Renaud, after his victory, dismounted for a moment, and, sitting down beside Bernard, on the shore of the VaccarÈs, where the cattle and mares of his drove had resumed their attitude of repose, he set about reviewing recent events in his mind.

To overturn his projected marriage, to ruin his future for the sake of the gipsy, for the sake of the unworthy passion that was at work within him—most assuredly Renaud had no such idea.

When the first fury of his desire was worked off by wild leaps and bounds, after the fashion of his horse Prince, he found a way to be reconciled with himself. His rugged honesty was impaired. He would try to satisfy his passion for the accursed gipsy when occasion offered; and that, he felt very sure, would do Livette no wrong!

Like a clever casuist, he combated his own instinctively honest impulses with arguments which he invented with much labor, and then complacently refined and elaborated, playing tricks upon himself. Now that he could boast of having fought Rampal on Livette’s account,—omitting in his thoughts the other two reasons he had had for fighting, namely, his determination to recover the stolen horse and his desire to display his strength and courage to Zinzara,—he could return to the ChÂteau d’Avignon with his head in the air, and meet his fiancÉe again as if nothing had happened.

Why, after all, should he be ashamed? Had he not established a fresh claim to Livette’s gratitude and the esteem of her relatives?

He would take poor Blanchet back to her,—Blanchet, of whom she was so fond,—and he could tell old Audiffret that the stolen horse was once more browsing, with the drove, on the reed-grass of the estate.

No: after mature reflection, he was sure that there was nothing that need make him ashamed.

Indeed, when one is not married, is he required to be so absolutely faithful? And what is a man to do, when things fall in his way?

The eyes see before one has had an opportunity to prevent them! Even after marriage, can one refrain from being moved by the sight of youthful loveliness? Can one control the movements of his blood? Desire is not a sin, and so long as Livette knew nothing, so long as she did not suffer through him, what reason had he, in all frankness, for self-reproach?

Nothing had come about by his procurement. He was still determined not to speak to the gipsy woman—but he would be a great fool not to put out his hand if the golden peach should offer itself to him voluntarily.

And the salt breeze that blew across the rushes, arousing the passions of the wild cattle, rushed through his veins, causing the blood to rise in sudden flushes to his cheeks.

Of what avail against that breeze, which the heifers inhale with delight, is the “I will not” of a young man who feels his youth? The good Lord forgives it in others. “I have been worrying a great deal over a very small matter of late,” thought Renaud. And he sagely concluded that he would return at once to Saintes-Maries, to set Livette’s mind at rest, as it was his duty to do first of all, without avoiding or seeking out the other.

Meanwhile, what had Livette been doing?

When she left the curÉ, almost at the same moment that Renaud was unhorsing Rampal, Livette had no wish but to take her horse and ride home at once, without even waiting for dinner.

She felt that she was lost in such close proximity to the ill-omened gipsies.

Her first thought was that Renaud, if he had overtaken Rampal, whom he could not fail to master, would go without loss of time to the ChÂteau d’Avignon.

But her second thought was that he would return to Saintes-Maries to make the most of his triumph. She knew Renaud well! He was proud of his strength and address. He was spoiled by the public at the races, who applauded with hands and voice, and he loved to hear the “Bravo, Renaud!”—He would return to the town, yes, he surely would!

He might imagine, indeed, that she, Livette, had remained there, and return on her account—and a little on the other’s account, at the same time!—Ah! poor child! suspicion was just beginning to creep into her mind. Just God! suppose that that zingara woman should fascinate her Renaud!

Livette, having found her horse still tied to the church-wall, sent him to the stable at the inn and went to the fisherman Tonin’s to share his bouille-abaisse.

“You did well, Livette,” said Tonin, “you have avoided a sharp squall of the mistral. But I know what I’m talking about; it’s nothing but a squall, and you can go home this afternoon quietly enough. It will be too hot, if anything. But what’s the matter, that you’re so thoughtful?”

Livette heard but little of all that was said at the fisherman’s table, and, after due reflection, returned to Monsieur le curÉ’s after the meal was at an end.

“Are you still at Saintes-Maries, little one?” he said, with a sad smile.

“I had a fright, my father——”

Livette sometimes addressed the curÉ thus, because of the custom in confession.

“A fright? how was that?” “Suppose they have fought, who knows what may have happened? Mon Dieu! chance is uncertain, and that Rampal is so treacherous that Renaud may be the loser. I would like, with your permission, Monsieur le curÉ, to go up on the roof of the church at once; from there I could see Renaud much sooner if he comes back here.”

The happy thought had come to her of watching her betrothed, as he himself had, that same morning, watched Rampal from the wine-shop window.

The curÉ smiled again and good-humoredly took down the keys of the little staircase that leads to the upper chapel and thence to the bell-tower.

He left the house, followed by Livette.

