Part 7

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 malignant fever, bred in the swamps, smites you on the hip?

Renaud was anxious to know if Rampal was occupying 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 discovered 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 necessary, 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.

That night he lay in one of the great cabins which serve as stables--winter _jasses_--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 Arles."

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, 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 _muraenae_, possessors of voracious 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 respective ways.

The drover's thoughts wandered from the cramp-fish and the _muraenae_ 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 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 arms, taking pleasure in the sense of being naked in the open air, of feeling the caressing breath of the sea-breeze 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, covered 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, 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 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 prepares 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 opportunity offered, she would assist the mischievous propensities 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 impulses, satisfied her desire for revenge, her love or her hate, without stopping to consider 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 profound mystery of the sphinx repeated. Her actions 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.

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 debauchery 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, 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 herself protected by something that relieved her of responsibility. 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 contempt. 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 each one of them to believe 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, 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 possession 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 labyrinthine 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."

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 gossamer,--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 distance. 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 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 swallows 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 procure their daily supply of water.

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 needless 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. 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--and without them what would the country live on? poor we! Where are our harvests? Where are our wheat 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, everything 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 25th! 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 companions, 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.

"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!