uNivEf^sm or CALIFORNIA SAN DIEOO ■J' -'J CHEFS-D'OEUVRE DU ROMAN CONTEA\PORAIN ROMANCISTS OF THIS EDITION, PRINTED ON JAPANESE VELLUM PAPER, ONLY ONE THOUSAND COMPLETE COPIES ARE PRINTED FOR SALE No THE ROMANCISTS JEAN AICARD KING OF CAMARGUE ' "^^fi^t^wf. *?..^)S- c\ --'.>•- -^^-3^ it tnt(fB(fi!) \^im^ Si <(_^ V»^\K\S^SW^\^l j-^\as\ M^'^Vi-i 5'3»-i«\\ ^i\.\ V^jJs \\iS. But by the thick, curly hair, surmounted by a tinsel crown, by the general contour of the bust, by the huge ear-rings with an- amulet hanging at the ends, Livette recognized a certain gipsy woman who was, universally known as the Queen. V; I) m u^y ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN JEAN AICARD KING OF CAMARGUE FOURTEEN ETCHINGS PHILADELPHIA PRINTED ONLY FOR SUBSCRIBERS BY GEORGE BARRIE & SON COPYRIGHT, 1 901, BY GEORGE BARRIE A SON THIS EDITION OF KING OF CAMARGUE HAS BEEN COMPLETELY TRANSLATED BY GEORGE B. IVES THE ETCHINGS ARE BY LOUIS V. RUET AND DRAWINGS BY GEORGE ROUX TO EMILE TRELAT My Very Dear Friend : Permit me to dedicate this book to you, whose incom- parable friendship has been to the poet, obstinate in his idealism, of hourly assistance, a constant proof of the reality of true generosity and kindness of heart. Jean Aicard. La Garde, near Toulon, April ii, i8go. KING OF CAMARGUE LIVETTE AND ZINZARA A shadow suddenly darkened the narrow window. Livette, who was running hither and thither, setting the table for supper, in the lower room of the farm-house of the Chateau d' Avignon, gave a little shriek of terror, and looked up. The girl had an instinctive feeling that it was neither father nor grandmother, nor any of her dear ones, but some stranger, who sought amusement by thus taking her by surprise. Nor a stranger, either, for that matter, — it was hardly possible! — But how was it that the dogs did not yelp? Ah ! this Camargue is frequented by bad people, espe- cially at this season, toward the end of May, on account of the festival of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, which at- tracts, like a fair, such a crowd of people, thieves and gulls, and so many mischievous gipsies ! The figure that was leaning on the outside of the window-sill, shutting out the light, looked to Livette like a black mass, sharply outlined against the blue sky ; 3 4 KING OF CAMARGUE but by the thick, curly hair, surmounted by a tinsel crown, by the general contour of the bust, by the huge ear-rings with an amulet hanging at the ends, Livette recognized a certain gipsy woman who was universally known as the Queen, and who, for nearly two weeks, had been suddenly appearing to people at widely distant points on the island, always unexpectedly, as if she rose out of the ditches or clumps of thorn-broom or the water of the swamps, to say to the laborers, preferably the women : ' ' Give me this or that ; " for the Queen, as a general rule, would not accept what people chose to offer her, but only what she chose that they should offer her. "Give me a little oil in a bottle, Livette," said the young gipsy, darting a dark, flashing glance at the pretty girl with the fair, sun-flecked hair. livette, charitable as she was at every opportunity, at once felt that she must be on her guard against this vagabond, who knew her name. Her father and grand- mother had gone to Aries, to see the notary, who Avould soon have to be drawing up the papers for her marriage to Renaud, the handsomest drover in all Camargue. She was alone in the house. Distrust gave her strength to refuse. "Our Camargue isn't an olive country," said she curtly, "oil is scarce here. I haven't any." "But I see some in the jar at the bottom of the cupboard, beside the water-pitcher." KING OF CAMARGUE 5 Livette turned hastily toward the cupboard. It was closed; but, in truth, the stock of olive oil was there in a jar beside the one in which they kept Rhone water for their daily needs. "I don't know what you mean," said Livette. "The lie came from your mouth like a vile black wasp from a garden-ilower, little one ! ' ' said the motion- less figure, still leaning heavily on the window-sill, evidently determined to remain. "The oil is where I say it is, and more than twenty-five litres too ; I can see it from here. Come, come, take a clean bottle and the tin funnel and give me quickly what I want. I'll tell you, in exchange, what I see in your future." "It's a deadly sin to seek to know what God doesn't wish us to know," said Livette, "and you can guess that oil is kept in cupboards and still be no more of a sorceress than I am. Go about your business, good- wife. I can give you some of this bread, fresh baked last night, if you wish, but I tell you I haven't any oil." " And why do they call you Livette," said the Queen calmly, "if it isn't on account of the field of old olive- trees — the oldest and finest in the country — owned by your father, near Avignon? There you were born. There you remained until you were ten years old, and at that age — seven years ago, a mystic number — you came here, where your father was made farmer, overseer of drovers, manager of everything, by the Avignonese 6 KING OF CAMARGUE master of this 'Chateau d' Avignon,' the finest in all Carmargue. — ' Livettes ! livettes ! ' that's the way you used to ask for olivettes, olives, when you were a baby. You were very fond of them, and the nick- name clung to you. A pretty nickname, on my word, and one that suits you well, for if you're not dark like the ripe olive, you're fair as the virgin oil, a pearl of amber in the sunlight, and then you are not yet ripe. Your face is oval, and not stupidly round like a Norman apple. You have the pallor of the olive-leaves seen from below. — And that you may soon see them so, little one, is the blessing I ask for you, as the cures of your chapels say, where they take us in for pity. Be compassionate as they are, in the name of your Lord Jesus Christ, and give me some oil quickly, I say — in the name of extreme unction and the garden of agony ! ' ' The gipsy had said all this without stopping to breathe, in a dull, monotonous, muffled voice, but she added ab- ruptly in loud, piercing, incisive tones : " Do you under- stand what I say?" imparting to those simple words an extraordinarily imperious and violent expression. Livette hastily crossed herself. "Come, enough of this! " said she, "I have nothing here for you, and we keep the oil of extreme unction for better Christians ! Begone, pagan, begone ! " she added, trying to counterfeit courage. " Of the three holy women," continued the gipsy, ** who took ship, after the death of Jesus Christ, to KING OF CAMARGUE j escape the crucifying Jews, one was like myself, an Egyptian and a fortune-teller. She knew the science of the Magi, of those with whom great Moses con- tended for mastery in witchcraft. She could, at will, order the frogs to be more numerous than the drops of water in the swamps, and she held in her hand a rod which, at her word, would change to a viper. Before Jesus she bowed, as did Magdalen, and Jesus loved her too. In the tempest, as they were crossing the sea, her wand pointed out the course to follow, and, to do that with safety, had no need to be very long. Must you have more pledges of my power and my knowledge ? What more must I tell you to induce you to give me the oil I need so much? If you were a man, I would say: * Look ! I am dark, but I am beautiful ! I am a de- scendant of that Sara the Egyptian who, when the boat of the three holy women drew near the sands of Ca- margue, paid the boatman by showing him her undefiled body, stripped naked, with no thought of evil and with- out sin, but knowing well that true beauty is rare and that the mere sight of it is better than all the treasures of Solomon. So be it ! " Livette was thoroughly alarmed. The gipsy's assur- ance, her hollow, penetrating voice, imperious by fits and starts, these strange tales filled with evil words on sacred subjects, this devilish mixture of things pagan and things mystic, the consciousness of her own loneli- ness, all combined to terrify her. She lost her head. 8 KING OF CAMARGUE "Away with you, away with you," she cried, ''queen of robbers ! queen of brigands ! away with you, or I will call for help! " " Your drover won't hear you ; he's tending his drove to-day beside the Vaccares. Come, give me the oil, I say, or I'll throw this black wand on the ground, and you -will see how snakes bite! " But Livette, brave and determined, said: "No!" shuddering as she said it, and, to glean a little comfort, cast a glance at the low beam along which her father's gun was hanging. The gipsy saw the glance. "Oh ! I am not afraid of your gun," said she, "and to prove it — wait a moment ! ' ' She left the window. The light streamed into the room, bringing a little courage to Livette's terrified heart, as she followed the gipsy with her eyes. In the bright light of that beautiful May evening, the gipsy woman stood out, a tall figure, against the distant, unbroken horizon line of the Camargue desert, which could be seen through a vista between the lofty trees of the park. Livette felt a thrill of joy as she saw a troop of mares trotting along the horizon, followed by their driver, spear in air — Jacques Renaud, her fianc6, without doubt. — But how far away he was ! the horses, from where she stood, looked smaller than a flock of little goats. And her eyes came back to the gipsy queen. A few steps from the farm-house, in front of the seign- iorial chateau, a huge square structure, with numerous KING OF CAMARGUE 9 windows, long closed, — a structure of the sort that arouses thoughts of neglect and death and the grave, — the gipsy stood on tiptoe, drawing down the lowest branch of a thorn-tree. The thorns were long, as long as one's finger. With a twig of a tree of that species the crown of the Crucified One was made. She broke off a twig thickset with thorns, bent it into a circle, twisting the two ends together like serpents, and returned to the window. Livette noticed at that moment that the two watch- dogs were following the gipsy, with their tails between their legs, their noses close to her heels, with little affectionate whines. And she, the gipsy Queen, as slender as haughty, erect upon her legs, in a ragged skirt with ample folds through the holes in which could be seen a bright red petticoat, her bust enveloped in orange-colored rags crossed below her well-rounded breasts, her amulets tinkling at her ears, medallions jangling on her forehead, which was encircled by a gaudy fillet of copper, — she, the Queen, came forward, hold- ing in her hand the crown of long stiff thorns, to which a few tiny green leaves clung in quivering festoons ; — and in a low, very low tone, she murmured the same caressing plaint that the two great cowed dogs were murmuring, saying to them, in their own language, mysterious things they understood. "Take this," said the gipsy, "let your kind heart be rewarded as it deserves ! Misfortune, which is at lO KING OF CAMARGUE work for you, will soon make itself known to you. How, may God tell you ! In love, the wind that blows for you is poisoned by the swamps. The charity your God enjoins is, so they say, another form of love that brings true love good fortune. And here is my queenly gift!" She threw the crown of thorns through the window at Livette's feet. "Madame ! " exclaimed Livette in dismay. But the gipsy had disappeared. Infinite distress filled the poor child's heart. With her eyes fixed on the crown, Livette recalled the legends in which the good Lord Jesus appears disguised as a beggar — and in which He rewards those who have re- ceived Him with sweet compassion. In one of those legends, the Poor Man, welcomed with harsh words, subjected to mockery and cowardly insults, struck with staves and goblets and bottles thrown by drunken revellers — at last, standing against the wall, begins to be transformed into a Christ upon the Cross, bleeding at the holes in his hands and feet !— And, sick with terror, she asked herself if she had not received with unkindness one of the three holy Avomen who, after the death of Jesus, crossed the sea in a boat to the shores of Camargue, using their skirts for sails, and assisted by the oars of a boatman, whom one of their number, Sara the Egyptian, paid in heathen coin, by allowing him to see, as the price of a Christian action, KING OF CAMARGUE ii her undefiled body, entirely naked, upon the self-same spot on which the church stands to-day. Slowly she picked up the crown and threw it into the fire over which the soup was stewing. Before it melted into ashes, the crown of thorns seemed for a moment to be pure gold. II IN CAMARGUE Every year, at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the village that stands at the southern end of Camargue, above the marshes, on a sand beach, the line of which is con- stantly changed by the action of the waves and high winds, every year, the feast of Saintes-Maries is cele- brated on May 24th ; and at the time of that festival the gipsies flock to Camargue in large numbers, im- pelled by a curious sort of piety, mingled with a desire to pilfer the pilgrims. Legends, like trees, spring from the soil, — are its expression, so to speak. They are also its essence. At every step in Camargue, you find the everlasting legend of the holy women, just as you everlastingly see there the same tamarisk-trees, confused, against the horizon, with the same mirages. The two Marys, so runs the legend, Jacobe, Salome, and — according to some authorities — Magdalen, and with them their bondwomen, Marcella and Sara, adrift on the sea in a boat without masts or sails, pursued by 13 14 KING OF CAMARGUE the accursed Jews, after the Saviour's death, spread to the breeze strips of their skirts and their long, thin veils, and the wind carried them to this beach at Camargue. There a church was built. The sacred bones, found by King Rene, were enclosed in a reliquary, which has never ceased to perform miracles. And every year, from every corner of Provence, from the Comtat and from Languedoc, the last of the believers throng to the spot, bringing their aspirations and their prayers, drag- ging with them their sick friends and kindred, or their own wretchedness, their wounds and their lamentations. Nothing more strange can be imagined than this land of desolation, traversed every year by a multitude of cripples on their way to hope ! From afar, at the end of the desert tract, can be seen the battlemented church that tells of the wars of long ago, of Saracen invasions, of the precarious life led by the poor in the Middle Ages. It stands there with its turrets and its bell-tower, which, like the stumps of gigantic masts, tower above the cluster of houses grouped about it; and the village, cut at about mid-height of the lower houses by the horizon line of the sea, seems drifting like a phantom ship among the billows of sand, like the boat of the holy women of the olden time, doomed to founder at last in the desolation of the desert. In this Camargue everything is strange. There are ponds like the huge central pond, the Vaccares, in the KING OF CAMARGUE 15 centre of which one can wade with ease ; there are tracts of land where the pedestrian sinks out of sight and is drowned. Here deception is easy. Yonder green sh'me that you take for a level plain — beware ! — men are drowned therein; those vast stretches of water which seem to you small seas — return that way to-morrow; they will have evaporated, leaving only a mirror of white salt that crackles beneath your feet. Yonder, do you see the calm, deep water ? and trees on the shore ? Ah ! no, you can run along the surface of that water ; it is dry land; the mirage alone formed those trees, just as it showed you the little child walking a league away, apparently near at hand and very tall. A land of visions, dreams, and hard work. A land of sedentary folk, who inhabit a vast space on the shore of endless waters, with an infinity of variations of mirages, sun- beams, reflections, and bright colors. A land of fever, where strong men daily bring wild bulls to earth. A land of leave-takings, for it is on the confines of an almost uninhabited land, on the shore of that great blue and white thoroughfare, the sea ; just at the point where the Rhone, coming from the mountains, sets out upon its long journey to the bottomless waters, where the sun will take it up again to restore it to its source. An im- pressive land, which one feels to be the end of so many things ; of the great city-making river, of the great expiring Faith, which flies to the sands to breathe its last, with its dying waves beating at the foundations of a - l6 KING OF CAMARGUE poor battlemented church, amid the psalms, mingled with lamentations of a dying race. The ceremony of May 24th, at Saintes-Maries-de-la- Mer, is unquestionably one of the most barbarous spec- tacles which men of modern times are permitted to witness. Since science made the conquest of men's minds, the faith of the last believers has changed. The most bigoted know, of course, that God can manifest Himself when and how He pleases, but they also know that He never pleases, in our positive days, to modify the movements of the vast mechanism of His creation, not even for the lowly pleasure of proving His existence to His creatures. The faith of civilized men no longer expects anything from Heaven in this world. Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, on the 24th of May, is the rendezvous of the last savages of the Faith. They who come to pray to the holy women for health of body and of heart are unpolished creatures of a primitive belief. They believe, and that is the whole of it. A cry, a prayer, and, in reply, the saints can give them what they have not : eyes, legs, arms, life ! And they ask them to perform a miracle as artlessly as a con- demned man implores his pardon from the head of the State. That their prayers should be granted is quite as possible, almost more probable, for the saints have more pity. The few thousands of believers — it is long since their numbers have been added to — who pay a visit to (tf^apttx M From afar, at the end of the desert tract, can be seen the battlemented church that tells of the wars of long ago, of Saracen invasions, of the precarious life led by the poor in the Middle Ages. «'^' Di., mingled es-Maries-de-la- >Nt barbarous spec- . i.mes are permitted to Saice sciencf conquest of men's minds, the faith of tlie last - has changed. The most bigoted know, of cours' wjr i l .1 x.ip*|inanifest Himself when and how He please*, but they also know that He never pleases, in our • days, to modify the movements of the vast TiiC(.;i;7iu'im qf His creation, nokeven^for the lowlv nl(^asur(..' oi i rovmg His existence to His creatures, •i' Th> l.ufn of ' ivrti/ea men no longer expects anything Sa.ntes-Man. ^?W^^n^W^4!ft%P«^il^hle rendezvous of t ^ivages of the Faith. They who come to pray to the holy women for health of body and of htart are unpolished creatures of a primitive belief. Thev l^elieve, and that is the whole of it. A cry, a pray. . in reply, the saints can give them what they h.i yes, legs, arms, life ! And ask them to |^ x miracle as artlessly as a con- tieiiuied man i' n from the head of the c granted is quite as iie saints have more since lO ■^ KING OF CAMARGUE 17 the saints every year, see one or two miracles on each occasion. When the priest, coming from the church, followed by a procession, stretches out toward the sea the Silver Ann which contains the relics, they see the sea recede ! That happens every year. Imagine, then, how strenuously they importune the saints who can do so much with so little exertion ! with what energy they hurry to the spot ! with what sighs they pour out their hearts ! with what a howling they utter their prayers ! with what fervor they raise their eyes, stretch out their necks and their arms! All, all in vain. The last pos- turings of the great, fruitlessly imploring sorrow are to be seen there, in that desert corner of France, between the arms of that dying stream, on the shore of the sea that is eating away the island ; beneath the arches of yonder church, so white without, so black within, wherein every hand holds a taper, flickering like a star of human misery, which burns for God and greases the fingers, and for which the beggar, whose heart would be made glad by a single sou, must pay five sous. The whole region seems to be at once the highway to exile, and a wild place of refuge. Therefore, the gipsies love it. It is one of the main cross-roads of their inter- lacing highways which envelop the whole world ; it is one of the favorite countries of the race that has no country. And every year, the gipsies come to Camargue to enjoy their very ancient privilege of occupying a black l8 KING OF CAMARGUE crypt or underground chapel, under the choir of the church, consecrated to Saint Sara the Egyptian. In that cavern they can be seen crouching at the foot of an altar whereon is a little shrine — Saint Sara's — all filthy from much kissing, while above, in the church, the great shrines of the two Marys are lowered from the vaulted roof amid vociferous prayers. There, in the crypt, the gipsies sit upon their haunches, curly-headed, hot-lipped, sweating profusely, amid hun- dreds of candles, which exude tallow and overheat the stifling oven, telling their greasy beads, exhaling an odor similar to that of wild beasts in their den, emit- ting from time to time a hoarse appeal to Saint Sara, wearing the smile of premeditated crime upon their faces mingled with the grimace due to remorse that may be sincere ; looking with envious eye at every sou, pilfering handkerchiefs, scratching their wounds, swarming in a mysterious dunghill, where one feels, in spite of everything, that some mystic flower is spring- ing into life, the involuntary aspiration of depravity toward purity. Early in May of this year, the band of gipsies had brought with them to the saints a young woman whom they called their " Queen." This " Queen," pending the arrival of the approach- ing fete-day, passed i)art of her time seated on the wooden bench under the canopy of thorn-broom erected by the customs' officers between two tamarisks, on the KING OF CAMARGUE 19 sand-dune just in front of the village; and there she sat and gazed at the sea. Her name was Zinzara. Her thick, black, wavy hair was twisted carelessly into a mass on top of her head. Two locks came for- ward to her temples, which were sunken and filled with shadows. Her piercing black eyes gleamed from beneath her thick arching eyebrows. A copper circlet with sequins hanging from it was placed upon her forehead, slightly at one side, after the manner of a crown. The glaringly bright materials in which she enveloped her figure revealed the outline of her powerful chest, and her hips that swayed at every step she took. And the fragment that formed her skirt fell in graceful folds, beneath which her naked foot peeped out, glis- tening with sand. Evening surprised her upon her bench beneath the broom, looking out upon the sea. The sun tinged the waves and the sand with golden yellow, then with red. The night wind made the reeds and rushes quiver. Slowly the gipsy drew a bright-colored handkerchief from her girdle and arranged it on her head. She put it over her face to tie the ends together behind the mass of hair, then raised it and threw it over her head, so that it fell upon her back. Thus arranged as a head- dress, it framed the face in stiff, broad folds, falling on both sides,— and the Egyptian, her hands spread out upon her knees, her eyes fixed on the horizon, resembled 20 KING OF CAMARGUE some figure of Isis, while about her a flock of red flamingoes or a solitary ibis, in hieroglyphic cries, told the sands of Camargue and the rushes of the Rhone tales of the sands of Libya and the lotus-trees of the Nile. Ill THE DROVERS Jacques Renaud, Livette's lover, was employed as drover of bulls and horses in this strange Camargue country, on the estate of the Chateau d' Avignon. The inanades, or droves, of Camargue bulls and mares live at liberty in the vast moor, leaping the ditches, splashing through the swamps, browsing on the bitter grass, drinking from the Rhone, running, jump- ing, wallowing, neighing and lowing at the sun or the mirage, lashing vigorously with their tails the swarms of gadflies clinging to their sides, then lying down in groups on the edge of the swamp, knees doubled under their bulky bodies, tired and sleepy, their dreamy eyes fixed vaguely on the horizon. The mounted drovers leave them at liberty, but keep a watchful eye on their freedom ; and according to the time of year and the condition of the pasturage, "round up" their herds, keep them together, and direct their movements. 21 22 KING OF CAMARGUE In the distance, as they sit motionless, and straight as arrows, on their saddles d la gardiane, astride their white horses, with the spear-head resting on the closed stirrup, they resemble knights of the Middle Ages, awaiting the flourish of the herald's trumpet to enter the lists. The Camargue horse, with his powerful hind-quarters, stout shoulders, head a little heavy, — an excellent beast withal, — is descended from Saracen mares and the palfrey of the Crusades. He still wears antique trappings. Huge closed stirrups strike against his sides ; the broad strap of the martingale passes through a heart-shaped piece of leather on his chest, and the saddle is an easy-chair, wherein the rider sits between two solid walls, the one in front as high as that at his back. At certain times, when the best pasturage is on the other bank of the Rhone, the drovers drive their nianades toward the river. When they reach the shore, they press close upon them to force them in. The earth-colored water of the river (lows bubbling by. The beasts hesitate. Some slowly put their heads down to the stream and drink, not knowing what is required of them. Others suddenly show signs of life at the "singing" of the water, stretch their necks, breathe noisily, and low and neigh. A horse, urged forward by a drover, rebels and rushes back, then rears and falls backward into the water, which splashes mightily under the weight of his great body; but he has made a start; he swims, and all the others follow. Muzzles and nostrils, KING OF CAMARGUE 23 manes and horns, wave wildly about above the river, which is now a swarm of heads. They blow foam and air and water all around. More than one, in jovial mood, bites at a neighboring rump. Feet rise upon backs, to be shaken off again with a quick movement of the spinal column, and thrown back into the waves. Sometimes a frightened beast, confused by the plunging and kicking, tries to return to the bank, and, being driven in once more by the drovers, loses his head, follows the current, sails swiftly seaward, feels his strength failing, drinks, struggles, turns over and over, plunges, drinks again, founders at last like a vessel and disappears. Finally the bulk of the drove has reached the opposite bank, and there they shake themselves in the sunlight, snort with delight, and caper over the fields. Tails lash sides and buttocks. Some young horses, excited by their bath, scamper away, side by side, toward the horizon, biting at the long hairs of each other's flying manes. Then it is the turn of the drovers. Some ride their horses into the river. Others, in the midst of the rear- guard of the manade, guide, with the paddle, a flat- bottomed boat that a blow of the foot would shatter, and their horses, held by their bridles, swim behind. At other times, the drovers are employed driving from the plains of Meyran or Aries, Avignon, Nimes, Aigues- Mortes to the branding-places at Camargue the bulls that are to take part in the sports at the latter place. 24 KING OF CAMARGUE These bulls sometimes travel in captivity, in a sort of high enclosure, without a floor, mounted on wheels and drawn by horses ; the bulls walk along the groubd, beat- ing their horns against the resonant wooden walls. Generally the bulls go to the games unconfined, but under the eye of mounted drovers, spear in hand. These journeys are made at night. As they pass through the villages, the people rush to their windows. The young men are on the watch for the "cattle" and try to drive them out of the circle of drovers, who lose their temper, and swear and strike : that sport is called the abrivade. In Aries, if the bulls happen to arrive by daylight, the drovers have a hard task, for all the young men in the city do their utmost to break the line of horsemen, in order to cut out one bull, or several, if possible, and then drive them through the city. The city assumes a posture of defence. Overturned carts barricade the ends of the streets. Shops are closed. The bull, in a frenzy, rushes here and there, stands musing for a moment at the corners, decides to take a cer- tain direction, rushes at a passer-by, knocks him down, and generally selects the shop of a dealer in crockery and glassware in which to make merry, amid the shouts of an excited populace. The drovers are a free, fearless, savage race, a little contemptuous of cities, devoted to their desert. A drover is at home alike in sun and rain, in the wind from the land, and the wind from the sea. ari)apter M5 In the distance, as they sit motionless, and straight as arrows, on their saddles a la gardiane, astride their white horses, with the spear-head resting on the closed stirrup, they resemble knights of the Middle Ages, awaiting the flourish of the herald's trumpet to enter the lists. V ity, in a sort of oiinted on wheels and long the grouYid, beat- C'uant wooden walls. CieiuT -J the games unconfined, but , drovers, spear in hand, made at night. As they pass tj, . people rush to their windows. The } are on the watch for the '"cattle" and tr>' to drive ; J^J'^^^ftBrt^ '^^ drovers, who lose their temper, "id s.vcar and strike: that sport is called ihc aiirivaiit rles, if the bulls happen to arrive by ,fa!:' -i;^, . '^'-">-i^ line of ;. . , to ^ ••* ■• ' •■• ■. V •!:;:. ;r }>ossri^ City, ihe barricM^\ti\-'^^^^\;^l«?^^^'^rM.^.. :. ^ rain, in the wind ' md the wind i ■^"*»liH, i ^ O'-i^ W^ ,'H" '>.* \f^'^!!»^^''^ ;^ .*K-=r^ ,rJS=^Sar C\\?0-'-K. --=^ V- .,(11!^ KING OF CAMARGUE 25 A drover knows how to deal blows and to receive them ; he pursues a bull at the gallop, and with a blow of the spear upon his flank, judiciously selecting his time, "fells" him unerringly. He knows the trick of pursuing a wild bull making for the open country. His well-trained horse bites the furious beast on the hind-quarters, and he turns. The drover, spear in rest, pricks the bull in the nose as he rushes upon him, and checks, him. Sometimes a drover, on foot and alone, pursued by a cow with calf, and apparently in imminent danger from the furious beast, will suddenly turn about, and — with arm outstretched, as if he held his spear — point his three fingers at the animal, separated so as to represent the three points of the trident. In face of the motionless man, the cow, seized with terror, recoils, pawing up the earth, with lowered head and threatening horns; and, as soon as she thinks she is well out of the man's reach, she turns and flies. A common performance of the drover, when he is in good spirits, is this : pursuing the bull, he passes beyond him some twenty or thirty yards, then stops short and leaps down from his horse ; the bull, taken by surprise, rushes at the man, who has one knee on the ground. The bull comes rushing on with lowered horns. Three sharp hand-claps : the bull has stopped ! His hot breath strikes the face of his subduer, who has already seized him with both hands by the horns. The man, springing 26 KING OF CAMARGUE instantly to his feet, struggles to throw the beast over to the right. The bull, resisting, throws himself in the opposite direction. The two forces neutralize each other for an instant, almost equal, the result uncertain ; then the man suddenly yields, and the beast, unex- pectedly impelled in the direction of his own efforts, falls upon his side. Skill is seconded by the creature's whole strength in its struggle for victory. This is the method adopted at the ferrades, or brand- ings, where the sport consists in branding the young animals with a red-hot iron. For a drover, to seize a colt by the nose, and mount him bareback ; to roll with his steed at the bottom of a ditch and emerge firmly seated in the saddle ; to subdue stallions by fatigue, and, if dismounted and wounded by a kick, to dress the wound as tranquilly as the cork-cutter dresses the scratch made by his knife, — all this is mere child's-play. A drover, caught between two horns — luckily well separated — and tossed into the air, has but one thought when he picks himself up after falling to the ground — a thought so surprising as not to be ridiculous : to rear- range his breeches and readjust his belt. A unique race it is, rough and brutal, which would be esteemed heroic, like the Corsican race, if it had great affairs in which to display its great qualities. IV THE SEDEN Jacques Renaud, Livette's betrothed, was, as we have said, one of the most fearless drovers in Camargue. He could pursue and catch and subdue a wild horse, attack a rebellious bull and master it, as no other could ; he was the king of the moor. For occasions of public rejoicing, at Nimes or Aries, he was always sent for when they desired a really fine performance in the arena. And he had so often called forth the exclamation, in all the arenas throughout Provence : '' Oh ! that fellow is the king of them all !" that the name had clung to him. And he himself had given to his finest stallion the name of "Prince." Whatever feats of address and strength were per- formed by others, he performed better than they. And with it all he was a handsome fellow, not too tall or too short, with a well-shaped head, clear, dark com- plexion, short, thick, matted black hair, a well-defined moustache of the same devil's black as the hair, and cheeks and chin always closely shaven, for this savage 27 28 KING OF CAMARGUE always carried in the leather saddle-bags hanging at the bow of his saddle a razor-edged knife, a stone to sharpen it upon, and a little round mirror in a sheep-skin case. And when, with his stout and shapely legs encased in heavy boots, his feet in the closed stirrups, his long spear resting on his boot, he sat erect and motionless in his high-backed saddle, his size heightened by the re- fraction of the desert, amid his little tribe of mares and wild bulls, wearing upon his head the round narrow- brimmed hat that made for him a crown of gleaming golden straw, indeed the drover did resemble the king of some outlandish race ! And yet it was not on the day of a fcrrade, nor be- cause of his great deeds as tamer of wild beasts, that the gentle, fair-haired girl had come to love him. In the first place, she was accustomed to seeing many of these drovers ; and then, being the daughter of a rich intendant, she might have been inclined rather to look down upon them a little, as mere herdsmen. Indeed her father and grandmother did not readily agree to give her hand to Renaud, who was poor and had no kindred; but Livette was an only child, and had wept and prayed so hard, the darling, that at last they had said yes. And this is how it came to pass that the drover Renaud, who was used to being run after by pretty girls, had taken Livette's trembling httle heart in his great hand. KING OF CAMARGUE 29 It was one morning when he was making a new seden for his horse, who had lost his the night before, while bathing in the Rhone. The sede7i, as it is called in Camargue, is a halter, but a halter made of mares' hair braided, it being cus- tomary always to allow the manes and tails of stallions to grow as long as they will, as a mark of strength and pride. The seden is generally black and white. It is, in a word, a long rope, which hangs in a coil about the horse's neck, and may serve, as occasion arises, many purposes, being generally used as a halter, sometimes as a lasso. But the sedeti, being a thing essentially Camarguese, should never go from the province. Many a one does so, no doubt, but it is on account of the contemptible greed of this or that drover, who snaps his fingers at the old customs that were good enough for his ancestors. Renaud, then, was making a seden. It was in front of one of the farm-houses appertaining to the Chateau d' Avignon, a long, low structure, rather a drover's cottage than a farm-house, lost in the moor, and so squat that it had the appearance of not wanting to be seen, like an animal burrowing in the ground. It was October. The larks were singing merrily. Mounted upon Blanquet (or Blanchet), her favorite horse, the little one, in obedience to her father's orders, was out in search of Renaud, and she spied him at a distance, walking backward, playing the rope-maker. 