under the ogive arch of the nave, will open. The relics will come down
toward the outstretched arms. The little children will be lifted up
toward them. The dead arms of the paralytics will be raised toward
them. The blind will turn toward them their sightless eyes, or their
empty, blood-stained orbits.
Meanwhile, Livette, who is standing there in the centre of the crowd,
directly in front of the altar, facing the grated door through which
you go down into the crypt, is preparing to sing the solo of
invocation. Her fresh, pure voice is to be the voice of all these
wretched creatures, crushed under the weight of impurity and disease.
Just below the high altar, which is studded with tapers, the gipsies
are huddled together in their crypt, with tapers in their hands,
invoking Saint Sara. The vault is dark. The gipsies are black. The
little glass shrine of Saint Sara has become black under the
accumulated filth of years. From the centre of the church you can see
through the grated opening, which resembles an air-hole of hell, the
innumerable twinkling lights of the tapers below, waving to and fro in
the hands that hold them. A muffled sound of praying comes up through
the opening.
In the church, every hand now has its taper, and they are rapidly
lighted one from another. The lights dance about in the air. But the
interior of the nave is dark. The high walls, pierced by narrow
windows, are grimy with age. And all this obscurity, where suffering
and misery crawl and cower, is studded with stars like heaven. To the
gipsies in the crypt, who will not see the blessed relics descend, the
body of the church, which they can see from below through the
air-hole, is a heaven beyond their reach, the world of the elect.
But the elect, alas! are damned. Their heaven is the chapel up yonder,
in which the power they invoke lies sleeping, beneath the stained wood
of the boxes, like to a double coffin--the power that may remain deaf,
the all-powerful power that will never perhaps awaken for any one, the
marvellous power upon which cures depend and which withholds
happiness!
Such was the interior of the three-storied church of Saintes-Maries on
that day. And above the lofty chapel, there was the bell-tower
overlooking the whole country-side. Surrounded by endless numbers of
swallows and sea-gulls, for centuries past it has looked upon the
glistening desert, the dazzling sea, the dumb infinitude of space,
which could explain things if it would, but only beams and laughs.
The hour drew near. The crowd was panting with heat and hope and fear.
Renaud was not there.
"Remember--we promised to burn three tapers each before the relics,"
Livette had said to him.
"I will come to-night," was his reply. "There's the branding to-day.
I have to look after my bulls."
So Livette was a little distraught. She was thinking of joining
Renaud, of being present at the branding, of keeping an eye on her
betrothed. Where was he?
But Monsieur le cure made a sign: Livette began to sing. Alas! why was
not her lover there? Her voice, which she knew was pleasant to the
ear, might have some effect on him. How eagerly he listened to the
gipsy's singing the other day!--Livette sang, and the buzzing of
prayers and litanies and invocations of all sorts, that every one was
indulging in on his or her own account, subsided as her clear, pure
voice arose. O God! what is this humanity of ours? It is vile and
abject, but it has some sense of shame. The basest know how to pray
that they may be cured of their baseness. And, however much they may
have rolled in the mire of their natural inclinations, a time comes
when they set the flame alight, when they burn incense, and when all
keep silent to listen to the voice ascending to Heaven, imploring for
them a grace that no one knows, that perhaps does not exist, but that
every one imagines and desires!
"Eat your excrement, dog!" say the gipsies; "what care I? There is a
light in the dog's eye that is not often seen in the eyes of kings."
Livette sang. The cure said to himself:
"O my God, mayhap this child of Thine will obtain favor in Thy sight!"
Livette's voice was as fresh as the water of salvation for which the
assembled multitude thirsted. And how intently they listened! But, at
the end of each stanza, weary of restraining their tumultuous
ejaculations of hope, they sent up from thousands of throats an
inarticulate roar in which only the two words: _Saintes Maries!_ could
be distinguished.
Livette sang:
"Quand vous etiez sur la grande eau,
Sans rames a votre bateau,
Saintes Maries!
Rien que la mer, rien que les cieux----
Vous appeliez de tous vos yeux
La douceur des plages fleuries."[9]
"_Saintes Maries!_" roared the people; uttered at the same moment by a
thousand voices acting upon a common impulse, the frenzied appeal was
like an explosion.
