Chapter IX: Part 9

Renaud awoke, standing on his feet beside his fallen horse. Blanchet was dying. It was soon over. The honest creature opened, to an unnatural width, his great glazed eyes, green as the stagnant water in the swamps, and filled with that wondering expression which the infinite mystery of living or of having lived imparts to the gaze of little children, animals, and dying men; he straightened out his four legs, trembling like the reeds in the marshes. A shiver ran over his whole body, riddled with the stings of a myriad of gnats and great flies, some of which flew up into the air and settled down again in the corners of the dim, wide-open eyes. Then the poor creature became motionless, with an indefinable something that was alarming and terrible in his immobility, something that put joy to flight, that seemed to imply finality. It was death. Blanchet had ended his humble Camarguese life in the open desert, in the bright sunlight. Livette's horse was dead in the service of Renaud's passion for Zinzara!

The faithful beast did not know what had happened; he did not know the reason of the forced journeys, the multiplied wounds inflicted by Renaud's spurs, by the stings of the gadflies, and by Zinzara's pin, buried in his flesh; he had submitted, without a murmur, to the destiny that bade him suffer at the hands of those who might have made life pleasanter for him, and, as he lay dead, his eyes still expressed his endless amazement at his failure to understand what was expected of him.

It was all over. He was dead. The affectionate creature had fallen a victim to the violence and malignity of human passions. Man had betrayed him for a woman's sake. And now his graceful form, made for swift movement, was infinitely sad to see, because the eye could see clearly all that there was in its immobility contrary to the purpose for which it was designed--and irreparable.

Renaud gazed stupidly at him.--He saw again, like so many reproachful words, Blanchet's last look, his short, rapid breath, the shudder that ran over his bleeding skin. And, restored to his senses by this unforeseen catastrophe which awoke a thousand salutary thoughts in his mind, he felt his heart grow soft. He burst into tears.

Thus Blanchet served his mistress still by his death. "Everything is of some use," said Sigaud.

Renaud stooped and returned, upon his still warm nostrils, the kiss he had received from him on the day of his first despair; then, having removed the saddle and bridle and concealed them in a safe place, he returned on foot to the Icard farm, with an intense, affectionate desire to do his utmost to care for and comfort poor Livette, for the death of her horse brought him back to her more quickly than anything else could have done.

He promised himself that he would return and bury Blanchet, but he did not have time. The good horse belonged to the vulture and the eagle.

In the evening of that same day, while Livette, sleeping soundly, seemed to everybody to be out of danger,--while Renaud lay, like a dog, in front of her door, determined to defend and save her,--Zinzara arrived at the Alyscamps at Arles.

There, thinking that Renaud might, with the devil's assistance, succeed in overtaking her,--although she may have had her reasons for thinking that his horse was not in condition for service at that time,--she left her house on wheels, in order that she might not be taken by surprise therein like a wild beast in its lair,--not from fear, but because she was desirous, before all else, not to see him again. She went to the farther end of the Allee des Alyscamps, between the rows of tall poplars, amid the stone monuments, and lighted a fire of twigs, to give her light enough to look about and select a spot where she could sleep comfortably.

She went there late, when the lovers who congregate there on May evenings, to make love upon the tombs, had returned to the sleeping city.

Along the whole length of the avenue, between the tall, straight poplars, run two rows of sarcophagi, some very high, with massive lids, others low and without lids, with a few scattered blossoms, sown by the wind, at the bottom. The dead who once slept there were sent down to Arles in sealed urns, abandoned to the current of the Rhone by the cities farther up the river. Now flowers are springing from their dust; and their open tombs are nothing more than beds for vagabonds and lovers.

By the bright light of her fire, which cast her shadow, enormously exaggerated, upon the wall of the ruined chapel, Zinzara selected her couch. She tossed an armful of grass and leaves upon the bottom of a sarcophagus; and, while the nightingale, who builds his nest there every year, was singing for dear life, the strange creature slept peacefully, with her face to the sky, trusting in her destiny; and, as a ray of moonlight fell upon her calm face with its closed eyelids, the sorceress resembled her black mummy, which concealed and idealized corruption--embalmed beneath a golden mask.