30 KING OF CAMARGUE From a piece of canvas tied around his waist and swell- ing out in front of him, like an apron turned up to make a great pocket, he was taking little bunches of white and black hair alternately, braiding them together and twisting them into a rope, which grew visibly longer. A child was turning the thick wooden wheel upon which the scden, already of considerable length, was wound ; and Renaud — keeping time to the wheel, which struck a dull blow against something or other at every revolution — was singing a ballad which floated to Livette's ears on the gentle breeze that was blowing, like a sweet, strong call from the love of which she as yet knew nothing. " N'use pas sur les routes Tes souliers ; Descends plutot le Rhone En bateau. " Laisse Lyon, Valence, De cote ; Salue-les de la tete Sous les ponts." He had a fine voice, smooth and clear, powerful with- out effort, and of wide range. " Avignon est la reine Passe encor ; Tu ne verras qu'en Aries Tes amours KING OF CAMARGUE 31 " La plaine est belle et grande, Compagnon Prends tes amours en croupe, En avant ! " ^ Livette had stopped her horse, to hear better. It was in the morning. In the light there was the reflection that tells that the day is young, that makes hope dance in hearts of sixteen, and sows hope anew even in the hearts of the old. A vague hope that is naught but the desire to love ; but its loss, bitterer than death, makes the thought of death a consolation ! " Prends tes amours en croupe- En avant ! ' ' the singer repeated, and the little one involuntarily urged her horse toward the song that called to her to come. "Aha!" said Renaud, pausing in his work, "aha! young lady ! you are astir early ! — with a white horse that will soon be all red ! " "Yes," she said, laughing, " with gnats and gadflies; there are swarms of them ! too many, by my faith in God! " "You are covered with them, young lady, as a bit of honey is covered with bees, or a tuft of flowering genesta ! But what brings you here?" "I come from my father. You must come with me at once." 22 KING OF CAMARGUE "But comrade Rampal borrowed my horse just now to go to Saintes. They went off one upon the other." "Take mine, then," said Livette. " And what will you do, young lady? " She was ashamed of her thoughtlessness, and blushed scarlet, "I?" said she, and the words of the ballad rang in her heart : " Prends tes amours en croupe, En avant ! " "Unless," said he, laughing in his turn, "you care to take me en croupe ? ' ' "People would never stop talking about it all over our Camargue," said she, with laughter in her voice. "A drover like you, the terror of riders, (fe-*'i«' •'^^■^^'^'^"'Mll take off my N-v^\,n- iV«\^\\5A'\4W!tsw^t')\3>M^n5t^iftibVro\v.'' "Ve. ' mpal didn't take ' rse ; and at the bre. '1 * great flies and ;n luj. about her. ! ~ were covered 11 h 1 labyrinth of . I i)ssing one anothei. ani! moscjuitoes „ iiSf! (1f>uii I i dotted fv liMvCi % .^^,,si^^^A,i;^»M|^;^^.;■ mm »•''«* 9^0. x^ ^ ^^^ ' V ^A ■''IIP'''- ' I'n'^Hil ":H\o' ^> KING OF CAMARGUE ^-^ it with a myriad of black spots; but Blanchet, albeit somewhat cross, was used to that annoyance. Livette fastened him to one of the rings in the wall, and sat down upon the stone bench, waiting until Renaud had finished his seden. The wheel turned and turned, striking its dull blow with perfect regularity at every turn. ''That was a pretty song, Renaud," said Livette suddenly, answering her thoughts without intention; "that was a pretty song you were singing just now." "I learned it," said Renaud, "from a boatman, a friend of my father, with whom I went up the Rhone as far as Lyon — and then came down again " "And is all that country very beautiful up there?" said she. "Yes," he answered, " it is beautiful." And he said nothing more. "You don't look as if you meant what you say, Re- naud. Pray, didn't you like the city of Lyon we hear so much about?" There was a long silence, broken only by the monoto- nous rhythm of the wheel. "No sun ! " said Renaud abruptly. "It's a city in a cold cloud ! — The Rhone isn't fine till you come down again," he added. Livette looked at him, and her wide-open eyes seemed to say : "Why is that?" 34 KING OF CAMARGUE He answered her look. "When one of us goes up yonder, young lady, you understand, he leaves everything to go nowhere, and when he gets there, all he asks is to start back again ! — When he comes from there here, on the contrary, he leaves nothing at all, and knows that, at the end of the journey, he will have arrived somewhere ! You see, young lady, the best horse must, of necessity, stop at the sea — and that is the only place where I am willing to consent to go no farther. Where the sea is not, you have all the rest of the journey still to do. — Enough, my boy ! " he added, raising his voice. The wheel stopped. He examined the seden. The rope, of black and white strands in regular alternation, was finished. "That's a good piece of work," said he; "look, young lady." He leaned over, almost against her, to look at a point in the rope which seemed to him defective ; he leaned over, and a short black curl touched lightly the disor- dered, almost invisible, locks that formed a sort of fleecy golden cloud over Livette's forehead. And thereupon it seemed to both of them — young as they were ! — that their hair blazed up and shrivelled softly, like the fine grass that takes fire in summer, under the hot sun. Ah ! holy youth ! Then, for the first time, Renaud thought of the girl. Hitherto he had seen in Livette only the "young lady." KING OF CAMARGUE 35 They remained bending forward, she over the rope which she seemed to be examining attentively, he over Li- vette's hair. Livette wore her "morning head-dress," consisting of a httle white handkerchief which covered the chignon, and was tied in such fashion that the two ends stood up like little hollow, pointed ears on top of her head. When they are in full-dress, the women of Camargue surround the high chignon, covered by a fine white linen cap, with a broad velvet ribbon, almost always black, whose long, unequal ends fall behind the head, a little at one side. Renaud, then, was looking at Livette's clear flaxen hair, — in which there was, here and there, a lock of a darker golden hue, — symmetrically massed on top of her head, advancing in little waves toward her temples, coquettishly arranged, but so short and fluffy that some few locks escaped, here, there, and everywhere, enough to form the faint golden mist above her head. He looked at the pretty, round neck, whence the fair hair seemed to spring, like a vigorous plant, so slender and so fine ! so long, and full of life ! And the tempta- tion to press his lips upon it drew him on, as, after a long day's journey among dry, stony hills, the sight of the water draws on the horses of Camargue, accus- tomed to moist pasturage. She felt that she was being stared at too long. "Let us go!" she said, suddenly. "My father's orders were that you should come as soon as possible." 36 KING OF CAMARGUE Renaud felt as if he were waking from a long sleep and from a dream. He jumped to his feet. Without a word, he went to Blanchet, took off the woman's sad- dle and carried it into the house, placed his own upon the beast, which the mosquitoes had at last made restive, and leaped upon his back. Livette, assisted by the drover's strong hand, leaped to the croup behind him with one spring ; highly amused she was as she threw one arm around Renaud's waist. It is the fashion among the Camarguese young women, all of whom, on fete-days, ride to the plains of Meyran, or to Saintes-Maries, "fitted" to the horses of their promised husbands. The drover started Blanchet off at a gallop, gave him his head, and let him take his own course. Blanchet left the travelled road, headed straight for the chateau across the moor, through the sand thickly sown with stiff, rounded clumps of saltwort at irregular inter- vals. The good horse fiew over these clumps, scarcely touching the toi)S, landing always between them in the damp sand, from which, however, by force of long habit, he withdrew his feet without effort, calcu- lating in advance the distance between the obstacles, galloping freely and evenly, changing feet as he chose, making sport of his heavy burden, happy at being left to himself And Livette must needs hold tight to the drover's waist ; he was a lithe, supple fellow, and swayed with KING OF CAMARGUE - 37 the horse. And the swift motion, the free air, youth and love, all combined to intoxicate the two young people; and without meaning it, without thinking of it, the horseman repeated his song of a few moments before, between his teeth, but loud enough to be overheard by the girl : " Prends tes amours en croupe ! En avant ! ' ' And it seemed to them as if the whole horizon were theirs. When they dismounted, in front of the farm-house of the chateau, they had not spoken a word, but they had exchanged in silence the subtlest and strongest part of themselves. From that day, Renaud, being sincerely in love, ex- erted himself to please. He was careful about his dress, paid more attention to the adjustment of his neck- erchief, shaved more closely, and had not a single glance to spare for the other girls, even the prettiest of them. At last, he said to Livette one day : "Your father will never be willing ! " Those were his first words of love. '' If I am willing, ray father will be. And when my father is willing, grandmother always is ! " "The good God grant it ! " replied Jacques. And it had happened as she said. For almost five months now they had been betrothed. 38 KING OF CAMARGUE The fascinating thing about Livette was that she was just the opposite of Renaud, so slender and delicate, so fair and such a child, — and, furthermore, that she loved him with all her might, the sweetheart, — there was no mistake about that. THE LOVERS Livette was so fresh and sweet that people often re- peated, in speaking of her, the Provencal expression : ' ' You could drink her in a glass of water ! ' ' In loving Livette, Renaud experienced the pleasant feeling, so dear to the heart of strong men, of having some one to protect, a little wife, who was no more than a child. Because of Livette's fragility and slender stature, the rough drover, made for violent passions, the horseman of the Camargue desert, the hard-fisted herdsman, the subduer of mares and bulls, felt the love that is based upon sweet compassion, upon respect for charming weakness; in a word, he learned the secret of true tenderness which he could not have felt, per- haps, for one of his own class. It would never have occurred to him to tell her any of the vulgar jests with a double meaning, with which he regaled the more robust fair ones of his acquaint- ance on branding-days or on race-days. To do that 39 40 KING OF CAMARGUE would have seemed to him to be a villainous misuse of his power and his experience as a man. Still less did Livette cause him to feel the fierce desire, well known to him, which sometimes, with other girls, went to his brain like a rush of blood, — the desire to touch with his hands, to take in his arms, to throw down into the ditch, laughing at the gentle resistance, at the con- sent which repels a little, at the equal struggle between the youth and the maiden, who have, in reality, a tacit understanding to be robber and robbed. No : in Livette's presence, Renaud felt that he was a new man. There came to him, in regard to the little damsel with the golden hair, a tranquillity of heart that sur- prised him greatly. Love has a thousand forms. That which Renaud felt for Livette was a soothing emo- tion. He "wished her well." That was what he kept repeating to himself as he thought of her. And, as he desired all the others something after the fashion of the bulls of his manade, in the season when the germs are at work, it so happened that he seemed not to desire the only woman he really loved. There was a sweet fascination in the thought, which he relished like a draught of pure water after a long day's walk through the dust in the hot sun. He re- joiced inwardly in his love as in a halt for rest in the shade of a great tree, beside a clear, cool spring, while the birds sang their greeting to the morning. Some- times, in the blazing heat of midday, when he was KING OF CAMARGUE 41 riding across the mirror-like waste of sand and salt and water, his horse plodding wearily along with hanging head, the thought of Livette would steal softly into his mind, and it would seem as if a cool breeze were blow- ing on his forehead, washing away, in a sense, the dust and fatigue, like a bath. He would feel refreshed, and a smile would come unbidden to his lips. His whole being would thrill with pleasure, and, with renewed life, he would imperceptibly, with hand and knee alike, order his horse to raise his head. And the lover's steed would raise his head without further bidding, and snort and toss his mane, scatter, with a sudden lash of his tail, the gadflies that were streaking his sides with blood, and, with quickened step, reach the shelter of the haw- thorns and the poplars on the Rhone bank — whose leaves forever quiver and rustle like the water, like the heart of man, like everything that lives and hopes and suffers and then dies ! Not only by her grace and weakness did she win his heart, strong and rough as he was ; but also by the care expended on her dress, by the splendor of her surround- ings, she, the wealthy farmer's daughter, enchanted him, the poor drover ; and she seemed to him a strange, unfamiliar creature from another world. And so she was in fact. Of a different quality, he said to himself: a being outside his sphere, far, far above it. That he might one day unloose the latchets of her little shoes had not occurred to him, and, lo ! she was 42 KING OF CAMARGUE his ! Livette, the daughter of the intendant of the Chateau d'Avignon ! she was his fiancee, his betrothed, his future wife ! He seemed to himself the heir to a throne. In face of the mere thought of his future, he felt something like the embarrassment a beggar feels on the threshold of a palace, before the carpets over which he must pass to enter, with shoes heavy with mud. She had in his eyes something of the sanctity of the blessed Madonna, carved from wood, painted blue and gold, and overladen with pearls and flowers, that he used to see when a child in the church of Saint-Trophime at Aries. So it was that he felt a secret amazement at finding himself beloved. It did not seem to him that it could really be true ; and as he must needs be convinced of the fact every time he spoke to her, his love constantly appealed to him with all the force of novelty. He was a little embarrassed, too, in her presence, could not find his words, contented himself with smiling at her, with yielding submission to her like a child, with running to fetch this or that for her, divining her desires from her glance ; mistaking now and then, but rarely ; feeling the same pleasure in being the maiden's footman that is felt by the misshapen court dwarf in love with the king's fair daughter. His sobriquet of The King seemed to him a mockery KING OF CAMARGUE 43 beside her. She embarrassed him ; in her presence he was meek and lowly. He was surprised, indignant even, in his heart, at the familiar tone assumed by others with Livette. It seemed strange to him that her companions should treat her as an equal ; that her father and her grandmother should not have the same respect and consideration for his fiancee that he himself had. Frequently, when the grandmother cried to Livette : " Do this or that; run ! be quick ! "he would be angry, and would long to say to her : " Why do you order her about? She was not made to obey! You're a bad grandmother ! Don't you see that she is too delicate and pretty for such tasks ? ' ' But this was a feeling kept hidden in his heart ; he would not have dared to avow it, for women are made, according to our ancestors, to be the slaves of man. So he said no word of what he felt. He even deemed him- self a little ridiculous to feel it. He contented himself by doing in a twinkling, in Livette's stead, the thing she was bidden to do, if it was something within his power. Ah ! but if any man had ventured to indulge in any ill-sounding pleasantry with Livette, to take any liberty with her. — oh ! then, be sure that he would without re- flection have felled him on the spot with his stout fist ! Why, if any one, man or woman, in the crowd on a fete-day, happened to make a coarse remark in her 44 KING OF CAMARGUE hearing, — one of the sort that he himself knew how to make with great effect upon occasion, — he would be overcome with rage against that person ; it seemed to him that every one should take notice of Livette's pres- ence, should feel that she was near, and understand that, before her, they should show some self-respect. All this he would have been incapable of explaining, but he felt it all, confusedly and vaguely, in his heart. Livette, for her part, was keenly conscious of the drover's adoration. She revelled in it, without unduly seeming to do so. She saw very plainly that she had, without effort, tamed a wild beast. She laughed some- times, as she looked at him — a frank, ringing laugh, in which there was, however, a touch of the triumph of the mysterious feminine witchery, the marvellous inven- tion of nature, which decrees that the strong man shall be vanquished, rolled in the dust, at the pleasure of fascinating weakness. This miracle, performed by life, by nature, by love, she believed to be her own work, — hers, Livette's, — and the little woman was a bit swollen with pride ! More than frequently she would say to her- self: ''What have I done? I don't deserve this good fortune; no, indeed, I don't deserve it! " She saw very clearly that, in his eyes, she was a being apart : that he did not treat her by any means as everybody else did : and, greatly astonished as she was, she was proud of it. Thereupon, wondering in her sincere heart what she had "more" or better than another, and finding no KING OF CAMARGUE 45 answer to the question, it came about that she deemed her lover a little, just a very little, stupid to be so domi- nated by her, and he so strong ! And then she would prettily make fun of him and laugh aloud at him, saying : "Ah ! great booby ! " So it was that the whole essence of Woman, profound, seductive, existed in this simple, obscure peasant-girl, who could have told nothing as to her own character. In time, too, she came to look upon herself as pretty, beautiful, the prettiest, the loveliest of all, and to admire her own charms. When such thoughts came to her, and if the truth must be known, none were more frequent, — ah ! then she felt her pride ! And she no longer deemed her lover stupid in the least degree ; on the contrary, he seemed to her very fortunate, too fortunate ! and then it was he who hardly deserved her ! At such times, she received his attentions, his humility, with the air of a princess accustomed to homage. Then, too, she would wonder why all the others did not do for her what he did ? And, thereupon, she would conceive a sort of gratitude for him. Such a constant revolution in our hearts of impressions, often irrecon- cilable and ever changing, around a fixed idea, is love. — Yes, in very truth he deserved to be loved simply because he had known enough to appreciate her ! to choose her ! The other young men were the fools, one and all ! Warm was his welcome if he arrived at the farm when that thought was in her mind. She would give 46 KING OF CAMARGUE the little cry of a happy bird, and run to meet her lover. " Good-morning, Monsieur Jacques ! " "Good-morning, Demoiselle Livette ! " They would shake hands. " Will you come to the Rhone? " "With all my heart! " And often they would go and sit together beside the Rhone, beneath the great hawthorn — a tree more than a hundred years old and known to everybody. The hawthorn, like the aspen and the birch, is a familiar Camarguese tree. Sometimes, on the way, she would hold out to him a flexible green twig, broken from a poplar by the road- side, and they would walk along, united and kept apart at the same time by the short branch, followed by a swarm of gnats with their tiny iris-hued wings. She was very fond of this sport of making him walk thus, not too near, not too far away, holding him with- out touching him, drawing him nearer or keej)ing him at a distance, as her fancy dictated, making of the leafy wand a whip if he showed signs of rebellion. She had the feeling that thus she was indeed his mis- tress, remembering how she used sometimes to make her horse Blanchet follow her docilely in the same way by holding out to him a small wisp of flowering oatsj — how she had sometimes, by the same means, led back behind her, (juiet as an ox, a vicious bull that had KING OF CAMARGUE 47 escaped, wounded, from the arena, and that she had encountered by the roadside, in a thicket of thorn- broom, bathing his foaming tongue in the streams of blood that were flowing from his nostrils. Arrived at the bank of the Rhone, beneath the great hawthorn with the gnarled black trunk and smooth white branches, that stretches its abundant rustling foliage well out over the stream, the lovers would sit down, side by side, upon the roots protruding from the ground or upon a bundle of cut reeds. And they would watch the water flow. The earthy, yellowish water, with its whirling masses of foam, rush- ing toward the sea. They would sit and gaze. They would not speak. They would live on in silence, listening to the plashing of the Rhone, the tiny wavelets that came rippling in obliquely to the bank, to loiter there among the feet of countless reeds and poplars, while the main current in the centre of the stream flowed swiftly, hurriedly along, as if in haste to reach the sea, and there be swallowed up. — There they would sit and dream, not speaking. They felt that they were living the same life as every- thing about them. From time to time, a kingfisher, .sky-blue and reddish-brown, would pass before them, light on a low branch, gazing sidewise at the water with his beak ready to strike, then, suddenly, fly off across the Rhone. And, with the sky-blue bird, their thoughts 48 KING OF CAMARGUE would cross the river, there to light again upon a branch, bent like a bow, whose slender point trailed in the water, vibrating in the current, and surrounded with a mass of foam, dead leaves, and twigs. And suddenly the bird, like a sorcerer, had disappeared. " How pretty ! " Livette would sometimes say. And that was all. He would make no reply. He knew not what to say to her. He was too happy. He would not call the king his cousin ! In the evening twilight, many little rabbits, young in that month of May, would run out from the park, through the wild hedges, almost invisible in their gray coats, and play in the shadow at the foot of the bushes, their presence betrayed by the rustling of a tuft of grass or a low-hanging, horizontal branch that barred their path. To heighten the enjoyment of the lovers, there was the nightingale's song, at the rising of the moon. Listen to it : 'tis always lovely in the darkness, is the nightin- gale's song. It begins with three distinct, long-drawn- out cries ; you would say it was a signal, a preconcerted call ; it enjoins attention. Then the modulations hesi- tatingly arise. You would say that it is timid, that it fears its prayer will not be granted. But soon it takes courage, self-assurance comes, and the song bursts forth and soars and fills the air with its melodious uproar. *Tis love, 'tis youth and love that can no longer be KING OF CAMARGUE 49 restrained, that nothing stays, that claim their rights in life. — His song is done. His song is done, but still the lovers listen on and on to the bird's song, echoed in the dark recesses of their own hearts. At last, it would be time to return. They would rise and walk back toward the farm, not far away. The grandmother would be calling from the door- way : "Livette ! Livette ! " Her voice would reach their ears, with a plaintive, caressing accent, tinged with sadness, from the edge of the vast expanse that rose in the darkness toward the stars, toward life and love, — a long, melancholy call. The voice at night upon the moor fills the air and rises tranquilly, disturbed by no echo, sad to be alone in a too great solitude. Around the lovers as they returned to the farm, in the orchards, in the park, as the darkness increased, the deafening clamor of the frogs would soon be heard, a mighty noise, the sum total of a multitude of feeble sounds, a frightful din, composed of many minor croak- ings of unequal strength, which, massed together, drowning one another, mount at last into a rhythmic tumult like the ceaseless roaring of a cataract. And amid this formidable everlasting clamor, made by the voices of myriads of amorous little frogs, accen- tuated by the cry of a curlew, or a heron on the watch, 5© KING OF CAMARGUE and accompanied by the humming of the two Rhones and the plashing of the sea — the lovers, both deeply moved, heard nothing save the calm beating of their hearts. As time went on, their love waxed greater, increased by the memory of all these hours lived together. Renaud was no longer simple Renautl in Livette's eyes, but the being by whom she knew what life was, through whom came to her that overwhelming con- sciousness of everything, of the horizons of land and sea, that sentiment of being, that longing for the future, for growth, that inflow of vague hopes that comes of love and gives a zest to life. And now, if any one had sought to wrest Jacques from Livette, she would have died of it, and he who should try to wrest Livette from Jacques would have died of it— he would, my friends, even more certainly. It is a good and excellent thing that love should be always busied in making the world younger — and the nightingale, like the frogs, is never weary of repeat- ing it. VI RAMPAL Rampal, who had borrowed Jacques Renaud's horse, had not returned. Renaud now rode no other horse than Blanchet. Rampal was alow rascal, gambler, hanger-on of wine- shops, well-known at Aries in all the vile haunts scat- tered along the Rhone. Dismissed by several masters, a drover without a drove, he passed his life in these days, riding from town to town, from Aigues-Mortes to Nimes, from Nimes to Aries, from Aries to Martigues, and in each of these towns plied some doubtful trade, cheated a little at cards, winning the means of living a week without doing any- thing, and returning, for that week, to the Camargue he loved, where there were, in two or three farm-houses, women who smiled upon his mysterious, piratical exist- ence. For that existence, a horse was essential. Rampal, serving as a drover on foot, had, in the first' place, stolen a horse from a manade, but he broke his tether the 51 52 KING OF CAMARGUE second night, left his master, swam the Rhone, and re- joined his fellows. Then it was that the rascal, ha\ing, in truth, important business on hand, had said to Renaud : "I have to go to Saintes, I'll take your horse, Cabri." "Take my horse," Renaud replied. It did not occur to liim that Rampal would not re- turn. Jacques relied so surely upon his own reputation for strength and courage that he did not think that any one would venture to arouse his wrath. And then he had a sort of pity for Rampal, mingled with a little admiration. He was a bold horseman, was Rampal, and, except for women and cards, he would have been, with Renaud, or just after him, a king of the drovers ! So that, if Rampal aroused Renaud's com- passion, Renaud aroused Rampal's envy. However, the vagaries of this marrias, this good-for- nothing knave, were the pranks of a free man. Neither married nor betrothed, fatherless and motherless, with no one to support or assist, no one whom he must please, he had a perfect right to live as he pleased ! At least, that is what most people thought. Moreover, Renaud, although an honest man, had the tastes of a vagabond. Before his heart was filled with his strange affection for Livette, by which he felt as if he were bound hand and foot, he had, in truth, borne a part with Rampal in many curious adventures. KING OF CAMARGUE 53 More than once they had galloped along side by side toward the open moor, each having en croupe a laughing damsel, who, after the close of a bull-fight at Aigues- Mortes or Aries, had consented to accompany them for a night. But on such occasions Renaud had always dealt frankly, never promising marriage nor any other thing, but simply giving the fair one a present, a souvenir, a brass ring, or a silk handkerchief — a ficJiii to pleat after the Arlesian fashion, or a broad velvet ribbon for a head-dress; while Rampal was treacherous, promised much and did nothing, — in short, was nothing but afena, a good-for-nothing. So Rampal had borrowed Renaud's horse with the intention of bringing him back the same evening ; but that evening he had heard of a fete at Martigues and had ridden away thither without worrying about Renaud. "He'll take a horse out of his manade,^'' he said to himself. Now, Audiffret, Livette's father, had insisted that Renaud should take Blanchet. "Take Blanchet," he said. "I don't like to have our girl ride him. He's a fine horse, but bad-tempered at times. Finish breaking him for us. I want him to run in the races at Beziers this year. Take him." Happy to have Blanchet in the hands of " her dear," for so she already called Renaud in her heart, Livette, who was fond of Blanchet, simply said : "Take good care of him." 54 KING OF CAMARGUE That was more than six months before. Rampal, who had caused considerable gossip mean- while, and of whom Renaud had heard more than once, had not brought back the horse. Renaud did not lose his patience. Several times, being informed that Rampal was in this or that place, he had tried to find him, but had not succeeded. "I shall catch him some day! " said Renaud. *'He loses nothing by waiting." He hoped that the fete at Saintes-Maries would bring the rascal back. "He will come back with the thieving gipsies! " he said ; and he was not mistaken. Not for an empire would Rampal have missed making the pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries. The rascal would have thought himself everlastingly damned. It had been his habit from childhood to come and ask forgiveness of his sins from the two Marys and Sara the bondwoman, at whom he did nothing but laugh in a boastful way, unable to satisfy himself whether he believed in them or not. This year, being affiliated with the gipsies in matters of horse-trading (every one knows that the gipsies, men and women, — roms and Juwas, as they say, — have a profound acquaintance with everything connected with the horse), Rami)al had been a fruitful source of infor- mation to them. By divers methods they had led him to talk about this and that, about every one and everything. He had no KING OF CAMARGUE 55 idea himself that he had told so many things. They had questioned him, sometimes directly, taking him una- wares ; sometimes in a slow, roundabout way ; when he was drunk, and when he was asleep. And his replies had been pitilessly registered in the gipsies' unfailing memory — the wherewithal to astonish all Camargue. Rampal had not even been questioned by the gipsy queen, who did not trust his discretion ; she learned the secrets of the province at second-hand. Once only had he spoken to her. It was one evening when the beggar queen began to dance for her own amusement on the high-road, to the music of her tam- bourine, which she hardly ever laid aside. " You are beautiful ! " he said to her. "You are ugly!" she replied, quickly, in a con- temptuous tone. " Give me the ring on your finger," said Rampal, "and I'll give you another." She glanced with a gleaming eye at her fantastic ring of hammered silver, then at the insolent Christian, and said: "A sound cudgelling about your loins is what I will give you, dog, if you don't leave me ! " And she spat fiercely at him as if in disgust. Rampal, somewhat abashed, abandoned the game. This woman had a way of looking at people that disconcerted them. You would say that a sharp, threat- ening flame shot from her eyes. It penetrated your 56 KING OF CAMARGUE being, searched your heart, and you were powerless against it. She fathomed your glance, but you could not fathom hers — which, on the contrary, repelled you, turned you back like a solid wall. And, at such mo- ments, she would stand proudly erect, her head thrown slightly back, her whole body poised, at once so sinuous and so rigid, that she might have been compared to a horned viper standing on his tail, fascinating his prey and preparing to spring. " I can't explain, Jacques, how that woman fright- ened me," said Livette to Renaud. "My blood is still running cold ! — She threatened me ! And when that crown of thorns fell at my feet — Holy Mother! — I thought I was going to faint ! " "If I meet her," Renaud replied, "she'll find she has some one to settle with ! " "Let the heathen alone, Jacques! It isn't well to have aught to do with the devil." But the drover loved a fight, and he longed for noth- ing so much as to fall in with Rampal and Zinzara, the gambler and the cjueen of the cards ; "a pair of gipsies, a pair of thieves," thought Renaud. ari)apter IJit This woman had a way of looking at people that dis- concerted them. You would say that a sharp, threatening flame shot from her eyes. It penetrated your being, searched your heart, and you were powerless against it. merits, ^ Slightly b-i. k and so : homed viper re powerless , but you could ; irary, re]>elled you, And, at such mo- ;rect, her head thrown /ised, at once so sinuous have been compared to a tail, tascinating his prey and preparing ,0^^^ T3tC{B(f!!) '* I ca*'''': ex' , i - w -Kenaud. that woraan fright- " My blood is still I And when that .tuiinmL' ., , ^ le-j mc !, Ana wnen tnat crown a r,, irti :; in) tcft — Hoiy Mother ! — I ' Let the hr have aught to u Bnt thr- .