about to escape the sun. The shadows under the awnings of the little
shops have a bluish cast. In front of the doors, which open on the
street, hang transparent curtains of common linen, in some cases of
very fine net-work, to stop the flies and admit the light after it has
passed through the sieve, so to speak. And, behind them, the maidens
of Saintes-Maries are confined like birdlings in a cage, or like very
dangerous little wild beasts. Are not all maidens to be looked upon
with more or less suspicion?
The maidens of Saintes-Maries wear the Arles head-dress and the
neckerchief, with fold upon fold held in place by hundreds of pins, by
as many pins as a rose-bush has thorns; and where the thick folds of
the handkerchief open, in the depths of the _chapelle_, you can see
the little golden cross gleaming upon the firm young flesh rising and
falling with the maidenly sigh. The apron worn over the ample skirt
seems like a skirt itself, it is so broad and full, and slender feet
peep out from beneath it, as agile as the Camargue partridge's red
claws, that love to scamper swiftly over the fields to escape the
hunter, knowing that Camargue is broad and space is plentiful.
Many are the pale faces at Saintes, for, whatever they may say, the
marshes still breed fever, and this country, to which people come to
be miraculously cured, is, generally speaking, a country of disease;
but pallor goes well with the wavy black hair, worn in broad puffs on
the temples and falling upon the neck in two heavy masses which are
turned up to meet the _chignon_. To help them to forget what is
depressing in their lives, they resort, here as elsewhere, to
coquetry--and the rest!--And then they are accustomed to the fever,
which gives birth to dreams and visions; they tame it, as it were; it
is not cruel to the people it knows, and does not lead them to the
cemetery until they are old and gray.
The cemetery is a few steps from the village, a few steps from the
sea. It lies at the foot of the sand-dunes, surrounded by a low wall.
The dead and gone villagers of Saintes-Maries lie sleeping there
between the sea and the desert of Camargue: many fishermen who lived
in their flat-bottomed boats; many herdsmen who lived on horseback in
the plain.
All of them alike find there, in death, the things amid which their
lives have been passed: the salt sand, filled with tiny shells, the
_enganes_ that grow in spite of everything, reddened by the salt-laden
winds, and heavy with soda,--and the thin shadow of the pink-plumed
tamarisk. There they hear the neighing of the wild mares, the shouts
of the herdsmen contending on the race-course on fete-days, or
stirring up the black bulls in the arena under the walls of the
church. They hear the sails flapping, and the _han_ of the bare-legged
fishermen pushing their flat-bottomed boats or barges into the water;
and night and day, the pounding of the sea in its efforts to push back
the island of Camargue, while the Rhone, on the other hand, is
constantly pushing it into the sea, and adding to its bulk with mud
and stones brought down from its head-waters. The sea smites the
island as if it would have none of it, but all in vain,--it, too, can
but augment its size with the sand it casts up.
And the sand from the sea makes a broad hem of dunes along the shores
of Camargue.
No one can fail to see that the dunes, those shifting, tomb-like
hills of sand, must have served as models for the massive pyramids,
the tombs of kings, in the Egyptian desert.
At the feet of the little pyramids of sand sleep the dead of Camargue.
But whither has the thought of death led us? Why do we tarry here,
while Livette is timidly lifting the knocker at monsieur le cure's
door?
The blow echoed within the house, in the empty hall. Livette was much
perturbed. What was she to say? Where should she begin? The beginning
is always the most difficult part. She would like to run away now, but
it is too late. She hears steps inside. Marion, the old servant, opens
the door.
Marion has a practised eye. When any one knocks at Monsieur le cure's
door, she knows, simply by examining his face, what he wants, and
frames her answers accordingly, on her own responsibility; for
Monsieur le cure is subject to rheumatism: he suffers from fever, too,
and Marion nurses Monsieur le cure! If he listened to Marion, he would
nurse himself so carefully that all the sick people would have to die
unshriven, without extreme unction, for Marion would always have a
good reason to give to prevent him from going out by day or night,
when the _mistral_ was blowing or the wind was from the east, summer
or winter, rain or shine.
But Monsieur le cure would smile and do just what he chose. He was a
good priest. He never failed in his duty. He loved his parishioners.
He assisted them on all occasions with his purse and his advice. He
was beloved by them all.
