with the tambourine. And this proceeding at length fascinated the
drover, who gazed at her, as completely under the spell as the lizard
listening to the locust in the sunshine on a summer's day.
This lasted an hour. He watched her, enchanted, proud, thinking of
nothing but her, and he felt his heart leap and quiver in his breast
at every touch upon the tambourine.
But one would have said that she had drawn about herself a circle that
he could not cross. He waited until the circle should be broken. He
was like one of the great dogs trained to guard droves of bulls; that
are so fearless of blows from the horns of their charges, but sit
obediently by watching their master at his meals, waiting for the
crumb he tosses them, slaves of the king, of their god, who is man.
She had now the effect upon him of a genuine queen, a queen in some
fairy tale, with her studied attitudes accompanied by the monotonous
music, which was accentuated by the ceaseless motion of the sequins of
her crown of copper against her swarthy brow and the dead black of
her hair.
Suddenly she laid her tambourine aside. He started toward her. She
held him back with a stern glance, and snatching away the silk
handkerchief that covered her shoulders, appeared before him in a rich
waist of many colors; and he saw upon her breast necklaces of gold
pieces--her fortune.
"Await my pleasure," said she. "Leave me in peace a moment."
She covered her head with the ample handkerchief she had taken off and
remained hidden behind that veil for a moment. Renaud heard her
muttering unfamiliar words--_mormo_, _gorgo_--words of sorcery,
without doubt.
When she threw back her veil, she was laughing.
What vision had the sorceress evoked? what had the seer seen?
"It will be better than I hoped!" said she. "Now, look!"
She rose, and to the accompaniment of the jangling of the sequins in
her diadem and the gold pieces of her necklace, set in motion by her
slow dance, in the course of which she did not move from where she
stood, she removed her garments, one by one.
By the flickering light of the candle, that waved back and forth as a
breath of air came in through the door, Renaud watched the familiar
vision reappear.
Zinzara swayed this way and that as she unfastened, one after
another, her waist, her skirts--and took them off, bending gracefully
forward and backward, raising her arms above her head or lowering them
to her ankles. And now you would have said it was a bronze statue,
glistening in the half-darkness. Renaud knew that figure well, from
having seen it one day in the bright sunlight, and so many, many times
since then, in his imagination.
The necklace tinkled upon her swelling breasts; several large rings
were around her ankles, and upon her brow, the crown from which the
trinkets hung.
She turned and twisted gracefully about, her dark skin gleaming like a
mirror.
"You see," said she, "Zinzara gives herself, no man takes her, romi.
The wild girl belongs to no one but herself. And even now I could, if
I chose, nail you where you stand, forever!"
As she spoke, she threw down upon her clothes a keen-edged stiletto
that had gleamed for an instant in her hand.
"Come!" said she.
They lay, side by side, on the floor of that hovel, upon the crackling
reeds.
At that moment, he looked into the depths of her eyes, and he saw
there vague things by which he had already on several occasions been
profoundly alarmed. The gitana's hidden purpose, as to which she
herself had no clear idea, flickered uncertainly in her glance,
making its presence felt, but giving no hint by which it could be
divined.
Her smile, which was ordinarily visible only at the corner of her
mouth, had spread, more unfathomable than ever, over her whole face,
which wore an expression of triumphant mockery. More mysterious she
appeared and more desirable. If Renaud had been familiar with the
carved stone animals that lie sleeping in the Egyptian desert, he
would have recognized their expression, an expression that words
cannot describe, upon the speaking face that gazed at him and called
him.
And, lo! the hatred he had once before felt for that face, for that
glance, returned swiftly, imperiously, to his mind; an irresistible
desire to seize the woman by the neck and choke her with cruel,
unyielding hands.
Even that feeling was love, for otherwise it would have occurred to
him to part abruptly from the sorceress, to fly from her; that thought
would have come to him, once at least, and it did not come. On the
contrary, he felt that he could not really possess her except by some
violence of that sort. Is it not true that mares look upon bites as
caresses?--She saw the thought in his eyes, and began to laugh.
