Chapter II: Part 2

Frequently, when the grandmother cried to Livette: "Do this or that; run! be quick!" he would be angry, and would long to say to her: "Why do you order her about? She was not made to obey! You're a bad grandmother! Don't you see that she is too delicate and pretty for such tasks?"

But this was a feeling kept hidden in his heart; he would not have dared to avow it, for women are made, according to our ancestors, to be the slaves of man. So he said no word of what he felt. He even deemed himself a little ridiculous to feel it. He contented himself by doing in a twinkling, in Livette's stead, the thing she was bidden to do, if it was something within his power.

Ah! but if any man had ventured to indulge in any ill-sounding pleasantry with Livette, to take any liberty with her--oh! then, be sure that he would without reflection have felled him on the spot with his stout fist!

Why, if any one, man or woman, in the crowd on a fete-day, happened to make a coarse remark in her hearing,--one of the sort that he himself knew how to make with great effect upon occasion,--he would be overcome with rage against that person; it seemed to him that every one should take notice of Livette's presence, should feel that she was near, and understand that, before her, they should show some self-respect.

All this he would have been incapable of explaining, but he felt it all, confusedly and vaguely, in his heart.

Livette, for her part, was keenly conscious of the drover's adoration. She revelled in it, without unduly seeming to do so. She saw very plainly that she had, without effort, tamed a wild beast. She laughed sometimes, as she looked at him--a frank, ringing laugh, in which there was, however, a touch of the triumph of the mysterious feminine witchery, the marvellous invention of nature, which decrees that the strong man shall be vanquished, rolled in the dust, at the pleasure of fascinating weakness. This miracle, performed by life, by nature, by love, she believed to be her own work,--hers, Livette's,--and the little woman was a bit swollen with pride! More than frequently she would say to herself: "What have I done? I don't deserve this good fortune; no, indeed, I don't deserve it!" She saw very clearly that, in his eyes, she was a being apart: that he did not treat her by any means as everybody else did: and, greatly astonished as she was, she was proud of it.

Thereupon, wondering in her sincere heart what she had "more" or better than another, and finding no answer to the question, it came about that she deemed her lover a little, just a very little, stupid to be so dominated by her, and he so strong! And then she would prettily make fun of him and laugh aloud at him, saying:

"Ah! great booby!"

So it was that the whole essence of Woman, profound, seductive, existed in this simple, obscure peasant-girl, who could have told nothing as to her own character.

In time, too, she came to look upon herself as pretty, beautiful, the prettiest, the loveliest of all, and to admire her own charms. When such thoughts came to her, and if the truth must be known, none were more frequent,--ah! then she felt her pride! And she no longer deemed her lover stupid in the least degree; on the contrary, he seemed to her very fortunate, too fortunate! and then it was he who hardly deserved her! At such times, she received his attentions, his humility, with the air of a princess accustomed to homage.

Then, too, she would wonder why all the others did not do for her what he did? And, thereupon, she would conceive a sort of gratitude for him. Such a constant revolution in our hearts of impressions, often irreconcilable and ever changing, around a fixed idea, is love.--Yes, in very truth he deserved to be loved simply because he had known enough to appreciate her! to choose her! The other young men were the fools, one and all!

Warm was his welcome if he arrived at the farm when that thought was in her mind. She would give the little cry of a happy bird, and run to meet her lover.

"Good-morning, Monsieur Jacques!"

"Good-morning, Demoiselle Livette!"

They would shake hands.

"Will you come to the Rhone?"

"With all my heart!"

And often they would go and sit together beside the Rhone, beneath the great hawthorn--a tree more than a hundred years old and known to everybody. The hawthorn, like the aspen and the birch, is a familiar Camarguese tree.

Sometimes, on the way, she would hold out to him a flexible green twig, broken from a poplar by the roadside, and they would walk along, united and kept apart at the same time by the short branch, followed by a swarm of gnats with their tiny iris-hued wings.

She was very fond of this sport of making him walk thus, not too near, not too far away, holding him without touching him, drawing him nearer or keeping him at a distance, as her fancy dictated, making of the leafy wand a whip if he showed signs of rebellion.

She had the feeling that thus she was indeed his mistress, remembering how she used sometimes to make her horse Blanchet follow her docilely in the same way by holding out to him a small wisp of flowering oats;--how she had sometimes, by the same means, led back behind her, quiet as an ox, a vicious bull that had escaped, wounded, from the arena, and that she had encountered by the roadside, in a thicket of thorn-broom, bathing his foaming tongue in the streams of blood that were flowing from his nostrils.

Arrived at the bank of the Rhone, beneath the great hawthorn with the gnarled black trunk and smooth white branches, that stretches its abundant rustling foliage well out over the stream, the lovers would sit down, side by side, upon the roots protruding from the ground or upon a bundle of cut reeds.

And they would watch the water flow. The earthy, yellowish water, with its whirling masses of foam, rushing toward the sea.

They would sit and gaze.

They would not speak. They would live on in silence, listening to the plashing of the Rhone, the tiny wavelets that came rippling in obliquely to the bank, to loiter there among the feet of countless reeds and poplars, while the main current in the centre of the stream flowed swiftly, hurriedly along, as if in haste to reach the sea, and there be swallowed up.--There they would sit and dream, not speaking.

