disappeared for a moment behind the houses. He was coming toward the
church.
From embrasure to embrasure she ran, to follow him with her eyes; and
in a few seconds he rode out into the square in front of the church,
at the foot of the Calvary erected there.
She leaned over and watched him. Where was he going? He had stopped.
His tired horse was standing quite still, simply moving his long tail
from side to side to drive away the gnats and gadflies that were
riddling his bleeding flanks with wounds, for, after the _mistral_,
the gadflies dance! And then? Nothing. Absolute silence in the vast
glowing expanse. Livette instinctively noticed that the horse's dark
shadow, clearly marked upon the ground, was already elongated,
indicating that it was four o'clock.
She continued to question herself as to Renaud's attitude--what was
he doing there, standing still like that?--when suddenly the sound of
a woman's voice singing floated up to her ears.
In the perfect silence, that voice, clear as a bell, poured forth
outlandish words that neither Renaud nor Livette could understand.
The zingara sang:
"Allow the romichal, the tzigane, to pass. He is the spectre of a true
king. Kingly is his tattered cloak. A saddle is his throne. Is the
whole earth thy kingdom, Romichal?
"At Boerenthal they speak the language of the Zend. Oh! the Coudra
would become pope! Thinkst thou it was the evil-doer who invented
evil? Nay, nay; put not thy trust in God, and remain free, Romichal!
"The Rhine, too, is a Nile. And the Rhone likewise. But thy mare
prefers to drink in the river of Chal! The Nile alone can make thy
hope neigh aloud, O Romichal!"
With her eye, like a migratory bird's, Zinzara had long before spied
Livette perched up aloft between the crenelles of the church-roof,
and, seeing Renaud riding toward her, she, in joyous mood as always,
had begun to sing, from mere caprice and bravado, within the circle of
the echo of the lofty walls.
Like the serpents at the sound of her flute, Renaud was fascinated.
The gipsy suspected as much.
And when she had finished her song she showed herself.
"Surely thou hast killed thy foe, romi?" she said. "But how is it that
I do not see his heart at the point of thy spear? Thy maiden whose
blood is like snow will ask thee for it ere long. Ah! that was a kiss
well avenged--for a Christian! For if thy foe still sat in his saddle,
thou wouldst not be in thine, I suppose? Listen, then, my
beauty--although it be, in very truth, a crime for us zingari women to
deem a Christian fair to look upon, I must tell thee, none the less:
On the honor of a queen, romi, thou art handsome as a son of my own
race, brave as a highwayman, as fine a horseman as the best of us,
proud as a free man! I regret neither my anger of the other day, nor
my song of a moment ago, nor the compliment I pay thee now: for I
never do aught save that which pleases me! and my very anger does me
better service than reflection! Adieu, romi, may thy God guard thee,
if He knows me!"
Livette had heard nothing but the sharp, incisive tone in which the
gipsy spoke; she could not distinguish her words.
But as Zinzara went away, she took good care, before she disappeared
at the corner of the square, to send a kiss to the drover with her
finger-tips--a kiss which seemed to him, because he could see her
smile, a bit of raillery, but which was in Livette's eyes a token of
requited love. Renaud thereupon admitted to himself that he had
returned to Saintes-Maries in quest of nothing else than this
compliment from the gipsy--something that drew him nearer to the
seductive creature!
[Illustration: Chapter XVI
_From embrasure to embrasure she ran, to follow him with her
eyes; and in a few seconds he rode out into the square in
front of the church, at the foot of the Calvary erected
there._
_She leaned over and watched him. Where was he going? He had
stopped._]
Now he had no choice but to turn back. He preferred not to see Livette
at once! He preferred to return to the free air of the desert, to set
his thoughts in order, discover his real feelings, reckon up his
chances, and, after that was done, to be left alone with the image of
the gitana, from whom he parted willingly, however, for he was very
glad to be at a distance from her, with unrestrained freedom of
movement, the better to think of her.
Before leaving the roof of the church, Livette cast a glance upon the
broad expanse of Camargue at her feet. Ah! how empty was that immense
space! The few scattered houses which would have delighted her eyes in
the plain, were hidden by the clumps of umbrella-like pines beneath
which they stood. Nothing human replied to the cry of distress uttered
by her poor heart, which longed to follow the bewitched drover into
the desert, and which seemed to her to flutter down from the summit of
the tower to the ground, where it was crushed by the fall like a bird
fallen from its nest.