Again she recognized distinctly, and with delight, the brute like
herself that she had aroused in him. And she did it to demonstrate her
power to subdue the brute, with a look.
"Oh! you may!" she said, with a smile.
As she spoke, he caught a rapid glimpse of the part she was to play
in his destiny: the pollution of his life, the loss of real happiness,
of all repose, and the false love--the strongest of all passions.
Their glances, laden with amorous hate, met and struck fire like
knife-blades.
He seized her around the neck and was very near choking her in good
earnest; he thought that he would strangle her. "Come, come!" she said
in a languishing voice; but, suddenly feeling the pressure of the hand
that was really squeezing her throat, she leaped up at him, and, with
a strangled laugh, hurled her mouth at his and bit his lips. They
could hear their teeth clash. He uttered a cry which was at once
stifled, for their angry lips had no sooner met than they were
appeased.
She gazed at him for a long while, looking always into his eyes. She
saw them more than once grow dim and sightless, and then, exulting in
the thought of this wild bull's weakness in her hands, she laughed
silently; but no emotion dimmed the brightness of her eyes. Suddenly,
when he had grown calmer, a profound sigh caused him to look with more
attention at the savage creature he had conquered at last. A pallor as
of the other world overspread her swarthy face; her features were
distended. She was no longer smiling. The wrinkle that ordinarily
raised one corner of her lips and gave her an air of mockery had
vanished. The corners of her mouth, on the other hand, drooped a
little, imparting a sad expression to her face. One would have said
she was a different being. There was no trace of animation upon her
features. She no longer belonged to herself. An attack of vertigo had
taken away her power of thought. She was like a drowned woman drifting
with the tide. Something as everlasting as death had proved stronger
than she.
As if from the midst of one of those dreams which, in a second, open
eternity to our gaze, she returned to herself with amazement.
The snake-charmer realized that she had been defeated in a way she was
unaccustomed to; she experienced a curious sensation of shame, a sort
of proud regret that she had forgotten herself as never before.--And
was he, without even suspecting the trap she had set for him,
tranquilly to carry off the gratification of his passion with which
she had baited the trap? In that case she would have betrayed herself!
She would be the victim of her detested lover! of Livette's
betrothed!--The mere thought was intolerable to her. And in a frenzy
of rage and humiliation she put out her hand and felt among her
clothes that lay in a pile near by, for the stiletto she had
insolently thrown upon them just before.
Renaud understood only one thing; the beast was becoming ugly again!
He seized her wrists and held her arms to the ground, crossed above
her head, and then he began to laugh in his turn.
Her insane rage came to the surface; she writhed about and tried to
bite, but could not. She felt that her power was gone, that she was in
the hands of one stronger than herself. Without understanding her, he
felt that she was dangerous and he mastered her. The Christian had her
in his power! It was too much. She felt her eyes bursting with the
tears that were ready to gush forth, but she forced them back. A
little foam appeared at the corner of her mouth.
"Dog!" she exclaimed.
At that, the man whose face she saw above her own, bending over and
rising again quickly, touched her lips with his. And he had the
feeling that the hand that grasped the stiletto relaxed its hold.
At that moment, a wailing cry rent the air above the cabin, then
ceased abruptly, before it had died away in the distance, as if the
bird that uttered that signal of distress had lighted among the reeds
near at hand, and had at once become mute.
Renaud took his eyes from the gitana's face.
"What is that?" said he.
"A curlew flying over!" she replied, without moving.--"The curlew goes
south in winter."
Renaud was on his feet, pale as death.
"King," said she, "do you love your queen? Then look at her!"
And, as she lay upon her back, she began to make her snake-like body
undulate and gleam like a mirror, keeping time with her tambourine,
which she held above her head.
The bursts of laughter with which she punctuated the outlandish music
displayed her glistening teeth from end to end.
"Come back here," she said, "are you afraid?"
He was ashamed, and, returning to the straw pallet, resumed his role
of subjugated watch-dog in love with a she-wolf.
In that one night, the young man felt the whole power of his youth,
learned more of life and realized more dreams than many real kings.