XXIV

IN THE GARGATE

When he received Zinzara's message from the gipsy child, Rampal, who was still suffering from his fall of a few days before, did not think of going in person to surprise Renaud. He did better than that. He went at once to Livette, and told her of the rendezvous at the cabin.

"Your lover, Livette, who defends you so fiercely against a harmless kiss, is with a woman to-night--you ought to be able to guess who she is--in the Conscript's Hut, near the Icard farm."

As Livette stood aghast, with pale cheeks, he continued:

"Your father has good horses; if you want to see for yourself, you can. It will be worth your while."

"Thanks, Rampal," said Livette.

Not for an instant did she doubt the truth of what he told her, and she said to her father:

"Go with me to the Icard farm, father, as you know the people there. Let us go to the Icard farm at once; my happiness depends on it. There is something there that I want to see to-morrow morning."

The poor man did not understand, but he always yielded to her caprice. They set out at once for the Chateau d'Avignon.

They left the wagon at the chateau; they harnessed the best pair of horses to the cabriolet, and made seven or eight leagues without stopping.

"Thanks, father. I must be here to-morrow morning. I will tell you why----"

It was eleven o'clock at night.

When all were in bed, Livette, being familiar with "the place," which her father had pointed out to her anew at her request,--Livette furtively left the house to prowl about the spot where disaster awaited her, for love knows no obstacles, and we follow our destiny through everything, and rush on to death in pursuit of our last sorrow.

And then?--Ah! throughout the visions of her sick-bed Livette constantly lived over that terrible moment when she was prowling around the swamp. In truth, she was still there, in agony of mind.

About the swamp, in the darkness, Livette hovered like a sea-gull in distress. Like a lost soul from hell she flitted about the edges of the bog, trying to pierce with her gaze the dark clumps of reeds and tamarisks.

From time to time, according to the spot from which she looked, she could see the gray roof of the cabin, silvered by the moonlight.

Was any one there? Had Rampal told her the truth? Ought she to lose this opportunity of convincing herself with her own eyes of Renaud's treachery?

Should she give her life to a traitor without endeavoring to unmask him, although warned? With her widely dilated eyes, she imagined that she saw lights that did not exist; or--if she did really see a feeble gleam through the chinks in the door--she refused to believe her eyes.

The blood was tingling in her ears, and she thought she could hear voices. It seemed to her at times as if her head were bursting. She could see, inside her head, beneath her skull, a great white light, and in the centre of the light Renaud and the gipsy together. Oh! to think of not finding out!

And, if it should be so, what should she do?

The essential thing was to find out. Afterward, she would see. If she were strong enough, if she could do it--she would certainly kill the woman.--How? Livette did not know. Simply with a look, perhaps.--Madness rises from the swamps with the miasmatic exhalations at night. Livette felt that she was going mad.

"How do you get to the cabin?" she had asked her father.

Ah! yes, the path is marked by stakes, is it not? To the left of the stakes is the path. She cannot see the tops of the stakes in the dark water. Frogs were sitting on them, perhaps, to look at the moon; or turtles on those that were just level with the surface. But no, it was grass that covered them all. And Livette's eyes ached with her endeavors to open them wider in the darkness, and find some sign upon the indistinct objects about her.

But suppose Rampal had deceived her?

At one time, it seemed to her that she could hear something resembling the gipsy music that made the snakes dance--but so weak! Surely it was in her poor, tired head,--for if it had been the real music, all the reptiles in the swamp would have come out to dance, all at once, in the moonlight.

Bah! Why should she be afraid? As if there were so very many of the creatures in the country! They are not fond of the salt in the bogs, nor the high winds.

She hovered about the swamp like a sea-gull lost at sea!

"Yes, yes, this is the way, here is the path under the water and the stakes that mark it! I must keep the stakes at my right as I walk along."