They felt that they were living the same life as everything about them. From time to time, a kingfisher, sky-blue and reddish-brown, would pass before them, light on a low branch, gazing sidewise at the water with his beak ready to strike, then, suddenly, fly off across the Rhone. And, with the sky-blue bird, their thoughts would cross the river, there to light again upon a branch, bent like a bow, whose slender point trailed in the water, vibrating in the current, and surrounded with a mass of foam, dead leaves, and twigs. And suddenly the bird, like a sorcerer, had disappeared.

"How pretty!" Livette would sometimes say.

And that was all.

He would make no reply. He knew not what to say to her. He was too happy. He would not call the king his cousin!

In the evening twilight, many little rabbits, young in that month of May, would run out from the park, through the wild hedges, almost invisible in their gray coats, and play in the shadow at the foot of the bushes, their presence betrayed by the rustling of a tuft of grass or a low-hanging, horizontal branch that barred their path.

To heighten the enjoyment of the lovers, there was the nightingale's song, at the rising of the moon. Listen to it: 'tis always lovely in the darkness, is the nightingale's song. It begins with three distinct, long-drawn-out cries; you would say it was a signal, a preconcerted call; it enjoins attention. Then the modulations hesitatingly arise. You would say that it is timid, that it fears its prayer will not be granted. But soon it takes courage, self-assurance comes, and the song bursts forth and soars and fills the air with its melodious uproar. 'Tis love, 'tis youth and love that can no longer be restrained, that nothing stays, that claim their rights in life.--His song is done.

His song is done, but still the lovers listen on and on to the bird's song, echoed in the dark recesses of their own hearts.

At last, it would be time to return. They would rise and walk back toward the farm, not far away.

The grandmother would be calling from the doorway:

"Livette! Livette!"

Her voice would reach their ears, with a plaintive, caressing accent, tinged with sadness, from the edge of the vast expanse that rose in the darkness toward the stars, toward life and love,--a long, melancholy call. The voice at night upon the moor fills the air and rises tranquilly, disturbed by no echo, sad to be alone in a too great solitude.

Around the lovers as they returned to the farm, in the orchards, in the park, as the darkness increased, the deafening clamor of the frogs would soon be heard, a mighty noise, the sum total of a multitude of feeble sounds, a frightful din, composed of many minor croakings of unequal strength, which, massed together, drowning one another, mount at last into a rhythmic tumult like the ceaseless roaring of a cataract.

And amid this formidable everlasting clamor, made by the voices of myriads of amorous little frogs, accentuated by the cry of a curlew, or a heron on the watch, and accompanied by the humming of the two Rhones and the plashing of the sea--the lovers, both deeply moved, heard nothing save the calm beating of their hearts.

As time went on, their love waxed greater, increased by the memory of all these hours lived together.

Renaud was no longer simple Renaud in Livette's eyes, but the being by whom she knew what life was, through whom came to her that overwhelming consciousness of everything, of the horizons of land and sea, that sentiment of _being_, that longing for the future, for growth, that inflow of vague hopes that comes of love and gives a zest to life.

And now, if any one had sought to wrest Jacques from Livette, she would have died of it, and he who should try to wrest Livette from Jacques would have died of it--he would, my friends, even more certainly.

It is a good and excellent thing that love should be always busied in making the world younger--and the nightingale, like the frogs, is never weary of repeating it.

VI

RAMPAL

Rampal, who had borrowed Jacques Renaud's horse, had not returned.

Renaud now rode no other horse than Blanchet.

Rampal was a low rascal, gambler, hanger-on of wine-shops, well-known at Arles in all the vile haunts scattered along the Rhone.

Dismissed by several masters, a drover without a drove, he passed his life in these days, riding from town to town, from Aigues-Mortes to Nimes, from Nimes to Arles, from Arles to Martigues, and in each of these towns plied some doubtful trade, cheated a little at cards, winning the means of living a week without doing anything, and returning, for that week, to the Camargue he loved, where there were, in two or three farm-houses, women who smiled upon his mysterious, piratical existence.

For that existence, a horse was essential. Rampal, serving as a drover on foot, had, in the first place, stolen a horse from a _manade_, but he broke his tether the second night, left his master, swam the Rhone, and rejoined his fellows. Then it was that the rascal, having, in truth, important business on hand, had said to Renaud:

"I have to go to Saintes, I'll take your horse, Cabri."

"Take my horse," Renaud replied.

It did not occur to him that Rampal would not return. Jacques relied so surely upon his own reputation for strength and courage that he did not think that any one would venture to arouse his wrath.

And then he had a sort of pity for Rampal, mingled with a little admiration. He was a bold horseman, was Rampal, and, except for women and cards, he would have been, with Renaud, or just after him, a king of the drovers! So that, if Rampal aroused Renaud's compassion, Renaud aroused Rampal's envy.

However, the vagaries of this _marrias_, this good-for-nothing knave, were the pranks of a free man. Neither married nor betrothed, fatherless and motherless, with no one to support or assist, no one whom he must please, he had a perfect right to live as he pleased! At least, that is what most people thought.

Moreover, Renaud, although an honest man, had the tastes of a vagabond. Before his heart was filled with his strange affection for Livette, by which he felt as if he were bound hand and foot, he had, in truth, borne a part with Rampal in many curious adventures.