He loved his parishioners, his commune, and his curious church, which
was once a fortress; he was familiar with the shape of its every
stone. He loved it both as priest and as archaeologist, for Monsieur
le cure is a scholar, and his church is, in very truth, one of the
most interesting monuments in France, with its abnormally thick, high,
and threatening walls, crowned with jutting galleries and surmounted
by crenelated battlements, with an unobstructed view of sea and land
in all directions, and overlooked by four turrets, and a tower in the
centre,--the highest of all,--from whose belfry the alarum bell, in
the old days, often aroused the country-side, repeating in its
shrillest tones: "Here come the heathens, good people of
Saintes-Maries! Attention! Come and shut yourselves up here! Make
ready your arrows and the boiling oil and pitch!"--Or else: "Hasten to
the shore, good people of Saintes-Maries! A French vessel is sinking!"
And to this day it seems still to say, to all, far and near: "I see
you! I see you!"
One could go on forever describing the church of Saintes-Maries, and
relating anecdotes concerning it.
Behind the battlements at the top, and enclosing the roof of flat
stones, runs a narrow pathway, where the archers and patrols in the
old days used to make their rounds, surrounded by countless
sea-swallows. Along the ridge-pole of the roof, of overlapping broad
flat stones, between which thick tufts of _nasques_ are growing, rises
a high carved comb, in ogive-like curves, surmounted by fleurs-de-lis.
All this is beautiful and grand, but there is a little thing of which
the villagers are as proud as of the bell-tower and the turrets, and
that is a marble tablet, about five courses in length by three in
height, on which two lions are represented. One is protecting its
whelp; the other seems to be protecting a little child, as if it were
its own offspring. It seems that this tablet was carved by a Greek
workman long, long ago.
The marble is set into the southern wall of the church, beside the
small door.
You enter. The ogive arch of the nave compels you to raise your eyes
to a great height. And as you enter by the main door, your attention
is attracted by a romanesque arch, directly in front of you, at the
far end of the church, at least five metres below the ogive arch of
the nave; in the centre of this arch are the blessed reliquaries,
resting upon the sill of an opening like a window, flanked by two
columns. From that position they are lowered once in every year at the
ends of two ropes.
The choir is some few feet higher than the flagging of the church. It
is reached by two symmetrical staircases, between which is the grated
door leading down into Sara's crypt. That door you can see, directly
in front of you, at the end of the passage through the centre of the
church, between the rows of chairs. One would say that it was the
air-hole of a dungeon.
Down below, in the damp crypt, with its low arched roof and naked
walls,--a veritable dungeon,--upon a mutilated marble altar, is the
little glass shrine containing the relics of Saint Sara, the patron
saint of the gipsies. There, amid the smoke of their candles, in an
atmosphere made foul by human exhalations, you can see them once a
year, huddled together in a dense crowd, mumbling their questionable
prayers.
In the days of the Saracen invasions this crypt served as a storehouse
for supplies, when all the inhabitants of the little village were
forced to take refuge in the fortress-church.
Aigues-Mortes has her walls and her Constance Tower, massive as Babel;
Nimes has her Arena and her Fountain--and the Pont du Gard, superb in
its beauty, is also hers; Avignon her bridges, her ramparts, and her
clocks with figures of armed men to strike the hours; Tarascon her
Chateau, mirrored in the Rhone; Baux the fantastic ruins of her
houses, hollowed, like the cells of a bee-hive, out of the solid rock
of the hill-side; Montmajour has her tombs of little children, also
dug, side by side, in the solid rock, and to-day filled with earth and
flowers, like the troughs at which doves drink; Orange has her theatre
and her triumphal arch; Arles has her theatre with the two pillars
still upright in the centre; she has Saint-Trophime, too, with its
sculptured facade and its _Allee des Alyscamps_, bordered with
Christian sarcophagi and lofty poplars. But Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
has her church, which Monsieur le cure would not give for all the
treasures of the other towns!
Marion saw plainly that Livette was depressed; Marion was touched when
Livette said: "I must see Monsieur le cure," and as her master would
not be seriously discommoded, there being no occasion for him to leave
the house, Marion ushered Livette into the parlor.
It was a whitewashed room, but the cure had transformed it into a
veritable museum, and the walls were completely hidden behind wooden
cabinets, made by himself, and all filled with his collections.
