Part 12

Her first thought was that Renaud, if he had overtaken 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 most of his triumph. She knew Renaud well! He was proud of his strength and 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?"

"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 go on 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 the church, as the little jug from which the lips of the faithful drank so eagerly was lowered into the miraculous 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 thousand, and only at long intervals?

And yet, what scores of votive offerings that lofty chapel held,--pictures, commemorative marble tablets, 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 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 northeast, 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, embracing 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 the same horizon lines, nowhere absolutely unbroken, but almost everywhere festooned with clumps of tamarisks; 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 refraction.

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 transparent undulations, the heat trembling in the cool air, the very soul of the interior fire 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 toward the sea, but the sea was simply an immense burnished mirror which flashed back at the eyes, from the countless facets of its swiftly moving fragments, the glow of the blazing sky multiplied beyond expression.

When 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 something 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 suddenly 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 standing 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, indicating that it was four o'clock.

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 Coudra 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 likewise. 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.

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 that he had returned to Saintes-Maries in quest of nothing else than this compliment from the gipsy--something that drew him nearer to the seductive creature!

Now he had no choice but to turn back. He preferred 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, intending 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 had 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 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 expect,--more amiable, in point of fact, than he had any right to hope,--he believed her, as if it had been revealed 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 inexplicable 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 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 directions, 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 vanquished 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; Napoleon I. on the Bridge of Arcola, 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."

"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. I am just getting ready."

Nothing more was said. When 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 trotting 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.

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 Renaud 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!--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 went slowly 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 delight, 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 affectation 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 leave. Audiffret remonstrated, and invited him to supper. 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.