More than once they had galloped along side by side toward the open moor, each having _en croupe_ a laughing damsel, who, after the close of a bull-fight at Aigues-Mortes or Arles, had consented to accompany them for a night.

But on such occasions Renaud had always dealt frankly, never promising marriage nor any other thing, but simply giving the fair one a present, a souvenir, a brass ring, or a silk handkerchief--a _fichu_ to pleat after the Arlesian fashion, or a broad velvet ribbon for a head-dress; while Rampal was treacherous, promised much and did nothing,--in short, was nothing but _fena_, a good-for-nothing.

So Rampal had borrowed Renaud's horse with the intention of bringing him back the same evening; but that evening he had heard of a fete at Martigues and had ridden away thither without worrying about Renaud.

"He'll take a horse out of his _manade_," he said to himself.

Now, Audiffret, Livette's father, had insisted that Renaud should take Blanchet.

"Take Blanchet," he said. "I don't like to have our girl ride him. He's a fine horse, but bad-tempered at times. Finish breaking him for us. I want him to run in the races at Beziers this year. Take him."

Happy to have Blanchet in the hands of "her dear," for so she already called Renaud in her heart, Livette, who was fond of Blanchet, simply said:

"Take good care of him."

That was more than six months before.

Rampal, who had caused considerable gossip meanwhile, and of whom Renaud had heard more than once, had not brought back the horse.

Renaud did not lose his patience. Several times, being informed that Rampal was in this or that place, he had tried to find him, but had not succeeded.

"I shall catch him some day!" said Renaud. "He loses nothing by waiting."

He hoped that the fete at Saintes-Maries would bring the rascal back.

"He will come back with the thieving gipsies!" he said; and he was not mistaken.

Not for an empire would Rampal have missed making the pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries. The rascal would have thought himself everlastingly damned. It had been his habit from childhood to come and ask forgiveness of his sins from the two Marys and Sara the bondwoman, at whom he did nothing but laugh in a boastful way, unable to satisfy himself whether he believed in them or not.

This year, being affiliated with the gipsies in matters of horse-trading (every one knows that the gipsies, men and women,--_roms_ and _juwas_, as they say,--have a profound acquaintance with everything connected with the horse), Rampal had been a fruitful source of information to them.

By divers methods they had led him to talk about this and that, about every one and everything. He had no idea himself that he had told so many things. They had questioned him, sometimes directly, taking him unawares; sometimes in a slow, roundabout way; when he was drunk, and when he was asleep. And his replies had been pitilessly registered in the gipsies' unfailing memory--the wherewithal to astonish all Camargue.

Rampal had not even been questioned by the gipsy queen, who did not trust his discretion; she learned the secrets of the province at second-hand.

Once only had he spoken to her. It was one evening when the beggar queen began to dance for her own amusement on the high-road, to the music of her tambourine, which she hardly ever laid aside.

"You are beautiful!" he said to her.

"You are ugly!" she replied, quickly, in a contemptuous tone.

"Give me the ring on your finger," said Rampal, "and I'll give you another."

She glanced with a gleaming eye at her fantastic ring of hammered silver, then at the insolent Christian, and said:

"A sound cudgelling about your loins is what I will give you, dog, if you don't leave me!"

And she spat fiercely at him as if in disgust.

Rampal, somewhat abashed, abandoned the game.

This woman had a way of looking at people that disconcerted them. You would say that a sharp, threatening flame shot from her eyes. It penetrated your being, searched your heart, and you were powerless against it. She fathomed your glance, but you could not fathom hers--which, on the contrary, repelled you, turned you back like a solid wall. And, at such moments, she would stand proudly erect, her head thrown slightly back, her whole body poised, at once so sinuous and so rigid, that she might have been compared to a horned viper standing on his tail, fascinating his prey and preparing to spring.

"I can't explain, Jacques, how that woman frightened me," said Livette to Renaud. "My blood is still running cold!--She threatened me! And when that crown of thorns fell at my feet--Holy Mother!--I thought I was going to faint!"

"If I meet her," Renaud replied, "she'll find she has some one to settle with!"

"Let the heathen alone, Jacques! It isn't well to have aught to do with the devil."

But the drover loved a fight, and he longed for nothing so much as to fall in with Rampal and Zinzara, the gambler and the queen of the cards; "a pair of gipsies, a pair of thieves," thought Renaud.

VII

THE MEETING

The gipsy queen was the first of the two he met.

Renaud, mounted on Blanchet, was riding along the beach toward Saintes-Maries.

The sea was at his right; at his left, the desert. He was riding through the sand, and from time to time the waves rolled up under his horse's feet, surrounding with sportive foam the rosy hoofs rapidly rising and falling.

Renaud was thinking of Livette.

He looked ahead and saw the tall, straight, battlemented walls of Saintes-Maries, and wondered whether he would lead his little queen, dressed in white, and crowned with flowers, to the altar there, or at Saint-Trophime in Arles.

He looked at the sea and wondered if nothing would come to him from that source; if his uncle, captain of a merchantman, who sailed on his last voyage so many years ago, would not come into port some day with a cargo of vague, marvellous things, a million in priceless stuffs and precious stones? In the poor, ignorant fellow's imagination, the thought of a fortune was a vision of legendary treasures, like those discovered in caverns in the Arabian tales.