XVII
THE OLD WOMAN
Renaud rode at a foot-pace to the _Menage_, one of the farms belonging
to the Chateau d'Avignon. He had ordered Bernard to bring Blanchet to
him there, intending to take him back to the chateau. It was but a
short distance from one to the other.
He was exceedingly astonished to find that the more he reflected upon
what had happened to him--and it was really what he had hoped for--the
more dissatisfied he was.
He believed that he had finally formed, in spite of everything, a
fairly accurate estimate of the gipsy's character--a fact that pleased
him. He had simply said to himself that she was an uncivilized
creature, since she could forget all shame of her nakedness in her
haste to punish as best she could a man she deemed overbold. From her
very immodesty, from the arrogance and malignity she had exhibited at
their first meeting, he had, strangely enough, evolved a proof of
chastity so sure of itself, so disdainful of peril, that the
shameless creature seemed to him only the more desirable.
He knew that the gipsy women esteem thieves, but not prostitutes, and
he had enjoyed seeing in Zinzara a sort of savage virgin, ferocious as
a wild beast of the Orient, over whom he, the tamer of beasts, would
be the first to enjoy the pride of triumph. And, lo! she suddenly
aroused in him a feeling of repulsion which he could not explain.
Simply because he had heard her pronounce a few words, of obscure
meaning, like all gipsy words, and threatening in tone as he ought to
expect,--more amiable, in point of fact, than he had any right to
hope,--he believed her, as if it had been revealed to him in a dream,
capable of anything, a _wicked woman_! He felt that the devil was in
her.
He had no precise knowledge as to her age. Was she seventeen or
twenty-five? The swarthy tint of her impassive yet smiling face told
nothing, hid blushes and pallor alike.
Her face was extremely young, and its expression was of no age. Renaud
had undergone the inexplicable fascination of that face, whereon the
malignity born of a woman's experience of the world, false for the
sake of omnipotence, was mingled with something child-like.
Stronger men than he would have been caught in the snare. Neither king
nor priest could have escaped the evil fascination of the gitana! She
would have had but to will. The very things that repelled one were
attractive!
So Renaud was caught, and his manner showed it. Sitting upon his tired
horse, upon the stallion whose fiery nature was subdued by so much
hard riding in all directions, and who carried his head less high, the
drover, supporting the head of his spear upon his stirrup while the
handle rested against his arm, seemed like a vanquished king,
humiliated by the feeling that he was a prisoner in the free air.
He found Bernard at the _Menage_, in the huge room on the lower floor,
like those in all the farm-houses of the province, with the high
mantelpiece, the long massive table in the centre, the kneading-trough
of well-waxed walnut, the carved bread-cupboard with little columns,
fastened to the wall like a cage, and the shining copper pans. Upon
the whitewashed wall a few colored pictures were hanging: the
Saintes-Maries in their boat; Napoleon I. on the Bridge of Arcola, and
Genevieve de Brabant, with the roe, in the depths of a forest.
An old shepherd was seated at the table, beside Bernard, slowly eating
his slice of bread.
"Is it you, king?" said he as Renaud entered. "I have seen you hold
your head higher! What's the matter with you? you look downhearted.
Aren't you still a cattle-herder, my boy? A shepherd's virtue, young
man, is patience, remember that. What you can't find in a day you may
find in a hundred years."
"Ah! there you are, Sigaud, eh?" Renaud replied, without answering
his questions. "When do you start for the Alps?"
"Right away, my son. We are behindhand this year. I am just getting
ready."
Nothing more was said. When they had eaten in silence their bread and
sheep's-milk cheese, and drunk a cup of sour wine made from the wild
grape, they rose.
The shepherd threw his cloak over his arm, took his staff from a
corner, and having doffed his broad-brimmed hat before an old image of
the Nativity, that hung on the wall, embellished with a branch laden
with cocoons, and beneath which, on a carved oak stand, stood a little
lamp, long unlighted, he went slowly from the room.
When Renaud, mounted upon Prince and leading Blanchet, left the
_Menage_, he rode some time with the shepherds, by the side of the
enormous flock on their way to the Alps, where they were to pass the
summer season.