Every one shouted with all his strength, for the saints must be made
to hear! Every one shouted with all his lungs, with all his heart,
with all his body, one might say. Heaven is so far away! Open-mouthed,
their faces twitching convulsively, they gazed upward. The veins in
their necks were swollen to the bursting-point. The muscles swelled
and thickened in faces to which the blood rushed in torrents. The
brothers, lovers, husbands, mothers, fathers, of the sufferers,
availed themselves of their own strength to call for help, howling
like wounded wild beasts turned toward the dawn. All this suffering
multitude, all this swarming heap of tainted, diseased flesh, uttered
the terrifying roar of a monster in pain--and still the
preternaturally shrill shriek of some doting mother would soar above
the horrid uproar. And all around the church, filled with the nameless
appeals of these damned of earth, lay the calm, silent desert, the
blue, foam-flecked sea, the brilliant sunlight, insensible to
everything.
"Sous le soleil, sous les etoiles,
De vos robes faisant des voiles
(Vogue, bateau!)
Sept jours, sept nuits vous naviguates,
Sans voir ni trois-ponts ni fregates----
Rien que la mer et la grande eau!"[10]
"_Saintes Maries!_" roared the people, and each time the shout burst
forth from thousands of throats, suddenly and at the same instant,
with the effect of a strange kind of explosion.
"Dieu qui fait son fouet d'un eclair,
Pour fouetter le ciel et la mer,
Saintes Maries!
Amena la barque a bon port----
Un ange, qui parut a bord,
Vous montra des plages fleuries!"[11]
"_Saintes Maries!_" the people roared again. And the appealing cry,
made up of so many cries, burst forth with a sound like that made by a
great wave that breaks against a cliff and is instantly scattered
about in foam! And again the young girl's voice arose above all the
vociferating, grinning creatures. Might not one fancy that he saw a
sea-swallow, white as the dove of the Ark, soaring over a bottomless
abyss?
"Vous pour qui Dieu fit ce miracle,
Voyez, devant son tabernacle,
Tous a genoux,
Souilles du peche de naissance,
Nous invoquons votre puissance,----
Saintes femmes, protegez-nous!"[12]
And for the last time, the deafening, harsh cry arose:
"_Saintes Maries!_"
Oh! the thousand, two thousand ejaculations of insane longing that
flew upward, at a single flight, flapping all their wings at once, to
fall back, dead, upon themselves.
It is very certain that there was in that frenzied appeal all the
madness of suffering, all the wrath of unsatisfied longing, and rage
as of unchained beasts, against the very beings they implored.
Meanwhile, the double shutter up above had not yet been thrown open.
And Livette, in accordance with the cure's instructions, was to repeat
the last verse.
So she began again:
"Vous pour qui Dieu fit ce miracle----"
But these first words had hardly passed her lips when her voice
faltered and died away. For a few seconds there was a silence as of
utter amazement in the church. Of what was Livette thinking? Of
what?--For the last minute, just God! her eyes had been obstinately
fixed upon the black opening leading to the crypt. In that opening, on
a level with the floor of the church, she had seen a head: it was the
gipsy queen, who had come up from the crypt, in mischievous mood,
curious to see Livette singing. Immediately below the great altar she
emerged from the dark depths of the cellar amid the ascending smoke of
the tapers. She came from her kingdom below, and with her copper crown
and gleaming ear-rings, her swarthy skin and her fiery black eyes, she
seemed to Livette a genuine devil from hell.
Zinzara ascended two steps more and her bust appeared. She darted a
keen, penetrating glance at Livette. That is why Livette was confused,
and why she called with all her strength upon the women of compassion,
the holy women above, for help against this woman from the chapel
below.
But the shutters that concealed the shrines were opened at last. And
slowly, very slowly, they descended, swinging from side to side, with
a slight jerky movement, at the ends of the two ropes, embellished
here and there with little bunches of flowers.
Is not this the image of every life? Is there aught else in the world?
Something descends from heaven, something ascends from hell; and we
suffer with hope and fear.
"_Saintes Maries!_"
Amid the vociferations of the crowd, Livette lost her head, she
forgot to sing, and, carried away by the prevailing excitement, hope,
and terror, she began to cry aloud with all the rest, like a lost
soul, while Zinzara, from below, continued to gaze fixedly at her.