For an instant, he seemed to see it with his eyes, to see his vision realized in the dazzling splendor of the boundless sea, that lay glistening in the sunlight, with sharp, fitful flashes, like a mirror broken into narrow, moving fragments of irregular shape. It was an undulating sheet of diamonds and sapphires. The sun's rays, as he sank lower and lower toward the horizon, assumed a ruddier hue as they fell obliquely upon the fast-subsiding waves, and soon the water was like a sheet of old burnished gold, moving slowly up and down; one would have said it was a vast melted treasure beneath a polished vitreous surface! At long intervals, a solitary wave greater than its fellows fell with a dull roar upon the beach, and ever and anon a cloud passed overhead; and in the mist flying from the gold-tipped wave, in the slow-moving shadow of the cloud, the water seemed a deep, dark blue. The sun sank lower, and broad bright red bands began to overshadow the bands of ochre, amethyst, light green, pale blue, that rose one above another on the horizon line. The changing sea was now like a cloak of royal purple, with fringe of azure, gold, and silver.

On the desert side, the marshes likewise were changed to vast floors carpeted with gorgeous drapery and rich embroidery. Everything was ablaze with sparkles--sea, sand, and salt. At intervals, a red flamingo rose from among the reeds, flew heavily along, seeming to carry on his side a little of the ruddy hue of sky and sea,--then lighted on the brink of the gleaming water.

The gulls were like white dream-birds in this enchanted country. They sat in lines, like brooding doves, on the crests of the waves in the offing, or on the hot sands, or on the surface of the ponds.

And, down in the northwest, Renaud was looking for the high, square terrace of the Chateau d'Avignon, for Livette sometimes went up there to see if she could not spy Blanchet and her dear Renaud's straight spear somewhere in the plain.

Suddenly Renaud checked his horse and gazed fixedly at a black object moving on the surface of the water, rising and falling with the motion of the waves, some two hundred feet from shore.

He thought he could descry a woman's head; a head covered with dripping black hair and surrounded by a copper circlet, from which depended glistening Oriental medallions.

The gipsy was swimming, disporting herself in the waves, which, coming from the deep sea, rose and fell slowly and at long intervals. She glided through them like a conger-eel, happy in the sensation caused by the gentle lapping of the salt water caressing her flesh. Her movements were undulating, like those of the waves themselves; she writhed and twisted like seaweed tossed about by the surf. Now and then a heavier, higher wave would come upon her. She would turn and face it, put her hands together in a point above her lowered head, as divers do, plunge into the broad wave horizontally, and cleave it through from front to rear.

From his horse, Renaud watched the dark head emerge on the other side of the swelling wave, which, as it approached the shore, curled over with whitening crest, broke upon the beach in snowy foam and spread out over the sand, beneath and all about him, in shallow, transparent, overlapping streams, all studded with sparks. He could not see the swimmer's body distinctly. Its fleeting outlines could scarcely be made out beneath the clear, transparent water, ere they were blotted out again by the undulations and reflections.

Suddenly the swimmer turned toward the shore, apparently gained a footing, and, raising one arm out of the water, motioned to Renaud to be gone, shouting:

"Go your way!"

But he, who had thus far watched her with curiosity and with no feeling of anger, was irritated by those words. Certainly he had forgotten none of Livette's grievances against the gipsy. Not a week had passed since her threatening visit to the Chateau d'Avignon. But, in that beautiful evening light, Renaud's heart felt at peace, and he had recognized the gipsy queen without emotion. It may be that curiosity was dominant in his heart, and urged him toward this mysterious being, surprised in her bath, in the utter solitude of the desert at evening; the curiosity of a traveller to examine a strange animal, of a Christian to investigate a heathen woman. "Go your way!" This command, hurled at him from afar by a woman's voice, wounded him in that part of his heart where the memory of the gipsy's threat against Livette was stored away.

"Ah! it's you," he cried, "you, who go about and stand in doorways to frighten young girls when they happen to be left alone! who tell lies and play monkey-tricks to make them give you what they refuse to give! Don't let it happen again, thief! or you'll find out how the pitchfork and the goad feel!"

The insulted queen was absolutely convulsed with furious rage. If she had been near the drover, she would have jumped straight at his throat, as the serpent straightens itself out like an arrow and darts at its prey. She felt that she grew pale, a shiver ran through her whole body, and swaying a little, like the adder about to spring, with her head thrown slightly back, she walked toward the horseman--but how far away he was!

"Aha!" he cried, "you are coming near to hear better! Come on, you heathen, come! I will explain it all to you!"

As he remembered how the woman had threatened Livette, his wrath rose within him. They were not Christians, these Bohemian creatures, but thieves, bandits, one and all. Why, it was said that they ate human flesh, child's flesh, when they could find nothing better. If that were not true, how would they have whole quarters of bleeding flesh in their kettles so often? Ah! a race of wolves, of accursed foxes!

"Come on!" he cried again.

She came on, but not without difficulty, having to force her way step by step through the resisting waves. Her shoulders were not yet visible, and she was accelerating her speed by using her arms under the water. She could have made the same distance more quickly by swimming, but she did not even think of that. She was thinking of something very different!

