Part 9

"Buy my dog," said one of them with a leer to an open-mouthed villager. "You will be well satisfied with his fidelity. He is faithful, I tell you! so faithful that I have been able to sell him four times.--He always comes back!"

All these women had a coppery, sun-burned, almost black skin, and hair of a peculiar, dull charcoal-like black.--Some wore it twisted in a heavy coil on top of the head. Several of the younger women let it hang in long, snake-like locks over their breasts and backs. Their eyes also were a curious shade of black, very bright, like black velvet seen through glass. Life shone but dully in them, without definite expression. Some mothers were attending to their duties with a child on their back, wrapped in a sheet which they wore bandoleer-fashion, with the ends knotted at the shoulder. The little one slept with his head hanging, tossed and shaken by every movement.

Red, orange, and blue were the prevailing colors of their tattered garments, but they were tarnished and faded and almost blotted out by layers of dust and filth;--a smoke-begrimed Orient.

Many of the women had short pipes between their teeth. The men who lay about here and there, with their elbows on the ground, were almost all smoking placidly, their Sylvanus-like eyes fixed on vacancy. They made a great show of pride under their rags. Some were asleep under the rolling cabins.

The line of wagons along the outskirts of the village was still in shadow, but at the head of the line, the first of the wagons, standing a little apart, beyond the line of the houses, was in the sunlight. This wagon, which was painted and kept up better than the others, was Zinzara's, and a few of the villagers had collected in the sunshine in front of it, attracted by the notes of the flute and tambourine.

Livette, as she approached the group, had no suspicion that, in the wine-shop facing the wagon, behind the curtains of a window on the first floor, Renaud had stationed himself, there, at his ease, to watch the gipsy, who was playing the flute and dancing at the same time, her feet and arms bare.

Zinzara held the flute--a double flute with two reeds diverging slightly--with much grace, and blew upon it with full cheeks, raising and lowering her fingers to suit the requirements of a weird air, sometimes slow, sometimes furiously fast and jerky. Her head was thrown back, so that she appeared more haughty and aggressive than ever.

As she played upon her flute, Zinzara danced--a dance as mysterious as herself. With her bare feet she simply beat time on the ground. Her dance was naught but a play of attitudes, so to speak. She constantly varied the rhythmical undulations of her flexible, vigorous body, whose outline could be traced at every movement beneath the clinging material of her dress. When the movement quickened, she stamped her feet faster, still without moving from where she stood, as if in haste to reach a lover's rendezvous, where languor would replace activity.

Seated a few steps from the dancer, a young gipsy, with a vague, dreamy expression, was pounding with his fist, thinking of other things the while, upon a large tambourine, to which amulets of divers kinds were attached,--Egyptian beetles, mother-of-pearl shells, finger-rings, and great ear-rings,--which danced up and down as he played.

And the tambourine seemed to say to the double flute:

"Never fear: your mate is watching over you. I am here, father or betrothed, I, your strong-voiced mate, and you can sing freely of your joy and sorrow; no one shall disturb you; I am on the watch, and for you my heart beats in my great, sonorous breast."

But to the gipsy's ear the music of the tambourine said something very different; and with a smile upon her lips, blowing into her flute with its diverging reeds, raising and lowering her slender fingers over the holes, Zinzara, exerting a subtle influence over all about her, dressed in soft rags that clung tightly to her form and marked the outlines of her hips and of her breast in turn; displaying her tawny calves beneath her skirts, which were lifted up and tucked into her belt,--Zinzara seemed not to see the spectators.

Twenty or thirty people were looking at her, and still she seemed to be dancing for her own amusement; but her witch's eye followed, without seeming to do so, the slightest movement of Renaud's head, the whole of which could be seen at times between the serge curtains with red borders, behind the windows of the wine-shop, under the eaves of the house across the way.

When she saw Livette approach, the dancer beat her feet upon the ground more rapidly, as if annoyed, and the flute emitted a cry, a shrill war-cry, like the sound made by tearing silk quickly.

