The curÉ of Saintes-Maries was a man of about sixty, well preserved, very tall and stout, with bright eyes whose light he quenched with spectacles, and energetic gestures which he purposely restrained.

The parsonage was near the church, the doorway shaded by a number of elms. The house, in accordance with the prevailing custom of the province, was whitewashed once a year, outside and in, like the houses of the Arabs.

The houses in Saintes-Maries are low. The streets are narrow, and wind about to escape the sun. The shadows under the awnings of the little shops have a bluish cast. In front of the doors, which open on the street, hang transparent curtains of common linen, in some cases of very fine net-work, to stop the flies and admit the light after it has passed through the sieve, so to speak. And, behind them, the maidens of Saintes-Maries are confined like birdlings in a cage, or like very dangerous little wild beasts. Are not all maidens to be looked upon with more or less suspicion?

The maidens of Saintes-Maries wear the Arles head-dress and the neckerchief, with fold upon fold held in place by hundreds of pins, by as many pins as a rose-bush has thorns; and where the thick folds of the handkerchief open, in the depths of the chapelle, you can see the little golden cross gleaming upon the firm young flesh rising and falling with the maidenly sigh. The apron worn over the ample skirt seems like a skirt itself, it is so broad and full, and slender feet peep out from beneath it, as agile as the Camargue partridge’s red claws, that love to scamper swiftly over the fields to escape the hunter, knowing that Camargue is broad and space is plentiful.

Many are the pale faces at Saintes, for, whatever they may say, the marshes still breed fever, and this country, to which people come to be miraculously cured, is, generally speaking, a country of disease; but pallor goes well with the wavy black hair, worn in broad puffs on the temples and falling upon the neck in two heavy masses which are turned up to meet the chignon. To help them to forget what is depressing in their lives, they resort, here as elsewhere, to coquetry—and the rest!—And then they are accustomed to the fever, which gives birth to dreams and visions; they tame it, as it were; it is not cruel to the people it knows, and does not lead them to the cemetery until they are old and gray. The cemetery is a few steps from the village, a few steps from the sea. It lies at the foot of the sand-dunes, surrounded by a low wall. The dead and gone villagers of Saintes-Maries lie sleeping there between the sea and the desert of Camargue: many fishermen who lived in their flat-bottomed boats; many herdsmen who lived on horseback in the plain.

All of them alike find there, in death, the things amid which their lives have been passed: the salt sand, filled with tiny shells, the enganes that grow in spite of everything, reddened by the salt-laden winds, and heavy with soda,—and the thin shadow of the pink-plumed tamarisk. There they hear the neighing of the wild mares, the shouts of the herdsmen contending on the race-course on fÊte-days, or stirring up the black bulls in the arena under the walls of the church. They hear the sails flapping, and the han of the bare-legged fishermen pushing their flat-bottomed boats or barges into the water; and night and day, the pounding of the sea in its efforts to push back the island of Camargue, while the RhÔne, on the other hand, is constantly pushing it into the sea, and adding to its bulk with mud and stones brought down from its head-waters. The sea smites the island as if it would have none of it, but all in vain,—it, too, can but augment its size with the sand it casts up.

And the sand from the sea makes a broad hem of dunes along the shores of Camargue.

No one can fail to see that the dunes, those shifting, tomb-like hills of sand, must have served as models for the massive pyramids, the tombs of kings, in the Egyptian desert.

At the feet of the little pyramids of sand sleep the dead of Camargue.

But whither has the thought of death led us? Why do we tarry here, while Livette is timidly lifting the knocker at monsieur le curÉ’s door?

The blow echoed within the house, in the empty hall. Livette was much perturbed. What was she to say? Where should she begin? The beginning is always the most difficult part. She would like to run away now, but it is too late. She hears steps inside. Marion, the old servant, opens the door.