Renaud mechanically cast his eye along the shore, behind him, and saw, a few steps away, the gipsy's clothes lying in a heap out of reach of the waves,--and her tambourine on top of them; then he looked around once more at the woman coming toward him. The water was now up to her armpits, and not until then did he see that she was entirely naked.

Her bust slowly emerged from the water. At a hundred paces from the shore, the water reached only to her knees. She was beautiful. Her slender, well-knit body was very youthful. She stood very erect, and seemed as if she were going into battle without any thought of shame. She had been assailed: she was rushing at her assailant, that was the whole of it. Her fists were clenched, her arms slightly bent, her head still thrown back a little. Her whole attitude was threatening. The water was rolling down in glistening pearls from her neck to her feet, over every part of her swarthy, bronzed body. Her swelling chest seemed to be put forward, as if it were ready, like a magic buckler, to receive the blows that would be powerless to injure it.

The drover sat still in speechless amazement. He gazed at the approaching woman, who, as he saw her, springing from the water, surrounded by white foam, with her unusual coloring, appeared to him like a supernatural being.

What was she there for? She came forward, boldly aggressive; and her witch's mind was revolving many evil schemes, no doubt.

Did she not bend over a moment, as if to pick up pebbles from beneath the water, with which to stone her enemy? Was she not holding them now in her clenched fists. No: the sands of Camargue stretch very far beneath the water, sloping very gradually, and not the tiniest pebble meets the swimmer's bare foot.

What was she doing then?

And now she was close beside the horseman, whose curiosity constantly increased. But he had ceased questioning himself. He simply stared at her, stupefied and enchanted.

He followed her with his eyes, fascinated, forgetting his spear resting upon his stirrup, forgetting his horse, forgetting everything.

And now she was within three paces of him, standing perfectly straight, insolent in her whole bearing, in every undulation of her figure, looking him in the face, with eyes from which a steely flame shot forth, and which no other eye could penetrate. And as she presented her profile to him for a second, he had a swift, hardly conscious thought that the lower part of the face--from below the nostrils to the base of the chin--resembled the head of the lizard of the sand, and the turtles and snakes of the swamp. There was the same vertical line, broken by thin, slightly-receding lips, whence he expected to see a forked, vibrating tongue come forth, as in a dream of the devil.

But this impression was but momentary, and he saw naught but the woman, young, fair, unclothed, seemingly offering herself voluntarily to his savage lust, in the security of that deserted shore, amid the plashing of the waves, in the fresh breeze blowing from the sea, and the evening sunlight, which, with the salt water, coursed in streams over the whole lovely body.

Dazzled, blinded, drunken with the waves of blood, which from his heart, whither it had rushed at first, suffocating him and making him waver in his saddle,--now poured back to his brain, suffusing his face and bull-like neck with red,--he was about to leap down from his horse, or perhaps to stoop over only, snatch up the creature--a mere feather in his hands--by strength of wrist, and centaur-like carry her away _en croupe_,--when she, more prompt to act, darted forward, stretching out her arms, and with her left hand seized and pulled back with all her strength the double rein of Renaud's horse, making him rear and fall back. And with her right hand she struck the creature's face!

_He saw naught but the woman, young, fair, unclothed,
seemingly offering herself voluntarily to his savage lust,
*** when she, more prompt to act, darted forward, stretching
out her arms, and with her left hand seized and pulled back
with all her strength the double rein of Renaud's horse,
making him rear and fall back._]

"Go, dog! go and tell your people that a woman has revenged herself upon you and has struck the horseman on his horse's face! Coward! Vile neat-herd! Go and tell it to your sweetheart! Go, tell her that when I struck you, you knew not what to do or say!"

There was no wrath left in Renaud; he had no feeling but fear mingled with amazement. The woman's performance seemed to him in very truth surprising, diabolical. In coloring, bearing, expression, and audacity, she was the sorceress to the life. A strange terror took possession of him. Perhaps he would have gone astray gaily, without remorse, with any other than this ill-omened gipsy, who terrified him. He was especially alarmed for Livette. He felt that she, and he himself with her, were threatened by some mysterious, obscure disaster; and the thought of being unfaithful to her filled him with dismay, as the beginning of the end. He was afraid of himself; afraid, for Livette, of this unforeseen, inexplicable creature, who rose up before him, challenging him to contend with her, for what?--Thus, malignity and hatred brought the woman to him as love would not have done!--He was bewildered. He simply waited till his rein should be let go, ready to start off at a gallop, feeling no longer in his heart the wrath a man must feel in order to ride down any woman, though she were a witch, and trample her beneath his horse's feet, at the risk of killing her.

But why was he no longer angry? Because his eyes, against his will, followed every movement of that body with its weird beauty,--the body of an enemy.

"You would like to fly like a coward, would you?" she suddenly cried. "You shall not go until I choose!"

Profiting by the horseman's open-mouthed stupor, she had seized with her teeth a hanging end of the lasso that was coiled about the horse's neck, and with the assistance of one hand--the other still holding the rein--had swiftly passed it about the nostrils and tied it in a cruel knot. With a fierce pull upon this instrument of torture, she held the beast fast just where she wished him to be.