She starts to take the first step, and dares not--but suddenly the sound of voices comes to her ears. She distinguishes two voices--two!--beyond any question. And now it is surely the metallic sound of the tambourine that floats through the reeds in the moonlight, bringing to her heart the frightful vision of the other's joy!

She will go. After all, since her unhappiness is certain, what matter if she die of it! Ah! how bitter would be his punishment if, on coming out, at daybreak, he should find her there, drowned!

She makes a step; she sinks! but she does not cry out. No, she will extricate herself unaided--she must. She clings to the long grass, to the reeds which break in her hands. She is sinking! Ah! God! is she to die there? They would be too well pleased, aye, both of them, to have caused her death! Therefore she must not die! She will not! She struggles, and sinks deeper. As she lifts one foot, she rests her weight on the other, which goes down, down, and the ooze gains upon her. It rises to her waist; and still she cannot refrain from raising her feet, one after the other, as if to climb an imaginary stairway, the solid ladder that she dreams of but cannot find!

With every upward effort she sinks lower; it is horrible. Her hands are so small that she does not grasp enough grass, enough reeds, at once! Everything about her yields, everything fails to give support. How the reeds break between her fingers! like grass threads! It seems to her that clammy creatures are rubbing against her legs, her hands--ah! yes, the snakes--the bloodsuckers! She will be eaten alive by the bloodsuckers.--But where is the stake, near the edge of the swamp, that she thought she saw a moment ago? She lets go the grass to which she is clinging, with the result that she sinks deeper, still deeper. Now the cold water submerges her bosom, surrounds her neck, crawls up toward her mouth. Will she be compelled in a moment to drink that filthy water? At that thought, she makes one final effort. Her dishevelled locks cling about her neck, as if to strangle her, all drenched and cold and slimy, like veritable snakes!--She struggles, tosses her hands about this way and that--until one of them comes in contact with the wooden stake, firmly planted in the ground.--Saintes Maries!--She seizes it, twines her fingers about it, digs her nails into it, and does not relax her hold. Nor will she, even when she is dead! But her arm no longer has the strength to raise her, and her head falls heavily back--her eyes close. Is this death?--It was at that moment, just as she lost consciousness, that the brave-hearted maid cried out,--not until then. And her cry rang out over the swamps, like the call of the birds of passage, which ceaselessly, over all the waters upon earth, seek the repose that can never be found.

That ghastly vision recurred again and again to Livette, while the women of the Icard farm were busying themselves, a little too noisily, around her bed. At last, there was silence in her room. She saw her father come in, but she did not choose to explain anything to him. She sent word to the grandmother not to be anxious, that she would return home in three days. Livette asked to see Renaud. Her father went to find him. She closed her eyes.

She fancied that she could remember, now, certain things that happened to her during her sleep of death in the _gargate_, but were not reproduced in her dream. She felt Renaud's arms lifting her out of the mire, and that, after all, is the one thing to be desired, more than life itself--the protection of the man she loved, her lover's mourning for her, thinking that she was dead.--But before that, a moment before, had she not felt the weight of a fixed gaze upon her?--She had looked dimly forth between her drooping eyelids, through her long lashes which seemed to her like a thick grating; and she fancied that she saw the gipsy, the ill-omened gitana, standing before her. "Yes, it is she, it is really she. She is standing here beside me. She looks very, very tall. Her head touches the sky. She is on the path leading to the cabin. She is just coming from the rendezvous. She has been kissing Renaud! When will he come? Will the witch's black shadow, standing so straight there, never go? What more do you want, witch? Don't you see that I am dead? I must make you think I am dead. Then you will leave me, at last!--The wicked woman is always smiling. Ah! there she goes.--How heavy her glance was! And how tall she was! She kept all the light from me. Now I can see the sky again. Is it you, Renaud, is it you, Jacques, who take me in your arms as if I were dead?--It is you, at last!"

Thus cried poor Livette, delirious once more. But Renaud was sitting beside her bed with his face in his hands, listening to her.