-*rr,-'-rT , n ' T i\e, Jacques ! It isn't well to devil." fight, and he longed for noth- with Rampal and Zinzara, the rhe cards; "a pair of gipsies, Ren Hid. r^^r-^-:. T?^,.^ -^- VII THE MEETING The gipsy queen was the first of the two he met. Renaud, mounted' on Blanchet, was riding along the beach toward Saintes-Maries. The sea was at his right ; at his left, the desert. He was riding through the sand, and from time to time the waves rolled up under his horse's feet, surrounding with sportive foam the rosy hoofs rapidly rising and falling. Renaud was thinking of Livette. He looked ahead and saw the tall, straight, battle- mented walls of Saintes-Maries, and wondered whether he would lead his little queen, dressed in white, and crowned with flowers, to the altar there, or at Saint- Trophime in Aries. He looked at the sea and wondered if nothing would come to him from that source ; if his uncle, captain of a merchantman, who sailed on his last voyage so many years ago, would not come into port some day with a cargo of vague, marvellous things, a million in priceless stuffs and precious stones? In the poor, ignorant fellow's 57 58 KING OF CAMARGUE imagination, the thought of a fortune was a vision of legendary treasures, hke those discovered in caverns in the Arabian tales. For an instant, he seemed to see it with his eyes, to see his vision realized in the dazzling splendor of the boundless sea, that lay glistening in the sunlight, with sharp, fitful flashes, like a mirror broken into narrow, moving fragments of irregular shape. It was an undu- lating sheet of diamonds and sapphires. The sun's rays, as he sank lower and lower tow^ard the horizon, assumed a ruddier hue as they fell obliquely upon the fast-subsiding waves, and soon the water was like a sheet of old bur- nished gold, moving slowly up and down ; one would have said it was a vast melted treasure beneath a pol- ished vitreous surface ! At long intervals, a solitary wave greater than its fellows fell with a dull roar upon the beach, and ever and anon a cloud passed overhead ; and in the mist flying from the gold-tipped wave, in the slow-moving shadow of the cloud, the water seemed a deep, dark blue. The sun sank lower, and broad bright red bands began to overshadow the bands of ochre, amethyst, light green, })ale blue, that rose one above another on the horizon line. The changing sea was now like a cloak of royal ])urple, with fringe of azure, gold, and silver. On the desert side, the marshes likewise were changed to vast floors carpeted with gorgeous drapery and rich embroidery. Everything was ablaze with sparkles — sea, KING OF CAMARGUE 59 sand, and salt. At intervals, a red flamingo rose from among the reeds, flew heavily along, seeming to carry on his side a little of the ruddy hue of sky and sea, — then lighted on the brink of the gleaming water. The gulls were like white dream-birds in this en- chanted country. They sat in lines, like brooding doves, on the crests of the waves in the offing, or on the hot sands, or on the surface of the ponds. And, down in the northwest, Renaud was looking for the high, square terrace of the Chateau d' Avignon, for Livette sometimes went up there to see if she could not spy Blanchet and her dear Renaud's straight spear somewhere in the plain. Suddenly Renaud checked his horse and gazed fixedly at a black object moving on the surface of the water, rising and falling with the motion of the waves, some two hundred feet from shore. He thought he could descry a woman's head ; a head covered with dripping black hair and surrounded by a copper circlet, from which depended glistening Oriental medallions. The gipsy was swimming, disporting herself in the waves, which, coming from the deep sea, rose and fell slowly and at long intervals. She glided through them like a conger-eel, happy in the sensation caused by the gentle lapping of the salt water caressing her flesh. Her movements were undulating, like those of the waves themselves ; she writhed and twisted like seaweed tossed 6o KING OF CAMARGUE about by the surf. Now and then a heavier, higher wave would come upon her. She would turn and face it, put her hands together in a point above her lowered head, as divers do, plunge into the broad wave horizontally, and cleave it through from front to rear. From his horse, Renaud watched the dark head emerge on the other side of the swelling wave, which, as it approached the shore, curled over with whitening crest, broke upon the beach in snowy foam and spread out over the sand, beneath and all about him, in shallow, transparent, overlapping streams, all studded with sparks. He could not see the swimmer's body distinctly. Its fleeting outlines could scarcely be made out beneath the clear, transparent water, ere they were blotted out again by the undulations and reflections. Suddenly the swimmer turned toward the shore, ap- parently gained a footing, and, raising one arm out of the water, motioned to Renaud to be gone, shouting : " Go your way ! " But he, who had thus far watched her with curiosity and with no feeling of anger, was irritated by those words. Certainly he had forgotten none of Livette's grievances against the gipsy. Not a week had passed since her threatening visit to the Chateau d' Avignon. But, in that beautiful evening light, Renaud' s heart felt at peace, and he had recognized the gipsy cjueen with- out emotion. It may be that curiosity was dominant in his heart, and urged him toward this mysterious being, KING OF CAMARGUE 6i surprised in her bath, in the utter solitude of the desert at evening ; the curiosity of a traveller to examine a strange animal, of a Christian to investigate a heathen woman. "Go your way ! " This command, hurled at him from afar by a woman's voice, wounded him in that part of his heart where the memory of the gipsy's threat against Livette was stored away. "Ah! it's you," he cried, "you, who go about and stand in doorways to frighten young girls when they happen to be left alone ! who tell lies and play monkey- tricks to make them give you what they refuse to give ! Don't let it happen again, thief! or you'll find out how the pitchfork and the goad feel ! " The insulted queen was absolutely convulsed with furi- ous rage. If she had been near the drover, she would have jumped straight at his throat, as the serpent straight- ens itself out like an arrow and darts at its prey. She felt that she grew pale, a shiver ran through her whole body, and swaying a little, like the adder about to spring, with her head thrown slightly back, she walked toward the horseman — but how far away he was ! "Aha!" he cried, "you are coming near to hear better ! Come on, you heathen, come ! I will explain it all to you ! ' ' As he remembered how the woman had threatened Livette, his wrath rose within him. They were not Christians, these Bohemian creatures, but thieves, ban- dits, one and all. Why. it was said that they ate human 62 KING OF CAMARGUE flesh, child's flesh, when they could find nothing better. If that were not true, how would they have whole quar- ters of bleeding flesh in their kettles so often ? Ah I a race of wolves, of accursed foxes ! '' Come on ! " he cried again. She came on, but not without difficulty, having to force her way step by step through the resisting waves. Her shoulders were not yet visible, and she was accel- erating her speed by using her arms under the water. She could have made the same distance more quickly by swimming, but she did not even think of that. She was thinking of something very different ! Renaud mechanically cast his eye along the shore, behind him, and saw, a few steps away, the gipsy's clothes lying in a heap out of reach of the waves, — and her tambourine on top of them ; then he looked around once more at the woman coming toward him. The water was now up to her armpits, and not until then did he see that she was entirely naked. Her bust slowly emerged from the water. At a hun- dred paces from the shore, the water reached only to her knees. She was beautiful. Her slender, well-knit body was very youthful. She stood very erect, and seemed as if .she were going into battle without any thought of shame. She had been assailed : she was rushing at her assailant, that was the whole of it. Her fists were clenched, her arms slightly bent, her head still thrown back a little. Her whole attitude was threatening. KING OF CAMARGUE 63 The water was rolling down in glistening pearls from her neck to her feet, over every part of her swarthy, bronzed body. Her swelling chest seemed to be put forward, as if it were ready, like a magic buckler^ to receive the blows that would be powerless to injure it. The drover sat still in speechless amazement. He gazed at the approaching woman, who, as he saw her, springing from the water, surrounded by white foam, with her un- usual coloring, appeared to him like a supernatural being. What was she there for ? She came forward, boldly aggressive; and her witch's mind was revolving many evil schemes, no doubt. Did she not bend over a moment, as if to pick up pebbles from beneath the water, with which to stone her enemy ? Was she not holding them now in her clenched fists. No : the sands of Camargue stretch very far beneath the water, sloping very gradually, and not the tiniest pebble meets the swimmer's bare foot. What was she doing then ? And now she was close beside the horseman, whose curiosity constantly increased. But he had ceased ques- tioning himself. He simply stared at her, stupefied and enchanted. He followed her with his eyes, fascinated, forgetting his spear resting upon his stirrup, forgetting his horse, forgetting everything. And now she was within three paces of him, standing perfectly straight, insolent in her whole bearing, in 64 KING OF CAMARGUE every undulation of her figure, looking him in the face, with eyes from which a steely flame shot forth, and which no other eye could penetrate. And as she presented her profile to him for a second, he had a swift, hardly conscious thought that the lower part of the face — from below the nostrils to the base of the chin — resembled the head of the lizard of the sand, and the turtles and snakes of the swamp. There was the same vertical line, broken by thin, slightly-receding lips, whence he expected to see a forked, vibrating tongue come forth, as in a dream of the devil. But this impression was but momentary, and he saw naught but the woman, young, fair, unclothed, seem- ingly offering herself voluntarily to his savage lust, in the security of that deserted shore, amid the plashing of the waves, in the fresh breeze blowing from the sea, and the evening sunlight, which, with the salt water, coursed in streams over the whole lovely body. Dazzled, blinded, drunken with the waves of blood, which from his heart, whither it had rushed at first, suffocating him and making him waver in his saddle, — now poured back to his brain, suffusing his face and bull-like neck with red, — he was about to leap down from his horse, or perhaps to stoop over only, snatch up the creature — a mere feather in his hands — by strength of wrist, and centaur-like carry her away en croupe, — when she, more prompt to act, darted forward, stretching out her arms, and with her left hand seized mmn VM He saw yiaught but the uwnan, young, fair, un- clothed, seemingly offering herself voluntarily to his sav- age lust, * * * wheyi she, more prompt to act, darted forward, stretching out her artns, afid with her left hand seized and pulled back with all her strength the double rein of Renard's horse, making him rear and fall back. KING or- CAMAKO^b ilation of her figure, in the li,', with eyes from which a ;iot forth, which no other eye could pei \nd as she ..tl her prolile to him for a second, he had a swift, hardly conscious * that the lower part of the face— from below t; to the base of the chin — resembled the head ot ihe lizard of the sand, the turtles and snakts swamp. There was ,ae vertiUTf e,:rBif(a(t3>;.' thin, slightly-receding lips, whence he ex pecte d to see a forked, vibrating tia-\gue come forth, as in a riream of the devil, -su^ r"^,.,-?^§'tjnn^^^'*${gn^^s'as>^V^!1f^U^g<\l1£qwif,'i\\®l^K3ft«^ily*tQthi^ sj!^>:ftg€^4i^st, in \ii^v^s\ ^^K^ -Ji^i^L^n: ^f^rthaftr(k.se^.-^osl|^<^^<^^^^ipd^-;^^^shing ^\*sw\),^5\ih*\-Sa5s^a,^^ ^^- ^^^t §^:iUe^^svi^l<^^^8i,^Cfs<^^^i the .').-iv.4eikj\Smii-<^ «««Wimft^M^^..w. — ,^ mere feather in his hands — by ^-•'"■'♦h of wri-st, and centaur-liko carry her away r« . f.'uj, . — when she, more prompt to art, darted forward, ' • '• ing out her arms, and with her left hand seized Iv' ^ pM/y. .^<> ^Z'"-^ KING OF CAMARGUE 65 and pulled back with all her strength the double rein of Renaud's horse, making him rear and fall back. And with her right hand she struck the creature's face ! ** Go, dog ! go and tell your people that a woman has revenged herself upon you and has struck the horseman on his horse's face ! Coward ! Vile neat-herd ! Go and tell it to your sweetheart ! Go, tell her that when I struck you, you knew not what to do or say ! ' ' There was no wrath left in Renaud ; he had no feel- ing but fear mingled with amazement. The woman's performance seemed to him in very truth surprising, diabolical. In coloring, bearing, expression, and audac- ity, she was the sorceress to the life. A strange terror took possession of him. Perhaps he would have gone astray gaily, without remorse, with any other than this ill-omened gipsy, who terrified him. He was especially alarmed for Livette. He felt that she, and he himself with her, were threatened by some mysterious, obscure disaster; and the thought of being unfaithful to her filled him with dismay, as the beginning of the end. He was afraid of himself; afraid, for Livette, of this unforeseen, inexplicable creature, who rose up before him, challenging him to contend with her, for what ? — Thus, malignity and hatred brought the woman to him as love would not have done ! — He was bewildered. He simply waited till his rein should be let go, ready to start off at a gallop, feeling no longer in his heart the wrath a man must feel in order to ride down any woman. G6 KING OF CAMARGUE though she were a witch, and trample her beneath his horse's feet, at the risk of killing her. But why was he no longer angry ? Because his eyes, against his will, followed every movement of that body with its weird beauty, — the body of an enemy. "You would like to fly like a coward, would you?" she suddenly cried. ' ' You shall not go until I choose ! ' ' Profiting by the horseman's open-mouthed stupor, she had seized with her teeth a hanging end of the lasso that was coiled about the horse's neck, and with the assist- ance of one hand — the other still holding the rein — had swiftly passed it about the nostrils and tied it in a cruel knot. With a fierce pull upon this instrument of torture, she held the beast fast just where she wished him to be. " You must wait until your comrades pass ! " she said. " 'i'hey must see a bull-tamer tamed by a woman ! " "Upon my word," thought Re-naud, " that would be, as she says, a very absurd thing! " And he drew his horse back a little, thinking he might release him, but the horse stretched out his head and neck, balked, dropped his tail, and stiffened his four legs, as if he were tied to a wall. The gipsy did not stir. She laughed, showing an unbroken set of small, white, pretty, formidable teeth. "Take care! " said Renaud at last, "I am going to ride my horse upon you ! " " I defy you to do it ! " she replied tranquilly. KING OF CAMARGUE 67 She saw with her unerring glance signs of confusion in the drover's eyes : the charm was working ! Through a mist he now gazed upon this woman, whose captive he was, by virtue of a burning curiosity already closely akin to love. She smiled. This lasted some time. At last, Renaud felt that his wits were leaving him. To remain faithful to Liveite, whom he could not betray with the very woman upon whom he had promised to avenge her, he must not dis- mount from his horse, for as soon as he put his foot to the ground he would have become the stronger of the two ! To remain faithful he must have courage to remain vanquished in this struggle of beauty against strength. And he waited. She surprised the drover glancing for an instant toward the moor. "Aha ! you are afraid some one will see you, coward ! but never fear ! Every one shall know what has hap- pened to you, all the same. I will take care of that ! Some day you shall come and tell me what your pale- faced, white-blooded blonde had to say to it ! " Humiliated at being forced thus to obey a woman, but rendered wavering and weak by the physical delight she caused him to feel, he remained where he was ! His horse, as he irritated without maddening him, tried several times to free himself, but without success. Re- naud looked on. Slight, supple as a tiger's whelp, active and srrong, and accustomed to contend with 68 KING OF CAMARGUE horses, the gipsy, still holding the cruel cord in her left hand, had seized the long mane and wound it about her right hand, and when the horse reared, she being thus made fast to him, allowed herself to be raised from the ground, standing erect upon the tips of her rigid toes — or else she would twine her feet about the rider's leg, clinging to him as the polypus clings, with its tendons to the rock, and laughing always, with a wicked, obstinate, triumphant air. ''You shall never be rid of me again ! " At last, becoming more and more alarmed, he came to have a horror of her, as of a poisonous insect, seen in a dream, a spider or a dragon-fly, that follows you obstinately, or of an adder that conceives a strange, almost human hatred for you, persists in following your footsteps, with unwearying patience, and becomes an object of terror, despite his puny size, because of his supernatural tenacity. And in very truth the fierce resolution, the malevolent perseverance, the demoniacal obstinacy of the woman, protected as she was by her beauty and her weakness, were terrifying. But the play of the muscles, causing that gleaming flesh, now moist with perspiration, to throb and un- dulate, aroused the man's interest, in spite of every- thing, and pleased him more and more. Desire awoke in him. And instantly he refused to accept his defeat, and rebelled. KING OF CAMARGUE 69 " Look out ! " he cried, and he urged his horse for- ward, driving his spurs into his sides; but the beast, held fast by the nostrils, gave but three leaps and then stopped short, breathing fire. Poor Blanchet, who was used to his young mistress's caresses and sweetmeats ! he was learning now to know woman's true nature. At last, the gipsy released her double prey. "Go ! you have looked at me enough! " she suddenly exclaimed. Renaud gazed at her an instant longer, without speak- ing or moving. The strength and chaotic character of his temptations held him fast there for another moment. So this extraordinary experience (which would never be repeated !) was ended at last ! — Mad thoughts, each clear enough in itself, but confused by their great number, jostled one another in his brain. Why had he not sooner put an end to this conflict ? What would people say of him when it was known ? How could it be that he, the king of the moor, had not stooped to pick up this joy? — But Livette? — ah, yes ! Livette ! He buried his spurs in Blanchet' s flanks, and the beast flew away toward Saintes-Maries. The gipsy stood on the shore a long while, looking after the fugitive. She smiled. She reviewed in her mind the varying fortunes of the battle, and gauged the extent of her victory. She recalled, one by one, to en- joy them to the full, the thoughts that had passed through her mind when she was wading toward the shore. 70 KING OF CAMARGUE She had not premeditated her assault, as she made it — her first idea had been to pick up some stones and throw them at Renaud's head, being an adept in the art. But she could find none. So she had continued her forward movement, not knowing what she would do, but certain that she must do something to punish the insolent Christian. But when she felt the cool air blowing upon her bare l^reast, she had said to herself in her mysterious lan- guage, full of cabalistic words and images, that if a saint had been able to recompense a boatman — her good friend — simply by revealing to him her beauty all un- clothed, a heathen might, by similar means, chastise a brutal drover ; for love is the magician's herb, the bitter- sweet, the plant with two savors, balm and poison at once; and woman is bitter as the salt sea water, fright- ful as death, — her hands are chains stronger than iron, and her whole being is as much to be dreaded as an army ! Could not she, brown as she was, almost black beside the white skinned blondes, domineer over the pale-faced Livette's lover, if she chose? Indeed, what more need she do, to make him unfaithful to his fair fiancee, than show herself to him, and could she not do it without seeming to intend it ? As she had, beyond question, been insulted by this Christian, she could pretend to forget her nudity in her wrath, and thus attack him with that same nudity ! — No, no, there was no need of philters, KING OF CAMARGUE 71 magic incantations, or fires lighted at night when the moon is young, under tripods on which marsh-water, filled with snakes, is boiling — no need of such things to bewitch this fellow ! She would come forth from the water, naked and lovely as she was, and the devil, at her command, would do the rest ! What were the stones she might throw at a young man, compared with the power that exhaled from herself? Yes, therein lay the charm of charms. She knew it, — being a witch like every other woman ! Lust for her body was what she would throw at him like an evil destiny; with that she would poison his life — and then, she would calmly watch the ravages of the poison. And so she had come forward, small but formidable — the queen ! She knew also that in former times, in the days of pagan Europe, an immortal goddess had issued from the sea, had sprung forth, fair and naked, like a marvellous flower, and, standing on the blue waves, her feet resting in a shell of mother-of-pearl, had long held sway over men — before the reign of Jesus Christ. Renaud, turning in his saddle, saw the gipsy standing there, still naked, waving her arms in the sunlight, as if she wished still, from afar, to hold Livette's betrothed spellbound and fascinated by her beauty. The sun disappeared below the horizon, and the naked woman's figure, even more mysterious in the gathering twilight, was outlined in black against a coppery red sky. VIII ON THE BENCH From Saintes-Maries, whither he went to ask how many bulls he was expected to bring on the day of the fete, Renaud rode away at once to the Chateau d' Avignon. He was in haste to see Livette once more, and sitting by her side to forget the scene of the afternoon, to which, despite his efforts, his mind constantly reverted. A ride of four or iive leagues and he reached his destination. Livette and her father and grandmother were sitting just outside the farm-house, enjoying the fresh air on the stone bench against the facade of the chateau, among the old climbing rose-bushes which frame the windows above with their bunches of green leaves interspersed with flowers. This was also one of the favorite resorts of our lovers, who liked to have above their heads the perfumed foli- age, to which one of the nightingales from the park often came to sing. 73 74 KING OF CAMARGUE "Ah! good-evening, Jacques." "Good-evening, all." "What brings you so late? You have dined, of course? " " I ate some anchovies at the Saintes " "They're good for nothing but to give you an appe- tite. Would you like something else? you have only to speak." "Thanks, Master Audiffret. I'll just go and look after Blanchet in the stable and then come back. I won't go to the Jass to-night. I'll sleep in the hayloft with the horses." Master Audiffret, with his pipe between his lips, rose and followed Renaud as far as the door of the stable, and from there watched him rub down his horse. " Whenever you please. Master Audiffret, you can take him back for Livette. I don't find any faults in him; far from it. He is a good horse, and very gentle." " He is quiet with you because you tire him out, you see ; but she didn't use him every day, not by any means; I am always afraid for her. If she takes a fancy to ride him sometimes, you can lend him to her, and take the first horse that comes along for yourself. By the way, I hope you will soon have your Cabri again. Somebody saw Rampal yesterday in Crau. He was riding your horse, so he hasn't sold him, at all events. It's fair to suppose he means to bring him back to you." KING OF CAMARGUE 75 "Oh! I will go to meet him," said Jacques, "for as to thinking he will bring him back to me — oh ! no ; he would have done that before now ! — Can you tell me, Audiffret, where Rampal was seen yesterday?" "Between Tibert's farm and Icard's in Crau. Right there, as you know, in the middle of a bog, is a hut you can only get to by a plank walk built on piles and covered by the water — you can only tell where it is, when you know the place, by stakes sticking up at inter- vals the whole length of the walk. I have an idea he means to go in hiding there, the beggar, like the deserter who went there to pass his time of service " "Aha ! he has gone to the Conscript's Hut, has he? Very good; I will go to see him there, never fear! " said Renaud. Blanchet, having been well rubbed down, was grinding the good lucern between his teeth. Renaud went out of the stable, and with Audiffret sat down beside Livette and the grandmother. All four kept silence for a long moment. Noth- ing could be heard but the unceasing, melancholy croaking of the frogs, and beneath it, but indistin- guishable, the dull murmuring of the two Rhones and the sea. The sky was swarming with innumerable tiny stars, which seemed to answer the various noises of the pal- pitating moor ; and, just as the waters of the Rhone, after it rushes into the blue ocean, pursue their own 76 KING OF CAMARGUE course for a long while therein, unmingled, without losing their earthy color ; so the Milky- Way, made of a dust of stars, pursued its course, easily distinguishable, through the ocean of starry worlds. Renaud had a feeling of constraint. When he joined his fiancee, he did not feel all that he ordinarily felt — a joyful impulse to run to meet her, a sort of oppression at the pit of the stomach, a sudden dehcious rush of the blood to the throbbing heart ! — And Livette, too, so soon, was conscious of a vague inexplicable feeling at the bottom of her heart that something was wrong. There was something between them ! Indeed, he had, for the first time, something to conceal from her ; and, thinking that it might, that it must be apparent, he suddenly said : "I am not well to-night." " Look out for the fever ! " said Audiffret. " I know it is not as frequent or as dangerous as it used to be, but you must be on your guard, all the same ! Be on your guard, and take the remedy. Up in the pharmacy of the chateau are the registers of the lime the land was first exploited — the time when the Chateau d'Avignon people were gaining a little arable land from the swamps every day. Why, men went to the hospital, fifteen, twenty a day. And such doses of quinine, my chil- dren ! It is all written down in the Livre dc Raison up there. In those days, all the farms hereabout had the same kind of a book, called by the same name, just as KING OF CAMARGUE 77 sailors have a log-book. Those were the days of good order and gallantry. The peasant-women in those days didn't try to copy Parisian bourgeoises, — eh, grand- mamma? — by wearing dresses that didn't suit them, instead of the old-fashioned gowns that made them attractive because they were so becoming." "Yes," sighed the grandmother, "this is the age of pride, and my time has gone by." That is the common remark of all our old peasants. "People didn't read so many newspaper^ in those days," continued Audiffret, "they didn't worry so much about the affairs of the whole world, and every man paid much more attention to his own affairs. Things went better for it. Landowners lived on their estates and raised families, instead of going to Paris and dying there, of pride or debt or something else. The Livre de Raison up yonder describes our ancestors' battles with the swamps and the fever. The pharmacy is still in good order, with the scales and the jars in the pigeon- holes, under the dust. And the book tells everything, diseases and deaths. To-day, hardly any one dies of the fever in our neighborhood. It is dying out. The dikes and canals have done good service, and this Cochin China of France, as that sailor called it that I took to see the Giraud rice-fields, this Camargue of ours is as healthy to-day as Crau ! — However, be on your guard, I tell you, and take the remedy ! don't wait till to-morrow; Livette will give you what you need. Now, I am going 78 KING OF CAMARGUE to bed. Stay up a little longer, young people, if you choose. Are you coming, grandma ? ' ' "No, I'll stay out a moment longer with the young folks," said the old woman. Audiffret knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the corner of the bench, and having put it in his pocket, went up to bed. Silence reigned upon the bench. The grandmother was tired and sleepy : every little while she would raise her head as if suddenly awak- ened, — then it would begin to fall forward again, slowly, slowly "A heavy dew is falling," observed Livette, sud- denly. " Yes, demoiselle. ' ' " See ! " said she ingenuously, holding out her arm so that he could feel the dampness on the sleeve of her dress. But he did not put out his hand. He was not all Livette's that evening, as usual. Strangely enough, she did not frighten him that evening. He was not, as usual, overcome with diffidence in her presence. She no longer dominated him. And he was angry with himself. He suffered. He realized that his thoughts were more frequently busied with the memory of the day than with his sweetheart, who was sitting so near him. "What are you thinking about?" said Livette, who had had her eyes upon him for a moment past, as if she KING OF CAMARGUE 79 could see his face distinctly, although they were sitting in the shadow. Beyond question, she felt that his thoughts were elsewhere. There is nothing more subtle than a lover's divination. "I am thinking," said Renaud, a long minute after the question, "about my horse, which I propose to take back from Rampal to-morrow if he can be found in Camargue or Crau." "And then?" "And then?" he repeated — "I was thinking of the Conscript's Hut, where he is at this moment, perhaps, — in hiding." "And of what else?" Livette insisted. " Oh ! how do I know ! of the fever — of all we have just been saying " "Alas! " said the maiden, "and not at all of me, Renaud ? do you not think of me any more ? ' ' Her voice was sad. He shuddered, and the movement did not escape the little one's notice. It seemed to him, as Livette uttered that reproach, that he saw the gipsy again as he had seen her in the afternoon, standing before him, near at hand, all naked and so brown ! as if she were accus- tomed to pass her days naked in the sun, and were tanned from head to foot by his rays. And how lithe and sinewy the wild creature was ! A genuine animal, a little Arabian mare, of much finer breed than the Camargue stock. Alas ! for too long a time, through 8o KING OF CAMARGUE fidelity to his fiancee, he had been as virtuous as a girl, and now the hot-blooded fellow's continence was taking its revenge upon him, a cruel revenge, arousing mad, amorous longings that were not for Livette. And so his very respect for her — poor child! — turned against her! "Jacques?" said Livette, in the hardly audible tone the sentiment of love imparts to the lover's voice, a soft, veiled tone, heard by the heart rather than by the ear. Renaud did not hear her. He saza. — He saw the gipsy as plainly as if she were there before him, even more plainly. In the darkness of the night, her body, brown as before, seemed luminous, like an opaque sub- stance giving forth a pale light. Her naked figure, obscure and bright at the same time, was standing mo- tionless before his eyes — then it moved — and he fancied that he saw the gipsy bathing in the phosphorescent water peculiar to the summer months, — when swimmers cause a cold, liquid light to dart hither and thither through the dark water, following and marking the outlines of their forms, from which it seems to radiate. " Have I the fever? " he said to himself. As if in answer to the unspoken question, Livette took his hand. She felt it from wrist to finger-ends, to see if it were dry and hot. "Yes," said she, "you must look out; father was right, you have a touch of fever. Come uj) and find the medicine." "Come on," said he, glad of the diversion. arf)aptcr Y]IM Silence reigned upon the bench. The grandmother was tired and sleepy : every little while she would raise her head as if suddenly awak- ened, — then it would begin to fall forward again, slowly, slowly 8o KING UF CA/.