At the foot of the great bare wall of the church, so high and cold,—a veritable rampart with its battlements sharply defined against the blue of the sky,—the good curÉ opened the small door.

They ascended the stairs.

When they reached the upper chapel, which is just above the choir of the church, as we know, the curÉ said:

“I will remain here, little one, to offer up a prayer to the holy women; you can go on alone.”

But Livette, without replying, knelt devoutly beside the curÉ for an instant, before the relics.

The relics were there, behind the ropes coiled about the capstan, by means of which they were lowered into the church, as the little jug from which the lips of the faithful drank so eagerly was lowered into the miraculous well below;—there they were, on the edge of the opening through which they were launched into space.

Through this window-like opening into the body of the church Livette could see the chairs systematically arranged below, and, higher up, the galleries, the pulpit, and the pictures—all well-nigh hidden in the dark shadow, intersected by two rays of light that darted in, like arrows, through the narrow loopholes.

Away down, below the gallery at the rear, opposite where she stood, the chinks in the great square door were marked like fine lines of fire by the sunshine without.

She gazed for a long moment at the blessed shrines, and conjured them to turn aside the evil spell that she could feel about her.

And, do what she would, as she gazed at the shrines, which had the appearance of two coffins laid side by side and welded together, Livette was conscious that her thoughts became more melancholy than ever. Had she not seen, year after year, some poor, infirm wretch in despair lie at full length on cushions in the acute angle formed by the two lids of the double coffin? And how many of them had been cured? One in fifty thousand, and only at long intervals?

And yet, what scores of votive offerings that lofty chapel held,—pictures, commemorative marble tablets, crutches, guns with shattered barrels, and small boats presented by sailors saved after shipwreck! Aye, but in how many years have the miracles been performed of which these offerings are the tokens?—One shudders to think how many.

And Livette, well content to divert her thoughts from such painful subjects, left Monsieur le curÉ at his prayers, and went up on the roof of the church.

The bright glare of the sky, bursting suddenly upon her, dazzled her. She had to close her eyes; then she looked down upon the plain. The plain was a flood of light.

The rascally mistral, that blows three, six, or nine days at a time when it has fairly buckled down to work, had simply taken a whim, as Tonin had foreseen. Not a leaf was stirring now. The sea had not had time to grow angry below the surface. It was laughing. The ponds were as smooth as mirrors. The sun shone hotter than ever in the clearer air.

The swallows and martins circled about Livette’s head, uttering in endless succession shrill, piercing cries that constantly came nearer and again receded. The pointed wings of the martins, also called arbalÉtriers or cross-bowmen, brushed against the turrets and shot into the loopholes like arrows.

Livette looked off into the desert straight before her, and, not seeing what she expected, she let her glance wander here and there over the vast expanse, attractive but monotonous, which one can traverse, from end to end, without ever seeing aught but endless repetition of the same sand, the same tufts of grass, the same gleaming waters.

From the top of the church the horizon seemed almost limitless in every direction, for the golden peaks of the little Alps, vaguely outlined down in the northeast, seem to be no more than jagged bits of cloud.

When you are looking at them from that point, you have at your right, to the eastward, Crau and the sansouÏres, Martigues, and Marseilles beyond the salt marshes of Giraud, cut into rectangular mounds of glistening salt. In the west is little Camargue, with its temporary ponds, its rare groves of pine, its euphorbium and branching asphodel, and its Étang des Fournaux, the father of mirages, and filled with shells, although it has no connection with the sea.

In this vast, flat region, the mind and the eye fall into the habit of looking always to the horizon, embracing as much space as possible in the hope of finding some inequality.

But they cannot escape the unchanging monotony, even less varied than the monotony of the sea, for the sea changes color, and is by turns black, blue, pale-green, dark-purple, or golden.

In our desert there are everywhere the same tamarisks, the same reeds, and—round about the six thousand hectares covered by the waters of the VaccarÈs—always the same horizon lines, nowhere absolutely unbroken, but almost everywhere festooned with clumps of tamarisks; the mirage will always show you a pond gleaming in some spot of the plain where none is to be found; and the fisherman, walking along the shore, increases enormously in size as he recedes, because of the refraction.

Sometimes the month of May is as hot in Camargue as August.

Livette was dazzled by the glare, and lowered her eyes to scan, with her keen glance, the most distant clumps of tamarisks, to follow the almost invisible ribbon of the cart-road that leads from the VaccarÈs to Saintes-Maries. Her eyes are tired, and scorching in her head. There is nothing in the landscape to give them rest.

Everywhere the treeless soil exhales a burning breath that rises in visible vibrations. The spirit of the earth breaks its bonds and hovers over her. She can see it ascending in hot waves. Her eyes perceive the transparent undulations, the heat trembling in the cool air, the very soul of the interior fire that trembles so to the sight that one fancies he can hear it rustle. It is the never-ceasing dance of the reflected light.