"It is you," she went on; "you think me dead, and I can feel you take me in your arms and quickly carry me away. But why do you not weep, when you see me so? It is you, at last! I am dead, and still I feel you. You have me in your arms. Your heart beats fast. Mine has ceased to beat. Where were you, bad boy? What did you say to her? But that is past and gone!--Is that woman very dear to your heart?--Why do you come no more to my father's house in the evening? He is very fond of you. Grandma is a dear old soul. Do you see how faithful she is to her dead husband? People knew how to love one another better in her day, she says. Is it true? Do you believe it, Jacques? And if I die, won't you keep my memory sacred, as she keeps grandpa's?--Why do you make me suffer so?--Are we two never to walk under the great elm again? Our pretty stone bench under the rose-bushes is very sad now, and lonely like a tombstone. Ah! if you had chosen! I was pretty, yes, pretty, pretty! And now I shall be ugly. For I have done with life, even if I am not dead. My life is at an end, at an end!"

XXV

THE PHANTOM

Livette, who had been carried back to the Chateau d'Avignon many days before, had not left her bed. The fever clung to her obstinately. Nothing could be done.

Was it really true, O God, that she was doomed to die, and he to see it? Was he to lose the future he had dreamed of, a future of unruffled happiness, of love and peace, as her husband; the joy he had known for such a brief space, of having a woman, sweet and dear and helpless as a child, to cherish and protect?--Was he condemned never to know the pleasure of having a family--a pleasure that had been denied to him, an orphan, and of which he had often dreamed as of one of the joys of Paradise--was he condemned never to know it, because he had forgotten his longing for a single day? The picture, dear to country-folk, of the chimney with the smoke curling upward, that seems to say to them, as far as it can be seen: "The soup is hot, the wife is waiting, the children are calling," recurred sometimes to his mind, and he sighed profoundly.

The punishment that he saw coming upon him did not seem to him proportionate to the offence. There was no justice in it!

What is the meaning of that most terrible of all mysteries: that the love of the senses is more powerful than the love of the heart when separated from its object, even though the last be recognized as the more certain and the sweeter?

Between the lofty chapel and the subterranean crypt of the church of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, on the level of human life, does the miracle come always from below? And if it be so, is it any less a miracle? Which of you has fathomed the meaning of life? Who can say: "It is unjust," or: "It is useless," or: "What I do not see does not exist"? Who can say if Livette's sufferings and Renaud's, their troubles and their heart-burnings, all the invisible and inexplicable movements within themselves,--of which they knew nothing,--were not preparing the way for realities inconceivable to our minds? The _ideal_, the dream of what is best, is the essential condition of the _material_ development of mankind. No force is wasted; everything is transformed. "Everything is of some use," said the old shepherd Sigaud. "It takes all kinds to make a world."

Livette had forgiven Renaud, Renaud had not forgiven himself.

Sometimes he gazed at her, deeply moved, and he suffered with her for hours at a time. Sometimes he had sudden fits of rage against her--paroxysms of wickedness, as it were. Was she not an obstacle in his path? At such times, he believed that he was possessed by a devil, and he would kneel by Livette's bed and pray to the saints, the women of compassion.

Ah! how thin she was! Her eyes seemed to have grown larger, and to have changed from blue to black, because the pupils were still dilated. Her long, fair hair no longer shone. It seemed as if the muddy water of the swamp had taken away its gloss forever.

She often started at noises that she imagined she heard.

She, who in the old days used to talk but little, was constantly telling of the things she had dreamed, and she would be vexed if they were not remembered.

The doctors of Arles tried everything. Nothing was of any avail.

"I want no more of their medicine," she said one day to Renaud. "They might do very well for swamp fever, but there is something else the matter with me. It was my heart that you drowned. I never could believe you again; it is much better that I should die."

She had explained nothing to her father or grandmother.

"They would have turned you out of the house," she said, "and I wanted to see you to the end."

Her journey to the Icard farm, her nocturnal flight, her accident, all were attributed to an attack of fever, which was supposed to have been responsible for her actions, whereas, on the contrary, her illness was the result of them all.

Renaud, by a desperate effort, mastered his passion at last. Was it forever? He chose to think so, because it was necessary that it should be so, in order to keep her alive.