"You must wait until your comrades pass!" she said. "They must see a bull-tamer tamed by a woman!"

"Upon my word," thought Renaud, "that would be, as she says, a very absurd thing!" And he drew his horse back a little, thinking he might release him, but the horse stretched out his head and neck, balked, dropped his tail, and stiffened his four legs, as if he were tied to a wall. The gipsy did not stir. She laughed, showing an unbroken set of small, white, pretty, formidable teeth.

"Take care!" said Renaud at last, "I am going to ride my horse upon you!"

"I defy you to do it!" she replied tranquilly.

She saw with her unerring glance signs of confusion in the drover's eyes: the charm was working! Through a mist he now gazed upon this woman, whose captive he was, by virtue of a burning curiosity already closely akin to love. She smiled.

This lasted some time. At last, Renaud felt that his wits were leaving him. To remain faithful to Livette, whom he could not betray with the very woman upon whom he had promised to avenge her, he must not dismount from his horse, for as soon as he put his foot to the ground he would have become the stronger of the two! To remain faithful he must have courage to remain vanquished in this struggle of beauty against strength. And he waited.

She surprised the drover glancing for an instant toward the moor.

"Aha! you are afraid some one will see you, coward! but never fear! Every one shall know what has happened to you, all the same. I will take care of that! Some day you shall come and tell me what your pale-faced, white-blooded blonde had to say to it!"

Humiliated at being forced thus to obey a woman, but rendered wavering and weak by the physical delight she caused him to feel, he remained where he was! His horse, as he irritated without maddening him, tried several times to free himself, but without success. Renaud looked on. Slight, supple as a tiger's whelp, active and strong, and accustomed to contend with horses, the gipsy, still holding the cruel cord in her left hand, had seized the long mane and wound it about her right hand, and when the horse reared, she being thus made fast to him, allowed herself to be raised from the ground, standing erect upon the tips of her rigid toes--or else she would twine her feet about the rider's leg, clinging to him as the polypus clings, with its tendons to the rock, and laughing always, with a wicked, obstinate, triumphant air.

"You shall never be rid of me again!"

At last, becoming more and more alarmed, he came to have a horror of her, as of a poisonous insect, seen in a dream, a spider or a dragon-fly, that follows you obstinately, or of an adder that conceives a strange, almost human hatred for you, persists in following your footsteps, with unwearying patience, and becomes an object of terror, despite his puny size, because of his supernatural tenacity.

And in very truth the fierce resolution, the malevolent perseverance, the demoniacal obstinacy of the woman, protected as she was by her beauty and her weakness, were terrifying.

But the play of the muscles, causing that gleaming flesh, now moist with perspiration, to throb and undulate, aroused the man's interest, in spite of everything, and pleased him more and more. Desire awoke in him. And instantly he refused to accept his defeat, and rebelled.

"Look out!" he cried, and he urged his horse forward, driving his spurs into his sides; but the beast, held fast by the nostrils, gave but three leaps and then stopped short, breathing fire. Poor Blanchet, who was used to his young mistress's caresses and sweetmeats! he was learning now to know woman's true nature.

At last, the gipsy released her double prey.

"Go! you have looked at me enough!" she suddenly exclaimed.

Renaud gazed at her an instant longer, without speaking or moving. The strength and chaotic character of his temptations held him fast there for another moment. So this extraordinary experience (which would never be repeated!) was ended at last!--Mad thoughts, each clear enough in itself, but confused by their great number, jostled one another in his brain. Why had he not sooner put an end to this conflict? What would people say of him when it was known? How could it be that he, the king of the moor, had not stooped to pick up this joy?--But Livette?--ah, yes! Livette!

He buried his spurs in Blanchet's flanks, and the beast flew away toward Saintes-Maries.

The gipsy stood on the shore a long while, looking after the fugitive. She smiled. She reviewed in her mind the varying fortunes of the battle, and gauged the extent of her victory. She recalled, one by one, to enjoy them to the full, the thoughts that had passed through her mind when she was wading toward the shore.

She had not premeditated her assault, as she made it--her first idea had been to pick up some stones and throw them at Renaud's head, being an adept in the art. But she could find none. So she had continued her forward movement, not knowing what she would do, but certain that she must do something to punish the insolent Christian.

But when she felt the cool air blowing upon her bare breast, she had said to herself in her mysterious language, full of cabalistic words and images, that if a saint had been able to recompense a boatman--her good friend--simply by revealing to him her beauty all unclothed, a heathen might, by similar means, chastise a brutal drover; for love is the magician's herb, the bitter-sweet, the plant with two savors, balm and poison at once; and woman is bitter as the salt sea water, frightful as death,--her hands are chains stronger than iron, and her whole being is as much to be dreaded as an army!

Could not she, brown as she was, almost black beside the white-skinned blondes, domineer over the pale-faced Livette's lover, if she chose? Indeed, what more need she do, to make him unfaithful to his fair fiancee, than show herself to him, and could she not do it without seeming to intend it? As she had, beyond question, been insulted by this Christian, she could pretend to forget her nudity in her wrath, and thus attack him with that same nudity!--No, no, there was no need of philters, magic incantations, or fires lighted at night when the moon is young, under tripods on which marsh-water, filled with snakes, is boiling--no need of such things to bewitch this fellow! She would come forth from the water, naked and lovely as she was, and the devil, at her command, would do the rest! What were the stones she might throw at a young man, compared with the power that exhaled from herself? Yes, therein lay the charm of charms. She knew it,--being a witch like every other woman! Lust for her body was what she would throw at him like an evil destiny; with that she would poison his life--and then, she would calmly watch the ravages of the poison.