\ fidelity to his fianc6e, he ha' . i and now the hot-bloodet: ontinence was taking its revenge upon him. •; revenge, arousing mad, amorous longings ot for I.ivette. And so his very respect for her — '^xh^t child 1 — turnea against her! "Jacques?" said i !sette, in the hardly audible tone the sentiment of \- •. arts to the lover's voice, a soft, veiled tone, he, the heart rather than by the ear. Renaud did 3^^' ht-ar her. He saza. — He saw the gipsy as plain 14i*'i^.>Ssh?^A4Wt'M;re before him, even more plainly, ir. thexlarkuess of the night, her body, brown as before, -(^emed luminous, like an opaque sub- stance giving fovh 4^pt<>^'t^.n-l^^>^^^^^"^"?,a^^a^\rure, »»\\^&')Any3.% ;t^K^^!^V^„sS«^'ft*At»:^^-.\ft^ f?*A^^sV^'Sa^^T'a.ii>ffi^ mo- -ixiHiMii ''(\S\^yc^c>^ -tsi \ssrt)^i«*>^ 't«a-^' \ii'sswaaii'iiVfec^Y8^«5ied water peculiar tf * sumuitr niontba, — when s,wjjj^ij^ers cause a cold, light to dart hither and thither through the dark wuter, following and marking the ont^■n^-^ of their f" . ^- from which it seems to radiate. -.„ve I the ft he said to himself As if in answe le unspoken question, Livette i-ook • V V,:-,,? She ■"'' it from wrist to finger-ends, to S'. .' dry a " ^'c . ... , i she, • i.-t look out; father was righi, you have a touci. - Come up and find the me<^''"''i- " " Coii.v, ^,n. :,,. '-diversion. ''r^ V^-" X -^*Sf^ KING OF CAMARGUE 8i "Come," she repeated, "but move softly: grandma has fallen asleep ! ' ' The old lady was asleep, as she said. She was lean- ing against the wall, perfectly motionless. The white handkerchief, tied in the Arlesian fashion, instead of covering her chignon only, enveloped almost her whole head, allowing two tufts of coarse, white hair, all in disorder, to protrude, like mist, on each side of her face. She was asleep, her mouth partly open, a ray of light shining through upon her teeth, which were still beauti- ful. They left her there. IX THE PRAYER Livette opened the farm-house door, which creaked loudly in the resonant emptiness of the spacious stone staircase. She lighted the lamp, which was hanging on a nail, and they went up-stairs together, she absorbed by thoughts of him, and he of her, but no longer in their accustomed condition of affectionate embarrassment. He held the iron lamp, hanging at the end of its hooked stick; and to relieve his conscience, to do his duty as a lover, and perhaps in that way to change the current of his thoughts, perhaps to set at rest the amo- rous anxiety with which he was assailed, — to force him- self to return, heart and soul, to Livette, and, who knows? — so hard to fathom is man with his background of devil ! — perhaps, with her and unknown to her, to satisfy to some extent the passion kindled by the other — for all these reasons together, more inextricably mingled than the twigs of the climbing rose-bushes, he said to himself: " I will kiss her ! " He had never done that thing, — except in the presence of the old people, — 84 KING OF CAMARGUE but the Renaud of that evening was not the Renaud of other days, in his feeling for Livette. The powerful leaven of his wild nature was swelling his veins to burst- ing. In very truth, he had the fever, — at all events, a species of fever. All his nerves were overstiained; in his eyes, even the most indifferent objects wore an unusual look. And in Livette he saw, in spite of himself, re- proaching himself bitterly therefor, things which ordi- narily he refused to see. And as, being always dressed in the Arlesian fashion, she wore the fichu of white muslin crossed upon her breast so low as to afford a glimpse, beneath the gold chain and cross, of the white throat, above the meeting of the stiff folds, laid neatly one upon another, his passionate gaze fell upon that spot, amid the modest arrangement of muslin, prettily called "the chapel." In his left hand was the lamp, which he held shoulder- high, and as far away as possible, to avoid the drops of oil, — and he wound his right arm about Livette's waist as she placed her hand upon the iron rail. At every step they climbed, he felt the play of the muscles of his fiancee's youthful frame, imparting to the arm about her waist a soothing languor that ran through his whole being, — and yet his heart did not rejoice thereat ; and he realized that, ordinarily, if the end of the velvet ribbon in Livette's head-dress touched his face, it caused a sweeter thrill of pleasure in his blood, and more than all else, a pleasure which there KING OF CAMARGUE 85 was no mistaking. And, thereupon, he grew vexed with himself as for a failure of duty, he was oppressed by a presentiment of disaster, vague but inevitable. And she felt more and more keenly the rebound of his emo- tions. She was conscious that her peace of mind was endangered. Something certainly was against her. The arm, which had sometimes been about her waist as now, no longer seemed to be her lover's arm, but a mere ordi- nary man's. She suffered, and did not understand. The look she saw in his eyes was a strange look from him, without affection, without pity even. She knew him well, honest Renaud, her promised husband, and yet she was afraid of him as of a stranger! All these thoughts passed very quickly through their minds, the more quickly because they were simply con- scious of them, and did not stop to try to analyze them. The all-powerful human electricity, less known than the other variety, was playing its game, impossible to follow, in their hearts, with its vast network of currents and connections. In these two creatures of instinct, the ever-recurring prodigy of love, of natural affinity — of the sympathies and their opposite — was seen once more, as mysterious, as marvellous, as profound as ever. So far as nature is concerned, there are two beings : man and woman ; there are no subdivisions. At the basis of humanity, all life is the same, all passion is the same. The student of the higher races labors incessantly to perfect his reasoning and his powers of expression, but 86 KING OF CAMARGUE there is more overflowing, complicated life in the heart of his ignorant brother than in the heads of the phi- losophers, who, by dint of self-analysis, have lost the faculty of emotion. They who deem themselves most skilful in discovering the real man in themselves, do not perceive that they pervert the secret impulses of their hearts by keeping too close a watch upon them. The light of their miner's lamp changes the psychological conditions, just as constant light would modify the phy- siological condition of human beings and plants. And, meanwhile, love and death repeat, in the eternal dark- ness of their simple hearts, their unwitnessed miracles. They had reached the landing on the first floor — as large as an ordinary room. At the last step, Renaud, almost lifting Livette to the landing, tried to draw her to him, but she was seized with an impulse to resist, and he with a sudden impulse to resist himself; separately, the two impulses would have had no effect ; but com- bined, they exerted sufficient force to place an obstacle between them, as if by mutual consent. That force was the witchery at work. As they did not exchange a word, their embarrassment increased. Hastily, to escape the constraint each imposed upon the other, she ran to the door at the right and entered. And he, well pleased to be able to do or say something to bring them nearer together, called out : " Wait for the light, Livette ! I am coming." KING OF CAMARGUE 87 But Livette had suddenly remembered the gipsy's threat. "It is fate," she said to herself, "I see it now ! " And she felt herself grow pale. Then she had an inspiration. "Follow me, Renaud." They passed through rooms where furniture of the time of the Empire was sleeping beneath its covers, and the long hangings falling from the ceiling in broad, stiff folds, and withered, as it were, by time ; rooms seldom visited by the master, but kept in order by Livette and her grandmother. At last, Renaud and Livette reached an apartment with bare, whitewashed walls, once used as a chapel. A wooden altar, entirely devoid of fittings and orna- ment, stood at one end of the room. Before the white and gold door of the tabernacle the sacred stone was missing, leaving a square hole in the wood-work of the altar. But Livette opened a broad door flush with the wall. It opened into a closet in the wall. When the door was thrown wide open, they could see, below a shelf about level with their heads, chasubles and stoles hang- ing straight and stiff — with great crosses in heavy gold embroidery — suns from which the dove came forth; and mystic triangles, and Agnus Deis. Among all the others were vestments for use in mourning ceremonies, — black, with bones and executioners' ladders, hammers and nails, in heavy white embroidery ; and — to Livette's 88 KING OF CAMARGUE amazement — there, in the centre of a stole, on silk as black as night, was worked a crown of thorns in silver, which, in the lamplight, seemed to emit bright rays. On the shelf, above all these priestly vestments — which were arranged with the backs outward, hung in such fashion that you seemed to be looking at the priests standing at the altar — on the shelf, between the goblet and the pyx, shone the consecrated host, a radiant sun, mounted upon a pedestal like a candelabrum; and in the centre of its rays was a gleaming circle of plain glass, which also reflected, in fantastic guise, the flame of the lamp. "Kneel, Renaud ! " said Livette. "Prayer is the cure for what is happening to us. Kneel and let us pray! " The drover obeyed. He understood that Livette's purpose was to exorcise fate. She prayed in silence fervently. He, marvelling, unwonted to the attitude of prayer, and striving to keep himself in countenance, looked from time to time at the lamp he held in his hand, raised it to get a better view of the ecclesiastical treasures, and, diverted for the moment, by constant effort, from the perplexity that weighed upon his heart, he was the more wretched when his mind suddenly reverted to Livette. Thereupon he said to himself that she certainly had guessed the truth ; that there was, in fact, a spell upon him, and, in his heart, he implored the merciful God of orijapter M In his left hand was the lamp, which he held shoulder- high, and as far away as possible, to avoid the drops of oil, — and he wound his right arm about Livette' s waist as she placed her hand upon the iron rail. 8.-^ KING OF CAMARGUn t — there, in the centre of a -Jiolc, on silk as ,is night, was worked a crowji of thorns in silver, whicn, in the lamplight, seemed to < rnit bright rays. On the shelf, abo\ e all these pi lesdy vestments — which were arranged with the backj outward, hung in such fashion that you seemed to be looking at the priests standing at the altar — on the shelf, between the goblet and the pyx, shone the i ated host, a radiant sun, mounted upon a pedesr.u like a candelabrum; and in the centre of its raA-s i L^ii^miing circle of plain glass, which also rCT*^ , . Ti "■Ttastic guise, the flame of the lamp. "Kneel, Renaud 1 Livette. "Prayer is the ^^«.^Vo^.f^^^v. .^-^^.i^^^te&f^j^l?' us purposf ^v;isYi^ t;t^-^\ ^M .j^Q<^ Vs^Sis\ -^^^ "a^^ssA^ "i^l l» She 1 in si tervently. He, marvelling, unwonted to the attit prayer, and striving to keep himself in countenance, looked from time to time at the lamp he held in hi.> hand, raised it to get a better view of the ecclesiastica 'reasures, and, diverted for the m*^^' v constant from the perplexity that wc. heart, he ^^.'< the more wretched when his nun* 1 \erted 'tte. Ill lijon he said to iit she certainly had 1 the truth ; that there > fact, a spell upon id, in his heart, he impK merciful God of v^sS*^^a KING OF CAMARGUE 89 the Cross, the mystic triangle, the symbolical bird and lamb, to come to his aid. '* Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us ! " Livette suddenly exclaimed, aloud, thinking of the gipsy. — "O God," she added, "we promise Thee that on Saintes- Maries Day, which is near at hand, we will each carry three tapers to their church, and wait, until they are so far consumed, one after the other, in their honor, that our finger-tips are burned ! " Then she rose — but before they left the room, they closed the unpretentious double door upon the objects of a dead cult, left in the darkness of abandonment — the goblet without wine, the pyx without bread, and the consecrated host, whose polished metal case held naught within. X THE TERRACE He was well aware that he needed no fever medicine, and that his fever did not come from the swamps. She said no more about the drug, but as they stood on the landing and he was preparing to descend, she said : . " Suppose we go out on the terrace?" Livette wished to prolong the tete-a-tete, to ascertain if, after her prayer, she would find her Renaud in him once more. He placed his lamp on the floor at the top of the staircase, and, pushing open the door just above the last step, they both stood on the terrace that overlooks the whole chateau. A square terrace, and in the centre the great bell lay upon its side in its iron cage — the great bell, three feet in diameter, that in the old days called to work as well as to prayer, and when it rang the Angelus caused the fever-haunted farm-laborers to fall upon their knees on the brink of the miasmatic bogs. 91 92 KING OF CAMARGUE Both of them, one after the other, mechanically struck the bell with their foot, as it lay there on its side. It gave forth a short, plaintive note, quickly stifled by contact with the flag-stones. It was like the sigh of a mystery-haunted soul. With hearts as sad as the bell, they leaned on the stone parapet in presence of the night. Livette and Renaud loved each other, but affection was no longer enough for him. The sap of the spring- time, boiling in his veins in lustful desire, gave birth, in Livette's heart, to sweet flowers of reverie. The swarming of the stars above their heads was beyond comprehension. They were as many as the gadflies and frogs in the desert, or the waves of the sea. They seemed to open and half close, like flowers in a meadow, waved to and fro by a light, quickly-passing breath, like e)'elids making signs. They seemed to have something to say, to move like lips speaking a living language, telling of something of great moment that must be known at once — but no sound coming from them reaches the ears of men, for human hearing is not keen enough. Nor is the human sight keen enough to see that the dust of the Milky-Way (pale as the pollen of flowers) is also made of stars. Though men have seen it with a differ- ent sight, afforded by man's inventive genius, that sight is powerless to pierce farther and deeper — to learn all there is to know. " KING OF CAMARGUE 93 Moreover, — and Renaud himself had heard the story from the shepherds who pass the winter in Camargue and Crau, and spend their nights in summer counting the stars upon the summits of the Alps, — there are, in space, beyond the skies visible to our eyes, fires alight so far away from us, so far away that their light, now on its way toward our earth, will not reach us for centuries to come. The men who follow us centuries hence will see twinkling stars that even in our day were lighted and making signs we could not see. And in those days ideas, which are already kindled in men's minds, and are seen to-day by none save those in whom their light is shed, will shine for all, and one of them will be, for every mortal, the love and pity of the world. Certain it is, that neither Renaud nor Livette could fathom those infinite depths ; but from the vast expanse of heaven, swarming with tiny lights, a nameless emo- tion stole into their hearts, made up of all their hopes to come. Future worlds, lovelier than this of ours, were dream- ing in them, with them. In them, too, because they were young and human, there was a share in the future. In them, too, was the responsibility for future lives. In them, too, lurked the mystery of generations to be born, for whom a single couple, surviving the wreck of the demolished world, would be enough to bestow upon them the desire to live and the power. 94 KING OF CAMARGUE A spark is the basis of all fire. A man and a woman are the basis of all love. Infinity is no greater than the number two. And that is why the great scholars, who figure like Barreme, know no more of life and the heart than Livette and Renaud — who knew nothing at all. They knew naught save that they were alive and that they wished to love each other and that they sought and shunned each other at the same moment — but they did not ask each other why. They said nothing. They felt. They could not say to each other that rivalry and jealousy, that is to say grief, serve the designs of nature, whose purpose doubtless is, by arousing those emotions, to quicken desire, so that creation may be assured by outbursts of passion, and the future of mankind by the imperious need of' pleasure. What does the law care for the weak and the van- quished? the strong alone, they say, it wishes to per- petuate. Pity and justice are human inventions, and will never triumph until they have been slowly assimilated by the human mind to the matter of which it is made. They suffered, they longed for happiness — beneath that mystery-laden spring sky. They awaited the com- ing of their joy, they summoned their every hope, and they gazed at the dark horizon, at the desert, where the tracts of sand shone like mirrors among the dark reeds, and the ponds glistening with salt between the KING OF CAMARGUE 95 black lines of tamarisks. They gazed upon the bound- less expanse in which they seemed lost, and where, nevertheless, they felt that they alone were an epitome of everything; they listened, without hearing them, to the unending noises of the island, — the murmuring of the water, the rustling of the reeds, the waving foliage, the growling of wandering beasts, the distant roaring of two rolling rivers and a restless sea; — and this combined voice of the whole island formed a fitting accompaniment, by reason of the extent and number of the sounds that composed it, to the silent twinkling of the stars, that no one hears. There was in the park, invisible to them at that hour, a foreign tree, on which the flowers could be seen, by daylight, opening with a slight noise. They sometimes amused themselves by watching that tree, said to have come from Syria. A slight report, as if muffled, and a tiny cloud, of very powerful odor, would issue from the bursting cell. The tree continued, during the night, to send out its dust of passions in quest of prey, and its strange perfume was wafted upward to the lovers. They trembled with joy at the slightest contact with each other. Ah ! if she could but have given him, on that beautiful May evening, all the love his lusty youth demanded ; if he could but have felt her clinging lips melt beneath his burning ones, upon that lofty terrace overlooking the rounded tops of the huge trees in the park, beneath that dark star-spangled sky, doubtless his 96 KING OF CAMARGUE little betrothed would have remained sole mistress of his heart ! But there were too many obstacles between Livette and Renaud; and as he struggled virtuously to keep away from her, his thoughts flew off to the other. And Livette was already conscious of the heartache of the deserted lover. All the broad expanse of level country that her eyes knew so well, and that she felt about her in the darkness, suddenly seemed empty to her, a desert in very truth, and thereby to resemble her own heart. And softly, silently, she began to weep, — whereupon one of the great farm dogs, her favorite, who had been seeking her in every direction, came up to her and licked her hand as it hung at her side. And down yonder, far down above the dark line of the sea, Renaud, meanwhile, fancied that he saw a naked woman's form emerge from the water, and await his coming, suspended in mid-air, or standing on the surface of the waves. "Livette! Livette! " It was the grandmother's voice calling. They went down without exchanging a word. "Good-night, Monsieur Jacques," said the maiden. "Good-night, mademoiselle," Renaud replied. So they called each other monsieur and mademoiselle that night, and, a moment after they had parted, Renaud took his horse from the stable in perfect silence, and rode away. ari)aptcr X With hearts as sad as the hell, they leaned on the stone parapet in presence of the night. mA king of CAMARGI ' iitue Detrothed wouiu na\e njui; • mistress of his JJut there w ' man} cs uetweexi j^iveuc and Renaud ; ct.... ^s he st ; virtuously to keep away from her, ins thoughts ..^ w oif to the other. And Livette was alreo ' ^scions ot the heartache 1 lover. Ai. lac broad expanse of level country that iier eyes knew so well, and that she felt about her in the dar' suddenly seemed empty to her, a desert in very turn, and thereby to resemble her own heart. And sofilr. silently, she began to weep, — whereui-on on«r oi^L„^jc*Mt farm dogs, her favorite, who had been sei "r in every direction, came up to her and licked iicr iiaud as it hung at her side. . And do>ij^ .vondef. ':■■■■ dq\yn iibQve^UiOt.tJvii{k line of the sea, iRenaud, rat vvvliile, Uioried that he saw a , m s form from the water, and await . suspended m mid-air, or standing on the waves. " Lr livette' It was the grand ^oice calling. T ^changing a word. h other ur and mademoiselle ht, and, a moment af: . had parted, Renaud orse f'ro.ri the st;i perfect silence, and KING OF CAMARGUE 97 His heart did not tell him that Livette, at her window, watched him depart, her eyes filled with tears. " Where is he going? " She followed for a moment with her glance the lumi- nous point (the reflection of a star upon the head of the drover's spear) dancing about in the darkness among the trees like a will-o'-the-wisp, — and when that spark went out, she no longer saw the stars. XI THE HIDING-PLACE Whither he was going he had no idea. He rode at random under the spur of the energy that was rampant within him, demanding to be expended. Love guided him as he himself guided his horse. He was the rider of his own steed, and at the same time the accursed steed of the passion that impelled him, spurred him on, shouted to him: "Forward!" guided this way and that, without purpose, his mad race across the moor. He, too, was mounted, harassed, bridled, whipped, bit in mouth, raging and powerless. And the horse shared the mad humor of his master, who was under the spell of love, so that Blanchet, wearied though he was by his day's labor, having had but a very brief rest, was wild with excitement none the less. For- tunately, he knew all the ditches and canals and bogs, and, in his rapid flight with the reins lying on his neck, he chose his own road. Sometimes he would slacken his pace on approaching a ditch, in order to walk down into it, head first, compelling his rider to stand in his 99 loo KING OF CAMARGUE great stirrups, with his back touching the croup : some- times he leaped them at full speed. Drunken, bareheaded, — his hat having blown away somewhere in the darkness, — the wind whistling through his hair, Renaud rode, for the sake of riding, because the violence of his pace corresponded to the violence of the passions that were raging within him. He tore along as a beast does in the rutting season, from its mad desire to be alone. And he said to himself that it was abominable to think of the other, when he had for his own that flower of beauty, chastity and sweetness ; but he was thirsting for something very different ; and he was conscious of an intensely bitter taste in his mouth, a clinging, dry saliva, a moisture that made his thirst the more unbearable. Powerless to devise a means of escape from all the evil impulses in his heart, he rode on confessing to two longings : either to meet Rampal and take vengeance upon him for everything, or else to fall over backward into a ditch and rise no more, thus giving a different turn to his evil destiny ; — and a third longing which he did not admit even to himself: to meet the gipsy at day-break, begging at the door of some farm. — And then ? — He did not know ! Suddenly he thought that he heard a beating of hoofs behind him, the echo of his own gallop ; he turned and saw — he saw in very truth ! — pursuing him at full speed, KING OF CAMARGUE loi the naked gipsy, sitting firmly astride her saddle, man- fashion, upon a shadowy horse whose feet did not touch the ground. She flew through the air, laughing in mockery as she cried to him : "Stop, coward!" He said to himself that it was not real, but he did not say to himself that it was a vision ; he thought : " It is witchcraft ! " and fear seized upon him, fear as powerful as his desire, and he fled from the image of her he sought. He turned to look no more ; he fled. He heard the double gallop still : his own and the other's. He rode through the transparent mist that hovered over the damp, salt sand ; and as he cut through those crawling clouds it seemed to him as if he were riding through the sky, above the higher clouds. In very truth, his brain was wandering, for love will be obeyed, and his youthful passion was like insanity. Suddenly Blanchet's four legs, as he flew over the ground, became motionless and rigid as stakes, and his shoeless feet began to slide over an absolutely smooth surface of clay, hard as iron and as slippery as if it had been soaped. Swiftly the horse slid along, digging fur- rows with his hoofs upon the polished surface, and when he lost his acquired momentum, he stopped, tried to resume his former pace, raised one foot and fell heavily to the ground, exhausted, his mouth and nostrils breath- ing despair. I02 KING OF CAMARGUE In an instant, Renaud, leaning on his spear, which he had not let go, stood at his horse's head, struggling to lift him up, and encouraging him with his voice. Blan- chet, supported by the rein in his master's hand, regained his feet after two fruitless slides. Renaud looked about : there was nothing to be seen save darkness, the desert, the stars, — tatters of pallid mist that strayed hither and thither, as if clinging to a bush, a tamarisk, a clump of rushes, — and assumed, from time to time, the shape of fantastic animals. Renaud mounted Blanchet once more, but he was moved to pity for him. And the horse, sometimes let- ting himself slide upon his shoeless feet, his four legs perfectly stiff, sometimes putting one foot before the other, testing the ground, which was firm and hard beneath his weight, but soft beneath his sharp, scaly hoof, carried him at last away from the clayey tract. Pity and remorse at once were awakened in Renaud's heart by Livette's horse. What right had he, the drover, to ruin the favorite steed of his darling fiancee in the service of his passion for a witch ? So Renaud dismounted, removed Blanchet's saddle and bridle, and said to him : " Go ! do what you will." Then he cut a bundle of reeds with which he made him- self a bed, and lay upon his back, with his saddle under his head and a handkerchief over his face, waiting for dawn. KING OF CAMARGUE 103 He fell into a heavy sleep, during which his trouble swelled and burst within him, forced its way out, and took on form and feature. — The same vision constantly returned. When he awoke, two hours later, he found his cheeks wet with tears and his hands over his face. Then he took pity upon himself, and, having begun to weep in his dream, he let the tears flow freely that he would have forced back had they sought an outlet on the previous day. He deemed himself a miserable wretch, and wept over his fate, at first madly, convulsively, and then with joy, as if, in weeping, he had poured out all his sorrow for- ever. He wept to think that he was caught, powerless, between two contrary, irreconcilable things : that he wished for the one, and thirsted, against his will, for the other. He beat his hands upon the ground ; he tore his cravat, which strangled him ; he ground the reeds with his teeth, and cried aloud like a child, — he, an orphan : "O God! my mother! " And he would have wept on for a long while, perhaps, and emptied the springs of bitterness in his heart, had he not suddenly felt a warm caress — two soft, warm, moist caresses upon his cheek, his forehead, his closed eyes. He half opened his eyelids and saw Blanchet standing beside him, touching his face with his pendant lip as he used to touch Livette's hand when in search of a bit of sugar. I04 KING OF CAMARGUE Another animal had imitated Blanchet ; it was the donda'ire, Le Doux, the drover's favorite, the leader of his drove of wild bulls and cows, whose bell he had not heard, but who had recognized his master. The compassion of these two dumb animals aggravated Renaud's bitter grief at first. Like children, who begin to howl as soon as you sympathize with them, he, when he found he was so wretched as to arouse the pity of beasts, cried aloud in his heart, but stifled the cry at his throat ; then, touched at the sight of their kindly faces, and dis- tracted thereby from his own thoughts, he became sud- denly calm, sat up, put out his hand toward the muzzles of the powerful yet docile creatures, and spoke to them : " Good fellows, good fellows ! oh ! yes, good fellows ! " Day began to break. And the great black bull and the white horse, both, as if in answer to the man and in answer likewise to the first gleam of returning day, which sent a thrill of delight over all the plain, stretched out their necks toward the east ; and the neighing of the horse arose, loud and shrill as a flourish of tnmipets, sustained by the bass of the bull's bellowing. Instantly a chorus of neighs and bellows arose on all sides of Renaud. His free drove had passed the night in the neighborhood. He was surrounded by the familiar forms of his own beasts. They came at the call of Blanchet and Le Doux and the drover's voice. The mares were white as salt. Some of them came trotting up, some galloping, some KING OF CAMARGUE 105 followed by their foals ; and passed their heads between the reeds, peered curiously in, and stood there, — or else, with a cunning air, set off again, as who should say : "There's the tamer, let us be off ! " And there was a great kicking and flinging of heels away from the man's side. Some bulls, thin, nervous black fellows, whipping their sides with their long tails, also came up, took alarm, remembering that they had been punished for some shortcoming, and, turning tail, decamped in the same way, and when they were out of sight, suddenly stopped. But as the donda'ire remained there, ^^vi of the horses and cattle left the spot. Some, the oldest or the wisest, slowly assumed a kneel- ing posture, as if to resume their interrupted repose, then, scenting the approaching sun, wound their tongues about the tufts of salt