Livette involuntarily shuddered, but she mingled with the group, momentarily increasing in size, and looked on.

Zinzara made a sign, and uttered some strange, guttural words between two loud notes--words that were, evidently, a precise command, for a gipsy child, who had come to her side a moment before, glided under the wagon, whence he emerged armed with a long white stick, with which he motioned to the spectators to fall back a little. Then he stationed himself in front of Zinzara, in the centre of the first row of spectators, and, turning toward them, enjoined silence upon them by placing his finger on his lips. The word was passed along, and the bystanders ceased their conversation, realizing that _something_ was about to happen.

The dance was at an end.--The tambourine ceased to beat time. The flute alone sang on in Zinzara's hands, as her fingers moved slowly up and down.--Now it gave forth a thin, clear note, like the prolongation of the sound made by a drop of water falling in a fountain; it was a sweet, insinuating appeal, as melancholy as the croaking of a frog at night, on the shores of a pond, at the bottom of an echoing, rocky valley.

And, with the end of his wand, the child pointed out to one of the spectators something that came crawling out from under the wagon. It was a tiny snake, with red and yellow spots, and it drew near, evidently attracted by the notes of the flute. Another followed, and soon there were several of them--five in all.

When they were in front of the flute-player, between her and the boy with the wand, they raised their heads and waved them back and forth, slowly at first, then more quickly, keeping time with the flute. The serpents danced, and the mind of every spectator involuntarily compared their dance with the woman's that he had seen a moment before. There was the same undulating movement, the same evil charm, and every one was conscious of an uncomfortable feeling at the sight.

Livette, surprised and strangely moved, thought that she was dreaming. The spectacle before her was curiously, deplorably in accord with the state of her heart. She did not understand its hidden, intimate connection with her own destiny, but she felt its baleful effects. Zinzara's glance, from time to time, swept over the girl's face, but did not rest upon it. On the subject of her own influence, Zinzara knew what she knew.

Soft, soft as spun silk, the notes of the flute arose, very soft and prolonged, like threads extending from the instrument and winding about the necks of the little snakes; and the little snakes followed the notes of the flute, which drew them on and on. Zinzara walked backward. The little snakes followed her as if they were held fast by the notes of the flute as by silken threads. The gipsy stopped, and the notes _grew shorter_, so to speak, like the threads one winds about a bobbin. Then the snakes approached the sorceress, and as Zinzara stooped slowly over them, and put down her hands, still holding the flute, upon which she did not cease to play, the snakes twined themselves about her bare arms. Thence one of them climbed up and wound about her neck, letting his little head, with its wide open mouth and quivering tongue, hang down upon her swelling breast. And when she stood erect again, two others were seen at her ankles, above the rings she wore on her legs. Then she laid aside her flute and began to laugh. Her laugh disclosed her regular, white teeth.

"Now," said she, "if any one will give me his hand, I will tell his fortune!"

But no hand was put forward to meet hers because of the little snakes.

Zinzara laughed aloud, and her laugh, in very truth, recalled certain notes of her double flute.

At that moment, Livette started to walk away.

"Come, you!" said the gipsy quickly,--"you refused to listen to me once, but to-day you must be very anxious to find out where your lover is, my beauty! Give me your hand without fear, if you are worthy to become the wife of a brave horseman."

Livette blushed vividly. Her two young friends arrived just then and heard what was said. "Don't you do it!" said one of them in an undertone, pulling Livette's skirt from behind; but, Livette, annoyed by the gipsy's expression, in which she fancied that she could detect a touch of mockery, put out her hand, not without a mental prayer for protection to the sainted Marys. The gipsy took the proffered hand in her own. The snakes put out their forked tongues. Livette was somewhat pale.

They were both very small, the fortune-teller's hand and the maiden's.

Renaud looked on from above with all his eyes, greatly surprised and a little disturbed in mind.

The gipsy held Livette's hand in her own a moment, exulting to feel the palpitations of the bird she was fascinating. She had hoped to intimidate Livette, and the courage the girl displayed annoyed her.

