One forgives only those whom one loves; only those who love forgive. Love at its apogee is naught but the power of inspiring forgiveness and bestowing it; and the social laws, which are of the mechanism of human justice, seem to have realized that fact, since they ignore the testimony of all those who would naturally be expected to love the culprit.

Sympathy is simply a laying aside—in favor of those we love—of the implacable severity which we use but little in dealing with ourselves, and which attributes to those who pass judgment an unerring wisdom which is not human, or a self-confidence which is too much so.

Livette, as she lay sick upon the best bed in the Icard farm-house, already had, in her sorrowing heart, an adorable feeling of indulgence for Renaud, which would have made the blessed maidens who laid the Crucified One in his shroud, smile with joy in the mystic heaven of the lofty chapel. She believed that she would die by her fiancÉ’s fault, and she pitied him. Forgiveness sooner or later redeems him who receives, and consoles him who accords it. In the sentiment of compassion is hidden the divine future of mankind.

Renaud was still ignorant of Livette’s indulgence. Indeed, he could not deserve it until he had come to look upon himself as forever unworthy.

For the moment, he had not gone to the bottom of the hell of evil thoughts.

When he found Livette half drowned in the gargate, his first impulse, born of true love and pity for her, in absolute forgetfulness of himself, lasted but an instant—but it had existed. Renaud at first suffered for her and for her alone.

His second impulse, almost immediate, and praiseworthy still, although there was a touch of selfishness in it, was to condemn himself, through fear of moral responsibility. Had he not with his own hand displaced the stakes that marked the path, with the idea, indefensible at best, that Rampal would be misled by that treacherous method of defence? Yes, almost immediately after he uttered his cry of agony, he shuddered with terror at the thought of the remorse that was in store for him, as soon as he felt that Livette was like a dead woman in his arms.

When he had given her in charge of the women at the main farm-house of the Icard farm, where there was great excitement over such an adventure at that time of day, he questioned two old peasant-women who knew more than all the doctors in the province. After doing what was necessary for Livette, they cheerfully declared that the poor girl would not die of it; they even said that it was “nothing at all.” He did not even try to understand how she had come so far to fall into the trap!

She would not die! That was the essential thing at that moment. What a relief to him, for he was already accusing himself of his little sweetheart’s death! He had been so afraid! And it turned out to be only a warning! God be praised, and blessed be the mighty saints who had performed such a miracle!

But the devil rejoiced when he looked into Renaud’s conscience, for he saw the course his ideas were about to take, a course that would lead him from bad to worse.

Reassured as to Livette,—and as to himself,—he flew into a passion with the accursed gitana, the indirect cause, at least, of all this misery.

“Ah! the beggar! I will kill her!—it will be easy to find her again. She can’t be far away—I will kill her!”

His wrath took full possession of him—he ran for his horse. Kill her!—kill her! Nothing could be more righteous.—And he went about it.

Poor Renaud! the victim of all the involuntary falsehoods which, starting from ourselves, one engendering another, sometimes render the best of us irresponsible and drive us on to disaster when passion makes us mad. This chain, often undiscoverable, of false but specious reasons with which men deceive themselves, each fitting into the last without violence, each explaining and justifying the one that follows it—leads insensibly to acts incomprehensible to him who is not able to follow it back, link by link. It is the chain of Fatality, in which the links, consisting of trifling but suggestive facts, of decisive circumstances, unknown sometimes to the culprit, alternate with the fictitious good motives he has invented for his own benefit in the reflex movements of his mind. To re-establish the logical sequence of facts, of sensations suddenly transformed into ideas, is the work of equity which reasons, or of love which divines. In default of tracing back the chain of insensible, imperious transitions, we find between the criminal who has long been an honest man and his crime, the abyss at sight of which fools and unthinking folk, filled with the pride of implacable sinners, never fail to exclaim: “It is monstrous!” But if God, infinite Love, does exist, everything is forgiven, because everything is understood; there are, mayhap, simply the miserable wretches on one side, and divine pity on the other.

Yes, Renaud would have killed the sorceress, with savage joy, to avenge Livette. But was not that desire, which he deemed a praiseworthy one, simply a pretext for seeking her out again that same day, for seeing her once more?—That, at all events, is what the devil himself thought as he crouched on the floor of the crypt in the church of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, on the spot occupied the day before by the dark-browed gipsies, beneath the shrine of Saint Sara.

And so, mounted upon Blanchet, Renaud galloped furiously away upon his tracks of the night, intending to kill Zinzara.

