All my life I had heard of the Camargue and of Les Saintes-Maries and the pilgrimage to their shrine, but I had never as yet been there. In the spring of the year 1855 I wrote to my friend Mathieu, ever ready for a little trip, and proposed we should go together and visit the saints.

He agreed gladly, and we met at Beaucaire in the Condamine quarter, from where a pilgrim party annually started on May 24 to the sea-coast village of Les Saintes-Maries.

A little after midnight Mathieu and I set forth with a crowd of country men and women, young girls and children, packed into waggons close as sardines in a tin; we numbered fourteen in our conveyance.

Our worthy charioteer, one of those typical Provenceaux whom nothing dismays, seated us on the shaft, our legs dangling. Half the time he walked by the side of his horse, the whip round his neck, constantly relighting his pipe. When he wanted a rest he sat on a small seat niched in between the wheels, which the drivers call “carrier of the weary.”

Just behind me, enveloped in her woollen wrap and stretched on a mattress by her mother’s side, her feet planted unconcernedly in my back, was a young girl named Alarde. Not having, however, as yet made the acquaintance of these near neighbours, Mathieu and I conversed with the driver, who at once inquired from whence we hailed. On our replying from Maillane, he remarked that he had already guessed by our speech that we had not travelled far.

“The Maillane drivers,” he added, “‘upset on a flat plain’; you know that saying?”

“Not all of them,” we laughed.

“’Tis but a jest,” he answered. “Why there was one I knew, a carter of Maillane, who was equipped, I give you my word, like Saint George himself—Ortolan, his name was.”

“Was that many years ago?” I asked.

“Aye, sirs, I am speaking of the good old days of the wheel, before those devourers with their railroads had come and ruined us all: the days when the fair of Beaucaire was in its splendour, and the first barge which arrived for the fair was awarded the finest sheep in the market, and the victorious bargeman used to hang the sheep-skin as a trophy on the main-mast. Those were the days in which the towing-horses were insufficient to tug up the RhÔne the piles of merchandise which were sold at the fair of Beaucaire, and every man who drove a waggon, carriage, cart, or van was cracking his whip along the high roads from Marseilles to Paris, and from Paris to Lille, right away into Flanders. Ah, you are too young to remember that time.”

Once launched on his pet theme Lamoureux discoursed, as he tramped along, till the light of the moon waned and gave place to dawn. Even then the worthy charioteer would have continued his reminiscences had it not been that, as the rays of the awakening sun lit up the wide stretches of the great plains of the Camargue lying between the delta of the two RhÔnes, we arrived at the Bridge of Forks.

In our eyes, even a more beautiful sight than the rising sun (we were both about five and twenty) was the awakening maiden who, as I have mentioned already, had been packed in just behind us with her mother. Shaking off the hood of her cloak, she emerged all smiling and fresh, like a goddess of youth. A dark red ribbon caught up her blonde hair which escaped from the white coif. With her delicate clear skin, curved lips half opened in a rapt smile, she looked like a flower shaking off the morning dew. We greeted her cordially, but Mademoiselle Alarde paid no attention to us. Turning to her mother she inquired anxiously:

“Mother, say—are we still far from the great saints?”

“My daughter, we are still, I should say, eighteen or twenty miles distant.”

“Will he be there, my betrothed?—say then—will he be there?” she asked her mother.

“Oh hush, my darling,” answered the mother quickly.

“Ah, how slowly the time goes,” sighed the young girl. Then discovering all at once that she was ravenously hungry, she suggested breakfast. Spreading a linen cloth on her knees, she and her mother thereupon brought out of a wicker basket a quantity of provisions—bread, sausage, dates, figs, oranges—and, without further ceremony, set to work. We wished them “good appetite,” whereupon the young girl very charmingly invited us to join them, which we did on condition that we contributed the contents of our knapsacks to the repast. Mathieu at once produced two bottles of good Nerthe wine, which, having uncorked, we poured into a cup and handed round to each of the party in turn, including the driver; so behold us a happy family.