grass, drew them into their mouths and chewed placidly, while the silvery foam fell from their muzzles. Others, in the same posture, lazily licked their sides. A mother, nursing her calf, watched him with a calm, gentle eye. Here a stallion drew near a mare, reached her side in two bounds, with tail in air and bristling mane, and bold, sonorous, trumpet-like call — then reared, and when the mare leaped aside, bit at her and with a sudden sidewise movement dodged the kick she aimed at him. io6 KING OF CAMARGUE More than one bull, too, paid court to the other sex, rose clumsily on his hind legs, only to fall again on his four feet, with nothing beneath him. The awakening of the drove was not complete. The animals Avere still dull and heavy. They were awaiting the coming of the sun. Renaud approached a half-broken stallion he had sometimes ridden, and threw over his neck the seden he had just coiled for that purpose — Livette's seden and Blanchet's, all stained with mud from having brought so many beasts to earth. He gave sugar to the wild creature, who allowed him- self to be saddled without overmuch resistance, desir- ous, perhaps, to enjoy for a day the abundant supply of hay in the stables of the chateau, which he had not forgotten. " Go and rest, old fellow ! " said Renaud to Blanchet. And he set off on his fresh steed, spear in hand, with the idea of seeking Rampal. The stallion he rode was his favorite, the one he had named Prince. And he felt a thrill of honest satisfaction as he said to himself that at all events Livette's horse would not have to put up with his whims and follies as a lover any more. He felt highly pleased at that thought, being lightened of a threefold responsibiUty, as rider, drover, and lover. Prince seemed disappointed when Renaud compelled him to turn his back on the Chateau d' Avignon. KING OF CAMARGUE 107 He rode in the direction of the cabin mentioned by Audiffret. It was very possible, after all, that Rampal had taken up his quarters there, and he proposed to find out. Now, as this cabin was, as we have seen, not in Caniargue, but in Crau, not far from the Icard farm, be- tween nine and ten leagues to the eastward, it was neces- sary to cross the main stream of the Rhone. But, in that vast plain, men rode long distances forajrs or a no, and thirty or forty kilometres had no terrors for Renaud. From his present position, it seemed to him that his shortest road would be to skirt the southern shore of the Vaccares. The cool, fresh morning air drove away all his black thoughts, his visions and nightmares ; he felt something like tranquillity. Moreover, he was so overdone with weariness that he seemed half-asleep, and the feeling was delicious. He no longer had the strength to follow his thoughts, still less to guide them, so that he was sub- missive as a blade of grass, as any inanimate thing, to the passing breeze, to the sun's rays. The hour and the coloring of the earth and sky were in very truth enough to rejoice the heart, and physical gaiety took possession of him, as he had ceased to reflect. A fresh breeze, smelling of the sea, sent a shiver over the water and the grass. The sun was rising. A mo- ment more and he would appear to cast his net of gold horizontally over the plain. He appeared. The vague io8 KING OF CAMARGUE murmurs became distinct sounds ; reflection changed to brilliant light, drowsiness to activity. Renaud, who was galloping along with his spear resting in his stirrup, his head leaning heavily on the arm that held it and his eyes closed, under the influence of the rocking motion of the horse, suddenly reopened them, and looked about with the joyous glance of a king. He paused a moment to gaze at a huge plough drawn by several horses, which was transforming a wretched stony field into cleared land ready for the vine. The phylloxera, which has done so much harm in rich and healthy districts, affords Camargue a new oppor- tunity to fight the fever and to gain ground on the swamp. The sand is, in fact, very favorable to the vine and very unfavorable to the parasitic insect, and this watery country will gradually become, please God, a genuine land of the vine ! Renaud watched the ploughman with a feeling of delight at the thought of his native country being enriched by honest toil ; and with a confused feeling of regret, too, for he preferred that the moor should remain uncultivated and wild and free. The idea of a flat plain, tilled from end to end, where no room was left for the straying feet of horses as God made them — that idea saddened him. He would always say to himself as he rode through more civilized regions: "Now there, you know, a man can neither live nor die. " KING OF CAMARGUE 109 The fields of wheat or oats, even in the summer season when they have such a lovely reddish tinge, so like the overheated earth, so like the turbid, gleaming waters of the Rhone, had no attraction for him. They gave him the impression of an obstacle that he must ride his horse around, and Renaud did not recognize the respectability of any obstacle — except the sea ! He was more inclined to look favorably upon the vine, because it seemed to him that it was a glorious thing for his country to produce wine, just at the time when other districts in France had exhausted their pro- ducing power. And then, the Rhone, the 7?iistral, horses, bulls, and wine, all seemed to him to go to- gether, as things that told of holiday-making, of manly strength and courage and joy. They knew how to drink, never fear, did the men of Saint-Gilles and Aries and Avignon. Renaud had attended wedding-parties more than once on the island of Barthelasse in the middle of the Rhone, opposite Avignon, and there he had tasted a red wine whose color he could still see. It was an old Rhone wine, so they had told him, and he remembered that, being desirous to do honor to the wine as well as to the bride, and being a little ex- hilarated, he had solemnly thrown his cup into the Rhone after the last bumper. There are, at the bottom of the Rhone, many such cups, dead but not broken, from which joy was quaffed but yesterday. They go gently down, turning over and over, through the water no KING OF CAM ARGUE to its sandy bed. There they sleep, covered with sand, and two or three thousand years hence — who knows? — the venerable scholars of that day will discover them, as they are discovering amphorae of baked earth at Trin- quetaille to-day, and now and then beside them a glass urn, wherein all the colors of the rainbow chase one another about as soon as its robe of dust is removed. Who can say that Renaud's brittle glass, from which he drank the best wine of his youth, will not remain for ages full of the sand and water of the Rhone, and that — in days to come — other youths will not find therein the same delight ? For everything begins anew. Thus did the wanderer's thoughts wander from point to point, from vine to glass. Ah ! that glass of his, thrown into the Rhone ! His mind recurred once more to that memory of a debauch. It seemed to him now, that, by throwing it into the river on the wedding-day, he had foretold his own destiny, and that he, Livette's fiance, would never be married ! He would drink no more from the discarded glass. The first impulse of delight that came to him with the newness of the morning had already passed ; his sadness had returned as the day lost the charm that attaches to a thing just beginning. Dreaming thus, Renaud rode across the marshes, Prince splashing through the water up to his thighs. Yes, my friends, he forgave the vine, did Renaud, for invading Camargue. KING OF CAMARGUE m Moveover, after the harvest was gathered, did not the red and white vineyards afford excellent pasturage for the bulls? There are some that are all red in the autumn, and others all white, or of a light golden yellow — as if the vines had amused themselves by re- producing the two colors of the wine under the gorgeous sunsets. He has seen nothing who has not seen the beams of the setting sun, in November, now yelloAv as gold, now red as blood, spreading over a field of red vines, over a field of yellow vines, which themselves spread out as far as the eye can reach. Indeed, is not Camargue the home of the lambrusque ? The lam- brusque is the wild, Camarguese vine, different from our cultivated vines in that the male and female are on separate plants. The grapes that grow on the female lajfibrusque make a somewhat tart but pleasant wine, and the shoots of the vine make light, stout staves for the hand. Arrived at Grand Patis, Renaud swam the Rhone three times, from Camargue to He Mouton, from He Mouton to He Saint-Pierre, and from He Saint-Pierre to the mainland. He was now in the swamps of Crau, a stony desert adjoining Camargue, which is a desert of mud. To the eye these two deserts seem to join hands across the Rhone. From Aigues-Mortes to the pond of Berre is a pretty stretch of flat country, my friends, and the sea-eagle, try as he may, cannot make it less 112 KING OF CAMARGUE than twenty good leagues in a straight line ! And that is the kingdom of King Renaud. Camargue has its saltwort, its grain and plantains and burdocks, growing in small clumps, with sandy intervals between ; it has its gapillons, which are green rushes split into bouquets, with thousands of sharp points finer than needles ; and here and there tamarisk-trees ; and, on the banks of the two Rhones, great elms, so often cut and hacked to procure wood to burn, that they resemble huge caterpillars sitting erect upon their tails, their short hair bristling as if in anger. Crau is a land of naked plains and heather. It is, to tell the truth, a veritable field of stones. They have come, people say, from Mont Blanc, all the stones that now lie sleeping there. The Rhone and the Durance have borne them down, then changed their beds, after having jousted together on the vast space at the foot of the little Alps. From beneath the stones of Crau, in May, there springs a rare, delicate plant, Xht paturin, or dog's tooth. The sheep push the stone away with their noses and browse upon the slender stalks while the shepherd stands and dreams in the wind and sun. But this stony Crau is farther away, beyond the pond of Ligagnou, which skirts the river. Here, in the Crau that lies along the banks of the Rhone, we are in the midst of the marshes, which are dry during the greater part of the year ; some of them, however, are very treacherous, and one should know them well. KING OF CAMARGUE 113 Renaud rode in a northeasterly direction, and soon reached the neighborhood of the Icard farm. He drew rein. "Where is the hiding-place?" he muttered. And he tried with all his eyes to pierce the thick underbrush of reeds, rushes, cat-tails, sedges, and bull- rushes, springing from the midst of a deep bog. This bog did not seem, to the eye, more formidable than another, but the bulls and mares feared it and carefully avoided it. On the surface of the water was what looked like a thick crust of mouldy verdure. It was not, however, the leprous formation of duck-weed that lies sleeping on our stagnant ponds. It was a sort of felt-like sub- stance, composed of dead rushes, roots, twined and twisted weeds, which made a solid but movajjle crust upon the water, swaying beneath the feet that ventured upon it, ready to bear their weight for a moinent and ready to give way beneath them. This crust (the transta'iere) was broken with fissures here and there, through which the water could be seen, dark as night, its surface flecked with transient specks of light, gleaming like a mirror of black glass. Around the edges, at the foot of the scattered tamarisks, grew reeds innumerable in thick clusters, always rustling against one another, and incessantly brushed, with a noise like rustling paper, by the slender wings of the dragon-flies with their monster-like heads. 114 ^^^^ OF CAM ARGUE Many of these catieous bear white flowers streaked with purple. As they rise above one another on the long stalks, you would take them for the flowers of a tall marsh-mallow. These reeds, with their long leaves, remind one of the thyrsi of antiquity, left standing there in the damp earth by bacchantes who have gone to rest somewhere near at hand in the shade of the tam- arisks, or to abandon themselves to the centaurs. They make one think, also, of the wand of the fable, which, when planted in the ground, was at once covered with flowers, and thereby had power over marriages. These thyrsi of the bog are reeds besieged by climb- ing plants. The convolvulus fastens itself to the reed, twines its arms about it, rises in a spiral course, seeks the sunlight at its summit, and robes the long murmur- ing stalk in brilliant and harmonious colors. The sharp leaves of the young reeds stand erect like lance-heads. The older ones break off and fall at right angles. The delicate, graceful foliage of the tamarisks is like a transparent cloud, and their little pink flowers, hanging in clusters that are too heavy for the branches, especially before they open, cause the flexible plumes of the gracefully rounded tree-top to bend in every direction. Through the reeds and tamarisks Renaud sought to discover the hut that he knew, and that Audiffret had spoken of to him the night before. But he could hardly distinguish the little inclined cross placed at the highest KING OF CAMARGUE 115 point of the roof of all the Camargue cabins, which are built of joists, boards, grayish mud {tape), and straw. The cabin was formerly entirely visible from the spot where he stood, but the reeds had grown so thickly on the islet on which it was built, that they completely hid it. The path leading to it was on the opposite side of the bog. He must make a wide detour in order to reach it, the bog de la Cabane, so called, being of a very erratic shape. From the south side of the cabin he went around to the north side. He no longer had the transta'iere in front of him ; but beneath the surface of the water, where reeds and thorn-broom flourish, was the gargaie, the slime, wherein he who steps foot is quickly buried. There are many other dangers in these accursed bogs. There are the lorons, a sort of bottomless well found here and there under the water, the location of which must be thoroughly understood. The mares and heifers know them and are clever in avoiding them, but now and then one of them falls in, and now and then a man as well. And he who falls in remains. No time for argument, my man ! You are in — adieu ! The drovers will tell you, and it is the truth, that from every loron comes a little twisting column of smoke, by which those mouths of hell can be located. A hundred lorons, a hundred columns of smoke. There, my friends, is something to dream about, is it not, when the malig- nant fever, bred in the swamps, smites you on the hip? Ii6 KING OF CAMARGUE Renaud was anxious to know if Rampal was occupy- ing the cabin, but not to attack him there, for it is a treacherous spot. "If he is there, he will come out some time or other. I will wait for him on the solid ground. Ah ! I see the path ! ' ' It was a winding path hiding under a sheet of shallow water. The bed of the path was of stones, very narrow but very firm, the right edge being marked, as far as the cabin, by stakes at short intervals, just on a level with the water. Renaud dismounted, and looked for the first stake, holding his horse by the rein. Although he knew its location, it took him some time to find it. With the end of his spear he put aside the grass, and when he dis- covered the stake, he felt for the solid road whose width it measured. Bending over, he gazed long and very closely at the grasses and the reeds, which met in places above the concealed pathway, and when he rose he was certain that it had not been used for some time. He was not mistaken. In truth, Rampal was a little suspicious of that hiding-place, which was too well known, he thought, and to which he could easily be traced. He often slept in the neighborhood, ready to take refuge in the cul-de-sac, if it should become neces- sary, but he preferred, meanwhile, to feel at liberty, with plenty of open space about him. Renaud remounted Prince, and crossed the Rhone again an hour later. KING OF CAMARGUE 117 That night he lay in one of the great cabins which serve as stables — wmter j'asses — for the droves of mares, in those months when the weather is so bad that the bulls can find no pasturage except by breaking the ice with their horns. The next day, an hour before noon, he saw before him the church of Saintes-Maries standing out like a lofty ship against the blue background of the sea. Little black curlews were flying hither and thither around it, mingled with a flock of great sea-gulls with gracefully rounded wings. A cart was moving slowly over the sandy road. "Good-day, Renaud." "Good-day, Marius. Where are you going?" "To carry fish to Aries." Marius raised the branches which apparently made up his load, but which were simply used to shade a dozen or more baskets and hampers. Well pleased with his freight, he put aside the cloth that was spread over his treasure under the branches. Baskets and hampers were filled to the brim with fish taken in the ponds and the sea. There were mullet and bream, still alive, animated prisms with mouths and gills wide open like bright red marine flowers amid a mass of dark-blue, olive-green, and gleaming gold. There were enormous eels, too, caught for the most part in the canals of Camargue, which are veritable fish-preserves. The dark-hued, slippery creatures twisted in and out, Ii8 KING OF CAMARGUE tying and untying endless slip-knots with their snake-like bodies. By the livid spots upon some of the great eels, Renaud recognized them as murancE, possessors of vora- cious mouths, well stocked with sharp teeth. " See how they all keep moving ! " said Marius. At that moment, as if to justify his words, a great flat fish flapped out of one of the baskets and fell to the ground. With the end of his three-pronged spear the mounted drover nailed him to the earth to prevent his leaping into the ditch, filled with water, that ran along the road. " Hallo ! " said he in surprise, " isn't that a cramp- fish. When I spear one of them with my regular fish- spear, which is longer than this three-pronged one, it gives me a shock I didn't feel at all to-day." "That's because the fish is in the water then, and your spear is damp," said Marius, laughing. "But let the fellow stay there," he added. "He isn't worth much. The snakes will have a feast on him." Thereupon, horseman and fisherman went their re- spective ways. The drover's thoughts wandered from the cramp-fish and the murcetics to the electric fish of America, of which old sailors had spoken to him. They had told him that it was charged with electricity like the cramp-fish, but resembled the conger more in shape, and that it could, with its overpowering current, kill a horse; in order to KING OF CAMARGUE 119 make it exhaust its stock of electricity, so that it can safely be taken, it is customary to send wild horses into the water against it; they receive the first shock, and sometimes die from the effects. As he rode on toward Saintes-Maries, Renaud mused in a vague way upon the miracles of life, which there is naught to explain. XII A SORCERESS Livette did not go to sleep. When Renaud had passed out of sight in the darkness, she softly closed her windows, and, throwing herself on the bed with her face buried in the pillow, wept in dismay. Meanwhile, — while Livette was weeping and Renaud, bewitched, was galloping over the moor, fancying that he was pursued by the gipsy, — the gipsy herself was asleep. The two beings whose lives she was beginning to destroy were already suffering a thousand deaths, and she, lying, fully dressed, under one of the carts of her tribe, in their regularly pitched camp outside the village, was sleeping tranquilly, her pretty, puzzling face smiling at the stars of that lovely May night. When Renaud left her, at sunset, all naked on the beach, she had slowly stretched her sun-burned arras, taking pleasure in the sense of being naked in the open air, of feeling the caressing breath of the sea-breeze 121 122 KING OF CAMARGUE that dried the great drops of water rolling down her body. Then, still slowly, she had dressed herself, — very slowly, in order to postpone as long as possible the renewed subjection to the annoyance of clothes, in order to enjoy unrestricted freedom of movement, like a wild beast. She had then walked along the beach, leaving the imprint of her bare, well-shaped foot in the sand, cov- ered at intervals by a shallow wave that gradually washed away the mark. The last kiss of the sea upon her feet, to which a bit of sparkling sand clung, delighted her. She laughed at the water, played with it, avoiding it sometimes with a sudden leap, and sometimes going forward to meet it, teasing it. She fancied that she could see, in the undulating folds of the wavelets, the tame snakes which she sometimes charmed with the notes of a flute, and which would thereupon come to her and twine about her arms and neck, and which were at that moment waiting for her, lying on their bed of wool at the bottom of their box in her wagon. She had already ceased to think of Renaud. She was always swayed by the dominating thought of the moment, never feeling regret or remorse for what was past, — having no power of foresight, except by flashes, at such times as passion and self-interest bade her exert it. Her reflection was but momentary, by fits and starts, KING OF CAMARGUE 123 SO to speak ; and her depth, her power, the mystery that surrounded her, were due to her having no heart, and, consequently, no conscience. The men and women who approached her might hope or fear something at her hands, imagine that she had determined upon this or that course, and try to defeat her plan ; but she never had any plan, which fact led them astray beforehand. She routed her enemies and triumphed over them, first of all, by indifference; and then she would abruptly cast aside her indolence, like an animal, at the bidding of a passion or a whim, and would still render naught every means of defence — her attack, her decisions, her clever wiles, being always spontaneous, born of circumstances as they presented themselves. No : she made no plans beforehand, in cold blood ; she never concocted any complicated scheme ; but she could, at need, invent one on the spur of the moment and carry it out instantly, at a breath, — or perhaps she would begin to execute it in frantic haste, and abandon it almost immediately from sheer ennui, to think no more of it until the day that some burst of passion should suddenly bring it back to her mind. She was like a spider spinning its whole web in the twinkling of an eye to catch the fly on the wing; or she would spin the first thread only, and forget it until something happened to remind her to spin a second. Thus constituted, she was at the same time better 124 ^^^^ ^^ CAMARGUE and worse than other women, because she was more changeable than the surface of the water, — because she was of the color of the moment. Being a fatalist, the gipsy said to herself that whatever is to happen, happens, and she had never taken the trouble to devise a scheme of revenge. She would simply utter a threat, knowing well that the terror inspired by a prediction is the first calamity that pre- pares the way for others, by disturbing the mind and heart and judgment. And then, something always goes wrong in the course of a year, collaborating, so to speak, with the sorcerer, and attributed by the victim to the "evil spell " cast upon him. It is upon him, in reality, because he believes that it is. In short, if op- portunity offered, she would assist the mischievous pro- pensities of fate, with a word, a gesture, a trifle — and, if opportunity did offer, it was because it was decreed long ages ago, written in the book of destiny that so it should be ! A true creature of instinct, the gipsy had no other secret than that she had none. She followed her imjnilses, satisfied her desire for revenge, her love or her hate, without stopping to con- sider anything or anybody ; and, like the wild beast, she, a human being, became an object of dread to civilized people, as nature itself is. Such creatures are implacable. The gipsy loved life, and lived as animals live, without reflection. It was the paltry yet KING OF CAMARGUE 125 profound mystery of the sphinx repeated. Her ac- tions were those of a brute, not far removed from the lower types of mankind, notwithstanding her lovely human face, in which the eyes, like Pan's, not clear, seemed veiled with falsehood because they were veiled to their own sight with their own lack of knowledge, their uncertainty and suspense. Look at the eyes of a goat or a heifer. They are as deep as Bestiality, cunning and strong, cowering in the shadow of the sacred wood. Life longs to live. It is lying in ambush there. It is sure of her and bides its time. The human beast not only has more craft than the fox or tiger, but has the power of speech as well. Nothing is more horrible than words without a conscience. After all, Zinzara was always sincere, although she never appeared so, because her versatility placed her from moment to moment in contradiction with herself. The caress and the wound that one received from her in rapid succession did not prove that she had feigned love or hate. She did, in fact, love and hate by turns, from moment to moment, or rather, without loving or hating, she acted in accordance with her own fancy, sincere in her contradictions — and very artlessly withal. She bore some resemblance to the ape, as it sits among the branches, softly rocking its little one in its arms with an almost human air, then suddenly relaxes its hold and lets its offspring fall, forgotten, to the ground, in order to pluck a fruit that hangs near by. 126 KING OF CAMARGUE She was a personage of importance in her own eyes, and she saw nobody but herself at all times and under all circumstances. The gipsy was formidable, as a spirit concealed in an element whose slave it should be. She had the force of a thunderbolt, of an earthquake, of any fatal occurrence impossible to foresee or to ward off. The viper is not evil-minded. He does not prepare his own venom. He finds it all prepared. Disturb him, and he bites before he makes up his mind to do it. Like the cramp-fish or the electric eel, the gipsy could discharge a fatal current of electricity as soon as you approached her, — by virtue of the very necessity of existence. It might happen to her also to indulge in the sport of exerting her malignant power around her, for no reason, simply to watch its effects, because it was her day and her hour, her whim. She had the same means of defence and amusement. It was not in her nature to be malignant. It simply was not necessary for her to think of you, that was all. As a matter of fact, a man was fortunate if she did not look at him. Although born of a race that holds chastity in high esteem, she was not chaste ; not that she loved debauch- ery above everything else, but she used it as a means of domination, — the more unfailing because she made little account of it. Always superior, in her coldness, KING OF CAMARGUE 127 to the passion she inspired, it was in that more than all else that she really felt herself a queen, a sorceress — aye, a goddess, by favor of the devil ! The caress of the water in which she bathed afforded her more pleasure than it afforded others. She was like the female plant of the lambrusque, which is fertilized by the wind. Like the mares of Camargue, that often assemble on the shore to breathe the fresh sea air, — when she opened her lips to the salty breeze, on those fine May evenings, she was happier than any man's kiss could make her. The wandering spirit of her race breathed upon her lips, in the air, with the freedom of the boundless waste — a vague hope, vain and unending. Being thus constituted, she knew that she exercised a disturbing influence upon others, and that she was her- self protected by something that relieved her of respon- sibility. That thought filled her with pride. There was a reflection of that pride in her smile. There was also the constant remembrance of the sensations she had experienced, known to her alone, and a certain number of men, who knew nothing of one another. Their ignorance, which was her work, also made her smile. And that smile was a mixture of irony and con- tempt. She knew her own strength and their weakness. So she was always smiling. With no other policy than this, she reigned over her nomadic tribe, changing her favorite, like a genuine queen, as chance or her own impulses willed, but giving 128 KING OF CAMARGUE each one of them to beheve that he was the only man she had ever really loved, even if he were not her first lover. To deceive the zingari — that was a notable triumph for a zingara .' Among the fifteen or twenty children in her party, there was a young dauphin, the queen's offspring; but since he had left her breast, she had bestowed no more care upon him than the bitch bestows upon her puppy some day to become her mate. When she came near her camping-ground, excited by her recent contact with the waves and the salt, which, as it dried upon her, pressed against her soft, velvety flesh, the gipsy, tingling with warmth in every vein, cast a sidelong glance at one of the male members of the tribe, a young man with a bronzed skin and thin, curly beard. And, in the darkness, — when they had eaten the soup cooked in the kettle that hung from three stakes in the open air, — the zingaro glided to the zingara's side. At that very moment, by her fault, two human beings were suffering in the inmost recesses of their consciences, where Livette and Renaud were gazing at each other with eyes in which there was no look of recognition. The betrothed lovers, her victims, were struggling under the evil spell cast upon them by her glance, at the moment that that glance seemed to grow tender in response to that with which her lover enveloped her. KING OF CAMARGUE 129 on the edge of the ditch, beneath the feeble light of the stars. Renaud at that moment was dreaming that he had seen the naked gipsy again and triumphed over her, and was asking himself, at the memory of that robust, youthful form, if she were not a virgin, even though a child of the high-road ; recalling confusedly a strange, overpowering, absolute passion, the triumphal posses- sion of a new being, a heifer hitherto wild and vicious, even to the bulls ; of a mare that had never known bit or saddle, and had maintained a rebellious attitude in presence of the stallion. Renaud was dreaming all that, but Renaud no longer existed for Zinzara. Zinzara, just at that moment, in the dew-drenched grass, was writhing about like the legendary conger-eel, that comes out of the sea to abandon itself to the laby- rinthine caresses of the reptiles on the shore. Two days Livette waited, wondering what was taking place. Weary at last of seeking without finding, she set out for Saintes-Maries on the morning of the third day. ''There," she thought, "I may, perhaps, hear some news. ' ' Her father saddled an honest old horse for her use. "You must go to Tonin the fisherman's at noon," said he, " and eat your bouille-abaisse. Send him word, when you arrive, with a good-day from me." 130 KING OF CAMARGUE Livette, as she rode along, looked about her at the peaceful green fields, joyous and bright in the light that fell from the sky and the light that rose on all sides from the water. The gnats danced merrily in the sunbeams. When the gnats dance, they furnish the music for the ball with their wings, and on calm days there is a sound like the strumming of a guitar on the golden strings of light over all the plain. There were also in the air long, slender threads, — the "threads of the Virgin," or gos- samer, — come from no one knows where, which waved gently to and fro, as if some of the fragile strings of the invisible instrument on which the little musicians of the air perform, being broken, had become visible, and were floating away at the pleasure of a breath. It may be that those threads came from a long dis- tance. It may be that the toiling spiders who patiently spun them lived in the forests of the Moors, in Esterel. A breath of air had taken them up very gently, and now they were on their travels. Livette watched them floating quietly by, and thought of a tale her grandmother had told her. According to the grandmother, the threads came from the cloaks spread to the wind as sails by the three holy women. The wind, as it filled them, had unravelled them a little, very carefully ; and the slender threads, taken long ago from the woof of the miraculous cloaks, hover forever above the sands of Camargue, where stands the church KING OF CAMARGUE 131 of the holy women. — Above the strand they hover night and day, as so many tokens of God's blessing ; but they are rarely visible, and if, by chance, on a fine day, you do see them, it means that some great good fortune is in store for you. In the transparent azure of the morning sky Livette's heart clung to each of the passing threads ; but the child tried in vain to acquire confidence, — her heart was too heavy to remain long attached to the fleeting things. She was afraid, poor child, and felt influences at work against her that she could not see. Alas ! while the golden threads floated over her head, the black spider was weaving his web somewhere about, to catch her like a fly. Still musing, Livette rode on, and could distinguish at last, far before her, the swallows and martins soaring above the steeple. They were so far away you would have said they were swarms of gnats. And with the swal- lows and martins were numberless sea-mews. This host of wings, large and small, now dark as seen from below, now bright and gleaming as seen from above, turned and twirled and gyrated in countless intricate, interlacing circles. Instinct with the spirit of the spring-time and the morning, they were frolicking in the fresh, clear air. It occurred to Livette to ride by the public spring in quest of news, for it was the hour when the women and maidens of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer go thither to pro- cure their daily supply of water. 