What would you say, Monsieur le cure, to Livette's thoughts,
who,--poor creature of the world we live in!--between the holy women
and the woman devil, no longer knew which way to turn? Had she not
reason to tremble? For the shrines descend to no purpose, they bring
us naught but dead relics--while the sorceress is a creature of flesh
and blood, whose feet walk, whose eyes see!
Far away from us, in the land of dreams, of supernatural hopes, above
the sky and the stars, are the sainted souls that have pity for
mankind; as far from man as Paradise itself are the chaste women who
embalm the crucified ones in herbs and spices, while _she_ is close at
hand, always ready, always armed against the repose of Christian
souls, she, queen of diabolic love, who, seeking only to gratify her
caprice, makes sport of everything!
Livette became more and more confused beneath Zinzara's steadfast
glance, and she tried in vain, after silence had at last been
restored, to resume the invocation. She faltered and stopped again.
Thereupon there was great confusion among the waiting multitude. All
those men and women who were holding their peace in order to listen
to the outpouring of their own souls in the maiden's voice, to the
pure, unspoken prayer which was in their hearts, but which they could
not put in words, had been thrown back once more, and more
despairingly than ever, upon themselves, upon their own helplessness,
when Livette's voice died away. Just at the decisive moment, their
interpreter failed them! They were afraid of their profound silence,
so contrary to the impulses of their hearts. In order to be heard on
high, their prayer must be offered; and, seized by the same thought,
every one began to shout or sing on his own account, some beginning
again at the very beginning, others taking the stanza they knew by
heart or had before them in a book, others repeating at random bits of
the litanies, one the _credo_, another the _pater_, and never did
prayers offered up to God create such a hellish uproar, since the
discordant cries of all the sorrows of mankind ascended to Heaven.
Stronger women than Livette would have been disturbed as she was,
would have felt their powers failing. She put her hand to her forehead
to detain her mind that seemed to be making its escape. Was not she
the cause of all this trouble? What would become of her, in this
state? She was afraid and ashamed at once.
Instead of looking up, instead of watching the blessed relics that had
now accomplished half of their descent, she could not refrain from
returning the fixed stare of the gipsy woman below, whose eyes seemed
to pierce her soul.
Livette suffered keenly. The gipsy's gaze entered into her very being,
and she felt that she could do nothing. It seemed to her as if a
sharp-toothed beast were gnawing at her heart. Instead of praying, she
listened to the terrible thoughts within her. She fancied that she
could feel the hatred go out from her with the glances that shot from
her eyes! She tried to stab to the heart with it that creature who was
defying her down there. Would not somebody kill the witch, who was the
cause of everything? Ah! Saintes Maries! what thoughts for such a
place! at such a time!
The relics slowly descended, and, amid the roars that greeted them,
Livette, in her overwrought imagination, fancied that she saw herself
clinging to Renaud, beseeching him to be faithful and kind to her, and
not to go to that other woman; and when he refused and left her, she
leaped at the gipsy's face and scratched her and clawed at her like a
cat.
Thus the sorceress's soul passed into Livette. Already, without
suspecting it, she had begun to resemble her enemy, the gitana who
leaped at the nostrils of Renaud's horse the other day. And yet this
little fair-haired girl was not one of the dark-skinned maidens of
Arles, who have African and Asian blood in their veins! No matter;
she, too, has a wild beast's fits of passion. Love and jealousy are at
work making a woman's soul.
The relics were still descending; and Livette feverishly told off
_paters_ and _aves_ on her rosary.--Patience! on the day after the
fete, the gipsies, she knows, will leave the town! Two more days and
her agony will be at an end.
Meanwhile--she makes this vow in presence of the relics--she will not
gratify Renaud by showing that she is jealous, as she is, and not
until later--when Zinzara is far away, and there is no chance of her
coming back--will she, perhaps, tell her promised husband that he lied
to her, that he is a traitor, because, instead of avenging her upon
the gipsy, he was false to his fiancee with her--for of course he is
false to her, as he is not there!--She will tell him, then, not in a
passion, but to punish him. It will be no more than justice.