"Your future husband isn't far away, my beauty," said she, "but he is not here on your account, never fear! On whose, then? That is for you to guess!"

Livette, already somewhat pale, became as white as a ghost.

"That alone, I fancy, is of interest to you, my pretty sweetheart! Then I'll say no more to you except this: Beware; the serpent on my left wrist just whispered something to me. Look well to your love!"

A shudder ran through the spectators like a ripple over the surface of a swamp. One of the snakes was, in fact, hissing gently.

The gipsy released Livette's hand; as the girl turned to go away, she came face to face with Rampal. He had been wandering about the village since early morning, and had just joined the group, unseen by any one, even by Renaud.

Livette recoiled instinctively and in such a marked way that Rampal might well have taken it for an affront. Unfortunately, having left the front row, she was hemmed in by the crowd on all sides of her.

"Oho! young lady," said Rampal, "so we don't recognize our friends!"

"Good-day, good-day, Rampal," replied Livette, repeating the salutation as the custom is in the province; "but let me pass! Make room for me, I say!"

"_Sur le pont d'Avignon_," sang the gipsy, with a laugh, "_tout le monde paye passage!_"[2]

Renaud, still behind his window, had at last recognized Rampal. Fuming with rage, but naturally wary, he considered whether he should rush down at once and attack him or wait until Livette had gone.

Rampal did not always need a pretext to kiss a pretty girl,--but here was one ready-made for him!

"Do you hear, demoiselle?" said he. "You must pay the tollman of your own accord, or else he will pay himself!"

He threw both arms about the poor child's waist. She bent back, holding her body and her head as far away from him as possible, but the rascal, hot of breath, holding her firmly and forcing her a little closer, kissed her twice full upon the lips.

A fierce oath was uttered behind them in the air. Everybody turned, and, looking up, discovered Renaud shaking the old-fashioned window, which was reluctant to be opened. Two more wrenches and the window yielded, flew suddenly open with a great noise of breaking glass, and Renaud, standing on the sill, leaped to the ground.

"Ah! the beggar! the beggar! where is the vile cur?"

But Rampal had already leaped upon his horse that was hitched near by to the bars of a low window, and was off at a gallop.

He rode as if he were riding a race, half-standing in his stirrups, his body bent forward, and plying incessantly and very rapidly a thong that was made fast to his wrist, and that drove his horse wild by the way it whistled about his ears.

"Coward! coward!" one of the young men present could not refrain from shouting after him.

"Coward? oh! no!" said Renaud--"simply a thief! for if he weren't riding a horse he never intends to return, the fellow wouldn't run away--I know him!"

He turned to poor, frightened Livette.

"Never fear, demoiselle," said he, "he shall not carry our horse to paradise with him."

Was it Renaud's purpose, in saying this, to make the gipsy think that he was bent upon taking vengeance for the theft of his horse rather than for the insult put upon his fiancee? Perhaps so; but the devil is so cunning that Renaud himself had no idea that he was capable of such craft.

As to the gipsy, she said to herself that Renaud, by jumping out of the window, instead of coming quietly down the stairs, had compromised his prospects of revenge for the satisfaction of exhibiting his gipsy-like agility to her. He did, in truth, jump like a wild cat, and rebound as if he were equipped with elastic paws! He was as agile as a true _zingaro_! He was as handsome and bold as a highwayman! They are gipsies, to all intents, these wandering guardians of mares and heifers!

Renaud, who had disappeared long enough to buckle his horse's girth, rode by in a few moments upon Prince; the witnesses of the scene just enacted were still discussing it.

"Catch him! catch him! eat him, King!" cried twenty young men's voices in chorus.

"With the King and the Prince arrayed against him, Rampal is a dead man," some one remarked, with a laugh.

Renaud was already at a distance. He had not looked at the gipsy, but he felt that her eyes were upon him, and he felt now that they were following him from afar; and the feeling caused a pleasurable thrill, of which he was conscious, and for which he reproved himself vaguely on Livette's account, but without seeking to repress it. Yes, as he galloped along in his wrath, he galloped in a particular way in order that his wrath might show to good advantage, so that he might appear a handsome and graceful horseman, as he was in fact. He was conscious of every movement that he made--he fancied that he could see himself, and was desirous to make a good appearance, he, the King!