Marion has a practised eye. When any one knocks at Monsieur le curÉ’s door, she knows, simply by examining his face, what he wants, and frames her answers accordingly, on her own responsibility; for Monsieur le curÉ is subject to rheumatism: he suffers from fever, too, and Marion nurses Monsieur le curÉ! If he listened to Marion, he would nurse himself so carefully that all the sick people would have to die unshriven, without extreme unction, for Marion would always have a good reason to give to prevent him from going out by day or night, when the mistral was blowing or the wind was from the east, summer or winter, rain or shine.

But Monsieur le curÉ would smile and do just what he chose. He was a good priest. He never failed in his duty. He loved his parishioners. He assisted them on all occasions with his purse and his advice. He was beloved by them all.

He loved his parishioners, his commune, and his curious church, which was once a fortress; he was familiar with the shape of its every stone. He loved it both as priest and as archaeologist, for Monsieur le curÉ is a scholar, and his church is, in very truth, one of the most interesting monuments in France, with its abnormally thick, high, and threatening walls, crowned with jutting galleries and surmounted by crenelated battlements, with an unobstructed view of sea and land in all directions, and overlooked by four turrets, and a tower in the centre,—the highest of all,—from whose belfry the alarum bell, in the old days, often aroused the country-side, repeating in its shrillest tones: “Here come the heathens, good people of Saintes-Maries! Attention! Come and shut yourselves up here! Make ready your arrows and the boiling oil and pitch!”—Or else: “Hasten to the shore, good people of Saintes-Maries! A French vessel is sinking!”

And to this day it seems still to say, to all, far and near: “I see you! I see you!”

One could go on forever describing the church of Saintes-Maries, and relating anecdotes concerning it.

Behind the battlements at the top, and enclosing the roof of flat stones, runs a narrow pathway, where the archers and patrols in the old days used to make their rounds, surrounded by countless sea-swallows. Along the ridge-pole of the roof, of overlapping broad flat stones, between which thick tufts of nasques are growing, rises a high carved comb, in ogive-like curves, surmounted by fleurs-de-lis.

All this is beautiful and grand, but there is a little thing of which the villagers are as proud as of the bell-tower and the turrets, and that is a marble tablet, about five courses in length by three in height, on which two lions are represented. One is protecting its whelp; the other seems to be protecting a little child, as if it were its own offspring. It seems that this tablet was carved by a Greek workman long, long ago.

The marble is set into the southern wall of the church, beside the small door.

You enter. The ogive arch of the nave compels you to raise your eyes to a great height. And as you enter by the main door, your attention is attracted by a romanesque arch, directly in front of you, at the far end of the church, at least five metres below the ogive arch of the nave; in the centre of this arch are the blessed reliquaries, resting upon the sill of an opening like a window, flanked by two columns. From that position they are lowered once in every year at the ends of two ropes.

The choir is some few feet higher than the flagging of the church. It is reached by two symmetrical staircases, between which is the grated door leading down into Sara’s crypt. That door you can see, directly in front of you, at the end of the passage through the centre of the church, between the rows of chairs. One would say that it was the air-hole of a dungeon.

Down below, in the damp crypt, with its low arched roof and naked walls,—a veritable dungeon,—upon a mutilated marble altar, is the little glass shrine containing the relics of Saint Sara, the patron saint of the gipsies. There, amid the smoke of their candles, in an atmosphere made foul by human exhalations, you can see them once a year, huddled together in a dense crowd, mumbling their questionable prayers.

In the days of the Saracen invasions this crypt served as a storehouse for supplies, when all the inhabitants of the little village were forced to take refuge in the fortress-church.

