Part 2

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 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.

III

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 _manades_, 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, jumping, 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.

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.

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 _manades_ toward the river. When they reach the shore, they press close upon them to force them in. The earth-colored water of the river flows 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, 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 rearguard 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 Arles, Avignon, Nimes, Aigues-Mortes to the branding-places at Camargue the bulls that are to take part in the sports at the latter place.

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 ground, beating 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 Arles, 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 certain 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.

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 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, unexpectedly 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 brandings, 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 rearrange 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 Arles, 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 performed 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 complexion, 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 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 refraction 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 _ferrade_, nor because 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 little heart in his great hand.

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 _seden_, as it is called in Camargue, is a halter, but a halter made of mares' hair braided, it being customary 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 _seden_, 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. From a piece of canvas tied around his waist and swelling 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 _seden_, 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 without effort, and of wide range.

"Avignon est la reine---- Passe encor; Tu ne verras qu'en Arles Tes amours----

"La plaine est belle et grande, Compagnon---- Prends tes amours en croupe, En avant!"[1]

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."

"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, _en croupe_ like a girl? No, no; no false shame, that is my place. We will take off my saddle, and you can bring it to me to-morrow."

"Very luckily," said Renaud, "Rampal didn't take mine, which I never lend."

Livette jumped down from her horse; and at the breeze made by her skirt a cloud of great flies and enormous mosquitoes rose and flew buzzing about her. Blanchet's snow-white rump looked as if it were covered with a net of purple silk, there was such a labyrinth of little streams of blood crossing and recrossing one another. Another instant, and gadflies and mosquitoes settled down again upon the bleeding surface and dotted 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, Renaud. Pray, didn't you like the city of Lyon we hear so much about?"

There was a long silence, broken only by the monotonous 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?"

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 disordered, 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." They remained bending forward, she over the rope which she seemed to be examining attentively, he over Livette's hair. Livette wore her "morning head-dress," consisting of a little 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 temptation 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, accustomed 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."

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 saddle 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 intervals. The good horse flew over these clumps, scarcely touching the tops, landing always between them in the damp sand, from which, however, by force of long habit, he withdrew his feet without effort, calculating 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 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, exerted himself to please. He was careful about his dress, paid more attention to the adjustment of his neckerchief, 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, my 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.

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.

V

THE LOVERS

Livette was so fresh and sweet that people often repeated, 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, perhaps, for one of his own class.