The peacock, in the mating season, has more gorgeous plumage, and makes the greatest possible display of it. The nightingale and the redbreast have sweeter voices. All alike take pleasure in so arraying themselves as to give pleasure.

"Where are you going, Livette?" her two friends asked her.

"I am going to see monsieur le cure. I must have a talk with him, poor me! for it was a great sin to listen to that sorceress, you know!"

XIV

JOUSTING

Both Renaud and Rampal had spears.

As he rode by the Neuf farm, half a league from Saintes-Maries, Rampal, who owned nothing in the world but his saddle, and had no spear, being at that time simply a drover out of a job, had spied one leaning against a fig-tree, and had appropriated it without dismounting, had "borrowed it without a word," thinking that he should probably need it to defend himself.

Now he was galloping across the fields, leaning forward on his horse's neck, with his thong in his boot and the spear resting in the stirrup.

Renaud had mistaken the road in his hot pursuit. Perhaps the gipsy was the cause of it, for, in spite of himself, in order to remain within her range of vision, Renaud had ridden straight toward the Vaccares, while Rampal had just taken the road to Arles, avoiding stratagem in order to mislead his pursuer more effectually, for he said to himself that Renaud would surely argue that he had made for the middle of the island to take refuge in some deserted _jass_.

Renaud divined Rampal's plan.

"He will keep to the road," he suddenly thought, and feeling certain that he was right, he turned to the left and rode due west. Rampal, having the start of him by a full league, drew rein in the vicinity of Grandes-Cabanes, and having planted his spear-head in the ground, rested both hands upon it, then placed his feet, one after the other, on the hind-quarters of his horse, and stood there for some moments, scanning the plain behind him. Between two clumps of tamarisks he caught a glimpse of a horseman, like a flash of light, or like a rabbit scuttling between two wild thyme bushes--Renaud, beyond question! Rampal saw that Renaud, if it were he, was about to take to the road, and he himself thereupon left it and rode in the opposite direction on a line parallel to that his enemy was following in the distance. When Renaud reached the road and turned into it, Rampal had the Vaccares in front of him, and there he turned to the left and followed the shore. His plan was to cross the main stream of the Rhone, and reach the Conscript's Hut, in the middle of the _gargate_, the spot where he was confident of finding safe shelter in times of serious danger. Unluckily for him, he had been seen--when he was standing on his horse watching his man--by a fisherman who was crouching on the edge of the canal, fishing for eels with a reed and a short line, at the end of which was a bunch of worms, strung and twisted together.

"Have you seen Rampal, friend?" said Renaud, stopping his horse short as soon as he saw the fisherman, who was just about changing his place.

"Ah! King, are you the man who is looking for him?" said the fisherman, an old man. "If he has kept to the road he took to get away from you,--for I saw he was watching some one behind him,--he ought to be on the shore of the Vaccares by this time, and from there, if he doesn't go back to Saintes-Maries, he will surely go up toward Notre-Dame-d'Amour. You have a good horse, and you can catch him between the Vaccares and the Grand' Mar."

Renaud darted away as if he had wings.

After an hour and a half of furious riding,--he was wise enough, however, to change his gait several times,-he drew rein, a little discouraged; then, after a brief halt and a draught of brandy from the flask that never left his holsters, he resumed his headlong race--but not until he had thoughtfully allowed his horse to drink a swallow of water from the canal.

When he was between the Grand' Mar swamp and the Vaccares, he found his own drove taking their midday rest there, under the guidance of Bernard, his young assistant.

Horses and bulls were lying motionless on the shore of the Vaccares, in the twofold glare from sky and water, for it was well-nigh noon, and the light was dazzling.

Bernard was resting likewise, lying on his back with his head on the saddle, not far from his horse, which was fettered near by, learning to amble.

