Part 11

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. IOV. M. L. CORN. BALBUS P. ANATILIORUM AD RHODANI OSTIA SACR. ARAM V. S. L. M.

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 cure, "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 passengers 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?"

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 Egyptian 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 fashion, 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.

"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 convinced of her saintliness 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 horrible 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 dedicated 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 representing the saint and the boatman, with this inscription: _How the saint offered her body to the boatman to pay her passage._[5]

"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, 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 quidem promptus est; caro autem infirma._"[6]

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 immersed 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 only on the banks of the Rhone, and _pendulines_, so called because they hang their nests like little pendulums from the flexible branches swaying to and fro above the water; and _stocking-makers_, whose nests resemble the tissue of a knitted stocking; and the _alcyon_, that is to say, the _bleuret_ or kingfisher; and the _siren_, of the brilliant 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 neighborhood because the herons' favorite place of assemblage was the pond of Galejon. There was one that bore on its pedestal the date: 1807, and the words: _Purchased at Arles 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 river shedding its tears into the ocean; dominating 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.[7]

Livette did not say to herself that there was, somewhere 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 Egyptian, and that they water their gaunt horses in the Nile as well as in the Rhone. She could not say to herself--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 Egyptian 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 with its pale-gray eyes. The _tarente_ 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 crocodile!--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 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 extreme 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 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 imbedded 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 ceiling, 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 same room, surrounded by those creatures and in the presence of a priest--_for 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 sunshine, 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 Zinzara'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 Arles. 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.

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, Mahomet's white mare, and the bulls of the Vaccares, brothers 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 Coudra, 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. Tradition forbids. Sara in the crypt 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. 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 opportunity 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 unfortunates 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.

"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 trembling 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.[8] "It is fate," he repeated. "Life is a sea of troubles, and God is mysterious."

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 instinctively honest impulses with arguments which he invented with much labor, and then complacently refined and elaborated, playing tricks upon himself.

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 determination 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 Audiffret 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 prevent 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--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?

When 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.