
through a vast violet net-work of flowering _saladelles_; for the
_saladelles_ spread out in broad, graceful tufts, with many
ramifications, but without foliage, dotted with a multitude of lilac
blossoms, between which the ground can be seen. And farther away the
fields of glasswort began, with their plump, juicy leaves; they are a
beautiful rich green when they are young, but the salt air soon turns
them blood-red, so that the oldest and those nearest the sea are the
darkest.
Here and there the stunted tamarisk, with its gnarled trunk, dotted
the plain, its sparse foliage tinged with pink by the blossoms hanging
in tiny clusters, which, tiny though they be, are a heavy burden for
its flexible branches.
And in the dry, seamy bottoms were great patches of _siagnes_,
_triangles_, _apaiuns_ of every kind, _caneous_ or dwarf reeds used
in making roofs and matting, thorn-broom and all sorts of aquatic
plants, bright green, and straight as fields of grain; their angular
battalions, harvested in summer, go down before the scythe in broad
half-circles. Above these patches of verdure, which bend and rustle
with the faintest breath of air, hovered dragon-flies with enormous
heads,--swallow-like insects, voracious devourers of gnats. They flew
about with the swallows over the waters where the mosquito is born,
making a metallic sound among the reeds when their wings of
transparent, black-veined mica came in contact with them.
Renaud gazed at these familiar things and forgot himself in them. For
a second he fancied that he was watching his drove there, and that he
had nothing else to do but remain with his beasts, absorbed, as they
were, in calm, unreasoning contemplation of the desert that surrounded
him. He ceased to love, to hate, to desire, and to pursue.
The shadow of wings passed him by. He raised his eyes and saw, above
his head, two red flamingoes.
"They built their nest here this year," he thought.
But Prince, the good horse, had recognized his favorite mares, and,
stretching out his neck, opening his nostrils wide to inhale the fresh
breeze of the swamp and the plain, raising his lips and displaying his
teeth, he gave a neigh that made all the mares spring to their feet at
a single bound, the bulls raise their heads, and Bernard himself jump
up from the ground, spear in hand.
Renaud, pressing his knees together and pulling his horse back, held
him in hand, although he trembled under him and pranced up and down in
the soft sand.
At the same time, a sudden gust of the _mistral_ swept across the
plain and broke the mirror-like surface of the Vaccares into little
waves.
"If it is Rampal you are looking for," said Bernard, "he isn't far
away, you may be sure. When he saw me here, all of a sudden--just a
moment ago--he rode off that way. And as he went out of my sight very
soon, I believe he has gone into some cabin. You had better look
around the Mejeane tower."
Renaud was off again.
Suddenly his eyes fell upon a low cabin with its rush-covered roof,
shaped like a pyramid, or like a stack of straw, and surmounted, as
they all are, by its wooden cross, bending back as if the _mistral_
were gradually blowing it over.
The thought came to him: "Rampal is there! His horse must be tired. He
retraced his steps a short distance without Bernard's seeing him, and
went into hiding there--hoping that I should be thrown off the scent
and would ride by. Yes, he is surely there!"
Renaud turned about, and rode straight toward the cabin, keeping a
sharp lookout; whereupon Rampal, who was really hidden there,
watching his pursuer through the holes in the wall, rushed out,
frightening an owl that flew away in dismay, and leaped upon his horse
which was browsing in hobbles near by, but out of sight, at the bottom
of a ditch.
The _mistral_, which comes like a cannon-ball when it makes up its
mind to blow at that time of day, suddenly began to roar. Renaud had
put his head down to meet the squall, so that he did not perceive this
manoeuvre of the enemy.
So it was that Rampal seemed suddenly to come up out of the ground,
not twenty feet from Renaud, who was not taken by surprise, however,
but rushed at him, brandishing his spear, for all the world like one
of the knights of the time of Saint Louis, of whom our legends tell.
(Aigues-Mortes was then in its prime.)
But Camargue is, as every one knows, the mother of the _mistral_--the
vast sunny plain, with Crau, which, after sending the air up by dint
of overheating it, is compelled to summon other air in order to
breathe at all. And thereupon, down the Rhone valley, at the summons
of the desert, comes a torrent of fresh air, which is the companion of
the river, and is called the _mistral_. It roared through Renaud's
open vest as in the belly of a sail, and, taking Prince sidewise, kept
him back a little. It was no easy matter to leap the ditch. That gave
the advantage to Rampal, who was now trotting freely along, face to
the wind.
The ditch was now between the two men, and Rampal's only purpose in
trotting along the edge of it was to limber up his horse's legs.
Renaud, abandoning the idea of crossing the ditch for the moment,
decided to follow along on his side. The two horsemen rode thus for a
few moments. Rampal had prudently protected his face from the
_mistral_ with a red silk handkerchief, the ends of which flapped
about his neck.
Suddenly, taking advantage of a spot where the banks came somewhat
nearer together, Renaud lifted his horse and landed on the other side
of the ditch at the very instant that Rampal, having executed the same
manoeuvre in the opposite direction, landed on the side Renaud had
left.
Renaud did not find a favorable spot for crossing at once, and Rampal
gained upon him.
Having at last crossed the obstacle once more, Renaud pursued Rampal
at full speed, and so rapidly that, when Rampal turned to judge the
distance between them, he saw Renaud hardly fifty paces behind him.
