Part 19

Renaud placed lilies on her grave. She sleeps in the cemetery of Saintes-Maries, at the foot of the dunes, under the cultivated lilies, among the wild asphodels, on the sea-shore.

Renaud returned to the desert, too much like the bull that, when wounded in the arena, returns to the solitude of the swamps, where he can lick his wounds, give free vent to his rage, bellow at the clouds, and to no purpose, but to his heart's content tear at the steel left in the wound.

One day they found, on the shore of the Vaccares, Rampal's bleeding body, pierced by horns in two places. Bernard alone saw his duel with Renaud one evening, when the sky was red with the afterglow. They fought hand to hand, in the midst of the drove, and Renaud, lifting his enemy from the ground in his arms, laid him face upward, dead, on the horns of a heifer that came rushing at them and, with one motion of her bulky head, tossed a corpse into the air.

Rampal died without a cry. He lay three days where he fell. The black bulls, that mourn nine days when one of their kind falls dead in the pasture, bellowed for three days around Rampal's body, at a respectful distance.

Bernard alone saw the duel and said nothing; but the people of the desert knew; they guessed the truth.

Since that, Renaud has become like a phantom himself.

In all weathers, summer or winter, rain or shine, he can be seen here and there, in the Camargue desert, sitting erect and melancholy on his horse, spear in hand.

He regrets Livette. He loves Zinzara. He weeps only for himself, the wretched creature! He has lost the paradise of affection he had dreamed of, and the appetizing hell of savage love he had tasted. He has nothing. It seems to him that Livette's death, for which he blames himself, has left him free to abandon himself to his passion for the other; but the other is absent--and, though absent, she tortures him as relentlessly as on the day when, clinging to his horse's mane, she defied him with insulting words, and aroused his passions, while he dared not shake her off, trample upon her, or seize her.

The memory of her is upon him like the gadfly that persists in following back the bloody track of its sting. Vainly does he shake himself; he cannot rid himself of it. Renaud loves Zinzara; he longs for her without hope, and, ruled by that single desire, he feels no other, so that the unexpended power of his youth accumulates within him and drives him mad.

The friends' houses, the fetes he used formerly to visit, have no further interest for him, because the only being he seeks cannot be found. The desert, once peopled with hopes in his eyes, has become an empty void. The roads that traverse it no longer lead anywhere.

He surprises himself sometimes, at night, bellowing with the bulls, against the wind that annoys them, toward the distant horizon. He is like one possessed. A devil dwells within him.

When he is weary of wandering about and of being in the saddle, and chooses to lie down and sleep for a day, he repairs to the cabin of his love, in the _gargate_, and there, full sure of being undisturbed, raves like a wild beast, in his frenzy at being alone. In the morning, he emerges from his retreat, more depressed, more miserable, more haunted with visions than ever.

At times, he fancies that he sees Livette under his horse's feet, imploring wildly, with hands outstretched--but he digs his spurs into his horse and rides on. A terrible shriek constantly rings in his ears.

He rides toward another spectre that calls him from the farthest point of the horizon.--He says, to any one who cares to listen, that he has come from Egypt, where he was a king, and that he will return there some day, King of Camargue.

His disordered mind seems the very incarnation of the wild moor. He fancies that he is flying about in circles with the birds of the swamps that weep in the drizzling rain. The _mistral_ lashes his wings. When the wind blows through his hair, he pities the poor grass of the plains because the _mistral_ is torturing it.

All the lamentations of the reeds and swamps, of the river and the sea, are but the ringing in his ears, and their loud wailing is constantly punctuated by a shriek--oh! so heart-rending it is!--the shriek of Livette!

As the bell-tower of the church of Saintes-Maries is filled with owls, so his heart is full of the remorse of a Christian; and the cure's kindness to him does not drive it away.

When he stands upon the sea-shore, many times he feels an overpowering desire to urge his horse, bleeding beneath the spur, far out to sea, farther and farther, until he vanishes in the direction of the country, vaguely seen in dreams, from which the saints and gipsies come--but something stops him; his destiny holds him back; he belongs to his kingdom.

If he has known one hour's peace of mind, it was on a certain morning when, among the usual hideous nightmares inspired by the memory of Zinzara, he had a pleasant dream, in which he saw Livette, dressed in white, with lilies in her hands like the saints in church pictures, smiling and saying to him: "I have forgiven you. FORGIVE YOURSELF."

The respite was of brief duration, for the herdsman did not know that excessive repentance is a crime, when it goes so far as to dry up the springs of will-power in a man, when it renders sterile his field of activity, when it bars the way to doing better in the future.

Self-pardon, at the proper time, after due penance has been done, is one of the secrets of the wise among men; for, without it, the first misstep would lead to never-ending despair, and would render all courage useless forever.

Such was the cure's opinion, which Renaud listened to, in the confessional, without paying heed to it.

He suffers, therefore, incessantly, awaiting the hour when his suffering shall be allayed. He is like the camping-grounds abandoned by shepherds and flocks, the _jasses_ of the desert, still black from an old conflagration, and surrounded by briers where rose-bushes once flourished. He is like the aloes that wither instantly in desolation, after the stalk their love has caused to bloom has risen high into the air.

The dream in which Renaud saw Livette was explained to him several times by Monsieur le cure, but always to no purpose.

How, indeed, could his remorse cease, when his passion still endured, and when he was constantly committing anew, in desire, the sin that caused all the misery?

My friends, there is but one wise course to pursue: "Plant a tree, build a house, rear a child. Be patient--everything comes in due time. The thing that does not happen in a hundred years, may happen in six thousand. The future is still yours!"