Aigues-Mortes has her walls and her Constance Tower, massive as Babel; NÎmes has her Arena and her Fountain—and the Pont du Gard, superb in its beauty, is also hers; Avignon her bridges, her ramparts, and her clocks with figures of armed men to strike the hours; Tarascon her ChÂteau, mirrored in the RhÔne; Baux the fantastic ruins of her houses, hollowed, like the cells of a bee-hive, out of the solid rock of the hill-side; Montmajour has her tombs of little children, also dug, side by side, in the solid rock, and to-day filled with earth and flowers, like the troughs at which doves drink; Orange has her theatre and her triumphal arch; Arles has her theatre with the two pillars still upright in the centre; she has Saint-Trophime, too, with its sculptured faÇade and its AllÉe des Alyscamps, bordered with Christian sarcophagi and lofty poplars. But Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer has her church, which Monsieur le curÉ would not give for all the treasures of the other towns!

Marion saw plainly that Livette was depressed; Marion was touched when Livette said: “I must see Monsieur le curÉ,” and as her master would not be seriously discommoded, there being no occasion for him to leave the house, Marion ushered Livette into the parlor.

It was a whitewashed room, but the curÉ had transformed it into a veritable museum, and the walls were completely hidden behind wooden cabinets, made by himself, and all filled with his collections.

There were pieces of antique pottery and of rainbow-hued antique glass. There were old medals.

One of the latter attracted Livette’s attention. It represented a bull in the act of falling; one of his fore-legs had given way. A man, his conqueror, had seized him by the horns. That Grecian medal was struck centuries upon centuries ago. A label explained it to Livette, who thought at first that it was Renaud. Life is all repetition.

There were collections of plants and boxes filled with shells, and also many stuffed birds, all the varieties found in Camargue. For more than thirty years, fishermen and hunters had presented Monsieur le curÉ with curious objects and animals. Here was an otter from the RhÔne, there a beaver, with his trowel-shaped tail and hooked teeth. It is a question of serious importance whether the beavers do not injure the dikes of the RhÔne. The important point, you see, is that the water from the swamps should empty into the river or the sea through the canals, which run in all directions. Therefore, the dikes must hold firm and not let the RhÔne overflow the swamps. And the beavers, they say, destroy the dikes. They gnaw into them when the great freshets come, to avoid the drift, and take refuge inside; and when the water comes in after them, they make a vertical hole through which to escape, and there is your dike, undermined, eaten into by the water! That is a bad state of affairs.

Livette raised her eyes. A reptile, with his mouth open, was hanging from the ceiling; he was very fat, and well he might be! he was a little crocodile, the last one killed in Camargue, a very long while ago!

In every nook left free by the natural curiosities some pious image was to be seen. Here the two Maries in their boat. There the Holy Women wrapping the Christ in his shroud. In another place, Magdalen at La Baume, kneeling in front of the death’s-head. But Livette saw no image of Saint Sara.

Livette sat down and waited. Monsieur le curÉ did not come. The fact was, that Monsieur le curÉ, who had already written two monographs, one entitled La Cure de Boismaux, and the other La Villa de la Mar, was at that moment at work upon a third: Concordance of the Legends of the Blessed Maries, with this sub-title: Concerning the strange and regrettable confusion that seems to exist between Saint Sara and Marie the Egyptian.

La Cure de Boismaux also had a sub-title: Monograph concerning the domains of the ChÂteau d’Avignon in Camargue. Monsieur le curÉ recalled the fact that the domains of the ChÂteau d’Avignon formerly constituted a separate commune. That commune naturally had a curÉ, and in those days the proprietor of the ChÂteau d’Avignon was General Miollis, brother of the Bishop of Digne mentioned by Monsieur Victor Hugo in Les MisÉrables under the name of Myriel.

In a special chapter, Monsieur le curÉ sought, to no purpose, to find a reason, telluric or otherwise, for the fact that the estates of the ChÂteau d’Avignon are particularly subject to invasion by locusts, which sometimes have to be fought in Camargue, as in Africa, by regiments.

As to the Concordance, that was a very important and very necessary work. It was based, in great measure, upon the authority of the Black Book. That Latin work, preserved in the archives of Saintes-Maries, was written, in 1521, by Vincent Philippon, who signed himself: 2000 Philippon![3] (Jesus himself did not disdain the pun.) There is a French translation of the Black Book. It was published in 1682, and begins thus:

Here follows the true version of the story of the patron saints of Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer.