At the first halt Mathieu and I got down to stretch our legs. We inquired of our friend Lamoureux who the young girl might be. He answered that hers was a sad story. One of the prettiest girls in Beaucaire, she had been jilted about three months ago by her betrothed, who had gone off to another girl, rich, but ugly as sin. The effect of this had been to send Alarde almost out of her mind; the beautiful girl was in fact not quite sane, declared Lamoureux, though to look at her one would never guess it. The poor mother, at her wits’ end to know what to do, was taking her child to Les Saintes-Maries to see if that would divert her mind and perhaps cure her.

We expressed our astonishment that any man could be such a scoundrel as to forsake a young girl so lovely and sweet-looking.

Arrived at the Jasses d’Albaron, we halted to let the horses have a feed from their nose-bags. The young girls of Beaucaire who were with us took this opportunity of surrounding Alarde, and singing a roundel in her honour:

But the result of this well-meant attention was very disastrous, for the poor Alarde burst out into hysterical laughter, crying, “My lover, my lover,” as though she were demented.

Soon after, however, we resumed our journey, for the sky, which since dawn had been flecked with clouds, became every moment more threatening. The wind blew straight from the sea, sweeping the black masses of cloud towards us till all the blue sky was obliterated. The frogs and toads croaked in the marshes, and our long procession of waggons struggled slowly through the vast salt plains of the Camargue. The earth felt the coming storm. Flights of wild ducks and teal passed with a warning cry over our heads. The women looked anxiously at the black sky. “We shall be in a nice plight if that storm takes us in the middle of the Camargue,” said they.

“Well, you must put your skirts over your heads,” laughed Lamoureux. “It is a known fact that such clouds bring rain.”

We passed a mounted bull-driver, his trident in his hand, collecting his scattered beasts. “You’ll get wet,” he prophesied cheerfully.

A drizzle commenced; then larger drops announced that the water was going to fall in good earnest. In no time the wide plain was converted into a watery waste. Seated beneath the awning of the waggon, we saw in the distance troops of the Camargue horses shaking their long manes and tails as they started off briskly for the rising grounds and the sandbanks.

Down came the rain! The road, drowned in the deluge, became impracticable. The wheels got clogged, the beasts were unable to drag us further. Far as the eye could reach there was nothing to be seen but one vast lake.

“All must get down!” cried the drivers unanimously. “Women and girls too, if you do not wish to sleep beneath the tamarisk-bush.”

“Walk in the water?” cried some in dismay.

“Walk barefoot, my dears,” answered Lamoureux; “thus you will earn the great pardon of which you all have need, for I know the sins of some of you are weighing devilish heavy.”

Old and young, women and girls, all got down, and with laughter and shrieks, every one began to prepare themselves for wading, taking off their shoes and tucking up their clothes. The drivers took the children astride on their shoulders, and Mathieu gallantly offered himself to the old lady in our waggon, the mother of the pretty Alarde:

“If you mount on my back,” he said, “I will undertake to carry you safely to the ‘Dead Goat.’” The old lady, who was so fat she walked with difficulty even on dry ground, did not refuse such a noble offer.

“You, my FrÉdÉric, can charge yourself with Alarde,” said Mathieu with a wink to me, “and we will change from time to time to refresh ourselves, eh?”

And forthwith we each took up our burden without further ceremony, an example which was soon followed by all the young men in the other waggons.

Mathieu and his old girl laughed like fools. As for myself, when I felt the soft round arms of Alarde round my neck as she held the umbrella over our heads, I own it to this day, I would not have given up that journey across the Camargue in the rain and slush for a king’s ransom.

“Oh goodness, if my betrothed could see me now,” repeated Alarde at intervals; “my betrothed, who no longer loves me—my boy, my handsome boy!”

It was in vain that I tried to steal in with my little compliments and soft speeches, she neither heard nor saw me—but I could feel her breath on my neck and shoulder; I had only to turn my head a little and I could have kissed her, her hair brushed against mine; the close proximity of this youth and freshness bewitched me, and while she dreamt only of her lover, I, for my part, tried to imagine myself a second Paul carrying my Virginia.

Just at the happiest moment of my illusion, Mathieu, gasping beneath the weight of the fat mamma, cried out:

“Let us change for a bit! I can go no further, my dear fellow.”

At the trunk of a tamarisk, therefore, we halted and exchanged burdens, Mathieu taking the daughter, while I, alas, had the mother. And thus for over two miles, paddling in water up to our knees, we travelled, changing at intervals and making light of fatigue because of the reward we both got out of the romantic rÔle of Paul!