When Renaud, in the dreams of his unhealthy life, feels, as he sometimes does, that his love is stronger in him than his passion, it seems to him as if Livette were drawing him toward death, but truthful, kindly beings never inspire thoughts of self-destruction.

Of one thing, at least, he is certain. He feels that voluntary death would not remove him from the circle of the accursed. He would, on the contrary, descend still lower in the spiral pit of mortals damned by love.

They say that persons drowned in the Rhone, borne along without doubt by the irresistible current, which brings them all together at the mouth of the river, return, on certain evenings, to hold a carnival of despair on the surface of the water.

Happy are they since they are, on those occasions, united.

But they who are drowned in stagnant waters, and they who, to join them, die by their own hand, are never aught but solitary spectres. They seek each other all the time, but always unavailingly. They are the souls of the damned. They wander through the desert, calling to one another; but never even approach or see one another; and at night, in the deserts of Crau and Camargue, the traveller hears long-drawn, wailing cries, flying unavailingly hither and thither over the vast plains, forever and forever.

Even the clouds call and answer one another in their aerial flight.

NOTES

[1] "Do not wear out your shoes on the hard roads; Rather take boat and so descend the Rhone.

"Leave Lyon and Valence behind; Salute them with a nod as you pass beneath their bridges.

"Avignon is the queen,--but pass her by as well; Not till you come to Arles will you find your love----

"The plain is fair and broad, O comrade,---- Take your love _en croupe_, and off you go!"

[2] "On the bridge of Avignon every one must pay toll."

[3] The name Vincent is pronounced very much like _vingt cent_, twenty hundred, or two thousand.

[4] "May this work of mine, begun in God's name, be constantly blessed with the favor of Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit wisely guide my hand, my pen, and my understanding."

[5] What would the good cure have said had he been told that a contemporary poet, Monsieur Pierre Gauthiez, has adopted the too common error? According to him, an Egyptian Marie came to Camargue in the boat with the saints.--When they approached the shore, it became necessary to reward the devoted boatman who had helped them to accomplish the prodigious journey. One of them gave him a sprig of rosemary that had touched the lips of the Christ; another, a lock of her fair hair. And as to the third--

"L'Egyptienne au doux oeil sombre, Debout aupres d'un olivier, Regarda le beau batelier.

"Elle prit son voile de lin, Et decouvrit sa chair de vierge Pure et luisante, ainsi qu'un cierge, Sous le soleil a son declin. Elle fut toute nue, et comme Sur le sable roux, le jeune homme S'agenouillait, la levre en feu, Tendant ses bras comme vers Dieu, La sainte, sans robe ni voiles, Pareille aux celestes etoiles, Lui dit: 'Tu vois, mon batelier, Je n'ai que Moi pour te payer!'"

(Translation.)

"The Egyptian of the soft dark eye, standing beside an olive-tree, gazed upon the comely boatman.

"She put aside her linen veil and discovered her virgin flesh, all pure and glistening, like a wax taper, beneath the setting sun. She was quite naked, and, as the young man knelt on the red sand, with lips on fire, holding out his arms to her as if to God, the saint, like the stars in heaven, wearing no gown or veil, said to him: 'Thou seest, my boatman, I have naught but Myself wherewith to pay thee!'"

[6] The spirit, indeed, is willing, but the flesh is weak.

[7] The _tarasque_, perhaps, is nothing more than a reproduction of the crocodile of the Rhone, increased in size to an absurd degree by the popular imagination. This one, the last that was seen in Camargue, so they say, is hanging to-day in the _Hopital des Antiquailles_ at Lyon, with an inscription stating the source from whence it came: "Gift of M. le Cure of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer."

[8] _C'est le sort._--_Sort_ may mean _fate_, and it may also mean _spell_, being used in the latter sense almost synonymously with _sortilege_. It may also mean _chance_.

[9] "When you were upon the great deep, without oars to row your boat, Saintes Maries! Naught but the sea and sky about you--with all your eyes you appealed to the verdant shore to be gentle."

[10] "Beneath the sun, beneath the stars, with sails made of the gowns you wore--Sail on, O ship!--seven days and nights you sailed and sailed and saw no vessel, large or small--naught but the sea and the great deep!"

[11] "God, who makes of a lightning-flash His scourge, wherewith to scourge the sky and sea, Saintes Maries! guided the bark to a safe harbor--an angel, who appeared on board, pointed out the way to the verdant shore."

[12] "Kneeling before God's tabernacle, we, stained with sin from birth, do invoke your power, for whom God performed this miracle--Holy women, protect us!"

[13] _Comment s'appelle ton chien?_--In common parlance--What is your dog's name? The joke is lost unless it is translated literally.

Transcriber's Note

Minor punctuation errors have been repaired.

Hyphenation and accent usage has been made consistent.

A single closing quote was omitted on page 7. The transcriber has added one in what seemed the most appropriate place--"... 'Look! I am dark, but I am beautiful! ... So be it!'"

The following typographic errors have been fixed:

Page 6--Carmargue amended to Camargue--"... this 'Chateau d'Avignon,' the finest in all Camargue."

Facing page 64 (illustration caption)--Renard's amended to Renaud's--"... and pulled back with all her strength the double rein of Renaud's horse, ..."

Page 111--Moveover amended to Moreover--"Moreover, after the harvest was gathered, ..."

Page 300--house amended to horse--"... "we will ride together till night. My horse has wings.""

The frontispiece illustration and introductory front matter has been moved to follow the title page. Other illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph.

The Table of contents has been added by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader.

The List of Illustrations has been moved from its original location on page 349 to the beginning of the book.