Marie JacobÉ, mother of Saint James the Less, Marie SalomÉ, mother of Saint James the Greater and of Saint John the Evangelist, came not alone to the shores of Camargue. The boat without sail or oars contained also their servants Marcella and Sara, Lazarus and all his family, and several of the Christ’s disciples.

Monsieur le curÉ would prove, with documents to sustain him, that Mary Magdalen was not in the boat. She came to Provence by some other means, no one can say by what miracle.

With the exception of the two Maries and Sara, all the passengers upon the miraculous craft dispersed in different directions, preaching and making converts.

The holy women did not leave Camargue, the island in the RhÔne, divided at that time into a great number of small islands by the ponds—a veritable archipelago, called Sticados and inhabited by heathens. In those days, all these small islands, formed by the swamps, were covered with forests and filled with wild beasts. And this delta of the RhÔne was infested with crocodiles. Now, a long, long time after the death of the holy women, a hunter, followed by his dogs, was passing over the spot where they lay buried in unknown graves; he fell in with a hermit there, beside a spring.

“My lord,” said the hermit, “I had a revelation in a dream last night. In the sand beside this spring repose the bodies of three sainted women!”

The hunter was a Comte de Provence. His palace was at Arles, and the curÉ had every reason to believe that he was Guillaume I., son of Boson I., famous for his liberality to the church.

It was in 981. This Guillaume had overcome the Saracens, and Conrad I., King of Bourgogne, his suzerain, loved and respected him.

The prince, having listened to the hermit’s tale, rode away musing deeply; not long after, he returned and caused a church in the form of a citadel to be built at that point of the coast, in the very centre of a spacious enclosure surrounded by moats.

Then he made known throughout Provence that special privileges would be accorded to all those who should build houses between the church and the moat.

Thus was founded the Villa-de-la-Mar—which is in fact a town (ville), although it is too often spoken of as a village, under its other name of Saintes-Maries.

The Comtes de Provence have always granted special privileges to the town.

Under Queen Jeanne, a guard was stationed all the time at the top of the church-tower to watch the ships and make signals. Sentinels were obliged to call to one another and answer every hour during the night. The people of Saintes-Maries were also exempted by the queen from payment of tolls and the tax upon salt.

Monsieur le curÉ explains all these things in his book, which is very interesting. He also describes therein, “as in duty bound,” the discovery of the sacred bones. In 1448, King RenÉ, being then at Aix, his capital, heard a preacher declare that Saintes Marie-JacobÉ and SalomÉ were certainly buried beneath the church of Villa-de-la-Mar.

RenÉ at once consulted his confessor, PÈre AdhÉmar, and sent a messenger to the Pope, asking that he be authorized to make search underground in the church. The authorization was given in the month of June in the same year. The Archbishop of Aix, Robert Damiani, presided at the search.

They found the spring; near the spring was an earthen altar; at the foot of the altar a marble tablet with this inscription, upon which the good curÉ descants at great length:

D. M.
IOV. M. L. CORN. BALBUS
P. ANATILIORUM
AD RHODANI
OSTIA SACR. ARAM
V. S. L. M. Lastly, they found the bones of the saints, perfectly recognizable, and, in addition, a head sealed up in a leaden box, which, according to the curÉ, was the head of Saint James the Less, brought from Jerusalem by Marie-JacobÉ, his mother.

The bones, having been devoutly taken from their resting-place, were with great ceremony bestowed in shrines of cypress wood. The king was present with his court. The papal legate was also there, and an archbishop, ten or twelve bishops, a great number of ecclesiastical dignitaries, professors, and learned doctors. The chancellor of the University of Avignon, too, and—so the reports of the proceedings set forth—three prothonotaries of the Holy See and three notaries public.

And so nothing is more firmly established than the authenticity of the relics of the saints.