Two thousand sheep, led by the rams, and arranged in battalions and
companies, under the care of several shepherds of whom old Sigaud was
the chief, were trotting along the road with hanging heads, making
with their eight thousand feet a dull, smothered pattering, as of
falling hailstones, in the dense clouds of dust. The Labry dogs ran to
and fro along the edges of the flock, full of business, but frequently
turning their eyes toward their master.
A few asses scattered among the different companies bore upon their
backs, jolting about in double wicker-baskets, the sleepy, bleating
lambs.
Old Sigaud was in high feather, thinking of the cool, fresh air of the
Alps, where the grass is green and the water pure, and where he could
gaze in peace every night at Cassiopeia's Chair and the Three Kings
and the Pleiades in the heavens studded with myriads of stars.
"Adieu, Sigaud," said Renaud, drawing rein when the time came for him
to part from the flock and its guardians.
Sigaud also stopped in front of him.
"Adieu, Renaud," said he gravely. "There must be a woman at the bottom
of your trouble. You are too sad. But we called you _King_ to do honor
to your courage, you mustn't forget that. Remember, too, that
everything is of some use, my boy, and that good may come out of evil.
It takes all kinds to make the world!"
Renaud found Livette sitting on the stone bench in front of the door
of the chateau. He had not leaped down from Prince before she was
covering Blanchet with kisses. Audiffret was very glad to learn that
the stolen horse had returned to the drove, but when Renaud explained
that he had come, on this occasion, to return Blanchet, Livette showed
some feeling.
"So you are not satisfied with what he has done for you?" said she.
"Such a pretty horse! and so clever!--or perhaps you are tired of
teaching him for me, of preventing him from learning bad tricks in the
stable, of training him so that I can have the pleasure of seeing him
return a winner from the races at Beziers, where my father is anxious
to send him next month?"
"Certainly, Renaud," said Audiffret, "you ought to keep him. He gets
rusty here in the stable. But I am surprised at what Livette says.
Why, would you believe that she was regretting him this very morning,
saying that she proposed to ask you to bring him back to-day. And now
she doesn't want him!--It takes a very shrewd man to understand these
girls!"
But what Audiffret could not understand, Renaud, for his part,
understood very well. The lovelorn damsel said to herself that, by
returning the horse, her fiance would rid himself of a reminder of
her, which was a cause of remorse to him perhaps--whereas, he ought,
like a jealous lover, to have wanted to look after Blanchet, and take
care of him for her, as long as possible.
Renaud resisted as best he could. He would have a deal of hard riding
to do at the time of the fetes, he said, and he did not want to
overwork Blanchet or to leave him with the drove to become wild again.
Thereupon, Audiffret, easily influenced by the last who spoke, agreed
with Renaud.
While the discussion was in progress, Renaud had put up both horses in
the stable. That done, he went slowly up to the hay-loft, whence he
threw down an armful of hay into the racks through the openings in the
floor.
When he went down again, Blanchet was standing alone in front of the
mangers, nibbling at the hay.--Renaud ran to the door. Livette, having
removed Prince's halter, was shouting at him and waving her pretty
arms to drive him away, naked and free. Honest Audiffret, delighted at
his daughter's cunning, laughed and laughed. And Prince, overjoyed to
return to the desert after these few days of slavery, thinking no more
of the oats to be had at the chateau, stood erect like a goat, neighed
shrilly with delight, shook his luxuriant mane, flung up his tail and
thrashed the air, alive with the flies he had driven from his
flanks--and darted away toward the horizon through the lane between
the trees in the park.
Renaud had no choice but to submit with an affectation of gratitude,
and to laugh with the rest;--but it was more distasteful to him than
ever to ride a horse that belonged to him less than any other in the
drove, a horse that was his fiancee's.
Thereupon, Audiffret went about his various tasks; and, two hours
later, when they were all assembled in the lower room of the
farm-house, Renaud, being suddenly seized with _ennui_ at the thought
that he was likely at any moment to have to endure an embarrassing
tete-a-tete with this same Livette whose company he had so ardently
desired a few days before, spoke of taking his leave. Audiffret
remonstrated, and invited him to supper. They would drink a glass in
honor of his victory. Renaud refused awkwardly, conscious how lacking
in courtesy such an utterly motiveless refusal was.
But when the grandmother, who hardly ever spoke, urged him to stay, he
stayed.