Weary of the glare of the plain, Livette turned toward the sea, but the sea was simply an immense burnished mirror which flashed back at the eyes, from the countless facets of its swiftly moving fragments, the glow of the blazing sky multiplied beyond expression.

When she looked down once more upon the plain, she saw, about a league away, a horseman trotting briskly toward the Saintes-Maries. By an indefinable something in the bearing of that tiny speck she recognized her Renaud.

So no harm had come to him!

She was on the point of going down again, when suddenly she forced herself to bide a little there, to see what he would do when he arrived.

He was already passing the public spring. He turned to the left, and disappeared for a moment behind the houses. He was coming toward the church.

From embrasure to embrasure she ran, to follow him with her eyes; and in a few seconds he rode out into the square in front of the church, at the foot of the Calvary erected there.

She leaned over and watched him. Where was he going? He had stopped. His tired horse was standing quite still, simply moving his long tail from side to side to drive away the gnats and gadflies that were riddling his bleeding flanks with wounds, for, after the mistral, the gadflies dance! And then? Nothing. Absolute silence in the vast glowing expanse. Livette instinctively noticed that the horse’s dark shadow, clearly marked upon the ground, was already elongated, indicating that it was four o’clock. She continued to question herself as to Renaud’s attitude—what was he doing there, standing still like that?—when suddenly the sound of a woman’s voice singing floated up to her ears.

In the perfect silence, that voice, clear as a bell, poured forth outlandish words that neither Renaud nor Livette could understand.

The zingara sang:

“Allow the romichÂl, the tzigane, to pass. He is the spectre of a true king. Kingly is his tattered cloak. A saddle is his throne. Is the whole earth thy kingdom, RomichÂl?

“At Boerenthal they speak the language of the Zend. Oh! the Çoudra would become pope! Thinkst thou it was the evil-doer who invented evil? Nay, nay; put not thy trust in God, and remain free, RomichÂl!

“The Rhine, too, is a Nile. And the RhÔne likewise. But thy mare prefers to drink in the river of ChÂl! The Nile alone can make thy hope neigh aloud, O RomichÂl!”

With her eye, like a migratory bird’s, Zinzara had long before spied Livette perched up aloft between the crenelles of the church-roof, and, seeing Renaud riding toward her, she, in joyous mood as always, had begun to sing, from mere caprice and bravado, within the circle of the echo of the lofty walls.

Like the serpents at the sound of her flute, Renaud was fascinated. The gipsy suspected as much. And when she had finished her song she showed herself.

“Surely thou hast killed thy foe, romi?” she said. “But how is it that I do not see his heart at the point of thy spear? Thy maiden whose blood is like snow will ask thee for it ere long. Ah! that was a kiss well avenged—for a Christian! For if thy foe still sat in his saddle, thou wouldst not be in thine, I suppose? Listen, then, my beauty—although it be, in very truth, a crime for us zingari women to deem a Christian fair to look upon, I must tell thee, none the less: On the honor of a queen, romi, thou art handsome as a son of my own race, brave as a highwayman, as fine a horseman as the best of us, proud as a free man! I regret neither my anger of the other day, nor my song of a moment ago, nor the compliment I pay thee now: for I never do aught save that which pleases me! and my very anger does me better service than reflection! Adieu, romi, may thy God guard thee, if He knows me!”

Livette had heard nothing but the sharp, incisive tone in which the gipsy spoke; she could not distinguish her words.

But as Zinzara went away, she took good care, before she disappeared at the corner of the square, to send a kiss to the drover with her finger-tips—a kiss which seemed to him, because he could see her smile, a bit of raillery, but which was in Livette’s eyes a token of requited love. Renaud thereupon admitted to himself that he had returned to Saintes-Maries in quest of nothing else than this compliment from the gipsy—something that drew him nearer to the seductive creature!

From embrasure to embrasure she ran, to follow him with her eyes; and in a few seconds he rode out into the square in front of the church, at the foot of the Calvary erected there.
She leaned over and watched him. Where was he going? He had stopped.

Now he had no choice but to turn back. He preferred not to see Livette at once! He preferred to return to the free air of the desert, to set his thoughts in order, discover his real feelings, reckon up his chances, and, after that was done, to be left alone with the image of the gitana, from whom he parted willingly, however, for he was very glad to be at a distance from her, with unrestrained freedom of movement, the better to think of her.

Before leaving the roof of the church, Livette cast a glance upon the broad expanse of Camargue at her feet. Ah! how empty was that immense space! The few scattered houses which would have delighted her eyes in the plain, were hidden by the clumps of umbrella-like pines beneath which they stood. Nothing human replied to the cry of distress uttered by her poor heart, which longed to follow the bewitched drover into the desert, and which seemed to her to flutter down from the summit of the tower to the ground, where it was crushed by the fall like a bird fallen from its nest.