I
"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!"
That is one of our old sayings here in Provence. I used to laugh at it
when I was young. I do not laugh at it now. When those words come into
my heart, and they come often, I go by the rough hard way that leads
upward to Notre Dame de la Garde until I come to the Crime Cross--it is
a wearying toil for me to get up that steep hill-side, I am so stiff
and old now--and there I cast fresh stones upon the heap at the foot of
the cross. Each stone cast there, you know, is a prayer for forgiveness
for some hidden crime: not a light fault, but a crime. The stones must
be little stones, yet the heap is very wide and high--though every
winter, when the great mistrals are blowing across the Étang de Berre,
the little stones are whirled away down the hill-side. I do not know
how this custom began, nor when; but it is a very old custom with us
here in Les Martigues.
Once in every year I go up to the Crime Cross by night. This is on
All Souls Eve. First I light the lamp over Magali's breast where she
lies sleeping in the graveyard: going to the graveyard at dusk, as the
others do, in the long procession that creeps up thither from the three
parts of our town--from Jonquières, and the Isle, and Ferrières--to
light the death-fires over the dear dead ones' graves. I go with the
very first, as soon as the sun is down. I like to be alone with Magali
while I light the little lamp that will be a guide for her soul through
that night when souls are free; that will keep it safe from the devils
who are free that night too. I do not like the low buzzing of voices
which comes later, when the crowd is there, nor the broken cries and
sobs. And when her lamp is lit, and I have lit my mother's lamp, I
hurry away from the graveyard and the moaning people--threading my
steps among the graves on which the lights are beginning to glimmer,
and through the oncoming crowd, and then by the lonely path through the
olive-orchards, and so up the stony height until I come at last to the
Crime Cross--panting, aching--and my watch begins.
[Illustration: MARIUS]
Up on that high hill-side, open to the west, a little of the dying
daylight lingers. Eastward, like a big black mirror, lies the great
étang; and far away across its still waters the mountain chain
above Berre and Rognac rises purple-grey against the darker sky.
In the west still are faint crimson blotches, or dashes of dull
blood-red--reflected again, and made brighter, in the Étang de Caronte:
that stretches away between the long downward slopes of the hills,
on which stone-pines stand out in black patches, until its gleaming
waters merge into the faint glow upon the waters of the Mediterranean.
Above me is the sanctuary of Notre Dame de la Garde, a dark mass on
the height above the olive-trees: of old a refuge for sinful bodies,
and still a refuge where sinful souls may seek grace in prayer from
their agony. And below me, on the slope far downward, is the graveyard:
where the death-fires multiply each moment, as more and more lamps
are lighted, until at last it is like a little fallen heaven of tiny
stars. Only in its midst is an island of darkness where no lamps are.
That is where the children lie together: the blessed innocents who have
died sinless, and who wander not on All Souls Eve because when sweet
death came to them their pure spirits went straight home to God. And
beyond the graveyard, below it, is the black outspread of the town: its
blackness deepened by a bright window here and there, and by the few
street lamps, and by the bright reflections which shine up from the
waters of its canals.
Seeing all this--yet only half seeing it, for my heart is full of other
things--I sit there at the foot of the Crime Cross in the darkness,
prayerful, sorrowful, while the night wears on. Sometimes I hear
footsteps coming up the rocky path, and then the shadowy figure of
a man or of a woman breaks out from the gloom and suddenly is close
beside me--and I hear the rattle of little stones cast upon the heap
behind me, on the other side of the cross. Presently, the rite ended,
whoever it is fades back into the gloom again and passes away. And I
know that another sinful soul has been close beside my sinful soul for
a moment: seeking in penitent supplication, as I am seeking, rest
in forgiveness for an undiscovered crime. But I am sure that none of
them sees--as I see in the gloom there always--a man's white face on
which the moonlight is shining, and beyond that white face the glint
of moonlight on a raging sea; and I am sure that on none of their
blackened souls rests a burden as heavy as that which rests on mine.
I am very weary of my burden, and old and broken too. It is my comfort
to know that I shall die soon. But, also, the thought of that comfort
troubles me. For I am a lone man, and childless. When I go, none
of Magali's race, none of my race, will be left alive here in Les
Martigues. Our death-fires will not be lighted. We shall wander in
darkness on All Souls Eve.