The old woman rarely spoke, for her thoughts were always with the dead
and gone grandfather, who had been the faithful companion of her
toilsome life. She was slowly drying up, like wood that is sound in
all its fibres, but has lost its sap. Hers was a lovely old age, such
as are seen in the land of the grasshopper, where people live sober
lives, preserved by the light. Already advanced in years when she came
to Camargue, she had never suffered from the malevolence of the
swamps. It was too late. The cypress-tree does not allow the worms to
draw their lines upon its surface.
She was patiently awaiting death, sometimes mumbling _paters_ upon her
rosary of olive-nuts, gazing fearlessly, with her dimmed eyes,
straight before her at the vague shadow wherein her departed old man,
her good, faithful Tiennet, was waiting for her;--Tiennet, who had
never, in forty years, caused her a pang, and whom she had never
wronged by a smile, even in the days of her gayest youth. Tiennet,
from the depths of the shadow, sometimes called to her softly, and
then the old woman would be heard to murmur, in a dreamy voice: "I am
coming, good man! I am coming!"
Being left alone for a moment with Livette, just before supper,
Renaud did not know what to say. Nor did she. He did not dare to lie,
and she hoped that he would open his heart and confess. At one moment,
she felt that the very fact of his silence was sufficient proof of his
treachery, and the next moment, on the contrary, she said to herself:
"If there was an understanding between them, he would not be here! I
was mad! He loves me."
At supper, he was very talkative, told about his battles and his
hunting exploits; how, the year before, with that rascal of a Rampal,
he had beaten up two coveys of partridges, on horseback, in a single
morning. They had taken twenty-eight, more than twenty being killed on
the wing at a single casting of their staves, Arab-fashion.
Audiffret, overjoyed at the recovery of a horse he had thought lost
forever, drew from under the woodpile an old-fashioned bottle, a gift
from the masters, those masters who are always absent--like all the
landowners of Camargue, who prefer to dwell in cities,--Paris,
Marseilles, or Montpellier,--leaving the desert to their _bailiffs_.
"Ah! the masters in old times!" said Audiffret, "they had more courage
and were better served and better loved!" Renaud, becoming more and
more animated, stood up for the times we live in. The grandmother,
grave and serious as always, said once to Audiffret at table,
speaking of Renaud: "Wait upon your son, my son." Well, well, he was
decidedly one of the family.
And that certainty, which it behooved him to retain at any price,
instead of moving his heart to gratitude, led him on to play the
hypocrite. He was ready to betray Livette, without renouncing her, for
he loved her so dearly, so sincerely, that he felt that he was ready,
on the other hand, to renounce the gitana, without too great a pang,
if circumstances should make it necessary. He laughed a great deal,
raising his glass with great frequency, and winking involuntarily at
Audiffret, as if to say: "We are sly fellows!" But honest Audiffret
could not detect his excitement. He had never interested himself in
anything except the farm accounts. He had never divined anything in
all his life, not he!--As far as the gipsy was concerned, she
certainly would not leave Saintes-Maries before the fete, that is to
say, for a week or more. After that, she could go where she chose! it
would make little difference to him. What could he hope for from a
wandering creature like that? An hour's meeting at the cross-roads on
the way to Arles! Nothing more!
As to Zinzara, he had hopes; as to Livette, he had certainty. And he
was very light of heart.
So it was, that, when the time came for him to take his leave, he
indulged in an outburst of affection toward his new family, quite
contrary to his usual habit, and to the habit of all drovers, who are
rough-mannered by profession.
You must know that the peasants, in general, do not kiss except on
great occasions--weddings or baptisms. Only the mothers kiss their
young children. The man of the soil is of stern mould.
"Audiffret," the grandmother suddenly said to her son, laying her
knitting on the table and her spectacles on her knitting;--"Audiffret,
every day brings me a little nearer the end, and I would like to see
this marriage take place before I die. You must hurry it as much as
possible, now that it's decided on. And if I can't be present on the
wedding-day, don't forget, my children, that the old woman blessed you
from the bottom of her heart to-night."
And, without another word, she calmly took up the stockings and
needles.
She had spoken almost without inflection, in a grave, calm tone,
moving her lips only.
Every one was deeply moved. Livette looked at Renaud. He, carried away
by his emotion, forgot everything except this new family that offered
itself to him, the orphan. Livette saw it and was grateful to him for
it. She felt that he was won back, like the stolen horse, and she
sprang to her feet in a burst of enthusiasm.