132 KING OF CAMARGUE As she entered the village, she noticed the gipsy camp at her right hand, but turned her head. At that moment, she met two women on their way to the spring, walking steadily between the two bars, the ends of which they held in their hands, and from which, exactly in the middle, the water-jug was suspended by its two ears. "It is just the time for the spring," said Livette to herself, and she followed them at a foot-pace. "Good-day, mademoiselle," the women said as they passed, for the pretty maiden of the Chateau d' Avignon was known to everybody. There was as yet no one at the spring. The two women waited, and Livette with them. " How do you happen to be riding about so early, mademoiselle? Are you looking for some one?" "I am out for a ride," said Livette, "and as it's the time for drawing water, I thought I would stop here a moment. My friends will surely come sooner or later." No more was said, and Livette, having nothing else to do, looked closely for the first time at the carved stone escutcheon in the centre of the high arched wall above the spring. It is the town crest, and it is need- less to say that it includes a boat, a boat without mast or oars, in which the two Maries — Jacobe and Salome — are standing. "I have often wondered," said Livette, "why they put only the figures of two holy women in the boat. KING OF CAMARGUE 133 For haven't our mothers always told us there were three of them ? Were there three or not ? ' ' "Certainly there were three, my pretty innocent," said the older of the two women, "but Sara was the servant, and no honor is due to her." "If the third was Saint Sara, then there were not three Marys, eh ? But I have always heard it said that the Magdalen was there, and that she went away from here and died at Sainte-Baume. " " Yes, so she was, and many others besides ! Lazarus was in the boat, too, but when they were once on shore, every one went his own way : Magdalen went to Baume, and the two Maries and Sara remained with us. That was when a spring came out of the sand, by the favor of our Lord. When they built the church, they walled in the spring in the centre of it." " Faith, they would have done well to leave the spring outside the church ! " " Why so? is the water spoiled by it?" " It's only good on the fete-day." "After so many years ! And there's so little of it ! " " We ought to have asked the saints to make it pure and abundant. If we had all set about it with our prayers, they would have done it for us." " One miracle more or less ! " "The miracles, my dear, are only for strangers." "And that is just what we need, neighbor. If it wasn't so, you see, strangers wouldn't come any more — • 134 KING OF CAMARGUE and without them what would the country Hve on ? poor we! Where are our harvests? Where are our w'heat and our grain, good people, tell me that? If it wasn't for the saints, this would be a cursed country ! One fete-day a year, and the pilgrims — God bless them ! — fill our purses for us." " Miracle days are only too few and far between. We ought to have two fete-days a year ! ' ' "What are you saying, you foolish woman? Two fete-days a year ! Mother of God ! That would mean death to pilgrimages. To keep the custom going, every- thing must be just as it is and nothing change at all. Our men know that well enough. Remember the visit the Archbishop of Aix and those great ladies paid us twenty years ago." And once more the story was told of the visit of the Archbishop of Aix to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer twenty or thirty years before. On a certain 24th of May the archbishop arrived at Saintes- Maries with several elderly ladies of the nobility of Aix. But it so happened that that 24th of May was the evening of the 25 th ! Anybody may be mistaken ! — So that, instead of being lowered at four o'clock, the reliquaries were raised again on that day, and when monseigneur entered the church with his fair compan- ions, it was good-by, saints ! They had already been hoisted up at the end of their ropes to the lofty chapel, amid the singing of canticles. KING OF CAMARGUE 135 " Oh ! well ! " said the archbishop to the cure, " they must come down again for us." The cure was about to obey, but a rumor of what was going on had already spread through the village ! — Ah ! bless my soul, what a commotion ! " What ! " said the old villagers. " They would lower the reliquaries on some other day than the 24th, would they? Why, if it is such a simple thing and can be done so often, why do you make the poor devils from every corner of Provence and all the rest of the world come hurrying to us on a special day? No, no, it would be the ruin of the country, that is certain ! " To make a long story short, the people of Saintes- Maries took their guns, and under arms, in the church itself, compelled the prince of the Church to respect the sovereign will of the people of the town. And they did very well, for rarity is the quality by virtue of which miracles retain their value. One of the women having told this anecdote, Avhich was perfectly well known to them all, they began, as soon as she had finished, to make up for their long silence by loud talk, vying with one another in their approval of the villagers' revolt against the bishops, who would have abused the good-will of the two Maries. "We are very lucky, all the same," said one of the old women, "to have a good well with good stone walls instead of the brackish spring the saints had to get their drinking-water from. I can remember the time when 136 KING OF CAMARGUE we got our water from the pousaraque (artificial pond), as the people on our farms do to-day. The Rhone water that was brought into them through the canals was always so thick and muddy you could cut it with a knife!" "Bah ! it had time enough to settle in our jars." "It is funny, though, to be so hard up for water in such a wet country ! ' ' said a young woman who had just arrived. "This water is a nuisance! Saint Sara, the servant, ought to have known from experience that a woman has enough work to do at home without wasting her time waiting in front of closed spigots. Saint Sara, protect us, and make them turn on the water ! " The women began to laugh. Almost all the housekeepers of Saintes-Maries had assembled by this time. A last group arrived upon the scene. Some carried jars, without handles, upon their heads, balancing them by a graceful swaying of the whole body. With their hands upon their hips, they themselves were not unlike living amphorse. Others, having one jug upon the head, carried another in each hand — the stout dourgue, with handle and mouth ; others had wooden pails, others, glass jars, each having selected a larger or smaller vessel, according to the necessities of her household. " What sort of a pot have you there, Felicite? " ^Vhereat there was a general laugh. She to whom the question was directed, replied : KING OF CAMARGUE 137 " I broke my jug, poor me ! And, as I had to have some water, I took an old thing I found that has always been standing behind the door at our house since I can remember. If it will hold water, it will do for me to-day, my dear ! ' ' "Take it to monsieur le cure for his library; it's an antique, and is worth money ! " FeUcite had, in fact, come to the spring with a genuine Roman amphora, found in the sandy bed of the Rhone — a jar two thousand years old and hardly chipped ! Each family at Saintes-Maries is entitled to one or two jars of water each day, according to the number of its members. — The water had not begun to flow. Livette, sitting upon her horse, thoughtful and sad amid the chatter, was still awaiting her friends. "What were you saying just now?" asked some late comers. And having been informed, each one of them pro- ceeded to expound her ideas upon the subject of the saints and Sara the bondwoman, paying no heed to what the others were saying — so that the jabbering of the women and girls seemed like a Ramadan of mag- pies and jays assembled in one of the isolated clumps of pines so often seen in Camargue. "I would like to know if it's fair," cried one of the women, "not to put in Saint Sara's portrait, too! A saint's a saint, and where there's a saint there isn't any servant ! ' ' 13S KING OF CAMARGUE "The saints aren't proud ! and Saint Sara cares mighty little whether her picture's there or not ! " *' She may not care, but it was an insult to her ! " "Oh ! " said another, "good King Rene and the Pope knew what they were doing when they arranged things so. Sara was Pontius Pilate's wife, and she was the one who advised her husband to wash his hands of the heathens' crime ! " A murmur of reproof ran from mouth to mouth among the gossips. "Ah ! here's old Rosine, she'll set us right." Motionless upon her horse Livette listened vaguely. She was absent-minded, yet interested. When old Rosine, who was very deaf, had finally been made to understand what was wanted of lier, and that she was expected to give her views concerning Sara the bondwoman, she began : "Ah! my children, God knows his own, and Sara was a great saint, for sure " Here Rosine crossed herself, and was at once imitated by all the old women. "But," added Rosine, "Sara was a heathen woman from Egypt, and not a Jewess of Judea ; and the heathens, you see, come a long way after the Jews in the world's esteem. Don't you see that the Jews are scattered all over the world, but they stay everywhere, and become masters by force of avarice. That is their way of being blessed by their Lord. But the heathens of Egypt, on KING OF CAMARGUE 139 the contrary, are wanderers and poor, although they are thieves, and more scattered and more accursed than the Jews. Well, you see, my children, Saint Sara is their saint, the saint of the Egyptian heathens ! She wasn't a very good Catholic saint, to pay the boatman for her passage by a sight of her naked body — with the indif- ference of an old sinner, I fancy ! So it is right that she should come after the two Mar}-s, for there are different ranks in heaven. And that is why Saint Sara's bones are not between the boards of the great shrine in the church, but under the glass of the little shrine in the crypt — or the cellar, you might say. The cellar is a good enough place — under the feet of Christians — for miserable gipsies ! And it is right that it should be so." " What Rosine says is true ! " cried one of the women. " These frequent visits of the gipsies are the ruin of the country. When our pilgrims come, rich and poor, do you suppose they like to find all these scamps, who are so clever at stealing folks' handkerchiefs and purses, settled here before them? Don't you suppose that drives people away from us ? How many there are who would like to come, but don't care to compromise themselves by being found in such company ! " " Bah ! such nonsense ! " said a humpbacked woman; "those who have faith don't stop half-way for such a small matter ! And those who have some troublesome disease and hope to cure it here aren't afraid of the 140 KING OF CAMARGUE thieves nor their vermin. Take away my hump, mighty saints, and I will undertake to get rid of my lice and my fleas one by one, without any assistance ! ' ' This speech was greeted by a roar of laughter, which stopped abruptly, as if by enchantment. The little gate to the spring was opened at last, and, at the sound of the water rushing from the pipe, all the women ran to take their places in the line — not without some trifling disputes for precedence. At last, some of Livette's girl friends arrived. Spying them at some little distance, she went to meet them. " What brings Livette here so early, on horseback? " said the women, when she had moved away. "Why, she's looking for her rascal of a Renaud, of course ! " said the hunchback. "That fellow isn't used to being tied like a goat to a stake, and the little one will have a hard time to keep him true to her, for all her fine dot/ — The other day, Rampal — you know, the drover, a good fellow — saw him at a distance on the beach talking with a gipsy who wasn't dressed for winter ! " " Not dressed for winter? what do you mean? " " She wore no furs, nor cloak, nor anything else, poor me ! She was taking a bath as God made her. The plain isn't a safe place for that sort of thing. You think you can't be seen because you think you can see a long distance yourself, but a tuft of heather is enough for the lizard to hide his two eyes behind while he looks." KING OF CAMARGUE 141 Again the women began to chuckle and laugh, but for a moment only. Meanwhile, Livette's friends were saying to her : " No, we haven't seen your sweetheart, my dear; but they are already putting the benches in place against the church for the branding, and he can't fail to be here soon." At that moment, a strain of weird music arose not far away. It was produced by a flute, and the notes, softly modulated at first, were abruptly changed to heart- rending shrieks. A strange, dull, mgnotonous accom- paniment seemed to encourage the sick heart, that called for help with piercing cries. " Hark ! there are the gipsies and their devil's music, Livette. Just go and look — it is such an amusing sight. We will join you in a little while." " What about my horse? " said Livette. "If you haven't come to stay, there's a heavy iron bracelet just set into the wall of the church to hold the bars of the enclosure for the branding. Tie your horse to that, and don't be afraid that he will disap- pear. Every one will know he's yours by those pretty letters in copper nails you have had put on your saddle- bow." Livette fastened her horse to the ring in the church - wall, and walked in the direction of the gipsy music. It seemed to her that she might probably learn some- thing there. 142 KING OF CAMARGUE Now, Zinzara the Egyptian had seen Livette ride into the village, and her music had no other purpose than to attract her, and Renaud, her fiance, with her, if he were there. Why? to see; — to bring together for an instant, with no fixed purpose, upon the same point of the vast world through which she wandered, two of the personages with whom she "beguiled her time;" to look on at the comedy of life, and to watch the sequel, with the inclination to give an evil turn to it, chance aiding. She loved the anomalies that result from the chaotic jumbling together of circumstances. Zinzara was turning a kaleidoscope whose field was vast like the horizon of her never-ending travels, and whose bits of glass, multicolored, were living souls. — She turned the wheel to see what calamity destiny, with her assistance, would bring to pass. The amusement of a woman, of a sorceress. XIII THE SNAKE-CHARMER Life is an enigma. The everlasting silence of space is but the endless murmuring of invisible circles which, twining in and out, part and meet again, lose and never find one another, or are inextricably interwoven forever. Life is an enigma. We can see something of its begin- ning, nothing of its close; its meaning escapes us, but all the links make the chain, and some one knows the rest. That there are two ends to the ladder is certain. Day is not night, and one does not exist without the other. There are joy and sorrow, health and sickness, happi- ness and unhappiness, life and death — in a word, good and evil, for the beast of flesh and bone. This is a good man, that a bad. Religion and morals have nothing to do with it, and afford no explanation ; but little children know that it is so, and fools know it like- wise. They who undertake to reason the thing out learnedly, befog it. They who pull the thread break it. There is some one and there is something. Nothing is 143 144 KING OF CAMARGUE null, I tell you, my good friends, and yonder drivelling old idiot, sitting on the stone at the foot of the Calvary before the church, and holding out his hand to Livette, knows two things better than we — good and evil. The idiot, when he passed the gipsies' wagons in the morn- ing, talked amicably, yes, he talked for some minutes with two or three gaunt dogs chained up under the wagons ; but when he saw Zinzara, the queen, fix her eyes upon him, the idiot was afraid and limped away as fast as he could. He was afraid because there was, in Zinzara's look, something 7iot good. And now Livette, as she passes by, glances at him, and the idiot — poor human worm — smiles and holds out to her a glass pearl, — a treasure in his eyes, — which he found that morning in the filth of the gutter near by. The pearl glistens. It is bright blue. The idiot sees beauty in it, and offers it to the pretty girl passing by. Livette smiles at him, and he, the drivelling idiot, the cripple who drags himself along the ground, laughs back at Livette. He laughs and feels his man's heart vaguely opening within him — why? — because of something good in Livette's eyes. God is above us, and the devil beneath us. God ? what do you mean by God? Kindly humanity, which is above us and toward which we are ascending ; the ideal, evolved from ourselves which, by dint of declaring itself and compelling love, will be realized in our chil- dren. The devil? what is that? the obscure beast, the KING OF CAMARGUE 145 ravenous, blind worm, which we were, and from which we are moving farther and farther away. There is something nearer the mystery than the mind, and that something is tlie instinct. Certainly we are nearer to our origin than to our end, and instinct almost explains the origin because it is still near at hand, but the mind cannot explain the end because it is still so far away ! Whence come we ? The crawling beast may suspect. — Whither go we? How can the beast tell, when he cannot fly ? The bond that binds us fast to earth is not cut. Man bears forever the scar of his birth. He has, therefore, always before him evidence of how he is connected with infinity behind him \ but how he is connected, by death, with the life everlasting, before him, he does not see. Instinct, like a glow-worm, lights up the depths from which man comes forth, but intelligence casts no light into the boundless expanse on high, wherein it loses itself, just at the point where God begins. — Ah! how mysterious is God ! Yes, between the intelligence and man's origin, in- stinct stretches like a bridge. Between the intelligence and man's end, there is a yawning chasm. The reason cannot cross it. There is no way but to leap. Man finds it easy to imagine what lies below ; his own weight draws him down to a point where he can understand it. To understand what is above, it is essential to have a power of lightening one's self, a wing which man has 146 KING OF CAMARGUE not. Here instinct acts upon the mind in a direction opposed to mental effort. To some minds this faculty of rising sometimes comes, but man's conceptions depend upon his experiences, and the time has passed when reliance was placed upon the "wise men," upon those whose conceptions far outran their experiences. Perhaps it is better so. Perhaps every man ought to form his ideas for himself and no one will know anything for good and ail until he has earned the right. Sometimes, for a moment, especially in dreams, but occasionally in his waking hours, man knows. He has profound intuition ; but nothing is more fleeting than this sudden glimpse of eternity. The best of us are blind men haunted by the memory of a flash of light. Which of us has not known, by personal experience, how a man can fly away from himself? The sense of mystery, scarcely detected, has escaped us, but who has not been conscious of it for a second ? Truth, like love, reveals itself for a second only, but we must believe in it — forever. These thoughts are properly presented here, for every- thing is in everything. One man studies the hyssop, another the oak ; Cuvier the mastodon, and Lubbock the ant, but they all arrive at the same point, a point which includes everything. Do you know why the gipsies, Bohemians, gitanos, KING OF CAMARGUE 147 zincali, zingari, zigeuners, zinganes, tziganes, romani, romichal, — all different appellations of the same wan- dering race, — arouse such intense interest on the part of civilized peoples? There are two reasons. The first is, that the gipsy, being very primitive and wild, appears among civilized beings as the image of themselves in the past. It is as if they were our own ghosts. When we see them among us, we amuse ourselves, in the shelter of our established homes, by thinking regret- fully that we no longer have before us the broad plains so dear to the beasts we are ; that we are no longer in constant contact with the earth, the plants, the animals, which are the mothers that bore us, and whom we love for that reason. They have remained what we were when we left them, and that touches us. The second reason is that they really discovered long ago something of the meaning of life. It is certain that they are magicians. They have seen the hidden spring and have a vague remembrance of it ; they have retained its dark reflection in their glance. The glance ! they know its dormant and insinuating power. They know how to subdue weak minds by a glance. The least skilled in magic among them still believe that the "secret " of things is hidden away somewhere under a stone, and in their travels through every country 148 KING OF CAMARGUE on earth they often raise heavy boulders, whose pecuHar shapes seem to indicate that they may conceal the mystery. They never find under the boulders anything but toads and snakes and scorpions, but they are skilled at making powerful potions from the blood and venom of the reptiles. They know, also, the secret properties of plants, and that the hemlock and belladonna vary in their effects when cut at certain times of the year and at certain hours, according to the influence of the seasons and the moon's rays. The gipsies are skilled in the science of poisons. Men and women — roms andjuwas — excel in the art of giving diseases to cattle. Their trades are only pretexts for calling at the houses they pass. They are coppersmiths simply because the art of subjecting metals to the action of fire was in- vented by the son of Cain, the progenitor of all accursed mortals. And they are saddlers because they like to be about horses, dear to all vagabonds. The gipsies, who were originally worshippers of fire, and now have no religion of their own, but always adopt that of the country they are passing through, are to mankind what Lucifer is to the angels. " ^^'e come from Egypt, if you please," Zinzara would sometimes say to the people of her tribe. " Indeed, that is where we had our homes and were a powerful race in the days of Moses. Then our ancestors were KING OF CAMARGUE 149 magicians to the kings of Egypt, who overcame death ; but our origin is higher and farther away. "We come from a country where the Secret Power of the World was discovered : a dragon guards the mys- tery on the summit of a lofty mountain, in a cavern, out of reach of whatever floods may come. *' Our ancestor (^oudra learned from the high-priests the method of compelling the dragon to obey him. He entered the cavern and conceived the idea of universal knowledge, and resolved to avail himself of it in the outside world, in order that he might become a king and mighty among men — for why was he poor? Why does poverty exist, why death ? "He had no sooner conceived his project of justi- fiable rebellion than the dragon sought to devour him. Our ancestor eluded him, and believed that, by virtue of the secrets he had discovered, he would be omnipotent on earth, but suddenly he found that he had almost forgotten them all, as if by magic. He no longer remembered any of them except those that do harm, those that produce disease, sorrow, misery, and death — all the evils from which he would have liked to free himself. "And the high-priests cursed him and his sons. Manou spoke against them thus : They shall dwell out- side of cities ; they shall possess none but broken vessels ; they shall have nothing of their own, except it be an ass or a dog. They shall wear the clothes they steal from 150 KING OF CAMARGUE the dead; their plates shall be broken ; their jeiuels shall be of iron. They shall journey, without rest, from place to place. Every man who is faithful to his duty shall hold himself aloof from them. They shall have no deal- ings except with one another. And they shall marry only in their own race. "And the Tchandalas were able to flee the country, but not the sentence. "And that is our present case. "The crown of Qoudra is a broken ring — with sharp points, Hke a dog's collar, and his sceptre is an iron staff, broken but formidable. For why does want exist, and pain and death ? God is wicked ! ' ' With this tale, set to music, the gipsy queen sometimes lulled her son to sleep. And when, at the entrance to some chateau, she cast a long, malevolent glance upon a young mother, who, upon catching sight of her, quickly carried her little child within, such thoughts as these would run through Zinzara's head: "The secrets that are known to our prophets, our dukes and princes and kings, will cause all your cities, your churches, and your thrones to trem- ble on their foundations, for why does want exist, and pain and death? The hour will come — we await it — when your nations will be scattered to the winds of wrath, unless the wise men who invoked a curse on us become their masters — but you are too far from their wisdom for that ! You will be ours. KING OF CAMARGUE 151 " Meanwhile, woe to those of you whom we find alone ! We look fixedly at them, and the spirit of evil does the rest." And this is what little Livette saw when she ap- proached the gipsy camp. The whole tribe was there. Their numerous wagons were of different sizes, most of them being made in the shape of small oblong houses, with little windows, very like the Noah's arks made for children in Germany. The gipsies had arranged their wagons side by side, in a line, each one opposite a house in the village. Thus the line of wheeled houses formed with the houses of the village a winding street, which, if prolonged, would have surrounded Saintes-Maries like a girdle. Thus, while their sojourn lasted, the gipsies could cherish the illu- sion that they were settled there, that they were inhab- itants of the village, one dwelling opposite the baker, another opposite the wine-shop ; but no one forgot that the gipsy houses were built upon wheels that turn and can make the tour of the world. "I pity the tree," says the gipsy, "it looks enviously at me as I pass. It is jealous of my ass's feet." Most of the wagons were patched with boards of many colors, picked up or stolen here and there. As a matter of fact, the wagons of the tribe were placed in the rear of the village houses, so that the occupants of those houses, the innkeeper or the baker, being busy in the front part of their establishments, 152 KING OF CAMARGUE could naturally dispense with a too frequent appearance in the gipsy street. The nomads alone swarmed there undisturbed. They passed but little time in the wagons, except when they were on the road or tired or sick ; their days were passed in the open air, squatting in the dust, or on the steps of the little ladders which they lowered from the doors of their wagons to the ground ; or else they passed long hours lying in the shade under the w-agon — smoking their pipes and dreaming. For the moment, some of the women here and there through the camp were intent upon the same occupation: searching, in the bright morning light, for vermin among the matted hair of their children, whom they held tightly between their knees as in a vise. From time to time, one of the little fellows would howl with pain, when his mother inadvertently pulled or tore out one of his wiry, coal-black hairs. Then he would wriggle and squirm to get away, but the vise formed by the knees would nip him again and hold him tight, and there would be a squealing as of sucking pigs loth to be bled. Then blow^s would rain down and the shrieks redouble. Suddenly the urchin that was howling most lustily would cease, and follow, with a lively inter- est, the movements of a chicken from some neighboring cooj), or the antics of a hunting-dog that had wandered that way and w^as well worth stealing. The mothers went through with their matutinal task KING OF CAMARGUE 153 in an automatic way that said as clearly as possible : "It is of no use to try to do this, tor the vermin breed and always will breed ; but we must do something. It is always a good thing to be busy ; and then it makes an excellent impression, here under the eye of civilized people. They see that we are clean and neat." "Buy my dog," said one of them with a leer to an open-mouthed villager. "You will be well satisfied with his fidelity. He is faithful, I tell you ! so faithful that I have been able to sell him four times. — He always comes back ! ' ' All these women had a coppery, sunburned, almost black skin, and hair of a peculiar, dull charcoal-like black. — Some wore it twisted in a heavy coil on top of the head. Several of the younger women let it hang in long, snake-like locks over their breasts and backs. Their eyes also were a curious shade of black, very bright, like black velvet seen through glass. Life shone but dully in them, without definite expression. Some mothers were attending to their duties with a child on their back, wrapped in a sheet which they wore bando- leer-fashion, with the ends knotted at the shoulder. The little one slept with his head hanging, tossed and shaken by every movement. Red, orange, and blue were the prevailing colors of their tattered garments, but they were tarnished and faded and almost blotted out by layers of dust and filth ; — a smoke-begrimed Orient. 154 KING OF CAMARGUE Many of the women had short pipes between their teeth. The men who lay about here and there, with their elbows on the ground, were almost all smoking l^lacidly, their Sylvanus-like eyes fixed on vacancy. They made a great show of pride under their rags. Some were asleep under the rolling cabins. The line of wagons along the outskirts of the village was still in shadow, but at the head of the line, the first of the wagons, standing a little apart, beyond the line of the houses, was in the sunlight. This wagon, which was painted and kept up better than the others, was Zinzara's, and a few of the villagers had collected in the sunshine in front of it, attracted by the notes of the flute and tambourine. Livette, as she approached the group, had no suspicion that, in the wine-shop facing the wagon, behind the curtains of a window on the first floor, Renaud had stationed himself, there, at his ease, to watch the gipsy, who was playing the flute and dancing at the same time, her feet and arms bare. Zinzara held the flute — a double flute with two reeds diverging slightly — with much grace, and blew upon it with full cheeks, raising and lowering her fingers to suit the requirements of a weird air, sometimes slow, some- times furiously fast and jerky. Her head was thrown back, so that she appeared more haughty and aggressive than ever. As she played upon her flute, Zinzara danced — a dance KING OF CAMARGUE 155 as mysterious as herself. With her bare feet she simply beat time on the ground. Her dance was naught but a play of attitudes, so to speak. She constantly varied the rhythmical undulations of her flexible, vigorous body, whose outline could be traced at every movement beneath the clinging material of her dress. When the move- ment quickened, she stamped her feet faster, still without moving from where she stood, as if in haste to reach a lover's rendezvous, where languor would replace activity. Seated a few steps from the dancer, a young gipsy, with a vague, dreamy expression, was pounding with his fist, thinking of other things the while, upon a large tambourine, to which amulets of divers kinds were at- tached, — Egyptian beetles, mother-of-pearl shells, finger- rings, and great ear-rings, — which danced up and down as he played. And the tambourine seemed to say to the double flute: " Never fear : your mate is watching over you. I am here, father or betrothed, I, your strong-voiced mate, and you can sing freely of your joy and sorrow ; no one shall disturb you ; I am on the watch, and for you my heart beats in my great, sonorous breast." But to the gipsy's ear the music of the tambourine said something very different ; and with a smile upon her lips, blowing into her flute with its diverging reeds, raising and lowering her slender fingers over the holes, Zinzara, exerting a subtle influence over all about her, 156 KING OF CAMARGUE dressed in soft rags that clung tightly to her form and marked the outlines of her hips and of her breast in turn ; displaying her tawny calves beneath her skirts, which were lifted up and tucked into her belt, — Zinzara seemed not to see the spectators. Twenty or thirty people were looking at her, and still she seemed to be dancing for her own amusement ; but her witch's eye followed, without seeming to do so, the slightest movement of Renaud's head, the whole of which could be seen at times between the serge curtains with red borders, behind the windows of the wine-shop, under the eaves of the house across the way. When she saw Livette approach, the dancer beat her feet upon the ground more rapidly, as if annoyed, and the flute emitted a cry, a shrill war-cry, like the sound made by tearing silk quickly. Livette involuntarily shuddered, but she mingled with the group, momentarily increasing in size, and looked on. Zinzara made a sign, and uttered some strange, gut- tural words between two loud notes — words that were, evidently, a precise command, for a gipsy child, who had come to her side a moment before, glided under the wagon, whence he emerged armed with a long white stick, with which he motioned to the spectators to fall back a little. Then he stationed himself in front of Zinzara, in the centre of the first row of spectators, and, turning toward them, enjoined silence upon them KING OF CAMARGUE 157 by placing his finger on his lips. The word was passed along, and the bystanders ceased their conversation, realizing that something was about to happen. The dance was at an end. — The tambourine ceased to beat time. The flute alone sang on in Zinzara's hands, as her fingers moved slowly up and down. — Now it gave forth a thin, clear note, like the prolon- gation of the sound made by a drop of water falling in a fountain ; it was a sweet, insinuating appeal, as melancholy as the croaking of a frog at night, on the shores of a pond, at the bottom of an echoing, rocky valley. And, with the end of his wand, the child pointed out to one of the spectators something that came crawl- ing out from under the wagon. It was a tiny snake, with red and yellow spots, and it drew near, evidently attracted by the notes of the flute. Another followed, and soon there were several of them — five in all. When they were in front of the flute-player, between her and the boy with the wand, they raised their heads and waved them back and forth, slowly at first, then more quickly, keeping time with the flute. The serpents danced, and the mind of every spectator involuntarily compared their dance with the woman's that he had seen a moment before. There was the same undu- lating movement, the same evil charm, and every one was conscious of an uncomfortable feeling at the sight. 