Livette would not die!—That idea caused him great joy, so great that he was no sooner out-of-doors, away from the painful, wearisome spectacle of the poor unconscious child, than he yielded, alas! to the influence of the bright sunlight, and breathed at ease. He had already ceased to think of Livette’s sufferings. His satisfaction had already ceased to be anything more than selfishness: not only would he not have to reproach himself for her death, but, more than that, now that she knew everything, was he not absolved, as it were? There was nothing more for him to fear. The worst that could happen had happened! And he actually felt as if a weight had been taken from his shoulders, as if he were once more sincere in his dealings with Livette, a better man, in short, thanks to what had happened. Although he did not reason this out, the thought went through his mind. It was what he felt. For everything serves the passion of love; it turns to its own profit the very things that would naturally tend most to thwart it. Moreover, he need feel no qualms of conscience, as he was going to chastise the malignant creature, to kill her, in fact:—a vile race! No, she could not be far away. Doubtless, if she had planned the catastrophe, she had concealed herself near at hand to see the result.

He rode back toward the bridge over the canal. No one had seen the gipsy there. He descended the RhÔne to the spot where they had left the boat the night before. The boat was in the same place, fastened by the same knot.

He began to fear that he might not find her. But when, after searching two hours, he was certain of it, he was much surprised to find that he did not feel the righteous wrath of the officer of justice at the thought of a culprit eluding the vengeance of the law, but the sudden distress of a betrayed lover. He did not cry to himself: “I shall not have the pleasure of punishing her!” but: “I shall never see her again!” And that cry burst forth in his heart as a fierce revelation of unpardonable, pitiless love. What! he loved her! he loved her! and he learned it for the first time at that moment! he admitted it to himself for the first time!—yes, beyond cavil he loved her—now! His heart failed him. He was bewildered. He felt a vague sense of well-being, due to the mere joy of loving, marred by a feeling of intense chagrin at the thought of the certain misery that lay before him. He was horrified at himself, and, at the same moment, decided upon his future course in a frenzy of excitement.

The physical power of love is superb and appalling. It stops at nothing. And the man who is watching beside the dying or the dead, even though it be some one who is dear to him, feels a thrill of joy rush to his heart, if the being he loves with all the force of his youth passes by.

Renaud had just held Livette almost dying in his arms, and already he had no regret save for the other, for the woman he should have trampled under his feet!

Thereupon, all the events of the night returned to his mind, and finished the work of poisoning. He could not be reconciled to the thought that he should never again see what he had had for so short a time. No, it could not be at an end. If she were a criminal, why then he would love her in her crime, that was all! The black bull was loose.—But Livette? aha! Livette? a swan’s feather, or a red flamingo’s, under his horse’s hoof.

What was the placid affection the young maid had inspired in his heart compared to the frenzy of sorrow and joy the other caused him to feel? Sorrow and joy combined, that is what love is; and the love men prefer is not that which contains the greater joy as compared to the keener sorrow—it is that in which those emotions are most intense. It was that law of passion to whose operation Renaud was now being subjected. He realized that he had definitely chosen the other, the gipsy, despite the cry of his outraged sense of honor.

That cry of his honest heart, to which he no longer lent a willing ear, he still heard, do what he would, and he suffered half consciously, for many reasons which he did not distinguish one from another, but which resulted in producing a confused feeling in his own mind that he was a monster.

A monster! for now that he considered the matter more carefully, it became his settled conviction that the gitana had intended to kill Livette—and yet it was that same gitana that he loved!

Ah! the witch!—She had certainly seen Livette, her poor little head, like a dead woman’s, lying on the water among the grass, her mouth open for the last cry for help, her teeth glistening with water in the sunlight! She could not have helped seeing her.—And she had passed her by without a word!—It was because she was determined to be her ruin. She had evidently led her into the trap. How? What did it matter! but it was no longer possible to doubt that it was the fact.

But in that case—if she was really guilty—there could be no doubt, either, that having seen her desire accomplished, she had fled. She would appear no more! he would have no opportunity to kill her! he would never see her again! And the thing that moved him most deeply in connection with Livette’s misfortune was the thought that it involved Zinzara’s flight. He tried in vain to put away the abominable regret; it returned upon him like a wave. What! he should never see her again! Oh! those caresses of the night before in the cabin of the swamp were clinging to his arms and legs like serpents. They twined about his body as creeping plants about the branches of the tamarisk, or as one eel about another: biting at his heart. And he shivered from head to foot.

“Ah! the witch!” he repeated. “Ah! the witch! What! never again!”

Never again!—Why, did he not think that night that he should be able to keep her on his island; that it would last a year at least, until the next year’s fÊtes; that he would have the wild beast to himself in the desert, in his wild beast’s lair—all to himself, with her lithe, graceful body, her ankle-rings and bracelets, and her beggar queen’s crown?