There were pieces of antique pottery and of rainbow-hued antique
glass. There were old medals.
One of the latter attracted Livette's attention. It represented a bull
in the act of falling; one of his fore-legs had given way. A man, his
conqueror, had seized him by the horns. That Grecian medal was struck
centuries upon centuries ago. A label explained it to Livette, who
thought at first that it was Renaud. Life is all repetition.
There were collections of plants and boxes filled with shells, and
also many stuffed birds, all the varieties found in Camargue. For more
than thirty years, fishermen and hunters had presented Monsieur le
cure with curious objects and animals. Here was an otter from the
Rhone, there a beaver, with his trowel-shaped tail and hooked teeth.
It is a question of serious importance whether the beavers do not
injure the dikes of the Rhone. The important point, you see, is that
the water from the swamps should empty into the river or the sea
through the canals, which run in all directions. Therefore, the dikes
must hold firm and not let the Rhone overflow the swamps. And the
beavers, they say, destroy the dikes. They gnaw into them when the
great freshets come, to avoid the drift, and take refuge inside; and
when the water comes in after them, they make a vertical hole through
which to escape, and there is your dike, undermined, eaten into by the
water! That is a bad state of affairs.
Livette raised her eyes. A reptile, with his mouth open, was hanging
from the ceiling; he was very fat, and well he might be! he was a
little crocodile, the last one killed in Camargue, a very long while
ago!
In every nook left free by the natural curiosities some pious image
was to be seen. Here the two Maries in their boat. There the Holy
Women wrapping the Christ in his shroud. In another place, Magdalen at
La Baume, kneeling in front of the death's-head. But Livette saw no
image of Saint Sara.
Livette sat down and waited. Monsieur le cure did not come. The fact
was, that Monsieur le cure, who had already written two monographs,
one entitled _La Cure de Boismaux_, and the other _La Villa de la
Mar_, was at that moment at work upon a third: _Concordance of the
Legends of the Blessed Maries_, with this sub-title: _Concerning the
strange and regrettable confusion that seems to exist between Saint
Sara and Marie the Egyptian._
_La Cure de Boismaux_ also had a sub-title: _Monograph concerning the
domains of the Chateau d'Avignon in Camargue._ Monsieur le cure
recalled the fact that the domains of the Chateau d'Avignon formerly
constituted a separate commune. That commune naturally had a cure, and
in those days the proprietor of the Chateau d'Avignon was General
Miollis, brother of the Bishop of Digne mentioned by Monsieur Victor
Hugo in _Les Miserables_ under the name of Myriel.
In a special chapter, Monsieur le cure sought, to no purpose, to find
a reason, telluric or otherwise, for the fact that the estates of the
Chateau d'Avignon are particularly subject to invasion by locusts,
which sometimes have to be fought in Camargue, as in Africa, by
regiments.
As to the _Concordance_, that was a very important and very necessary
work. It was based, in great measure, upon the authority of the _Black
Book_. That Latin work, preserved in the archives of Saintes-Maries,
was written, in 1521, by Vincent Philippon, who signed himself: 2000
Philippon![3] (Jesus himself did not disdain the pun.) There is a
French translation of the _Black Book_. It was published in 1682, and
begins thus:
"Au nom de Dieu mon oeuvre comancee
Par Jesus-Christ soit toujours advancee.
Le Saint-Esprit conduise sagement
Ma main, ma plume, et mon entendement."[4]
Here follows the true version of the story of the patron saints of
Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer.
Marie Jacobe, mother of Saint James the Less, Marie Salome, mother of
Saint James the Greater and of Saint John the Evangelist, came not
alone to the shores of Camargue. The boat without sail or oars
contained also their servants Marcella and Sara, Lazarus and all his
family, and several of the Christ's disciples.
Monsieur le cure would prove, with documents to sustain him, that Mary
Magdalen was not in the boat. She came to Provence by some other
means, no one can say by what miracle.
With the exception of the two Maries and Sara, all the passengers upon
the miraculous craft dispersed in different directions, preaching and
making converts.
The holy women did not leave Camargue, the island in the Rhone,
divided at that time into a great number of small islands by the
ponds--a veritable archipelago, called _Sticados_ and inhabited by
heathens. In those days, all these small islands, formed by the
swamps, were covered with forests and filled with wild beasts. And
this delta of the Rhone was infested with crocodiles.