By dint of uncoiling themselves by little jerks, the ropes have
lowered the relics almost within reach of the hands stretched up to
meet them. Thereupon the rabble of poor devils could contain itself no
longer. Every one was determined to be the first to touch them. Those
who were already in the choir, directly below the hanging relics, lost
their footing, crowded as they were by those who were pressing in from
the body of the church, jostling and crushing one another with a
constant pressure. Livette was borne along on the wave, seeing
nothing, and with but one thought in her mind--to touch the
consecrated relics herself!--That she felt she must do, so that she
might escape the influence of the glance the black woman had cast at
her. She would seek to turn aside the fatal spell that had been upon
her ever since her first meeting with the sorceress! But would she
reach the shrines?--Livette felt that she was seized by two strong
arms. She turned: it was Renaud! He had just entered the church with
two other drovers, his friends. These three young men, glowing with
the outside sunlight, healthy and strong, amid the lame and halt and
blind, had the insolent bearing--cruel without meaning to be--of manly
beauty, of life itself. They extricated the girl and made a ring about
her. She was able to breathe.
"Would you like to touch the relics, demoisellette?"
Forcing their way before her, without great effort, but pitilessly,
through the crowd of cripples, they cleared a passage for her. Livette
walked quickly, she drew near the spot, and Renaud, seizing her around
the waist, lifted her up like a child so that she touched the
consecrated relics first of all!
Still with the three youths as a body-guard, before whom all were fain
to stand aside, and without further thought--poor you! it is the law
of the world--of the innumerable, nameless perils by which she was
encompassed, she left the church content. Peace had found its way into
her heart once more. Her Renaud was there by her side. Was all that
she had dreaded a dream and nothing more?
"Ah! it is good to be outside!" he said, filling his lungs with the
fresh air.
"Yes, but when will you light the tapers, Renaud, that you are to burn
in the church as I promised for you?"
"Oh! I have a whole day before me," he replied. "Now let us go to the
races."
XIX
THE BRANDING
The relics having descended, the majority of those present left the
dark church and returned to the dazzling outside world.
As the crowd poured out through the narrow side-doors, another crowd
was forcing its way in through the main entrance, making but slow
progress,--two or three steps in a quarter of an hour,--all hot and
perspiring, in a cloud of luminous dust.
Many young men were there, for the pleasure of being pressed by the
crowd against the pretty girls, their sweethearts, whose sinuous
bodies they could feel against their own, and who could not escape
them there. How many hands and waists were squeezed which the mothers
could not see!
And in undertones they said:
"I love you, Lionnette."
"Fie, Francois!"
"Let me go, Tiennet!----"
Thus, beside the infirm and incurable, who know naught of the good
things of life, love saucily sports and laughs, feels its own force,
and seeks return. The incense in the church serves only to inflame its
desire, and more than one youth offers his beloved a rosary, whose
boxwood cross he has ardently kissed before her eyes, so that she may
find the kiss with her lips.
All day long, the pilgrims and invalids enter the church. Many will
pass the night there, keeping vigil with the tapers, on their knees or
prostrate before the relics; and more than one, each in his turn, will
lie down upon them, on cushions brought expressly for the purpose.
For the moment--it is the first day of the fete--nothing is talked
about in the streets of the town save the bulls and the sports.
"Are you going to the races?"
"Yes."
"Does Prince run? He's the best horse in all the droves."
"No, he won't run; Renaud, who usually handles him, told me that he
was too tired."
"Pshaw! what a pity!"
"What about the bulls? Shall we have any that are a bit ugly?"
"There's _Sirous_ and _Dogue_ and _Machicoulis_. I cut them out myself
with Bernard and Renaud. They gave us a lot of trouble! They refused
to leave the herd. As soon as we got them out, back they would go
again. But we set _Martin_ and _Commetoi_ at them, two bull-dogs that
can't be matched anywhere; and even _Machicoulis_ obeyed at last!"
"_Martin_ and _Commetoi_?--Those are curious names for dogs!"
"It's a joke. When any one asks: 'How is your dog called?'[13] The
dog's master replies: '_Commetoi!_' [Like yourself.] The other man
gets angry, and it raises a laugh."