158 KING OF CAMARGUE Livette, surprised and strangely moved, thought that she was dreaming. The spectacle before her was curi- ously, deplorably in accord with the state of her heart. She did not understand its hidden, intimate connection with her own destiny, but she felt its baleful effects. Zinzara's glance, from time to time, swept over the girl's face, but did not rest upon it. On the subject of her own influence, Zinzara knew what she knew. Soft, soft as spun silk, the notes of the flute arose, very soft and prolonged, like threads extending from the instrument and winding about the necks of the little snakes ; and the little snakes followed the notes of the flute, which drew them on and on. Zinzara walked backward. The little snakes followed her as if they were held fast by the notes of the flute as by silken threads. The gipsy stopped, and the notes grew shorter, so to speak, like the threads one winds about a bobbin. Then the snakes approached the sorceress, and as Zin- zara stooped slowly over them, and put down her hands, still holding the flute, upon which she did not cease to play, the snakes twined themselves about her bare arms. Thence one of them climbed up and wound about her neck, letting his little head, with its wide open mouth and quivering tongue, hang down upon her swelling breast. And when she stood erect again, two others were seen at her ankles, above the rings she wore on her legs. Then she laid aside her flute and began to laugh. Her laugh disclosed her regular, white teeth. KING OF CAMARGUE 159 " Now," said she, " if any one will give me his hand, I will tell his fortune! " But no hand was put forward to meet hers because of the little snakes. Zinz'ara laughed aloud, and her laugh, in very truth, recalled certain notes of her double flute. At that moment, Livette started to walk away. "Come, you!" said the gipsy quickly, — "you re- fused to listen to me once, but to-day you must be very anxious to find out where your lover is, my beauty ! Give me your hand without fear, if you are worthy to become the wife of a brave horseman." Livette blushed vividly. Her two young friends arrived just then and heard what was said. " Don't you do it ! " said one of them in an undertone, pulling Livette's skirt from behind ; but, Livette, annoyed by the gipsy's expression, in which she fancied that she could detect a touch of mockery, put out her hand, not without a mental prayer for protection to the sainted Marys, The gipsy took the proffered hand in her own. The snakes put out their forked tongues. Livette was somewhat pale. They were both very small, the fortune-teller's hand and the maiden's. Renaud looked on from above with all his eyes, greatly surprised and a little disturbed in mind. The gipsy held Livette's hand in her own a moment, exulting to feel the palpitations of the bird she was l6o KING OF CAMARGUE fascinating. She had hoped to intimidate Livette, and the courage the girl displayed annoyed her. "Your future husband isn't far away, my beauty," said she, " but he is not here on your account, never fear ! On whose, then? That is for you to guess ! " Livette, already somewhat pale, became as white as a ghost, "That alone, I fancy, is of interest to you, my pretty sweetheart ! Then I'll say no more to you except this : Beware ; the serpent on my left wrist just whispered something to me. Look well to your love ! " A shudder ran through the spectators like a ripple over the surface of a swamp. One of the snakes was, in fact, hissing gently. The gipsy released Livette's hand ; as the girl turned to go away, she came face to face with Rampal. He had been wandering about the village since early morn- ing, and had just joined the group, unseen by any one, even by Renaud. Livette recoiled instinctively and in such a marked way that Rampal might well have taken it for an affront. Unfortunately, having left the front row, she was hemmed in by the crowd on all sides of her. "Oho! young lady," said Rampal, "so we don't recognize our friends! " "Good-day, good-day, Rampal," replied Livette, repeating the salutation as the custom is in the prov- ince ; "but let me pass! Make room for me, I say ! " KING OF CAMARGUE i6l ''Sur le pont d' Avignon,'" sang the gipsy, with a laugh, '•' tout le mojide paye passage J ^^ ^ Renaud, still behind his window, had at last recog- nized Rampal. Fuming with rage, but naturally wary, he considered whether he should rush down at once and attack him or wait until Livette had gone. Rampal did not always need a pretext to kiss a pretty girl, — but here was one ready-made for him ! "Do you hear, demoiselle?" said he. "You must pay the tollman of your own accord, or else he will pay himself!" He threw both arms about the poor child's waist. She bent back, holding her body and her head as far away from him as possible, but the rascal, hot of breath, holding her firmly and forcing her a little closer, kissed her twice full upon the lips. A fierce oath was uttered behind them in the air. Everybody turned, and, looking up, discovered Renaud shaking the old-fashioned window, which was reluctant to be opened. Two more wrenches and the window yielded, flew suddenly open with a great noise of break- ing glass, and Renaud, standing on the sill, leaped to the ground. "Ah! the beggar! the beggar! where is the vile cur?" But Rampal had already leaped upon his horse that was hitched near by to the bars of a low window, and was off at a gallop. ■f i62 KING OF CAMARGUE He rode as if he were riding a race, half-standing in his stirrups, his body bent forward, and plying inces- santly and very rapidly a thong that was made fast to his wrist, and that drove his horse wild by the way it whistled about his ears. " Coward ! coward ! " one of the young men present could not refrain from shouting after him. " Coward .■* oh ! no ! " said Renaud — "simply a thief! for if he weren't riding a horse he never intends to return, the fellow wouldn't run away — I know him ! " He turned to poor, frightened Livette. "Never fear, demoiselle," said he, "he shall not carry our horse to paradise with him." Was it Renaud's purpose, in saying this, to make the gipsy think that he was bent upon taking vengeance for the theft of his horse rather than for the insult put upon his fiancee? Perhaps so; but the devil is so cunning that Renaud himself had no idea that he was capable of such craft. As to the gipsy, she said to herself that Renaud, by jumping out of the window, instead of coming quietly down the stairs, had compromised his prospects of re- venge for the satisfaction of exhibiting his gipsy-like agility to her. He did, in truth, jump like a wild cat, and rebound as if he were equipped with elastic paws ! He was as agile as a true zingaro / He was as handsome and bold as a highwayman ! They are gipsies, to all intents, these wandering guardians of mares and heifers ! KING OF CAMARGUE 163 Renaud, who had disappeared long enough to buckle his horse's girth, rode by in a few moments upon Prince; the witnesses of the scene just enacted were still discuss- ing it. "Catch him! catch him! eat him, King!" cried twenty young men's voices in chorus. "With the King and the Prince arrayed against him, Rampal is a dead man," some one remarked, with a laugh. Renaud was already at a distance. He had not looked at the gipsy, but he felt that her eyes were upon him, and he felt now that they were following him from afar; and the feeling caused a pleasurable thrill, of which he was conscious, and for which he reproved himself vaguely on Livette's account, but without seek- ing to repress it. Yes, as he galloped along in his wrath, he galloped in a particular way in order that his wrath might show to good advantage, so that he might appear a handsome and graceful horseman, as he was in fact. He was conscious of every move- ment that he made — he fancied that he could see him- self, and was desirous to make a good appearance, he, the King ! The peacock, in the mating season, has more gorgeous plumage, and makes the greatest possible display of it. The nightingale and the redbreast have sweeter voices. All alike take pleasure in so arraying themselves as to give pleasure. 164 KING OF CAMARGUE "Where are you going, Livette?" her two friends asked her. "I am going to see monsieur le cure. I must have a talk with him, poor me ! for it was a great sin to listen to that sorceress, you know ! ' ' XIV JOUSTING Both Renaud and Rampal had spears. As he rode by the Neuf farm, half a league from Saintes-Maries, Rampal, who owned nothing in the world but his saddle, and had no spear, being at that time simply a drover out of a job, had spied one leaning against a fig-tree, and had appropriated it without dis- mounting, had "borrowed it without a word," thinking that he should probably need it to defend himself. Now he was galloping across the fields, leaning for- ward on his horse's neck, with his thong in his boot and the spear resting in the stirrup. Renaud had mistaken the road in his hot pursuit. Perhaps the gipsy was the cause of it, for, in spite of himself, in order to remain within her range of vision, Renaud had ridden straight toward the Vaccares, while Rampal had just taken the road to Aries, avoiding strat- agem in order to mislead his pursuer more effectually, for he said to himself that Renaud would surely argue 165 l66 KING OF CAMARGUE that he had made for the middle of the island to take refuge in some deserted Jass. Renaud divined Rampal's plan. "He will keep to the road," he suddenly thought, and feeling certain that he was right, he turned to the left and rode due west. Rampal, having the start of him by a full league, drew rein in the vicinity of Grandes- Cabanes, and having planted his spear-head in the ground, rested both hands upon it, then placed his feet, one after the other, on the hind-quarters of his horse, and stood there for some moments, scanning the plain behind him. Between two clumps of tamarisks he caught a glimpse of a horseman, like a flash of light, or like a rabbit scuttling between two wild thyme bushes — Renaud, beyond question ! Rampal saw that Renaud, if it were he, was about to take to the road, and he himself thereupon left it and rode in the opposite direc- tion on a line parallel to that his enemy was following in the distance. When Renaud reached the road and turned into it, Rampal had the Vaccares in front of him, and there he turned to the left and followed the shore. His plan was to cross the main stream of the Rhone, and reach the Conscript's Hut, in the middle of the gargate, the spot where he was confident of finding safe shelter in times of serious danger. Un- luckily for him, he had been seen — when he was standing on his horse watching his man — by a fisherman who was crouching on the edge of the canal, fishing for eels with KING OF CAMARGUE 167 a reed and a short line, at the end of which was a bunch of worms, strung and twisted together. " Have you seen Rampal, friend? " said Renaud, stop- ping his horse short as soon as he saw the fisherman, who was just about changing his place. "Ah! King, are you the man who is looking for him?" said the fisherman, an old man. "If he has kept to the road he took to get away from you, — for I saw he was watching some one behind him, — he ought to be on the shore of the Vaccares by this time, and from there, if he doesn't go back to Saintes-Maries, he will surely go up toward Notre-Dame-d' Amour. You have a good horse, and you can catch him between the Vaccares and the Grand' Mar. ' ' Renaud darted away as if he had wings. After an hour and a half of furious riding, — he was wise enough, however, to change his gait several times, — he drew rein, a little discouraged ; then, after a brief halt and a draught of brandy from the flask that never left his holsters, he resumed his headlong race — but not until he had thoughtfully allowed his horse to drink a swallow of water from the canal. When he was between the Grand' Mar swamp and the Vaccares, he found his own drove taking their midday rest there, under the guidance of Bernard, his young assistant. Horses and bulls were lying motionless on the shore of the Vaccares, in the twofold glare from sky and l68 KING OF CAMARGUE water, for it was well-nigh noon, and the light was dazzling. Bernard was resting likewise, lying on his back with his head on the saddle, not far from his horse, which was fettered near by, learning to amble. In front of Renaud lay the pearl-gray Vaccares, gleaming like a huge table of polished steel, in the centre of which a veritable white islet of sea-mews were sleeping, motionless as statues. Behind him stretched an ashen-gray plain, which could be seen only in spots — where the salt emerged in efflorescent crystals — glistening through a vast violet net- work of flowering saladelles ; for the saladelles spread out in broad, graceful tufts, with many ramifications, but without foliage, dotted with a multitude of lilac blossoms, between which the ground can be seen. And farther away the fields of glasswort began, with their plump, juicy leaves; they are a beautiful rich green when they are young, but the salt air soon turns them blood-red, so that the oldest and those nearest the sea are the darkest. Here and there the stunted tamarisk, with its gnarled trunk, dotted the plain, its sparse foliage tinged with pink by the blossoms hanging in tiny clusters, which, tiny though they be, are a heavy burden for its flexible branches. And in the dry, seamy bottoms were great j)atches of siagnes, triangles, apa'iuns of every kind, cancans or mmtn x^yj Two minutes later, powerless to control their ener- vated beasts, excited as they loere by the struggle and the %vi7id, the two adversaries rode at full speed through the drove. KING OF CAA\ARGUt for it was well-nigh noon Bernard was resting likewise on his back with his head on the saddle, not I'^r irom his horse, which was fettered near by, lear^n : to amble. In front of Renaud le pearl-gray Vaccares, I polished steel, in the ■ite islet of sea-mews were gleaming like a huge i centre of which a veritai sleeping, motionl^js^ ^^ijll^ Behind him stretch; an ashen-gray plain, which could be seen only in <'- M*; — where the salt emerged in efflc ^\■or orescent crv'stals— , ng through a vast violei net- . ,.rk i.f tlDWtfing o?:-; I'us ; lor the y(7/(Z//fc'//^i- spread ^'r)Tit L'^*! rcv.iT, irhicef.iT tiffts, with many ramifications, blossoms, between wh farther away the fie plump, juicy leaves : when they are young, Mood-red, '^ ■^'''f ''v" ' are the dat Here auu ,. .^ the st- • - ,,,i- ,iotf. .1 (■-,« plain, tiny though they be, are a branches. And in the liiv, m-vuh n'anj^les, apaiun the ground can be se^S??''^^ ^^d glasswort began, with their are a beautiful rich green :he salt air soon turns them ' f and those nearest tht^ ^ra tamarisk, with its gnarled arse foliage tinged with •n tiny clusters, which, T-i"'-; for its flexible <:>t • H 1 i ,/^^' $u%f^ ;Bwiv/ KING OF CAMARGUE 169 dwarf reeds used in making roofs and matting, thorn - broom and all sorts of aquatic plants, bright green, and straight as fields of grain ; their angular battalions, harvested in summer, go down before the scythe in broad half-circles. Above these patches of verdure, which bend and rustle with the faintest breath of air, hovered dragon-flies with enormous heads, — swallow- like insects, voracious devourers of gnats. They flew about with the swallows over the waters where the mos- quito is born, making a metallic sound among the reeds when their wings of transparent, black-veined mica came in contact with them. Renaud gazed at these familiar things and forgot him- self in them. For a second he fancied that he was watching his drove there, and that he had nothing else to do but remain with his beasts, absorbed, as they were, in calm, unreasoning contemplation of the desert that surrounded him. He ceased to love, to hate, to desire, and to pursue. The shadow of wings passed him by. He raised his eyes and saw, above his head, two red flamingoes. "They built their nest here this year," he thought. But Prince, the good horse, had recognized his favor- ite mares, and, stretching out his neck, opening his nostrils wide to inhale the fresh breeze of the swamp and the plain, raising his lips and displaying his teeth, he gave a neigh that made all the mares spring to their feet at a single bound, the bulls raise their heads, and lyo KING OF CAMARGUE Bernard himself jump up from the ground, spear in hand. Renaud, pressing his knees together and pulling his horse back, held him in hand, although he trembled under him and pranced up and down in the soft sand. At the same time, a sudden gust of the viistral swept across the plain and broke the mirror-like surface of the Vaccares into little waves. "If it is Rampal you are looking for," said Bernard, "he isn't faraway, you may be sure. When he saw me here, all of a sudden — just a moment ago — he rode off that way. And as he went out of my sight very soon, I believe he has gone into some cabin. You had better look around the Mejeane tower." Renaud was off again. Suddenly his eyes fell upon a low cabin with its rush- covered roof, shaped like a pyramid, or like a stack of straw, and surmounted, as they all are, by its wooden cross, bending back as if the mistral were gradually blowing it over. The thought came to him: "Rampal is there! His horse must be tired. He retraced his steps a short distance without Bernard's seeing him, and went into hiding there — hoping that I should be thrown off the scent and would ride by. Yes, he is surely there! " Renaud turned about, and rode straight toward the cabin, keeping a sharp lookout ; whereupon Rampal, KING OF CAMARGUE 171 who was really hidden there, watching his pursuer through the holes in the wall, rushed out, frightening an owl that flew away in dismay, and leaped upon his horse which was browsing in hobbles near by, but out of sight, at the bottom of a ditch. The mistral, which comes like a cannon-ball when it makes up its mind to blow at that time of day, suddenly began to roar. Renaud had put his head down to meet the squall, so that he did not perceive this manoeuvre of the enemy. So it was that Rampal seemed suddenly to come up out of the ground, not twenty feet from Renaud, who was not taken by surprise, however, but rushed at him, brandishing his spear, for all the world like one of the knights of the time of Saint Louis, of whom our legends tell. (Aigues-Mortes was then in its prime.) But Camargue is, as every one knows, the mother of the mistral — the vast sunny plain, with Crau, which, after sending the air up by dint of overheating it, is compelled to summon other air in order to breathe at all. And thereupon, down the Rhone valley, at the summons of the desert, comes a torrent of fresh air, which is the companion of the river, and is called the mistral. It roared through Renaud' s open vest as in the belly of a sail, and, taking Prince side\vise, kept him back a little. It was no easy matter to leap the ditch. That gave the advantage to Rampal, who was now trotting freely along, face to the wind. 172 KING OF CAMARGUE The ditch was now between the two men, and Ram- pal's only purpose in trotting along the edge of it was to limber up his horse's legs. Renaud, abandoning the idea of crossing the ditch for the moment, decided to follow along on his side. The two horsemen rode thus for a few moments. Rampal had prudently protected his face from the mistral with a red silk handkerchief, the ends of which flapped about his neck. Suddenly, taking advantage of a spot where the banks came somewhat nearer together, Renaud lifted his horse and landed on the other side of the ditch at the very instant that Rampal, having executed the same manoeuvre in the opposite direction, landed on the side Renaud had left. Renaud did not find a favorable spot for crossing at once, and Rampal gained upon him. Having at last crossed the obstacle once more, Renaud pursued Rampal at full speed, and so rapidly that, when Rampal turned to judge the distance between them, he saw Renaud hardly fifty paces behind him. He had just time to turn about, and waited for his foe, with lance in rest, leaning forward in his saddle, his feet planted firmly in the broad stirrups. Renaud, unluckily, was charging against the mistral. A sort of hail, consisting of sand and of the little snails that cling in myriads to the leaves of the cngancs, beat into his face and angered him. Five hundred feet away, Bernard was looking on — not KING OF CAMARGUE 173 saying a word, for fear of Rampal, but praying fer- vently for Renaud, and he fancied that he was watching two champions standing on the long ladders in the prows of the jousting boats, with their lances held firmly under their right arms. Rampal's spear, being suddenly low- ered too far by a false step of his horse, pricked the heel of Renaud' s boot and grazed Prince's flank, where- upon he jumped violently aside, as if he were avoiding the horns of a heifer. Renaud's spear tore the sleeve of his enemy's blue shirt and carried away the piece. The horsemen met and passed each other. Rampal was the first to turn, and rode after Renaud, ready to strike him from behind, while he was struggling to stop Prince, who had acquired too much momentum ; and Prince, hearing the othef horse's hurried step, and feeling his hot breath behind him, furious at being held back, fearing that he would be overtaken, turned about so quickly and unexpectedly in his wrath, that Rampal took fright and turned again, but involuntarily. Renaud, finding that his pursuer had once more become a fugitive, gave Prince a free rein. The stallion was off like the wind. The horsemen sped along, pushed on by the gusts, the wind being now behind them. The mares and heifers, the whole drove, in fact, stood with their heads in the air, staring eyes, and nostrils distended, watching the two men come down toward 174 KING OF CAMARGUE them, bending over their horses' necks, reins flying, as if pursued by the tempest along the shores of the pond, whose waters were dancing and rippling in the wind. Here and there the little tamarisks, bent almost double, seemed likewise to be fleeing from the storm. There were no more gnats or dragon-flies in the air. Above the Vaccares the spray was flying. The mistral swept everything clean. Two minutes later, powerless to control their ener- vated beasts, excited as they were by the struggle and the wind, the two adversaries rode at full speed through the drove. Thereupon, inflamed by the sight of their two stallions racing madly by, alarmed at the sight of the waving spears, intoxicated by the wild wind that found a way into their bodies through their fiery nostrils, the mares neighed and reared and started off together on the gallop. The heifers followed. Hundreds of hoofs and cloven feet beat the ground with a noise like the roaring of a tempest, and the whole drove, lashed by the mistral, which howled behind them, biting them and urging them forward, rolled across the plain like a second Rhone. And while Bernard was saddling his horse in hot haste to overtake them, the two enemies galloped in the midst of the hurricane as if borne on by the stamping of eighty beasts, whose hoofs raised clouds of sand and showers of spray and mud in the wind that travelled faster than thev ! KING OF CAMARGUE 175 At the head of this whirlwind, and still in the midst of it, Renaud succeeded in overtaking Rampal. When he was near enough to touch him, he selected the pre- cise moment when his horse was raising his left hind foot, to strike him on the right hind-quarter. The right leg, just as it was about to strike the ground, bent double under the blow of a spear directed by a man riding at a gallop, and Rampal and his horse rolled over among the countless galloping hoofs that shook the earth. Bulls and horses leaped over the two bodies lying there, man and beast, and when the drove, tired and subdued, came to a stop half a league farther on, Renaud, still riding Prince, was holding by the bridle his recaptured horse, bleeding only in the flank and at the nose. Standing beside him, with rage in his heart, stained with mud and dust, his face bleeding and the skin torn from the palms of the hands, Rampal, red as fire, was occupied in rearranging his breeches and fastening his belt. " Wait till next time, Renaud ! After this you would expect a man to seek revenge, eh?" But his shrill voice was drowned in the howling of the mistral. " Give me back my saddle ! " he shouted in a louder tone. The drover's saddle is his whole fortune. He cher- ishes it, loves it, takes pride in it. 176 KING OF CAMARGUE ' ' Your saddle ?' ' rejoiaed Renaud suspiciously. ' * Come with me and get it ! Bernard will give it to you." He shrugged his shoulders, and without another word rode after the drove, leading back to it the emaciated horse which Rampal had sadly misused. He was extremely glad that Blanchet had had no part in this duel. He recognized Blanchet from afar in among the mares, but sleeker and better cared for than the others. A true lady's horse, staunch as he was ! — And now he would be able to return him to his mistress, as he had his former horse, in addition to Prince. And his nostrils dilated with the pride of victory. He inhaled long draughts of the bracing salt air. He was thinking of two women — yes, of two, not one only! — who would .say of him when they heard \\hat had taken place: "That is a man!" And Renaud's noble horse shared his master's pride, as he capered about, in the liberty accorded him to choose his own pace, with the proud bearing of a stallion that had won the race in the sight of his whole drove. XV MONSIEUR LE CURE'S ARCHEOLOGY The cure of Saintes-Maries was a man of about sixty, well preserved, very tall and stout, with bright eyes whose light he quenched with spectacles, and energetic gestures which he purposely restrained. The parsonage was near the church, the doorway shaded by a number of elms. The house, in accord- ance with the prevailing custom of the province, was whitewashed once a year, outside and in, like the houses of the Arabs. The houses in Saintes-Maries are low. The streets are narrow, and wind 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 Ught 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 177 lyS KING OF CAMARGUE dangerous little wild beasts. Are not all maidens to be looked upon with more or less suspicion ? The maidens of Saintes-Maries wear the Aries 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 hand- kerchief 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 be- neath 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 docs not lead them to the cemetery until they are old and gray. KING OF CAMARGUE 179 The cemetery is a few steps from the village, a kw 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 herds- men 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 engaties 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 fisher- men 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, l8o KING OF CAAIARGUE tomb-like hills of sand, must have served as models for the massive pyramids, the tombs of kings, in the Egyp- tian 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 exam- ining 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 KING OF CAMARGUE 181 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 curi- ous 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 abnor- mally thick, high, and threatening walls, crowned with jutting galleries and surmounted by crenelated battle- ments, 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 l82 KING OF CAMARGUE 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, sur- mounted 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 stair- cases, between which is the grated door leading down KING OF CAMARGUE 183 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 Httle glass shrine con- taining 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 Foun- tain — 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; Aries has her theatre 184 KING OF CAMARGUE 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: "Imust 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 trans- formed 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 KING OF CAMARGUE 185 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 ver- tical hole through which to escape, and there is 3'our 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 Httle 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 lS6 KING OF CAMARGUE 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 : Concord- ance 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 par- ticularly subject to invasion by locusts, which sometimes have to be fought in Camargue, as in Africa, by regi- ments. As to the Concordance y 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 him- self: 2000 Philippon!^ (Jesus himself did not disdain KING OF CAMARGUE 187 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." * Here follows the true version of the story of the patron saints of Notre-Danie-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 Avild beasts. And this delta of the Rhone was infested with crocodiles. i88 KING OF CAMARGUE 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 Aries, 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 suze- rain, 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 KING OF CAMARGUE 189 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. lOV. M. L. CORN. BALBUS P. ANATILIORUM AD RHODANI OSTIA SACR. ARAM V. S. L. M, igo KING OF CAMARGUE 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 cur6, "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 pas- sengers 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?" KING OF CAMARGUE 191 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 Egyp- tian 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 fash- ion, 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. 