At last the heavy rain began to abate, the sky to clear and the roads to become visible. We remounted the waggons, and about four o’clock in the afternoon, suddenly we saw rise out of the distant blue of sea and sky, with its Roman belfry, russet merlons and buttresses, the church of Les Saintes-Maries.

There was a general exclamation of joyful greeting to the great saints, for this far-away shrine, standing isolated on the edge of the great plain, is the Mecca of all the Gulf of Lyons. What impresses one most is the harmonious grandeur of the vast sweep of land and sea, arched over by the limitless dome of sky, which, more perfectly here than anywhere else, appears to embrace the entire terrestrial horizon.

Lamoureux turned to us saying: “We shall just arrive in time to perform the office of lowering the shrines; for, gentlemen, you must know that it is we of Beaucaire to whom is reserved the right before all others of turning the crane by which the relics of the saints are lowered.”

The sacred remains of Mary, mother of James the Less, Mary Salome, mother of James and John, and of Sarah, their servant, are kept in a small chapel high up just under the dome. From this elevated position, by means of an aperture which gives on to the church, the shrines are slowly lowered by a rope over the heads of the worshipping crowd.

So soon as we had unharnessed, which we did on the sandbanks covered with tamarisk and orach by which the village is surrounded, we made our way quickly to the church.

“Light them up well, the dear blessed saints,” cried a group of Montpellier women selling candles and tapers, medals and images at the church door.

The church was crammed with people of all kinds, from Languedoc, from Arles, the maimed and the halt, together with a crowd of gypsies, all one on the top of the other. The gypsies buy bigger candles than anybody else, but devote their attention exclusively to Saint Sarah, who, according to their belief, was one of their nation. It is here at Les Saintes-Maries that these wandering tribes hold their annual assemblies, and from time to time elect their queen.

It was difficult to get in at the church. A group of market women from NÎmes, muffled up in black and dragging after them their twill cushions whereon to sleep all night in the church, were quarrelling for the chairs. “I had this before you.”—“No, but I hired it,” &c. A priest was passing “The Sacred Arm” from one to the other to be kissed; to the sick people they were giving glasses of briny water drawn from the saints’ well in the middle of the nave, and which on that day they say becomes sweet. Some, by way of a remedy, were scraping the dust off an ancient marble block fixed in the wall, and reported to be the “saints’ pillow.” A smell of burning tapers, incense, heat and stuffiness suffocated one, while one’s ears were deafened by each group singing their own particular canticles at the pitch of their voices.

Then in the air, slowly the shrines begin to descend, and the crowd bursts into shouts and cries of “O great Saint Marys!” And as the cord unrolls, screams and contortions increase, arms are raised, faces upturned, every one awaits a miracle. Suddenly, from the end of the church, rushing across the nave, as though she had wings, a beautiful girl, her fair hair falling about her, flung herself towards the floating shrines, crying: “O great saints—in pity give me back the love of my betrothed.”

All rose to their feet. “It is Alarde!” exclaimed the people from Beaucaire, while the rest murmured awestruck, “It is Saint Mary Magdalen come to visit her sisters.” Every one wept with emotion.

The following day took place the procession on the sea-shore to the soft murmur and splash of the breaking waves. In the distance, on the high seas, two or three ships tacked about as though coming in, while all along the coast extended the long procession, ever seeming to lengthen out with the moving line of the waves.

It was just here, says the legend,[13] that the three Saint Marys in their skiff were cast ashore in Provence after the death of Our Lord. And looking out over the wide glistening sea, that lies in the midst of such visions and memories, illuminated by the radiant sunshine, it seemed to us in truth we were on the threshold of Paradise.

Our little friend Alarde, looking rather pale after the emotions of the previous day, was one of a group of maidens chosen to bear on their shoulders the “Boat of the Saints,” and many murmurs of sympathy followed her as she passed. This was the last we saw of her, for, so soon as the saints had reascended to their chapel, we took the omnibus for Aigues-Mortes, together with a crowd of people returning to Montpellier and Lundy, who beguiled the way by singing in chorus hymns to the Saints of the Sea.

STANZAS FROM “MIREILLE”[14]