But various apocryphal legends had appeared to throw doubt upon the truth, and Monsieur le curÉ was at work upon the following passage while Livette, with increasing uneasiness, was awaiting him in the parlor.

“Among the popular fallacies,” wrote the curÉ, “which destroy pure tradition, we must stigmatize as one of the most deplorable, I may say one of the most pernicious, that one which insists that among the passengers of the miraculous craft was a third Saint Marie, surnamed the Egyptian. It is downright heresy! How could it have taken root, and how far does it extend?” Monsieur le curÉ proposed to retouch that last phrase forthwith, and for a very good reason.

“Without doubt,” he continued, “the Egyptians, or Bohemians, or gipsies, by manifesting, from remote times, particular veneration for Saint Sara, who was, according to their ideas, an Egyptian and the wife of Pontius Pilate, have contributed to the formation of an absurd legend, but this one has its source, or its root, in something different; there is an episode of a boat in the life of the Egyptian, which assists the error by causing confusion.”

Monsieur le curÉ proposed to return to that paragraph also.

“Born in the outskirts of Alexandria, Marie the Egyptian left her family to lead the life of shame she had chosen, in the great city. Coming to a river, she desired to cross it in a boat, and having not the wherewithal for her passage, she paid the boatman in an impure manner.

“Later, she undertook a journey to Jerusalem with a great number of pilgrims, and on that occasion again she paid the expenses of her journey in diabolical fashion, especially if we remember that those whom she enticed into evil ways were devout pilgrims! And so, when she presented herself at the door of the temple, an invisible and invincible force held her back. She could not gain admission there.”

Monsieur le curÉ was better satisfied with that, and took a pinch of snuff. “She thereupon withdrew to the desert, where she lived forty-seven years. Her image appeared one day to the monk Sosimus at Jerusalem. She appeared before him naked and begged him to come and confess her. He obeyed, and went into the desert. He found her, naked, indeed, but very old. And Sosimus was convinced of her saintliness because she had the power of walking on the water. He listened to her confession. She died in the odor of sanctity, as decrepit and horrible to look upon as she had been fair and pleasant to the sight. A lion dug a grave for her with his claws in the sand of the desert.

“The Egyptian’s long penance had redeemed her life, therefore, and under Louis IX. the Parisians dedicated a church to her, which bore the name of Sainte-Marie-l’Égyptienne,—corrupted at a later period to La Gypecienne and then to La Jussienne. This church was on Rue Montmartre, at the corner of Rue de la Jussienne.

“The church contained a stained window representing the saint and the boatman, with this inscription: How the saint offered her body to the boatman to pay her passage.[5]

“We must not, then, in any case, confound Saint Sara, a contemporary of the Christ, with Marie the Egyptian, who lived in the fifth century,—a fact that cuts short all controversy.

“It is very fortunate,” continued Monsieur le curÉ, well pleased with his somewhat tardy conclusion, “that such a sinner was not among those on board the boat of our Maries-de-la-Mer, for in that boat, as we have said above, there were several of the Christ’s disciples. Spiritus quidem promptus est; caro autem infirma.”[6]

Monsieur le curÉ took snuff, he removed and replaced his spectacles. Monsieur le curÉ forgot himself. He went over all the early pages of his treatise, he struck out and interlined; he struggled with rebellious words. From time to time, he adjusted his spectacles more firmly, and opened and consulted an ancient book of great size. He was very busy, very deeply absorbed in his favorite employment. He forgot that somebody was waiting for him, and poor Livette, all alone in the parlor, with the dead birds and the shells, was sadly disturbed in mind. The melancholy that possessed her was not dissipated—far from it!—by the place in which she found herself.

All the dead birds, most of which she recognized as birds of passage, reminded her of the weariness of winter, the season when the wave-washed island is immersed in fog.