192 KING OF CAMARGUE "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 con- vinced of her sainthness 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 hor- rible 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 dedi- cated 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 represent- ing the saint and the boatman, with this inscription : How the saiiit offered her body to the i/oatmati to pay her passage} "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, KING OF CAMARGUE 193 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 qiiidem promptiis est ; euro aute7?i infirnia. ' ' ^ 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 im- mersed 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 194 KING OF CAMARGUE only on the banks of the Rhone, and penduU)ics, so called because they hang their nests like little pendulums from the flexible branches swaying to and fro above the water ; and sfocking-fuakers, whose nests resemble the tissue of a knitted stocking ; and the alcyon, that is to say, the bleuret or kingfisher; and the sij-en, of the brill- iant 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 neighbor- hood because the herons' favorite place of assemblage was the pond of Galejon. There was one that bore on its pedestal the date : iSoy, and the words : Purchased at Aries 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 / Livette fancied that she could hear in the distance the mournful, heart-rending cry of the birds of passage, rising above the roar of the wind and the sound of the KING OF CAMARGUE 195 river shedding its tears into the ocean; donainating the mysterious sounds that fill the darkness. How many times had she heard the cries of cranes and petrels and Egyptian curlews over the Chateau d' Avignon in the season when the nights are long, when the sight of the fire rejoices the heart like a living thing full of promise, when the blackness of death envelops the world. The birds remind her also of the Christmas evenings, the evenings when the logs blazing in the huge fire-place and the many lamps seem to say : " Courage ! the night will pass." And it is then that the wheat shows its green stalk, saying likewise : " Yes, courage ! bad weather, like all other, comes to an end at last. ' ' Livette mused thus, and mechanically raised her eyes to the ceiling, from which the crocodile was hanging.' Livette did not say to herself that there was, some- where on the other side of the great sea, in the same Egypt to which Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary fled to protect the Child Jesus from the persecution of King Herod, a great river, the mighty brother of the Rhone, and that in the hottest hours of the day, on the islands in the Nile, the crocodiles crawl in great numbers out upon the overheated sands to expose their backs to the rays of a sun as hot as any oven. She did not say to herself that Saint Sara, the swarthy patron saint of the gipsies, is called by them the Egyp- tian, and that they water their gaunt horses in the Nile as well as in the Rhone. She could not say to herself— ig6 KING OF CAMARGUE because she knew it not — that the Egyptians inherit from the Hindoos a debased sort of magic, and that it was the same sort, even more debased without doubt, that gave Zinzara her power. Nor did Livette know that Zinzara carried in one of the boxes in her ambulatory house — between a crocodile from the Nile and a sacred ibis, both found in an Egyp- tian crypt — the mummy of a young girl, six thousand years old, whose face, from which the bandages had been taken, wore a mask of gold. She could conceive no connection between the ibis of the Nile and yonder creature of the same name killed within the year on the shore of the Vaccares, but she underwent the influence of all these mysterious connecting currents to which space and time are naught. The lifeless creatures, scattered all about her, lived again by virtue of the power of retaining their form forever. And fear seized upon her, for suddenly the mad idea, at once vague and precise, entered her mind of a resemblance between the profile of the great reptile hanging from the ceiling and the lower part of the gipsy queen's face. Livette thought that she must be ill, and rose to go, determined to wait no longer, but as she put out her hand to the door she uttered a cry. A centipede was crawling along the key, as lively as you please. She recoiled, and saw upon the white wall, at about the level of her head, a tarente, that seemed to be watching her KING OF CAMARGUE 197 with its pale-gray eyes. The farenfe is inoffensive, but Livette knew nothing of that. It is the Mauritanian gecko, which abounds in Provence, a reptile repugnant to the sight, with gray protuberances on the head and back like those upon cantaloupe melons. And then the little fellow, the tiny creature, resembles the croco- dile ! — Surely, Livette has the fever. "What's the matter, my child?" Monsieur le cure has entered the room. He has a kindly air that comforts the poor child at once. He points to a chair. She sits down and dares not say a word. Where shall she begin ? He urges her. "Well, my child?" He closes his eyes, that he may not embarrass her by his glance, which he knows to be searching. He has left his spectacles up-stairs on his great book. He closes his eyes ; and with compressed lips, presses his jaws against each other to a sort of rhythm, so that you can see his temples bulge out and subside like a fish's gills. It is a nervous affection. His hands are folded on his waist ; he clasps his fingers and plays at making them revolve about one another, mechanically; but he is keenly attentive. Monsieur le cure loves the souls of his fellow-men. He knows that they suffer, that life is infinite, and that they veer about and call to one another in the boundless expanse of space and time, like birds in a storm. He is reflecting. He is a kind-hearted igS KING OF CAMARGUE priest. He is imbued with the spirit of the Gospel. He is indulgent. Does he not know that some great saints have been great sinners? He desires to be kind. He knows how to be. What can be the matter ? At last, Livette speaks. She tells him everything ; the gipsy's first appearance, her refusal to give her the oil she asked for insolently, with jeering remarks about ex- treme unction ; then of the ominous spell she cast upon her, realized even now perhaps; the change in her Renaud's character, his coldness, his flight; and then, that very morning, the scene of the snakes; how she had been attracted— partly by curiosity, no doubt, but also by her conviction that she should hear something of Renaud. And how she gave her hand to the gipsy to have her fortune told ! That, she had done against her inclination ! She knew that it was wrong. Who would have dared say a moment before that she would commit such a sin? But she was afraid of seeming cowardly, not because of what the world would say, but because of her, the gitana, in whose presence she deemed it her duty to display pride and courage. She felt that she was very hostile to her. She was afraid of her, and yet, in her despite, she would defy her. She was the stronger of the two. — At last, she arrives at her most shocking avowal — she is jealous. A terrible thought has come into her mind; is it possible that Renaud could ? But no. Did he not, to save her from Rampal, risk his KING OF CAMARGUE 199 life by leaping down from a first-floor window the whole height of the house ? To be sure, Rampal had stolen a horse from Renaud, and Renaud had been looking for him for a long time Livette is undone. She has glanced at Monsieur le cure, who, before replying, is listening to his own thoughts, in order not to be diverted from the matter in hand. He is still playing with his clasped fingers, making them revolve about one another. Around them the swans, the pelican, the red flamingo, the petrel, the ibis, look on with their eyes of glass im- bedded in those heads that have lived ! There they stand, those phantom birds, with wings outspread and one claw put 'forward, exactly similar in shape, color, and plumage to the birds that are soaring above the Nile and the Ganges, beyond seas, at this moment, and no less like other birds that lived six thousand years ago. The reptile on the ceihng, laughing down at them with his numerous long, sharp teeth, does, in very truth, resemble some one a little — but whom? Livette, as she puts the question to herself, suddenly comes to the conclusion that she is insane, utterly insane, to have had such an idea ! She smiles at it herself. And she seems to feel her smile. She does feel it. She fancies she can see it ! And at the moment she is conscious of a sensation — and a painful sensation it is — of being there, in that 200 KING OF CAMARGUE same room, surrounded by those creatures and in the presence of a priest— ^^r the second time in her life ! Yes, all her present surroundings she has seen before — this that is happening to her has happened before. But the first time was a long while ago, oh ! such a long while ! The great reptile on the ceiling remembers, perhaps. That is why it laughs. — But she has forgotten all about it. Why is she here ? She no longer knows even that. She was a fool to come here ! This Camargue country, you see, is the home of malignant fever. It rises from the swamps in the sun- shine, with fetid odors, exhalations that disturb the brain and the action of the blood. From the dead vegetation, from the dead water, bad dreams and fever rise like vapor. There is an evil atmosphere there ; and the evil eye too, thinks Livette. But who can say of what the mummy lying in Zin- zara's wagon is thinking all this time — the mummy of which Livette knows nothing, and which is of the same age as Livette, plus six thousand years? Like Livette, it has wavy hair, very long, but somewhat faded by time. It was once as black as jet like that of the women of Aries. The mummy is of the same age as Livette, plus six thousand years ! The gipsies believe that so long as the dead body retains its shape, something of its spirit continues to dwell within it. Zinzara affirms that this mummy, which she procured in Egypt, speaks to her sometimes and tells her things. KING OF CAMARGUE 201 Ah ! if we should undertake to go to the bottom of the simplest facts, how they would puzzle us ! Our Saracen mares of Camargue, sisters of Al-Borak, Ma- homet's white mare, and the bulls of the Vaccares, broth- ers of Apis, sometimes absent-mindedly take into their mouths, in the heart of the swamps, the long, gently- waving stalk of the mysterious lotus that lives three lives at once, in the mud with its root, in the water with its stalk, in the blue air with its flower. Not without reason do the zingari, descendants of (^oudra, flock to the crypt of the three-storied church, there to adore the shrine of Sara, Pilate's wife — the Egyptian woman. Monsieur le cure, who is a profound student, is revolving all these things confusedly in his mind — with no very clear understanding of them himself — and pondering them. Ah ! if he could, how quickly he would sweep the island clear of the gipsy vermin ! But he cannot. Tradi- tion forbids. Sara in the crj^pt is their saint. There is a mixture of pagan and Christian in the affair, painful to contemplate certainly, but with which he has no right to interfere. The essential thing is that the Christian shall triumph over the pagan, that God shall prevail against Satan — for certain it is, whatever the gipsies may say, that they are not descended from the wise king who was a negro and who brought the myrrh to Jesus. How to protect Livette? " Do not remain alone with your thoughts, my child. 202 KING OF CAMARGUE Carry your rosary always with you, and tell your beads often, not mechanically but with your whole heart. Confide your sorrows to your good grandmother, whose Christian sentiments I well know. That simple-minded old woman has a great heart. "Avoid the town. Tell your father — who has always done as you wished, nor has he had reason to repent of so doing — to have an eye to his house, and never to leave you alone. Avoid Renaud for some little time ; at all events, do not seek him. He must have an oppor- tunity to' read his own heart clearly ; we must not — by trying to bring him back to you — help him to mistake his affection for you, which is not, perhaps, so deep as it should be. I will speak to him myself when I have an opportunity. The day after to-morrow is the day of the fete at Saintes-Maries. Do not fail to be present ; bring us that day a heart filled with faith and with the desire to do what is right. You will meet many unfor- tunates there. Turn your eyes toward those who are more wretched than yourself, and by comparing their lot with yours, you will see how fortunate you are, who have youth and good health. "The health of the soul depends upon ourselves. You will save yours. "You will be the one, on the day of the fete, to sing the solo of invocation just as the reliquaries descend — I ask you to do it, and, if need be, I will lay the duty upon you as a penance. KING OF CAMARGUE 203 " She who thinks on God and the holy women forgets all earthly ills. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. They who fear shall be reassured. Blessed are they who weep, for they shall be comforted ' ' Monsieur le cure broke off abruptly. He realized, the kind-hearted man, that his discourse was, by force of habit, degenerating into a commonplace sermon, and, rising from his chair, he walked quickly toward the door, bestowing an affectionate tap on the trem- bling maiden's cheek with two fingers of the hand that held his snuff-box, saying to her in a fatherly tone : " Go, little one ; you have a good heart. The wicked can do naught against us. I will pray for you at Mass. Everybody in the country loves you. Have no fear, my daughter." Livette took her leave. The cure, left to himself, sighed. He saw that Livette was confronted by an ill-defined, strange, diabolical peril, of the kind that cannot be turned aside, that God alone can avert. "It is fate," he muttered, employing unthinkingly a word of twofold signification.* "It is fate," he re- peated. "Life is a sea of troubles, and God is mys- terious." XVI ON THE ROOF OF THE CHURCH Renaud, after his victory, dismounted for a moment, and, sitting down beside Bernard, on the shore of the Vaccares, where the cattle and mares of his drove had resumed their attitude of repose, he set about reviewing recent events in his mind. To overturn his projected marriage, to ruin his future for the sake of the gipsy, for the sake of the unworthy passion that was at work within him — most assuredly Renaud had no such idea. When the first fury of his desire was worked off by wild leaps and bounds, after the fashion of his horse Prince, he found a way to be reconciled with himself His rugged honesty was impaired. He would try to satisfy his passion for the accursed gipsy when occasion offered ; and that, he felt very sure, would do Livette no wrong ! Like a clever casuist, he combated his own instinct- ively honest impulses with arguments which he invented with much labor, and then complacently refined and elaborated, playing tricks upon himself. 205 2o6 KING OF CAMARGUE Now that he could boast of having fought Rampal on Livette's account, — omitting in his thoughts the other two reasons he had had for fighting, namely, his deter- mination to recover the stolen horse and his desire to display his strength and courage to Zinzara, — he could return to the Chateau d' Avignon with his head in the air, and meet his fiancee again as if nothing had happened. Why, after all, should he be ashamed ? Had he not established a fresh claim to Livette's gratitude and the esteem of her relatives? He would take poor Blanchet back to her, — Blanchet, of whom she was so fond, — and he could tell old Audif- fret that the stolen horse was once more browsing, with the drove, on the reed-grass of the estate. No : after mature reflection, he was sure that there was nothing that need make him ashamed. Indeed, when one is not married, is he required to be so absolutely faithful ? And what is a man to do, when things fall in his way ? The eyes see before one has had an opportunity to pre- vent them ! Even after marriage, can one refrain from being moved by the sight of youthful loveliness? Can one control the movements of his blood? Desire is not a sin, and so long as Livette knew nothing, so long as she did not suffer through him, what reason had he, in all frankness, for self-reproach? Nothing had come about by his procurement. He was still determined not to speak to the gipsy woman — KING OF CAMARGUE 207 but he would be a great fool not to put out his hand if the golden peach should offer itself to him voluntarily. And the salt breeze that blew across the rushes, arousing the passions of the wild cattle, rushed through his veins, causing the blood to rise in sudden flushes to his cheeks. Of what avail against that breeze, which the heifers inhale with delight, is the " I will not" of a young man who feels his youth? The good Lord forgives it in others. " I have been worrying a great deal over a very small matter of late, ' ' thought Renaud. And he sagely concluded that he would return at once to Saintes- Maries, to set Livette's mind at rest, as it was his duty to do first of all, without avoiding or seeking out the other. Meanwhile, what had Livette been doing ? AVhen she left the cure, almost at the same moment that Renaud was unhorsing Rampal, Livette had no wish but to take her horse and ride home at once, without even waiting for dinner. She felt that she was lost in such close proximity to the ill-omened gipsies. Her first thought was that Renaud, if he had over- taken Rampal, whom he could not fail to master, would go without loss of time to the Chateau d' Avignon. But her second thought was that he would return to Saintes-Maries to make the m.ost of his triumph. She knew Renaud well ! He was proud of his strength and 2o8 KING OF CAMARGUE address. He was spoiled by the public at the races, who applauded with hands and voice, and he loved to hear the "Bravo, Renaud ! " — He would return to the town, yes, he surely would ! He might imagine, indeed, that she, Livette, had remained there, and return on her account — and a little on the other's account, at the same time ! — Ah ! poor child ! suspicion was just beginning to creep into her mind. Just God ! suppose that that zingara woman should fascinate her Renaud ! Livette, having found her horse still tied to the church- wall, sent him to the stable at the inn and went to the fisherman Tonin's to share his bouille-abaisse. "You did well, Livette," said Tonin, "you have avoided a sharp squall of the mistral. But I know what I'm talking about; it's nothing but a squall, and you can go home this afternoon quietly enough. It will be too hot, if anything. But what's the matter, that you're so thoughtful?" Livette heard but little of all that was said at the fisherman's table, and, after due reflection, returned to Monsieur le cure's after the meal was at an end. "Are you still at Saintes-Maries, little one ? " he said, with a sad smile. " I had a fright, my father " Livette sometimes addressed the cure thus, because of the custom in confession. "A fright? how was that? " KING OF CAMARGUE 209 "Suppose they have fought, who knows what may have happened ? Mon Dieu ! chance is uncertain, and that Rampal is so treacherous that Renaud may be the loser. I would like, with your permission, Monsieur le cure, to go up on the roof of the church at once ; from there I could see Renaud much sooner if he comes back here." The happy thought had come to her of watching her betrothed, as he himself had, that same morning, watched Rampal from the wine-shop window. The cure smiled again and good-humoredly took down the keys of the little staircase that leads to the upper chapel and thence to the bell-tower. He left the house, followed by Livette. At the foot of the great bare wall of the church, so high and cold, — a veritable rampart with its battlements sharply defined against the blue of the sky, — the good cure opened the small door. They ascended the stairs. When they reached the upper chapel, which is just above the choir of the church, as we know, the cure said : "I will remain here, little one, to offer up a prayer to the holy women ; you can goon alone." But Livette, without replying, knelt devoutly beside the cure for an instant, before the relics. The relics were there, behind the ropes coiled about the capstan, by means of which they were lowered into 2 10 KING OF CAMARGUE the church, as the Httle jug from which the lips of the faithful drank so eagerly was lowered into the miracu- lous well below ; — there they were, on the edge of the opening through which they were launched into space. Through this window-like opening into the body of the church Livette could see the chairs systematically arranged below, and, higher up, the galleries, the pulpit, and the pictures — all well-nigh hidden in the dark shadow, intersected by two rays of light that darted in, like arrows, through the narrow loopholes. Away down, below the gallery at the rear, opposite where she stood, the chinks in the great square door were marked like fine lines of fire by the sunshine without. She gazed for a long moment at the blessed shrines, and conjured them to turn aside the evil spell that she could feel about her. And, do what she would, as she gazed at the shrines, which had the appearance of two coffins laid side by side and welded together, Livette was conscious that her thoughts became more melancholy than ever. Had she not seen, year after year, some poor, infirm wretch in despair lie at full length on cushions in the acute angle formed by the two lids of the double coffin ? And how many of them had been cured ? One in fifty thou- sand, and only at long intervals ? And yet, what scores of ^•otive offerings that lofty chapel held, — pictures, commemorative marble tablets, KING OF CAMARGUE 211 crutches, guns with shattered barrels, and small boats presented by sailors saved after shipwreck ! Aye, but in how many years have the miracles been performed of which these offerings are the tokens? — One shudders to think how many. And Livette, well content to divert her thoughts from such painful subjects, left Monsieur le cure at his prayers, and went up on the roof of the church. The bright glare of the sky, bursting suddenly upon her, dazzled her. She had to close her eyes ; then she looked down upon the plain. The plain was a flood of light. The rascally mistral, that blows three, six, or nine days at a time when it has fairly buckled down to work, had simply taken a whim, as Tonin had foreseen. Not a leaf was stirring now. The sea had not had time to grow angry below the surface. It was laughing. The ponds were as smooth as mirrors. The sun shone hotter than ever in the clearer air. The swallows and martins circled about Livette's head, uttering in endless succession shrill, piercing cries that constantly came nearer and again receded. The pointed wings of the martins, also called arbaletriers or cross-bowmen, brushed against the turrets and shot into the loopholes like arrows. Livette looked off into the desert straight before her, and, not seeing what she expected, she let her glance wander here and there over the vast expanse, attractive 212 KING OF CAMARGUE but monotonous, which one can traverse, from end to end, without ever seeing aught but endless repetition of the same sand, the same tufts of grass, the same gleaming waters. From the top of the church the horizon seemed almost limitless in every direction, for the golden peaks of the little Alps, vaguely outlined down in the north- east, seem to be no more than jagged bits of cloud. When you are looking at them from that point, you have at your right, to the eastward, Crau and the sansouires, Martigues, and Marseilles beyond the salt marshes of Giraud, cut into rectangular mounds of glistening salt. In the west is little Camargue, with its temporary ponds, its rare groves of pine, its euphorbium and branching asphodel, and its Etang des Fournaux, the father of mirages, and filled with shells, although it has no connection with the sea. In this vast, flat region, the mind and the eye fall into the habit of looking always to the horizon, embra- cing as much space as possible in the hope of finding some inequality. But they cannot escape the unchanging monotony, even less varied than the monotony of the sea, for the sea changes color, and is by turns black, blue, pale- green, dark-purple, or golden. In our desert there are everywhere the same tamarisks, the same reeds, and — round about the six thousand hectares covered by the waters of the Vaccares — always KING OF CAMARGUE 213 the same horizon Hnes, nowhere absolutely unbroken, but almost everywhere festooned with clumps of tama- risks ; the mirage will always show you a pond gleaming in some spot of the plain where none is to be found ; and the fisherman, walking along the shore, increases enormously in size as he recedes, because of the re- fraction. Sometimes the month of May is as hot in Camargue as August. • ' Au mois de Mai Va comme il te plait." Livette was dazzled by the glare, and lowered her eyes to scan, with her keen glance, the most distant clumps of tamarisks, to follow the almost invisible ribbon of the cart-road that leads from the Vaccares to Saintes- Maries. Her eyes are tired, and scorching in her head. There is nothing in the landscape to give them rest. Everywhere the treeless soil exhales a burning breath that rises in visible vibrations. The spirit of the earth breaks its bonds and hovers over her. She can see it ascending in hot waves. Her eyes perceive the trans- parent undulations, the heat trembling in the cool air, the very soul of the interior lire that trembles so to the sight that one fancies he can hear it rustle. It is the never-ceasing dance of the reflected light. Weary of the glare of the plain, Livette turned to- ward the sea, but the sea was simply an immense bur- nished mirror which flashed back at the eyes, from the 2 14 •^'NG OF CAMARGUE countless facets of its swiftly moving fragments, the glow of the blazing sky multiplied beyond expression. \V'hen she looked down once more upon the plain, she saw, about a league away, a horseman trotting briskly toward the Saintes-Maries. By an indefinable some- thing in the bearing of that tiny speck she recognized her Renaud. So no harm had come to him ! She was on the point of going down again, when sud- denly she forced herself to bide a little there, to see what he would do when he arrived. He was already passing the public spring. He turned to the left, and 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 stand- ing 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, indi- cating that it was four o'clock. KING OF CAMARGUE 215 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 (^oudra 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 like- wise. 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. 2i6 KING OF CAMARGUE 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 ari)apter XVi From embrasure to embrasure she rati, to follow htm with her eyes ; and in a few seconds he rode out into the square in front of the church, at the foot of the Cahary erected there. She leaned over and watched him. Where was he going? He had stopped. KING OF CAM^ ;i she had finished ,>.;cly thou hast killed • :t how is it that I do n tivic a norbemaa as me ^^"iii^^^Y t"# ^^..^^h^^-': ^"^^ > .^Sv:^;)t^'ii ^-^^s^u^^o, nor the compliment I i>.^ ;.^-«4^s\j^"ifeT^^Iv(?»vT^'^do does uie belr-r :>ervjce i: ^,^<^^Ht"^iik ^"4^^'^^s^^8§'''' mav thy C. ;rd thee, ). * . ki^ows me ! " ird nothin,' .;t the sharp, incisive tone V spoke '.mid not distinguish her V. ijiUi. s'cni awa) /ok ^uod care, before lie con he square, to send a kiss to Uie ii. ' V , 'ips— a kiss which 1 to hi ne cu her smile, a bit raiilcry, but whiv:ii was in 1 ves a token of 1 love. V thereupoj. 'ed to himself Sil^ Oi KING OF CAMARGUE 217 that he had returned to Saintes-Maries in quest of noth- ing else than this compliment from the gipsy — some- thing that drew him nearer to the seductive creature! Now he had no choice but to turn back. He pre- ferred 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, intend- ing 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 bad 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 219 220 KING OF CAMARGUE 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 ex- pect, — more amiable, in point of fact, than he had any right to hope, — he believed her, as if it had been re- vealed 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 inexpli- cable 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 KING OF CAMARGUE 221 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 direc- tions, 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 van- quished 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 ; Napo- leon I. on the Bridge of Areola, 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." 222 KING OF CAMARGUE "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. 1 am just getting ready." Nothing more was said. AVhen 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 trot- ting 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. KING OF CAMARGUE 223 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 Re- naud 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 ! — 224 •^'NG OF CAMARGUE 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 w-ent slowly KING OF CAMARGUE 225 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 dehght, 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 affecta- tion 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 226 KING OF CAMARGUE leave. Audiffret remonstrated, and invited him to sup- per. 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 mum- hXmg paiers upon her rosary of olive-nuts, gazing fear- lessly, 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 i)ang, 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! " KING OF CAMARGUE 227 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 mas- ters who are always absent — like all the landowners of Camargue, who prefer to dwell in cities, — Paris, Mar- seilles, 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 an- imated, stood up for the times we live in. The grand- mother, grave and serious as always, said once to 228 KING OF CAMARGUE 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 inter- ested 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 Aries ! 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 KING OF CAMARGUE 229 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. "Audififret," 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 mar- riage 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 grate- ful 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. 230 KING OF CAMARGUE 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, recoil- ing 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 Langue- doc 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 donda'ire, 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, omni- buses, as far away as possible, be it understood, from the gipsy encampment. 231 232 KING OF CAMARGUE Around the little town, the hundreds of vehicles con- stitute 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 lumi- nous shadow of the awnings. From time to time, it parts, with loud shouts, before a drovet, 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 hke islets in the midst of the sea of prom- enaders, 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. KING OF CAMARGUE 233 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 Proven gal costume, dark-skinned girls with white teeth beneath their sensu- ous 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 cun- ning 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 Avhich the relics descend. 234 KING OF CAMARGUE At four o'clock precisely, the shutter of the high window up yonder, under the ogive arch of the nave, will open. The relics will come down toward the out- stretched 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 invoca- tion. 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 accu- mulated 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 KING OF CAMARGUE 235 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 swal- lows and sea-gulls, for centuries past it has looked upon the glistening desert, the dazzling sea, the dumb infini- tude 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. 236 KING OF CAMARGUE "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, implor- ing 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 ! " KING OF CAMARGUE 237 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 inar- ticulate 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." ^ " Saintes Maries / " roared the people; uttered at the same moment by a thousand voices acting upon a com- mon 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, hus- bands, mothers, fathers, of the sufferers, availed them- selves of their own strength to call for help, howling like wounded wild beasts turned toward the dawn. 238 KING OF CAMARGUE All this suffering multitude, all this swarming heap of tainted, diseased flesh, uttered the terrifying roar of a monster in pain — and still the pretematurally 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 bril- liant 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 " Saifites 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. " Dicu 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 h bord, Vous montra des plages fleuries ! " !• '' SainUs 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 ! KING OF CAMARGUE 239 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 240 KING OF CAMARGUE 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 ap- peared. 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 de- scended, 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, some- thing ascends from hell ; and we suffer with hope and fear. * ' Saintes Maries ! ' ' ortapfer X\mM The relics slowly descended, and, amid the roars that greeted them, Livette, in her overwrought imagination, fancied that she saw herself clinging to Renaud, be- seeching him to be faithful and kind to her, and not to go to tliat other woman. KING OF CAM A t;icro was a siicnt-c as of uttei "- -"- > ^lurcn. Of what was Livctte think i what?— For the last minute, just God! her .. - uad beer ' lately fixed upon the black openi^ ding to th^ ^^j^'- In that opening, on a level \\ .<; uie floor of the church, she had seen a head : it was the gipsy queen, who had come up from the crypt, ;. mischievous mood, curious to see Livette singing. • ;raediately below the great altar she emerged from i .>c dark depths of the cellar amid the as^sfvU^^^'^ i%^apers. She came from her kingdon? below* ^w.. ViHi her copper crown and gleaming ear-rings, -hef^sw.Trthy skin and her fiery black eye- mM to I ' gimuine devil from hell. Zinzura 't t»... v^eps more and her bust ap- .v\ ^^^^f?.^?^.^^ mi^'^V^ AA%V^^^ c^=¥<^ ^^ ^Vu^^^^^ why Q\ \Q«ltoesiQTiHkl^V'itiii'>aW\vhr\N\Wi3sS^>^