In front of Renaud lay the pearl-gray Vaccares, gleaming like a huge table of polished steel, in the centre of which a veritable white islet of sea-mews were sleeping, motionless as statues.

Behind him stretched an ashen-gray plain, which could be seen only in spots--where the salt emerged in efflorescent crystals--glistening through a vast violet net-work of flowering _saladelles_; for the _saladelles_ spread out in broad, graceful tufts, with many ramifications, but without foliage, dotted with a multitude of lilac blossoms, between which the ground can be seen. And farther away the fields of glasswort began, with their plump, juicy leaves; they are a beautiful rich green when they are young, but the salt air soon turns them blood-red, so that the oldest and those nearest the sea are the darkest.

Here and there the stunted tamarisk, with its gnarled trunk, dotted the plain, its sparse foliage tinged with pink by the blossoms hanging in tiny clusters, which, tiny though they be, are a heavy burden for its flexible branches.

And in the dry, seamy bottoms were great patches of _siagnes_, _triangles_, _apaiuns_ of every kind, _caneous_ or dwarf reeds used in making roofs and matting, thorn-broom and all sorts of aquatic plants, bright green, and straight as fields of grain; their angular battalions, harvested in summer, go down before the scythe in broad half-circles. Above these patches of verdure, which bend and rustle with the faintest breath of air, hovered dragon-flies with enormous heads,--swallow-like insects, voracious devourers of gnats. They flew about with the swallows over the waters where the mosquito is born, making a metallic sound among the reeds when their wings of transparent, black-veined mica came in contact with them.

Renaud gazed at these familiar things and forgot himself in them. For a second he fancied that he was watching his drove there, and that he had nothing else to do but remain with his beasts, absorbed, as they were, in calm, unreasoning contemplation of the desert that surrounded him. He ceased to love, to hate, to desire, and to pursue.

The shadow of wings passed him by. He raised his eyes and saw, above his head, two red flamingoes.

"They built their nest here this year," he thought.

But Prince, the good horse, had recognized his favorite mares, and, stretching out his neck, opening his nostrils wide to inhale the fresh breeze of the swamp and the plain, raising his lips and displaying his teeth, he gave a neigh that made all the mares spring to their feet at a single bound, the bulls raise their heads, and Bernard himself jump up from the ground, spear in hand.

Renaud, pressing his knees together and pulling his horse back, held him in hand, although he trembled under him and pranced up and down in the soft sand.

At the same time, a sudden gust of the _mistral_ swept across the plain and broke the mirror-like surface of the Vaccares into little waves.

"If it is Rampal you are looking for," said Bernard, "he isn't far away, you may be sure. When he saw me here, all of a sudden--just a moment ago--he rode off that way. And as he went out of my sight very soon, I believe he has gone into some cabin. You had better look around the Mejeane tower."

Renaud was off again.

Suddenly his eyes fell upon a low cabin with its rush-covered roof, shaped like a pyramid, or like a stack of straw, and surmounted, as they all are, by its wooden cross, bending back as if the _mistral_ were gradually blowing it over.

The thought came to him: "Rampal is there! His horse must be tired. He retraced his steps a short distance without Bernard's seeing him, and went into hiding there--hoping that I should be thrown off the scent and would ride by. Yes, he is surely there!"

Renaud turned about, and rode straight toward the cabin, keeping a sharp lookout; whereupon Rampal, who was really hidden there, watching his pursuer through the holes in the wall, rushed out, frightening an owl that flew away in dismay, and leaped upon his horse which was browsing in hobbles near by, but out of sight, at the bottom of a ditch.

The _mistral_, which comes like a cannon-ball when it makes up its mind to blow at that time of day, suddenly began to roar. Renaud had put his head down to meet the squall, so that he did not perceive this manoeuvre of the enemy.

So it was that Rampal seemed suddenly to come up out of the ground, not twenty feet from Renaud, who was not taken by surprise, however, but rushed at him, brandishing his spear, for all the world like one of the knights of the time of Saint Louis, of whom our legends tell. (Aigues-Mortes was then in its prime.)