But did she not love him? Had it all been mere trickery and craft on her part?

The horse’s blood flowed freely under the drover’s spurs; but the horseman’s heart was bleeding within him a thousand times more cruelly.

All mere trickery and craft! He repeated it again and again to himself, and would not believe it.

That she was false to the core, he firmly believed, and, by dint of thinking about it, soon ceased to believe it. That would have been too horrible, really! His self-pity and the feeling that he must be proud of her forced back the thought, which, driven away for a moment, returned again at once with more force as a sure, proven, established fact. It returned like a flash of light which hurt his eyes. Yes, yes, she was false to the core! yes, from pure wantonness the woman had deceived him again and again since the day of the bath, when she exhibited her naked body to him with the deliberate purpose of leading him astray, of leaving him, some day, stranded in the desert, without his fiancÉe, without his love—alone.

And he struggled desperately to see her again—in his memory at least—in order to question her crafty features, but, try as he would, his mind was unable to restore the picture, drowned as it was beneath a wavering, irritating mist. He opened his eyes to their fullest extent, as if, by causing them to express a fixed determination to see her again, he could compel her to appear before him in flesh and blood. And he no longer saw the trees or the moor that lay before him, or the sky or the horizon, but neither did he see her whose image he sought to evoke. Then he suddenly closed his eyes, and for a brief second—in the darkness—he caught a glimpse of her. Was it really she? He had not time to recognize her. Once, however, the image became clearer, and he saw her; but still it was only a shadowy face, still veiled with falsehood and impenetrable to him.

She went to the farther end of the AllÉe 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.

What he was seeking was her real face, WHICH DID NOT EXIST, for a face is the expression of a soul, and she had no soul. Had she ever loved him? that is what he would have liked to ascertain, if nothing more. Had she smiled on Rampal? Perhaps—God! could it be possible? Who knows? Of what was she not capable to consummate her crime?—And yet he secretly admired her for the extraordinary perfidy he attributed to her. The Saracen blood, the blood of heathen pirates, did not flow in his veins for nothing.

Yes, indeed, if, in her hate-inspired work, she had had need of Rampal, with whom he had several times seen her talking, was it not possible that she had given herself to him in order to make him absolutely submissive to her will? What was he thinking of? Given herself to him? No, not that!—Not in its fullest meaning, at all events—but she might have let him steal a kiss—a long kiss, perhaps—from her lips. And the herdsman felt the keen point of the spear of jealousy pierce his heart.

He thought and thought, feverish with passion, excited by his excessive exertions for several days past, and he rode through the fields and swamps, amid the grass and stones of Crau, surrounded by buzzing insects maddened by the heat, which was terrible.

Great God! only the night before, he had believed that she had a veritable woman’s passion for him, a passion like those he had often aroused in women, with his strength, his courage, and his prowess as horse-breaker and cavalier. And as she was the daughter of a free race, and queen of her tribe, he had been proud of his conquest. He had straightened himself up in his saddle, like a crowned king, conqueror in many battles. He had handled his spear with a firmer hand. He had glanced proudly at the other drovers, his comrades, with a distinct feeling that he was “better than they,” since this savage queen, who, in her travels, had doubtless seen so many brave and comely men, had chosen him—even though he were not the first!—that she, whom the laws of her people forbade to love a European dog, the slave of cities, had chosen him, the drover of Camargue!

Now that that happiness was gone from him, he suddenly realized its value. An immense void lay before him. For the first time, the desert seemed a melancholy place to him, too vast, too bare. He realized that henceforth his whole life would lie in the past. He was no longer the king! He would never be the king again! She had never loved him! And she had pretended that she did!

But when she had cried out and turned pale in his arms, had she not forgotten that she was acting a lie? If that were so, she must be very sure of finding elsewhere such ardent caresses as his, from another. Otherwise she would not have fled, for he scouted the idea that she was afraid. Such a one as she could have no fear! And if, as he thought the night before, he had really taken her fancy, would she not have remained, guilty or not, to enjoy his caresses anew, even though she were to die of them? But she would not have died of them! She, sorceress as she was, must have known that he would have forgiven everything. Therefore she had wanted to go. She cared nothing for him. If, on the other hand, it had pleased her to keep him with her, to continue their liaison, she would have found a way to do it, in spite of everything. She had only to desire to do it. She did not desire!—Even so, he desired her!

He rode away at headlong speed. He must find her again. Then they would see! And he circled round the cabin in the swamp like a hawk, examining all the clumps of thorn-broom, all the tamarisks and reeds. Oh! he would find her!

He had been riding for several hours, and he began to feel that his quest was useless. If she were outside the limits of the last greater circle that he had described in his search for her, it was all over! he was too late.