There were screech-owls, the pale-yellow owls that live in church-steeples and at night drink the oil in the church-lamps; vultures that come down from the Alps and Pyrenees in times of excessive cold; the ash-colored vulture that lives at Sainte-Baume. There are little tomtits, called serruriers (locksmiths), which are found only on the banks of the RhÔne, and pendulines, so called because they hang their nests like little pendulums from the flexible branches swaying to and fro above the water; and stocking-makers, whose nests resemble the tissue of a knitted stocking; and the alcyon, that is to say, the bleuret or kingfisher; and the siren, of the brilliant diversified plumage, called also honey-eater, which flies north in the month of May, and spends its winters by preference in Camargue. There was a stork, that probably considered Camargue, between the dikes of the RhÔne, a little like Holland. There, too, was the heron with its frill of delicate feathers, falling like a long fringe over its throat. Livette knew it only by the name of galejon, bestowed upon it in that neighborhood because the herons’ favorite place of assemblage was the pond of Galejon. There was one that bore on its pedestal the date: 1807, and the words: Purchased at Arles market; it was of a bluish slate color, and had on its head three slender black feathers, a foot in length. Then there were flamingoes galore, for they sometimes build their nests by myriads in the marshes of Crau, sitting astride their nests which are as tall as their legs. And the divers! and grebes! and penguins, which are seldom seen! And the rascally pelican, called by the people thereabouts grand gousier!

Livette fancied that she could hear in the distance the mournful, heart-rending cry of the birds of passage, rising above the roar of the wind and the sound of the river shedding its tears into the ocean; dominating the mysterious sounds that fill the darkness. How many times had she heard the cries of cranes and petrels and Egyptian curlews over the ChÂteau d’Avignon in the season when the nights are long, when the sight of the fire rejoices the heart like a living thing full of promise, when the blackness of death envelops the world. The birds remind her also of the Christmas evenings, the evenings when the logs blazing in the huge fire-place and the many lamps seem to say: “Courage! the night will pass.” And it is then that the wheat shows its green stalk, saying likewise: “Yes, courage! bad weather, like all other, comes to an end at last.”

Livette mused thus, and mechanically raised her eyes to the ceiling, from which the crocodile was hanging.[7]

Livette did not say to herself that there was, somewhere on the other side of the great sea, in the same Egypt to which Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary fled to protect the Child Jesus from the persecution of King Herod, a great river, the mighty brother of the RhÔne, and that in the hottest hours of the day, on the islands in the Nile, the crocodiles crawl in great numbers out upon the overheated sands to expose their backs to the rays of a sun as hot as any oven.

She did not say to herself that Saint Sara, the swarthy patron saint of the gipsies, is called by them the Egyptian, and that they water their gaunt horses in the Nile as well as in the RhÔne. She could not say to herself—because she knew it not—that the Egyptians inherit from the Hindoos a debased sort of magic, and that it was the same sort, even more debased without doubt, that gave Zinzara her power.

Nor did Livette know that Zinzara carried in one of the boxes in her ambulatory house—between a crocodile from the Nile and a sacred ibis, both found in an Egyptian crypt—the mummy of a young girl, six thousand years old, whose face, from which the bandages had been taken, wore a mask of gold. She could conceive no connection between the ibis of the Nile and yonder creature of the same name killed within the year on the shore of the VaccarÈs, but she underwent the influence of all these mysterious connecting currents to which space and time are naught.

The lifeless creatures, scattered all about her, lived again by virtue of the power of retaining their form forever. And fear seized upon her, for suddenly the mad idea, at once vague and precise, entered her mind of a resemblance between the profile of the great reptile hanging from the ceiling and the lower part of the gipsy queen’s face.

Livette thought that she must be ill, and rose to go, determined to wait no longer, but as she put out her hand to the door she uttered a cry. A centipede was crawling along the key, as lively as you please. She recoiled, and saw upon the white wall, at about the level of her head, a tarente, that seemed to be watching her with its pale-gray eyes. The tarente is inoffensive, but Livette knew nothing of that. It is the Mauritanian gecko, which abounds in Provence, a reptile repugnant to the sight, with gray protuberances on the head and back like those upon cantaloupe melons. And then the little fellow, the tiny creature, resembles the crocodile!—Surely, Livette has the fever.