"Kiss me, my betrothed!" said she proudly.
He kissed her with heartfelt sincerity.
The father and the grandmother looked on with eyes that gradually
became dim with tears.
When he had pressed the father's hand, Renaud turned to the
grandmother, as she stuck her knitting-needle into the white hair that
fluttered about her temples.
"Kiss me, grandmother!" he said, with a smile.
The old woman gave a leap, then stood erect, recoiling a little as if
in fear:
"Since my husband died, no man has ever kissed me," she said, "not
even my son there! Let young people kiss. Life is before them. I," she
added, "am already with the dead."
And with that, the old peasant-woman, straight and stiff and
withered,--the image of a by-gone time, when it was deemed a
praiseworthy thing to remain true to a single sentiment,--sought the
bed of her old age, which was soon to see her lying dead, with the
tranquillity of a simple, loving, faithful heart upon her
parchment-like face.
XVIII
THE BLESSED RELICS
The great day has arrived. From all parts of Languedoc and Provence,
pilgrims, rich and poor, have come to Saintes-Maries. There are fully
ten thousand strangers in the town.
For three days past they have been arriving in vehicles of all shapes
and of all ages.
Many of these pilgrims lodge with the villagers at extraordinary,
princely rates. A bunch of straw on the floor brings twenty francs.
The villager himself sleeps on a chair, or passes the night in the
open air on the warm sand of the dunes. If the bulls arrive during the
night for the sports of the following day, he assists the drovers to
drive them into the compound, in the wake of the _dondaire_, the
enormous ox with a bell.
The houses are soon filled to overflowing. New-comers are obliged to
camp. Tents are pitched. People live in carts and wagons, in breaks,
tilburys, caleches, omnibuses, as far away as possible, be it
understood, from the gipsy encampment.
Around the little town, the hundreds of vehicles constitute a roving
town of their own, resting there like a flock of birds of passage
around a swamp.
And on all sides naught can be seen but tattered, crippled,
hunchbacked, deformed, blind, or one-eyed creatures, broken in health,
lame, maimed, scrofulous, and paralytic, dragging themselves along or
dragged by others, carried in men's arms or on litters, some with
bandages over their faces, others displaying unhealed wounds from
which one turns aside in horror.
Here a poor fellow who has been bitten by a mad dog wanders about with
gloomy brow, tormented by insane anxiety and hope, for a pilgrimage to
Saintes-Maries is especially efficacious against hydrophobia.
All varieties of misfortune are represented. All the children of Job
and Tobias have journeyed hither to find the healing angel and the
miraculous fish.
A motley crowd swarms upon the public square in the bright sunlight,
and in the narrow streets, under the luminous shadow of the awnings.
From time to time, it parts, with loud shouts, before a drover, who
rides proudly by, his sweetheart _en croupe_ with her arms about his
waist.
Here and there flat baskets laden with rosaries, sacred images,
Catalan knives, and handkerchiefs of brilliant hue stand out like
islets in the midst of the sea of promenaders, and all the merchandise
displayed for sale takes on a pink or pale-blue tint through the great
stationary umbrellas that shield it from the sun.
Amid the fantastic piercing notes of a _galoubet_, or high-pitched
flute, tambourines can be heard humming in cadence in the interior of
a wine-shop, where young girls of the province are dancing in
Provencal costume, dark-skinned girls with white teeth beneath their
sensuous lips; very like Moors they are, the descendants of some
Saracen pirate who ravaged the Ligurian shore.
The town is flooded with joyous light. Everybody is in his Sunday
dress. Upon the fever-haunted strand, whither a whole people flocks to
pray to the Saintes Maries for bodily health, that joyous sun is
dangerous. The whole scene has the appearance of a hospital ball, a
fete given by dying men. The devil wields the baton, it may be. One
would think it, to see the faces of the gipsies, whose expression,
notwithstanding certain cunning leers, is and remains undecipherable.
In the church with the black, dirt-begrimed walls, filled with a fetid
odor by such an accumulation of misery, diseased flesh, and perspiring
humanity, the people crowd about the iron balustrade of the little
well, as if it were the Fountain of Youth. The poor, green,
dilapidated pitcher humbly descends at the end of its cord to bring up
from the sand below brackish water that to-day seems sweet.
Keep faith with them, O saints!--Faith gives what one wishes.
They are waiting for four o'clock, the hour at which the relics
descend.