He had just time to turn about, and waited for his foe, with lance in
rest, leaning forward in his saddle, his feet planted firmly in the
broad stirrups.
Renaud, unluckily, was charging against the _mistral_. A sort of hail,
consisting of sand and of the little snails that cling in myriads to
the leaves of the _enganes_, beat into his face and angered him.
Five hundred feet away, Bernard was looking on--not saying a word,
for fear of Rampal, but praying fervently for Renaud, and he fancied
that he was watching two champions standing on the long ladders in the
prows of the jousting boats, with their lances held firmly under their
right arms. Rampal's spear, being suddenly lowered too far by a false
step of his horse, pricked the heel of Renaud's boot and grazed
Prince's flank, whereupon he jumped violently aside, as if he were
avoiding the horns of a heifer.
Renaud's spear tore the sleeve of his enemy's blue shirt and carried
away the piece.
The horsemen met and passed each other.
Rampal was the first to turn, and rode after Renaud, ready to strike
him from behind, while he was struggling to stop Prince, who had
acquired too much momentum; and Prince, hearing the other horse's
hurried step, and feeling his hot breath behind him, furious at being
held back, fearing that he would be overtaken, turned about so quickly
and unexpectedly in his wrath, that Rampal took fright and turned
again, but involuntarily.
Renaud, finding that his pursuer had once more become a fugitive, gave
Prince a free rein.
The stallion was off like the wind.
The horsemen sped along, pushed on by the gusts, the wind being now
behind them.
The mares and heifers, the whole drove, in fact, stood with their
heads in the air, staring eyes, and nostrils distended, watching the
two men come down toward them, bending over their horses' necks,
reins flying, as if pursued by the tempest along the shores of the
pond, whose waters were dancing and rippling in the wind.
Here and there the little tamarisks, bent almost double, seemed
likewise to be fleeing from the storm. There were no more gnats or
dragon-flies in the air. Above the Vaccares the spray was flying. The
_mistral_ swept everything clean.
Two minutes later, powerless to control their enervated beasts,
excited as they were by the struggle and the wind, the two adversaries
rode at full speed through the drove.
Thereupon, inflamed by the sight of their two stallions racing madly
by, alarmed at the sight of the waving spears, intoxicated by the wild
wind that found a way into their bodies through their fiery nostrils,
the mares neighed and reared and started off together on the gallop.
The heifers followed. Hundreds of hoofs and cloven feet beat the
ground with a noise like the roaring of a tempest, and the whole
drove, lashed by the _mistral_, which howled behind them, biting them
and urging them forward, rolled across the plain like a second Rhone.
And while Bernard was saddling his horse in hot haste to overtake
them, the two enemies galloped in the midst of the hurricane as if
borne on by the stamping of eighty beasts, whose hoofs raised clouds
of sand and showers of spray and mud in the wind that travelled faster
than they!
At the head of this whirlwind, and still in the midst of it, Renaud
succeeded in overtaking Rampal. When he was near enough to touch him,
he selected the precise moment when his horse was raising his left
hind foot, to strike him on the right hind-quarter. The right leg,
just as it was about to strike the ground, bent double under the blow
of a spear directed by a man riding at a gallop, and Rampal and his
horse rolled over among the countless galloping hoofs that shook the
earth.
Bulls and horses leaped over the two bodies lying there, man and
beast, and when the drove, tired and subdued, came to a stop half a
league farther on, Renaud, still riding Prince, was holding by the
bridle his recaptured horse, bleeding only in the flank and at the
nose.
Standing beside him, with rage in his heart, stained with mud and
dust, his face bleeding and the skin torn from the palms of the hands,
Rampal, red as fire, was occupied in rearranging his breeches and
fastening his belt.
"Wait till next time, Renaud! After this you would expect a man to
seek revenge, eh?"
But his shrill voice was drowned in the howling of the _mistral_.
"Give me back my saddle!" he shouted in a louder tone.
The drover's saddle is his whole fortune. He cherishes it, loves it,
takes pride in it.
"Your saddle?" rejoined Renaud suspiciously. "Come with me and get
it! Bernard will give it to you."
He shrugged his shoulders, and without another word rode after the
drove, leading back to it the emaciated horse which Rampal had sadly
misused.
He was extremely glad that Blanchet had had no part in this duel. He
recognized Blanchet from afar in among the mares, but sleeker and
better cared for than the others. A true lady's horse, staunch as he
was!--And now he would be able to return him to his mistress, as he
had his former horse, in addition to Prince. And his nostrils dilated
with the pride of victory. He inhaled long draughts of the bracing
salt air.
He was thinking of two women--yes, of two, not one only!--who would
say of him when they heard what had taken place: "That is a man!" And
Renaud's noble horse shared his master's pride, as he capered about,
in the liberty accorded him to choose his own pace, with the proud
bearing of a stallion that had won the race in the sight of his whole
drove.
XV
MONSIEUR LE CURE'S ARCHAEOLOGY
The cure of Saintes-Maries was a man of about sixty, well preserved,
very tall and stout, with bright eyes whose light he quenched with
spectacles, and energetic gestures which he purposely restrained.
The parsonage was near the church, the doorway shaded by a number of
elms. The house, in accordance with the prevailing custom of the
province, was whitewashed once a year, outside and in, like the houses
of the Arabs.