"And what about the full-blooded Spanish bull, with the horns twisted
like a lyre; shall we see him?"
"_Angel Pastor?_ He is sick. I like our straight-horned bulls better.
The important thing is that the horns should be far enough apart for a
man's body to go between them."
"Are there any heifers?"
"One, a wicked one--_Serpentine_."
"And _bioulets_?"
"Young bulls, do you mean? Renaud has kept six of them, expressly to
give the strangers a chance to see a branding."
"When will the branding come off?"
"In a moment. Suppose we go to see it."
The gipsy was present at the branding.
The arena was against the church, at the end opposite the main
entrance.
The many-sided irregular enclosure was formed on one side by the high
wall of the church; on another, by a house standing by itself, against
which was a series of roughly made benches, one above another; on
still another side by three or four small houses, each of whose
windows formed a frame for a dozen or more heads of young men and
women, crowded together and all laughing gaily. At the base of one of
these houses was a cafe with a glass door opening on the arena and
barricaded by tables and overturned chairs. On each side of the door
was drawn, in deepest black, a silhouette of a bull of the Camargue
type, that is to say, with straight horns of ample proportions.
On all sides of the enclosure where there were no stone walls, their
place was supplied by wagons bound firmly together by their shafts.
At the corner of the wall of the church, there were three great iron
rings one above another, and through them were thrust three wooden
bars, which could be moved back and forth at will.
These bars were to be let down for the young bulls which were to be
turned out of the arena, one by one, after they had been branded, to
find their way alone to the desert. Outside the bars, a system of
barricades closed the streets of the town to them, and--by compelling
them to go behind the few houses facing the arena--guided them,
whether they would or not, to the margin of the open plain in less
than a hundred steps.
Zinzara was present, as we have said, standing in a wagon. She
followed with impassive glance all the happenings within the arena,
grotesque and heroic alike.
These duels between man and beast are grand or disgusting according
to the character of the adversaries. It sometimes happens that the man
attacks in a cowardly fashion, or that the beast, from astonishment it
may be, or fatigue, turns about and tries to return to the stable.
Fine contests are rare.
Sometimes a sharp stone is thrown from a safe distance by a disloyal
foe. The surprised beast receives it full in the face; the blood flows
in long streams from his nostrils to the ground. He looks straight
before him, his great eyes filled with mirage, and does not budge, as
if he were at once saddened and contemptuous.
Sometimes a mischievous rascal has the happy thought of coming very
close to him and throwing sand in his eyes by the handful. Another,
more mischievous than he, covers the bull with filth collected from
the gutter! But the sand-thrower, being spattered thereby, himself
picks up a handful, and the two heroes engage in a fierce battle with
dung picked up smoking from the ground under the bull's very tail,
amid the laughter and applause of a whole population, until the
champions, reeking with filth, are abruptly separated by the bull, who
bestirs himself at last and charges them.
"This way! this way, Livette!"
Livette had just come into the arena. Her young friends called her and
gladly moved closer together to make room for her on the benches.
A stable just beside the cafe had been transformed into a _toril_.
Just above the door of the stable was the long window of the hay-loft,
level with the floor. Two herdsmen, sitting in the window with their
legs hanging outside, rose from time to time, and could be seen
pricking the _dondaire_, the beloved leader of the herd, through the
holes in the floor above the hay-racks. The _dondaire_ would thereupon
go out and lead the tired bull back to the stable. Every time that a
new beast left the _toril_, or one that was tired out returned, a
dexterous hand swiftly closed the door.
All these things, which were probably by no means new to the gipsy,
who was doubtless familiar with the tragic entertainments of Madrid
and Seville, left her unmoved. Her eye did not kindle; it was as dull
and vague as a heifer's.
The "amateurs" played with a few bulls. They were not ill-tempered.
Somebody seized one of them by the tail. A whole party clung to his
skirts, dancing the farandole--but were soon scattered. The
performance thus far was not inspiriting, but it was amusing.
Behind the glass door of the cafe, which opened on the arena, some
congenial spirits were emptying a bottle and smoking while they
enjoyed the spectacle. The door was barricaded by a rampart of
overturned tables, with their legs in the air and passed through a
net-work of broken chairs.