“What’s the matter, my child?”

Monsieur le curÉ has entered the room. He has a kindly air that comforts the poor child at once.

He points to a chair. She sits down and dares not say a word. Where shall she begin?

He urges her.

“Well, my child?”

He closes his eyes, that he may not embarrass her by his glance, which he knows to be searching. He has left his spectacles up-stairs on his great book. He closes his eyes; and with compressed lips, presses his jaws against each other to a sort of rhythm, so that you can see his temples bulge out and subside like a fish’s gills. It is a nervous affection. His hands are folded on his waist; he clasps his fingers and plays at making them revolve about one another, mechanically; but he is keenly attentive. Monsieur le curÉ loves the souls of his fellow-men. He knows that they suffer, that life is infinite, and that they veer about and call to one another in the boundless expanse of space and time, like birds in a storm. He is reflecting. He is a kind-hearted priest. He is imbued with the spirit of the Gospel. He is indulgent. Does he not know that some great saints have been great sinners? He desires to be kind. He knows how to be.

What can be the matter?

At last, Livette speaks. She tells him everything; the gipsy’s first appearance, her refusal to give her the oil she asked for insolently, with jeering remarks about extreme unction; then of the ominous spell she cast upon her, realized even now perhaps; the change in her Renaud’s character, his coldness, his flight; and then, that very morning, the scene of the snakes; how she had been attracted—partly by curiosity, no doubt, but also by her conviction that she should hear something of Renaud. And how she gave her hand to the gipsy to have her fortune told! That, she had done against her inclination! She knew that it was wrong. Who would have dared say a moment before that she would commit such a sin? But she was afraid of seeming cowardly, not because of what the world would say, but because of her, the gitana, in whose presence she deemed it her duty to display pride and courage. She felt that she was very hostile to her. She was afraid of her, and yet, in her despite, she would defy her. She was the stronger of the two.—At last, she arrives at her most shocking avowal—she is jealous. A terrible thought has come into her mind; is it possible that Renaud could——? But no. Did he not, to save her from Rampal, risk his life by leaping down from a first-floor window the whole height of the house? To be sure, Rampal had stolen a horse from Renaud, and Renaud had been looking for him for a long time——

Livette is undone. She has glanced at Monsieur le curÉ, who, before replying, is listening to his own thoughts, in order not to be diverted from the matter in hand. He is still playing with his clasped fingers, making them revolve about one another.

Around them the swans, the pelican, the red flamingo, the petrel, the ibis, look on with their eyes of glass imbedded in those heads that have lived! There they stand, those phantom birds, with wings outspread and one claw put forward, exactly similar in shape, color, and plumage to the birds that are soaring above the Nile and the Ganges, beyond seas, at this moment, and no less like other birds that lived six thousand years ago.

The reptile on the ceiling, laughing down at them with his numerous long, sharp teeth, does, in very truth, resemble some one a little—but whom?

Livette, as she puts the question to herself, suddenly comes to the conclusion that she is insane, utterly insane, to have had such an idea! She smiles at it herself. And she seems to feel her smile. She does feel it. She fancies she can see it!

And at the moment she is conscious of a sensation—and a painful sensation it is—of being there, in that same room, surrounded by those creatures and in the presence of a priest—for the second time in her life!

Yes, all her present surroundings she has seen before—this that is happening to her has happened before. But the first time was a long while ago, oh! such a long while! The great reptile on the ceiling remembers, perhaps. That is why it laughs.—But she has forgotten all about it. Why is she here? She no longer knows even that. She was a fool to come here!

This Camargue country, you see, is the home of malignant fever. It rises from the swamps in the sunshine, with fetid odors, exhalations that disturb the brain and the action of the blood. From the dead vegetation, from the dead water, bad dreams and fever rise like vapor. There is an evil atmosphere there; and the evil eye too, thinks Livette.