And so she had come forward, small but formidable--the queen! She knew also that in former times, in the days of pagan Europe, an immortal goddess had issued from the sea, had sprung forth, fair and naked, like a marvellous flower, and, standing on the blue waves, her feet resting in a shell of mother-of-pearl, had long held sway over men--before the reign of Jesus Christ.

Renaud, turning in his saddle, saw the gipsy standing there, still naked, waving her arms in the sunlight, as if she wished still, from afar, to hold Livette's betrothed spellbound and fascinated by her beauty.

The sun disappeared below the horizon, and the naked woman's figure, even more mysterious in the gathering twilight, was outlined in black against a coppery red sky.

VIII

ON THE BENCH

From Saintes-Maries, whither he went to ask how many bulls he was expected to bring on the day of the fete, Renaud rode away at once to the Chateau d'Avignon.

He was in haste to see Livette once more, and sitting by her side to forget the scene of the afternoon, to which, despite his efforts, his mind constantly reverted.

A ride of four or five leagues and he reached his destination.

Livette and her father and grandmother were sitting just outside the farm-house, enjoying the fresh air on the stone bench against the facade of the chateau, among the old climbing rose-bushes which frame the windows above with their bunches of green leaves interspersed with flowers.

This was also one of the favorite resorts of our lovers, who liked to have above their heads the perfumed foliage, to which one of the nightingales from the park often came to sing.

"Ah! good-evening, Jacques."

"Good-evening, all."

"What brings you so late? You have dined, of course?"

"I ate some anchovies at the Saintes----"

"They're good for nothing but to give you an appetite. Would you like something else? you have only to speak."

"Thanks, Master Audiffret. I'll just go and look after Blanchet in the stable and then come back. I won't go to the _jass_ to-night. I'll sleep in the hay-loft with the horses."

Master Audiffret, with his pipe between his lips, rose and followed Renaud as far as the door of the stable, and from there watched him rub down his horse.

"Whenever you please, Master Audiffret, you can take him back for Livette. I don't find any faults in him; far from it. He is a good horse, and very gentle."

"He is quiet with you because you tire him out, you see; but she didn't use him every day, not by any means; I am always afraid for her. If she takes a fancy to ride him sometimes, you can lend him to her, and take the first horse that comes along for yourself. By the way, I hope you will soon have your Cabri again. Somebody saw Rampal yesterday in Crau. He was riding your horse, so he hasn't sold him, at all events. It's fair to suppose he means to bring him back to you."

"Oh! I will go to meet him," said Jacques, "for as to thinking he will bring him back to me--oh! no; he would have done that before now!--Can you tell me, Audiffret, where Rampal was seen yesterday?"

"Between Tibert's farm and Icard's in Crau. Right there, as you know, in the middle of a bog, is a hut you can only get to by a plank walk built on piles and covered by the water--you can only tell where it is, when you know the place, by stakes sticking up at intervals the whole length of the walk. I have an idea he means to go in hiding there, the beggar, like the deserter who went there to pass his time of service----"

"Aha! he has gone to the Conscript's Hut, has he? Very good; I will go to see him there, never fear!" said Renaud.

Blanchet, having been well rubbed down, was grinding the good lucern between his teeth. Renaud went out of the stable, and with Audiffret sat down beside Livette and the grandmother.

All four kept silence for a long moment. Nothing could be heard but the unceasing, melancholy croaking of the frogs, and beneath it, but indistinguishable, the dull murmuring of the two Rhones and the sea.

The sky was swarming with innumerable tiny stars, which seemed to answer the various noises of the palpitating moor; and, just as the waters of the Rhone, after it rushes into the blue ocean, pursue their own course for a long while therein, unmingled, without losing their earthy color; so the Milky-Way, made of a dust of stars, pursued its course, easily distinguishable, through the ocean of starry worlds.

Renaud had a feeling of constraint.

When he joined his fiancee, he did not feel all that he ordinarily felt--a joyful impulse to run to meet her, a sort of oppression at the pit of the stomach, a sudden delicious rush of the blood to the throbbing heart!--And Livette, too, so soon, was conscious of a vague inexplicable feeling at the bottom of her heart that something was wrong. There was something between them! Indeed, he had, for the first time, something to conceal from her; and, thinking that it might, that it must be apparent, he suddenly said:

"I am not well to-night."

"Look out for the fever!" said Audiffret. "I know it is not as frequent or as dangerous as it used to be, but you must be on your guard, all the same! Be on your guard, and take the remedy. Up in the pharmacy of the chateau are the registers of the time the land was first exploited--the time when the Chateau d'Avignon people were gaining a little arable land from the swamps every day. Why, men went to the hospital, fifteen, twenty a day. And such doses of quinine, my children! It is all written down in the _Livre de Raison_ up there. In those days, all the farms hereabout had the same kind of a book, called by the same name, just as sailors have a log-book. Those were the days of good order and gallantry. The peasant-women in those days didn't try to copy Parisian bourgeoises,--eh, grandmamma?--by wearing dresses that didn't suit them, instead of the old-fashioned gowns that made them attractive because they were so becoming."