The pleasures of love are no greater to the prince than to the
charcoal-burner.
The day was breaking. Bands of violet along the horizon changed to
pink and then to yellow. An awakening breeze passed like a shiver over
the desert of sand and water, entered the cabin, and blew out the
flickering light on the stone table.
A cock in the distance welcomed the dawn.
Thereupon, Renaud started to go to find his horse. The wallet was
empty, too.
"At the Icard farm," said he, "I can get what I need."
"Do you suppose," said she, "that I intend to stay here all day like a
captive goose?"
"Is it all over, then?" said he, "and are you going away, too?"
"To return may be a pleasure," said she, "but to remain is always a
bore."
She hummed in the gipsy language:
"God gave thy mare no rein, Romichal."
"If you choose," she continued, "we will ride together till night. My
horse has wings."
"Very good," said Renaud. "Do you cross over to solid ground first. We
will go together and get my horse. It will be a fine day."
"And a good one! be sure of that!" said she, in her jerky voice, her
voice which resembled _another's_.
He went with her as far as the first of the stakes he had displaced,
to point out the safe road to her, and when he saw her reach the edge
of the swamp sixty feet beyond, he stooped and began to put the stakes
in place one by one as he walked toward the firm ground.
When he reached the last, he sprang to his feet with haggard eyes.
Livette, with head thrown back, face turned toward the sky, eyes
closed, mouth open, and grass mingled with her straying hair, was
lying among the water-lilies, as if asleep, and in the throes of a bad
dream. He also saw her two little clenched hands, above the water,
clinging to the reeds.
Transformed for a moment to a statue, Renaud soon aroused himself,
and, bending over Livette, put his hands under her armpits. The poor
body, buried in the thick, black ooze, came slowly forth, torn from
its bed like the smooth stalk of a lily.
When he had the poor body in his arms, inert and cold, perhaps
dead,--the body of the poor, dear child, whose skirts, entangled in a
net-work of long grasses, clung tightly to her dangling legs,--Renaud
suddenly uttered a roar as of an enraged wild beast, and ran like a
madman at the top of his speed to the nearest farm-house.
XXIII
THE PURSUIT
One forgives only those whom one loves; only those who love forgive.
Love at its apogee is naught but the power of inspiring forgiveness
and bestowing it; and the social laws, which are of the mechanism of
human justice, seem to have realized that fact, since they ignore the
testimony of all those who would naturally be expected to love the
culprit.
Sympathy is simply a laying aside--in favor of those we love--of the
implacable severity which we use but little in dealing with ourselves,
and which attributes to those who pass judgment an unerring wisdom
which is not human, or a self-confidence which is too much so.
Livette, as she lay sick upon the best bed in the Icard farm-house,
already had, in her sorrowing heart, an adorable feeling of indulgence
for Renaud, which would have made the blessed maidens who laid the
Crucified One in his shroud, smile with joy in the mystic heaven of
the lofty chapel. She believed that she would die by her fiance's
fault, and she pitied him. Forgiveness sooner or later redeems him
who receives, and consoles him who accords it. In the sentiment of
compassion is hidden the divine future of mankind.
Renaud was still ignorant of Livette's indulgence. Indeed, he could
not deserve it until he had come to look upon himself as forever
unworthy.
For the moment, he had not gone to the bottom of the hell of evil
thoughts.
When he found Livette half drowned in the _gargate_, his first
impulse, born of true love and pity for her, in absolute forgetfulness
of himself, lasted but an instant--but it had existed. Renaud at first
suffered for her and for her alone.
His second impulse, almost immediate, and praiseworthy still, although
there was a touch of selfishness in it, was to condemn himself,
through fear of moral responsibility. Had he not with his own hand
displaced the stakes that marked the path, with the idea, indefensible
at best, that Rampal would be misled by that treacherous method of
defence? Yes, almost immediately after he uttered his cry of agony, he
shuddered with terror at the thought of the remorse that was in store
for him, as soon as he felt that Livette was like a dead woman in his
arms.