Now, a long, long time after the death of the holy women, a hunter,
followed by his dogs, was passing over the spot where they lay buried
in unknown graves; he fell in with a hermit there, beside a spring.
"My lord," said the hermit, "I had a revelation in a dream last night.
In the sand beside this spring repose the bodies of three sainted
women!"
The hunter was a Comte de Provence. His palace was at Arles, and the
cure had every reason to believe that he was Guillaume I., son of
Boson I., famous for his liberality to the church.
It was in 981. This Guillaume had overcome the Saracens, and Conrad
I., King of Bourgogne, his suzerain, loved and respected him.
The prince, having listened to the hermit's tale, rode away musing
deeply; not long after, he returned and caused a church in the form of
a citadel to be built at that point of the coast, in the very centre
of a spacious enclosure surrounded by moats.
Then he made known throughout Provence that special privileges would
be accorded to all those who should build houses between the church
and the moat.
Thus was founded the Villa-de-la-Mar--which is in fact a town
(_ville_), although it is too often spoken of as a village, under its
other name of Saintes-Maries.
The Comtes de Provence have always granted special privileges to the
town.
Under Queen Jeanne, a guard was stationed all the time at the top of
the church-tower to watch the ships and make signals. Sentinels were
obliged to call to one another and answer every hour during the night.
The people of Saintes-Maries were also exempted by the queen from
payment of tolls and the tax upon salt.
Monsieur le cure explains all these things in his book, which is very
interesting. He also describes therein, "as in duty bound," the
discovery of the sacred bones. In 1448, King Rene, being then at Aix,
his capital, heard a preacher declare that Saintes Marie-Jacobe and
Salome were certainly buried beneath the church of Villa-de-la-Mar.
Rene at once consulted his confessor, Pere Adhemar, and sent a
messenger to the Pope, asking that he be authorized to make search
underground in the church. The authorization was given in the month of
June in the same year. The Archbishop of Aix, Robert Damiani, presided
at the search.
They found the spring; near the spring was an earthen altar; at the
foot of the altar a marble tablet with this inscription, upon which
the good cure descants at great length:
D. M.
IOV. M. L. CORN. BALBUS
P. ANATILIORUM
AD RHODANI
OSTIA SACR. ARAM
V. S. L. M.
Lastly, they found the bones of the saints, perfectly recognizable,
and, in addition, a head sealed up in a leaden box, which, according
to the cure, was the head of Saint James the Less, brought from
Jerusalem by Marie-Jacobe, his mother.
The bones, having been devoutly taken from their resting-place, were
with great ceremony bestowed in shrines of cypress wood. The king was
present with his court. The papal legate was also there, and an
archbishop, ten or twelve bishops, a great number of ecclesiastical
dignitaries, professors, and learned doctors. The chancellor of the
University of Avignon, too, and--so the reports of the proceedings set
forth--three prothonotaries of the Holy See and three notaries public.
And so nothing is more firmly established than the authenticity of the
relics of the saints.
But various apocryphal legends had appeared to throw doubt upon the
truth, and Monsieur le cure was at work upon the following passage
while Livette, with increasing uneasiness, was awaiting him in the
parlor.
"Among the popular fallacies," wrote the cure, "which destroy pure
tradition, we must stigmatize as one of the most deplorable, I may say
one of the most pernicious, that one which insists that among the
passengers of the miraculous craft was a third Saint Marie, surnamed
the Egyptian. It is downright heresy! How could it have taken root,
and how far does it extend?"
Monsieur le cure proposed to retouch that last phrase forthwith, and
for a very good reason.
"Without doubt," he continued, "the Egyptians, or Bohemians, or
gipsies, by manifesting, from remote times, particular veneration for
Saint Sara, who was, according to their ideas, an Egyptian and the
wife of Pontius Pilate, have contributed to the formation of an absurd
legend, but this one has its source, or its root, in something
different; there is an episode of a boat in the life of the Egyptian,
which assists the error by causing confusion."
Monsieur le cure proposed to return to that paragraph also.
"Born in the outskirts of Alexandria, Marie the Egyptian left her
family to lead the life of shame she had chosen, in the great city.