"Yes," sighed the grandmother, "this is the age of pride, and my time has gone by."

That is the common remark of all our old peasants.

"People didn't read so many newspapers in those days," continued Audiffret, "they didn't worry so much about the affairs of the whole world, and every man paid much more attention to his own affairs. Things went better for it. Landowners lived on their estates and raised families, instead of going to Paris and dying there, of pride or debt or something else. The _Livre de Raison_ up yonder describes our ancestors' battles with the swamps and the fever. The pharmacy is still in good order, with the scales and the jars in the pigeon-holes, under the dust. And the book tells everything, diseases and deaths. To-day, hardly any one dies of the fever in our neighborhood. It is dying out. The dikes and canals have done good service, and this Cochin China of France, as that sailor called it that I took to see the Giraud rice-fields, this Camargue of ours is as healthy to-day as Crau!--However, be on your guard, I tell you, and take the remedy! don't wait till to-morrow; Livette will give you what you need. Now, I am going to bed. Stay up a little longer, young people, if you choose. Are you coming, grandma?"

"No, I'll stay out a moment longer with the young folks," said the old woman.

Audiffret knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the corner of the bench, and having put it in his pocket, went up to bed.

Silence reigned upon the bench.

The grandmother was tired and sleepy: every little while she would raise her head as if suddenly awakened,--then it would begin to fall forward again, slowly, slowly----

"A heavy dew is falling," observed Livette, suddenly.

"Yes, demoiselle."

"See!" said she ingenuously, holding out her arm so that he could feel the dampness on the sleeve of her dress. But he did not put out his hand. He was not all Livette's that evening, as usual. Strangely enough, she did not frighten him that evening. He was not, as usual, overcome with diffidence in her presence. She no longer dominated him. And he was angry with himself. He suffered. He realized that his thoughts were more frequently busied with the memory of the day than with his sweetheart, who was sitting so near him.

"What are you thinking about?" said Livette, who had had her eyes upon him for a moment past, as if she could see his face distinctly, although they were sitting in the shadow. Beyond question, she felt that his thoughts were elsewhere. There is nothing more subtle than a lover's divination.

"I am thinking," said Renaud, a long minute after the question, "about my horse, which I propose to take back from Rampal to-morrow if he can be found in Camargue or Crau."

"And then?"

"And then?" he repeated--"I was thinking of the Conscript's Hut, where he is at this moment, perhaps,--in hiding."

"And of what else?" Livette insisted.

"Oh! how do I know! of the fever--of all we have just been saying----"

"Alas!" said the maiden, "and not at all of me, Renaud? do you not think of me any more?"

Her voice was sad.

He shuddered, and the movement did not escape the little one's notice. It seemed to him, as Livette uttered that reproach, that he saw the gipsy again as he had seen her in the afternoon, standing before him, near at hand, all naked and so brown! as if she were accustomed to pass her days naked in the sun, and were tanned from head to foot by his rays. And how lithe and sinewy the wild creature was! A genuine animal, a little Arabian mare, of much finer breed than the Camargue stock. Alas! for too long a time, through fidelity to his fiancee, he had been as virtuous as a girl, and now the hot-blooded fellow's continence was taking its revenge upon him, a cruel revenge, arousing mad, amorous longings that were not for Livette. And so his very respect for her--poor child!--turned against her!

"Jacques?" said Livette, in the hardly audible tone the sentiment of love imparts to the lover's voice, a soft, veiled tone, heard by the heart rather than by the ear.

Renaud did not hear her. He _saw_.--He saw the gipsy as plainly as if she were there before him, even more plainly. In the darkness of the night, her body, brown as before, seemed luminous, like an opaque substance giving forth a pale light. Her naked figure, obscure and bright at the same time, was standing motionless before his eyes--then it moved--and he fancied that he saw the gipsy bathing in the phosphorescent water peculiar to the summer months,--when swimmers cause a cold, liquid light to dart hither and thither through the dark water, following and marking the outlines of their forms, from which it seems to radiate.

"Have I the fever?" he said to himself.

As if in answer to the unspoken question, Livette took his hand. She felt it from wrist to finger-ends, to see if it were dry and hot.

"Yes," said she, "you must look out; father was right, you have a touch of fever. Come up and find the medicine."

"Come on," said he, glad of the diversion.

"Come," she repeated, "but move softly: grandma has fallen asleep!"

The old lady was asleep, as she said. She was leaning against the wall, perfectly motionless. The white handkerchief, tied in the Arlesian fashion, instead of covering her _chignon_ only, enveloped almost her whole head, allowing two tufts of coarse, white hair, all in disorder, to protrude, like mist, on each side of her face.

She was asleep, her mouth partly open, a ray of light shining through upon her teeth, which were still beautiful.

They left her there.

IX

THE PRAYER

Livette opened the farm-house door, which creaked loudly in the resonant emptiness of the spacious stone staircase.

She lighted the lamp, which was hanging on a nail, and they went up-stairs together, she absorbed by thoughts of him, and he of her, but no longer in their accustomed condition of affectionate embarrassment.