But who can say of what the mummy lying in Zinzara’s wagon is thinking all this time—the mummy of which Livette knows nothing, and which is of the same age as Livette, plus six thousand years? Like Livette, it has wavy hair, very long, but somewhat faded by time. It was once as black as jet like that of the women of Arles. The mummy is of the same age as Livette, plus six thousand years! The gipsies believe that so long as the dead body retains its shape, something of its spirit continues to dwell within it. Zinzara affirms that this mummy, which she procured in Egypt, speaks to her sometimes and tells her things. Ah! if we should undertake to go to the bottom of the simplest facts, how they would puzzle us! Our Saracen mares of Camargue, sisters of Al-Borak, Mahomet’s white mare, and the bulls of the VaccarÈs, brothers of Apis, sometimes absent-mindedly take into their mouths, in the heart of the swamps, the long, gently-waving stalk of the mysterious lotus that lives three lives at once, in the mud with its root, in the water with its stalk, in the blue air with its flower.

Not without reason do the zingari, descendants of Çoudra, flock to the crypt of the three-storied church, there to adore the shrine of Sara, Pilate’s wife—the Egyptian woman.

Monsieur le curÉ, who is a profound student, is revolving all these things confusedly in his mind—with no very clear understanding of them himself—and pondering them.

Ah! if he could, how quickly he would sweep the island clear of the gipsy vermin! But he cannot. Tradition forbids. Sara in the crypt is their saint. There is a mixture of pagan and Christian in the affair, painful to contemplate certainly, but with which he has no right to interfere. The essential thing is that the Christian shall triumph over the pagan, that God shall prevail against Satan—for certain it is, whatever the gipsies may say, that they are not descended from the wise king who was a negro and who brought the myrrh to Jesus.

How to protect Livette?

“Do not remain alone with your thoughts, my child. Carry your rosary always with you, and tell your beads often, not mechanically but with your whole heart. Confide your sorrows to your good grandmother, whose Christian sentiments I well know. That simple-minded old woman has a great heart.

“Avoid the town. Tell your father—who has always done as you wished, nor has he had reason to repent of so doing—to have an eye to his house, and never to leave you alone. Avoid Renaud for some little time; at all events, do not seek him. He must have an opportunity to read his own heart clearly; we must not—by trying to bring him back to you—help him to mistake his affection for you, which is not, perhaps, so deep as it should be. I will speak to him myself when I have an opportunity. The day after to-morrow is the day of the fÊte at Saintes-Maries. Do not fail to be present; bring us that day a heart filled with faith and with the desire to do what is right. You will meet many unfortunates there. Turn your eyes toward those who are more wretched than yourself, and by comparing their lot with yours, you will see how fortunate you are, who have youth and good health.

“The health of the soul depends upon ourselves. You will save yours.

“You will be the one, on the day of the fÊte, to sing the solo of invocation just as the reliquaries descend—I ask you to do it, and, if need be, I will lay the duty upon you as a penance. “She who thinks on God and the holy women forgets all earthly ills. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. They who fear shall be reassured. Blessed are they who weep, for they shall be comforted——”

Monsieur le curÉ broke off abruptly. He realized, the kind-hearted man, that his discourse was, by force of habit, degenerating into a commonplace sermon, and, rising from his chair, he walked quickly toward the door, bestowing an affectionate tap on the trembling maiden’s cheek with two fingers of the hand that held his snuff-box, saying to her in a fatherly tone:

“Go, little one; you have a good heart. The wicked can do naught against us. I will pray for you at Mass. Everybody in the country loves you. Have no fear, my daughter.”

Livette took her leave. The curÉ, left to himself, sighed. He saw that Livette was confronted by an ill-defined, strange, diabolical peril, of the kind that cannot be turned aside, that God alone can avert.

“It is fate,” he muttered, employing unthinkingly a word of twofold signification.[8] “It is fate,” he repeated. “Life is a sea of troubles, and God is mysterious.”