Coming to a river, she desired to cross it in a boat, and having not
the wherewithal for her passage, she paid the boatman in an impure
manner.
"Later, she undertook a journey to Jerusalem with a great number of
pilgrims, and on that occasion again she paid the expenses of her
journey in diabolical fashion, especially if we remember that those
whom she enticed into evil ways were devout pilgrims! And so, when she
presented herself at the door of the temple, an invisible and
invincible force held her back. She could not gain admission there."
Monsieur le cure was better satisfied with that, and took a pinch of
snuff.
"She thereupon withdrew to the desert, where she lived forty-seven
years. Her image appeared one day to the monk Sosimus at Jerusalem.
She appeared before him naked and begged him to come and confess her.
He obeyed, and went into the desert. He found her, naked, indeed, but
very old. And Sosimus was convinced of her saintliness because she had
the power of walking on the water. He listened to her confession. She
died in the odor of sanctity, as decrepit and horrible to look upon as
she had been fair and pleasant to the sight. A lion dug a grave for
her with his claws in the sand of the desert.
"The Egyptian's long penance had redeemed her life, therefore, and
under Louis IX. the Parisians dedicated a church to her, which bore
the name of Sainte-Marie-l'Egyptienne,--corrupted at a later period to
_La Gypecienne_ and then to _La Jussienne_. This church was on Rue
Montmartre, at the corner of Rue de la Jussienne.
"The church contained a stained window representing the saint and the
boatman, with this inscription: _How the saint offered her body to the
boatman to pay her passage._[5]
"We must not, then, in any case, confound Saint Sara, a contemporary
of the Christ, with Marie the Egyptian, who lived in the fifth
century,--a fact that cuts short all controversy.
"It is very fortunate," continued Monsieur le cure, well pleased with
his somewhat tardy conclusion, "that such a sinner was not among those
on board the boat of our Maries-de-la-Mer, for in that boat, as we
have said above, there were several of the Christ's disciples.
_Spiritus quidem promptus est; caro autem infirma._"[6]
Monsieur le cure took snuff, he removed and replaced his spectacles.
Monsieur le cure forgot himself. He went over all the early pages of
his treatise, he struck out and interlined; he struggled with
rebellious words. From time to time, he adjusted his spectacles more
firmly, and opened and consulted an ancient book of great size. He was
very busy, very deeply absorbed in his favorite employment. He forgot
that somebody was waiting for him, and poor Livette, all alone in the
parlor, with the dead birds and the shells, was sadly disturbed in
mind. The melancholy that possessed her was not dissipated--far from
it!--by the place in which she found herself.
All the dead birds, most of which she recognized as birds of passage,
reminded her of the weariness of winter, the season when the
wave-washed island is immersed in fog.
There were screech-owls, the pale-yellow owls that live in
church-steeples and at night drink the oil in the church-lamps;
vultures that come down from the Alps and Pyrenees in times of
excessive cold; the ash-colored vulture that lives at Sainte-Baume.
There are little tomtits, called _serruriers_ (locksmiths), which are
found only on the banks of the Rhone, and _pendulines_, so called
because they hang their nests like little pendulums from the flexible
branches swaying to and fro above the water; and _stocking-makers_,
whose nests resemble the tissue of a knitted stocking; and the
_alcyon_, that is to say, the _bleuret_ or kingfisher; and the
_siren_, of the brilliant diversified plumage, called also
_honey-eater_, which flies north in the month of May, and spends its
winters by preference in Camargue. There was a stork, that probably
considered Camargue, between the dikes of the Rhone, a little like
Holland. There, too, was the heron with its frill of delicate
feathers, falling like a long fringe over its throat. Livette knew it
only by the name of _galejon_, bestowed upon it in that neighborhood
because the herons' favorite place of assemblage was the pond of
Galejon. There was one that bore on its pedestal the date: 1807, and
the words: _Purchased at Arles market_; it was of a bluish slate
color, and had on its head three slender black feathers, a foot in
length. Then there were flamingoes galore, for they sometimes build
their nests by myriads in the marshes of Crau, sitting astride their
nests which are as tall as their legs. And the divers! and grebes! and
penguins, which are seldom seen! And the rascally pelican, called by
the people thereabouts _grand gousier_!