When he had given her in charge of the women at the main farm-house of
the Icard farm, where there was great excitement over such an
adventure at that time of day, he questioned two old peasant-women who
knew more than all the doctors in the province. After doing what was
necessary for Livette, they cheerfully declared that the poor girl
would not die of it; they even said that it was "nothing at all." He
did not even try to understand how she had come so far to fall into
the trap!
She would not die! That was the essential thing at that moment. What a
relief _to him_, for he was already accusing himself of his little
sweetheart's death! He had been so afraid! And it turned out to be
only a warning! God be praised, and blessed be the mighty saints who
had performed such a miracle!
But the devil rejoiced when he looked into Renaud's conscience, for he
saw the course his ideas were about to take, a course that would lead
him from bad to worse.
Reassured as to Livette,--and as to himself,--he flew into a passion
with the accursed gitana, the indirect cause, at least, of all this
misery.
"Ah! the beggar! I will kill her!--it will be easy to find her again.
She can't be far away--I will kill her!"
His wrath took full possession of him--he ran for his horse. Kill
her!--kill her! Nothing could be more righteous.--And he went about
it.
Poor Renaud! the victim of all the involuntary falsehoods which,
starting from ourselves, one engendering another, sometimes render the
best of us irresponsible and drive us on to disaster when passion
makes us mad.
This chain, often undiscoverable, of false but specious reasons with
which men deceive themselves, each fitting into the last without
violence, each explaining and justifying the one that follows
it--leads insensibly to acts incomprehensible to him who is not able
to follow it back, link by link. It is the chain of FATALITY, in which
the links, consisting of trifling but suggestive facts, of decisive
circumstances, unknown sometimes to the culprit, alternate with the
fictitious good motives he has invented for his own benefit in the
reflex movements of his mind. To re-establish the logical sequence of
facts, of sensations suddenly transformed into ideas, is the work of
equity which reasons, or of love which divines. In default of tracing
back the chain of insensible, imperious transitions, we find between
the criminal who has long been an honest man and his crime, the abyss
at sight of which fools and unthinking folk, filled with the pride of
implacable sinners, never fail to exclaim: "It is monstrous!" But if
God, infinite Love, does exist, everything is forgiven, because
everything is understood; there are, mayhap, simply the miserable
wretches on one side, and divine pity on the other.
Yes, Renaud would have killed the sorceress, with savage joy, to
avenge Livette. But was not that desire, which he deemed a
praiseworthy one, simply a pretext for seeking her out again that same
day, for seeing her once more?--That, at all events, is what the devil
himself thought as he crouched on the floor of the crypt in the
church of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, on the spot occupied the day
before by the dark-browed gipsies, beneath the shrine of Saint Sara.
And so, mounted upon Blanchet, Renaud galloped furiously away upon his
tracks of the night, intending to kill Zinzara.
Livette would not die!--That idea caused him great joy, so great that
he was no sooner out-of-doors, away from the painful, wearisome
spectacle of the poor unconscious child, than he yielded, alas! to the
influence of the bright sunlight, and breathed at ease. He had already
ceased to think of Livette's sufferings. His satisfaction had already
ceased to be anything more than selfishness: not only would he not
have to reproach himself for her death, but, more than that, now that
she knew everything, was he not absolved, as it were? There was
nothing more for him to fear. The worst that could happen had
happened! And he actually felt as if a weight had been taken from his
shoulders, as if he were once more sincere in his dealings with
Livette, a better man, in short, thanks to what had happened. Although
he did not reason this out, the thought went through his mind. It was
what he felt. For everything serves the passion of love; it turns to
its own profit the very things that would naturally tend most to
thwart it. Moreover, he need feel no qualms of conscience, as he was
going to chastise the malignant creature, to kill her, in fact:--a
vile race!
No, she could not be far away. Doubtless, if she had planned the
catastrophe, she had concealed herself near at hand to see the result.
He rode back toward the bridge over the canal. No one had seen the
gipsy there. He descended the Rhone to the spot where they had left
the boat the night before. The boat was in the same place, fastened by
the same knot.