At last, convinced of his discomfiture, he leaped from his horse and seated himself on the sloping bank of a ditch. It was near midday. He was neither hungry nor thirsty, but the sun told him that it was midday.

The gnats were humming about his ears, devouring him, riddling the hide of his horse, who hung his head and sniffed at a tuft of salt grass without eating it, pulling a little upon the rein which Renaud, still seated, held loosely in his hand.

Renaud was looking straight before him, and now that he was assured of his misfortune, now that he had neither betrothed nor mistress, neither present nor future, he felt that he was becoming cold and hard, and was astonished to find it so. It seemed to him as if his misfortune had happened to a piece of wood or stone. The wood and the stone were himself. How could he have had such dread of the certainty that had come to him at last? While he had that dread, he still hoped and suffered. Now that all was said, he found that he was insensible to it all—dead, in a measure. And that gratified him.

He who had wept so bitterly the night that he tried to put aside his nascent passion, now, in this final catastrophe, which should have called forth all the tears in his body, felt as if the springs had run dry. Instead of being more deeply moved than ever, he found that he was strangely composed, as if armed against fate.—He received the blow like a soldier, like a drover. His tranquillity became more pronounced and more extraordinary as the excessive severity of the disaster became more certain.

Tranquillity for an hour, perhaps! But what did that matter? He had no suspicion of it. He found that he was strong in the face of disaster. Ah! she could make up her mind to go? She was laughing at me? Very good! I have no need of her, the vagabond! I have seen through the sorceress! I know her, I know her! Good-evening!

He rose, to return home. As he raised his head, he saw the gitana—five hundred yards ahead of him.—Her back was turned to him, and she was walking tranquilly along.

In a twinkling, he was in the saddle. “Stop!” Blanchet, smarting under a blow from the stirrup-leather, flew over the ground, making the sand and stones fly, snorting with wrath as the spur tore his flank. In four minutes they made half a league. The gipsy, still in front, with her back turned to them, walked quietly along. It was her orange handkerchief, her copper crown, her undulating gait. It was certainly she!

Suddenly, when she reached the shore of a pond, she walked out, with the same tranquil step, upon the surface of the water, which bore her weight as if it were covered with ice; while, not far away, a large brig, decked out with flags, was bearing down upon him, with all sail set, through the furze-bushes and prickly oaks of Crau, across the arid fields.

Renaud sadly hung his head. The brig explained it all. It was all a spectre due to the mirage! Discouragement came upon the man and crushed him.

Thus, all the strength he had expended, his shameful acceptance of such a love, his toilsome day of fruitless search, after the mad ride of the preceding night, the exhaustion of horse and rider, all came to an end in the endless trickery of the mirage!

The sorceress must be far away! And in what direction? There was nothing for him to do but abandon the pursuit. He retraced his steps to the Icard farm. The fruitlessness of the effort affected him more keenly than the effort itself.

He no longer looked about, he no longer thought, he no longer loved or hated. Weariness had suddenly fallen upon his shoulders and his loins like a weight too heavy to be borne. He rode on, bent almost double, swaying like an inert thing, with the motion of his horse. He felt as if he were falling from a great height in a sort of sick man’s dream. His eyes, worn out with gazing over the fields and scrutinizing every bush, closed in spite of him. His nerveless hand knew not where the reins were; nor did his brain know what had become of his ideas.

Blanchet went forward mechanically, with his head almost touching the ground. He, too, was without will-power, overdone, exhausted, his eyes injected with blood; his breath was short and quick, and his flanks beat the charge.

At another time, the careful horseman, who loved his beasts, would very quickly have noticed that his horse’s wind was broken, when he felt his sides rise and fall with that short, hard, jerky breath; but Renaud was conscious of nothing. There was nothing in his head but a burning void. He did not even long for shade or rest. He was suffering from the utter dejection that follows terrible crises, from the great sorrow caused by death, from hopeless despair. Overwhelmed as he was by his selfish weariness, if he had been capable of recognizing any sentiment in his mind, he would have found there a vague, cowardly feeling of annoyance at having to enter a sick-chamber, at having to witness the spectacle of Livette’s suffering. He would have liked—but he had not the strength to do it—to dismount from his horse, to lie down in the fresh air, under a tamarisk, and sleep there a long, long time; to forget himself, to cease to see or speak or hear or listen or exist!—He was like one walking in his sleep.

Suddenly Blanchet stopped, and began to tremble in every limb, and, before his rider had come to his senses, his four legs, planted stiffly like stakes, seemed to be broken by a single blow, and he fell in a heap.

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 AllÉe 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 RhÔne 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.