He tried not to think of the other. He tried to repent. Every moment he tore from his mind by an exertion of his will--as he would tear up grass with his hand--some one of his memories. He told amusing stories, pretending to laugh loudest at them.

His heart was filled with a great pity for Livette, but, for all that, you would not have had to lift a very large stone to find there, in a spot that he knew well, the sleeping viper.

"I shall die, I shall die!"--Livette often said, "but I want to see the fete of Saintes-Maries once more. I want to live till then. You must carry me there and lay me on the relics; that is where I want to die. And at my burial, I want the drovers, your comrades, to follow on horseback--promise me this--with their spears reversed, like the soldiers I saw at Avignon one day, marching to the cemetery, holding their guns that way."

With a sort of gaiety, she often recurred to the subject of her burial, and embellished it with other details, saying, with the air of a playful child:

"There must be lilies, as there are in the procession at Saintes-Maries when they go to bless the sea; I want lots of lilies! Lilies are so pretty and white! they are so proud on their stalks, and they smell so sweet!"

Meanwhile, the season was hastening away; the months came and went, like the same months in years past for centuries.

Summer set the sky and land and sea ablaze, drawing the last drop of moisture from the swamps, sowing the venomous seeds of miasma in the heavy air that people breathed. The crops ripened; then came the harvest. It was autumn. The redbreast sang in the park of the Chateau d'Avignon. The nights grew long once more. The leaves fell. The sad days of the year began.

The buttercups had disappeared. The Vaccares, which had been dry all summer, no longer exposed to the sun its lovely mouse-gray bed; it was once more a sea. The light golden tint of the September sky was long since hidden from sight behind the rising mists.

The birds of passage began anew their flight over the mirror-like island which promised them abundant prey. The eagle hurried from the Alps to make war upon the fish-hawks. And at night, when the wind howled and the rain fell in torrents, the storks and cranes and geese passed over in triangular flocks, at a great height in the drenched atmosphere, uttering cries like cries of alarm.

Livette's suffering became more intense. She passed whole days sitting at her window.

One evening, Renaud was sitting beside her, in silence, while the grandmother and Pere Audiffret were dining in the room below. The room was dimly lighted by a lamp. Suddenly Livette sprang to her feet, then fell back, crying:

"There she is! there she is! No! no! don't go with her! I don't want you to! no, no, Jacques!"

Renaud also had risen, and was staring vacantly at Livette; following the direction of her gaze, he began to tremble. Outside the window stood a pale, uncertain, but very recognizable spectre, the gipsy herself! He had no sooner recognized her than she disappeared, after making a significant sign to him, that said: "Come!"

It was not a vision of the sick girl's imagination, for he, too, had seen it!

Perhaps the fever-laden island had sown its poison in the blood of both. The germs of fever were taking root and flourishing in them. The blight of the _paluns_ implanted in their brains, as in a cloudy mirror, the image everlastingly repeated of the familiar plaintive objects of the desert, with which the current of their thoughts was mingled.

"Don't go! don't go! my Jacques!"

She dragged herself along the floor on her knees, shaken with sobs, imploring the drover, as she clung with both hands to his jacket.

The father and grandmother had hastened to the room.

The father, too, was sobbing, and knew not what to do. The grandmother slowly seated herself by the bed on which Renaud had gently laid Livette.

Calm and silent, the old woman gazed long and with a beautiful expression of perfect trust upon the copper crucifix and the images of the saints that hung on the wall of the recess.

And, on the bed, Livette, uttering cries like a lost bird, twining her fingers about her as if clinging to life, to the reeds in the swamp wherein she still fancied that she was drowning--Livette breathed her last.

Livette was dead.

The drovers, on horseback, with spears reversed, attended her body to the cemetery. Her favorite dog followed her thither.

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

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

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

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

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

Since that, Renaud has become like a phantom himself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Translation.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcriber's Note

Minor punctuation errors have been repaired.

Hyphenation and accent usage has been made consistent.

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

The following typographic errors have been fixed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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