He began to fear that he might not find her. But when, after searching
two hours, he was certain of it, he was much surprised to find that he
did not feel the righteous wrath of the officer of justice at the
thought of a culprit eluding the vengeance of the law, but the sudden
distress of a betrayed lover. He did not cry to himself: "I shall not
have the pleasure of punishing her!" but: "I shall never see her
again!" And that cry burst forth in his heart as a fierce revelation
of unpardonable, pitiless love. What! he loved her! he loved her! and
he learned it for the first time at that moment! he admitted it to
himself for the first time!--yes, beyond cavil he loved her--_now_!
His heart failed him. He was bewildered. He felt a vague sense of
well-being, due to the mere joy of loving, marred by a feeling of
intense chagrin at the thought of the certain misery that lay before
him. He was horrified at himself, and, at the same moment, decided
upon his future course in a frenzy of excitement.
The physical power of love is superb and appalling. It stops at
nothing. And the man who is watching beside the dying or the dead,
even though it be some one who is dear to him, feels a thrill of joy
rush to his heart, if the being he loves with all the force of his
youth passes by.
Renaud had just held Livette almost dying in his arms, and already he
had no regret save for the other, for the woman he should have
trampled under his feet!
Thereupon, all the events of the night returned to his mind, and
finished the work of poisoning. He could not be reconciled to the
thought that he should never again see what he had had for so short a
time. No, it could not be at an end. If she were a criminal, why then
he would love her in her crime, that was all! The black bull was
loose.--But Livette? aha! Livette? a swan's feather, or a red
flamingo's, under his horse's hoof.
What was the placid affection the young maid had inspired in his heart
compared to the frenzy of sorrow and joy the other caused him to feel?
Sorrow and joy combined, that is what love is; and the love men prefer
is not that which contains the greater joy as compared to the keener
sorrow--it is that in which those emotions are most intense. It was
that law of passion to whose operation Renaud was now being subjected.
He realized that he had definitely chosen the other, the gipsy,
despite the cry of his outraged sense of honor.
That cry of his honest heart, to which he no longer lent a willing
ear, he still heard, do what he would, and he suffered half
consciously, for many reasons which he did not distinguish one from
another, but which resulted in producing a confused feeling in his own
mind that he was a monster.
A monster! for now that he considered the matter more carefully, it
became his settled conviction that the gitana had intended to kill
Livette--and yet it was that same gitana that he loved!
Ah! the witch!--She had certainly seen Livette, her poor little head,
like a dead woman's, lying on the water among the grass, her mouth
open for the last cry for help, her teeth glistening with water in the
sunlight! She could not have helped seeing her.--And she had passed
her by without a word!--It was because she was determined to be her
ruin. She had evidently led her into the trap. How? What did it
matter! but it was no longer possible to doubt that it was the fact.
But in that case--if she was really guilty--there could be no doubt,
either, that having seen her desire accomplished, she had fled. She
would appear no more! he would have no opportunity to kill her! he
would never see her again! And the thing that moved him most deeply in
connection with Livette's misfortune was the thought that it involved
Zinzara's flight. He tried in vain to put away the abominable regret;
it returned upon him like a wave. What! he should never see her again!
Oh! those caresses of the night before in the cabin of the swamp were
clinging to his arms and legs like serpents. They twined about his
body as creeping plants about the branches of the tamarisk, or as one
eel about another: biting at his heart. And he shivered from head to
foot.
"Ah! the witch!" he repeated. "Ah! the witch! What! never again!"
Never again!--Why, did he not think that night that he should be able
to keep her on his island; that it would last a year at least, until
the next year's fetes; that he would have the wild beast to himself in
the desert, in his wild beast's lair--all to himself, with her lithe,
graceful body, her ankle-rings and bracelets, and her beggar queen's
crown?
But did she not love him? Had it all been mere trickery and craft on
her part?
The horse's blood flowed freely under the drover's spurs; but the
horseman's heart was bleeding within him a thousand times more
cruelly.
All mere trickery and craft! He repeated it again and again to
himself, and would not believe it.