King of Camargue Part 1

King of Camargue.

by Jean Aicard.

I

LIVETTE AND ZINZARA

A shadow suddenly darkened the narrow window. Livette, who was running hither and thither, setting the table for supper, in the lower room of the farm-house of the Chateau d'Avignon, gave a little shriek of terror, and looked up.

The girl had an instinctive feeling that it was neither father nor grandmother, nor any of her dear ones, but some stranger, who sought amus.e.m.e.nt by thus taking her by surprise.

Nor a stranger, either, for that matter,--it was hardly possible!--But how was it that the dogs did not yelp? Ah! this Camargue is frequented by bad people, especially at this season, toward the end of May, on account of the festival of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, which attracts, like a fair, such a crowd of people, thieves and gulls, and so many mischievous gipsies!

The figure that was leaning on the outside of the window-sill, shutting out the light, looked to Livette like a black ma.s.s, sharply outlined against the blue sky; but by the thick, curly hair, surmounted by a tinsel crown, by the general contour of the bust, by the huge ear-rings with an amulet hanging at the ends, Livette recognized a certain gipsy woman who was universally known as the Queen, and who, for nearly two weeks, had been suddenly appearing to people at widely distant points on the island, always unexpectedly, as if she rose out of the ditches or clumps of thorn-broom or the water of the swamps, to say to the laborers, preferably the women: "Give me this or that;" for the Queen, as a general rule, would not accept what people chose to offer her, but only what she chose that they should offer her.

"Give me a little oil in a bottle, Livette," said the young gipsy, darting a dark, flas.h.i.+ng glance at the pretty girl with the fair, sun-flecked hair.

Livette, charitable as she was at every opportunity, at once felt that she must be on her guard against this vagabond, who knew her name. Her father and grandmother had gone to Arles, to see the notary, who would soon have to be drawing up the papers for her marriage to Renaud, the handsomest drover in all Camargue. She was alone in the house.

Distrust gave her strength to refuse.

"Our Camargue isn't an olive country," said she curtly, "oil is scarce here. I haven't any."

"But I see some in the jar at the bottom of the cupboard, beside the water-pitcher."

Livette turned hastily toward the cupboard. It was closed; but, in truth, the stock of olive oil was there in a jar beside the one in which they kept Rhone water for their daily needs.

"I don't know what you mean," said Livette.

"The lie came from your mouth like a vile black wasp from a garden-flower, little one!" said the motionless figure, still leaning heavily on the window-sill, evidently determined to remain. "The oil is where I say it is, and more than twenty-five litres too; I can see it from here. Come, come, take a clean bottle and the tin funnel and give me quickly what I want. I'll tell you, in exchange, what I see in your future."

"It's a deadly sin to seek to know what G.o.d doesn't wish us to know,"

said Livette, "and you can guess that oil is kept in cupboards and still be no more of a sorceress than I am. Go about your business, good-wife. I can give you some of this bread, fresh baked last night, if you wish, but I tell you I haven't any oil."

"And why do they call you Livette," said the Queen calmly, "if it isn't on account of the field of old olive-trees--the oldest and finest in the country--owned by your father, near Avignon? There you were born. There you remained until you were ten years old, and at that age--seven years ago, a mystic number--you came here, where your father was made farmer, overseer of drovers, manager of everything, by the Avignonese master of this 'Chateau d'Avignon,' the finest in all Camargue.--'Livettes! livettes!' that's the way you used to ask for _olivettes_, olives, when you were a baby. You were very fond of them, and the nickname clung to you. A pretty nickname, on my word, and one that suits you well, for if you're not dark like the ripe olive, you're fair as the virgin oil, a pearl of amber in the sunlight, and then you are not yet ripe. Your face is oval, and not stupidly round like a Norman apple. You have the pallor of the olive-leaves seen from below.--And that you may soon see them so, little one, is the blessing I ask for you, as the cures of your chapels say, where they take us in for pity. Be compa.s.sionate as they are, in the name of your Lord Jesus Christ, and give me some oil quickly, I say--in the name of extreme unction and the garden of agony!"

The gipsy had said all this without stopping to breathe, in a dull, monotonous, m.u.f.fled voice, but she added abruptly in loud, piercing, incisive tones: "Do you understand what I say?" imparting to those simple words an extraordinarily imperious and violent expression.

Livette hastily crossed herself.

"Come, enough of this!" said she, "I have nothing here for you, and we keep the oil of extreme unction for better Christians! Begone, pagan, begone!" she added, trying to counterfeit courage.

"Of the three holy women," continued the gipsy, "who took s.h.i.+p, after the death of Jesus Christ, to escape the crucifying Jews, one was like myself, an Egyptian and a fortune-teller. She knew the science of the Magi, of those with whom great Moses contended for mastery in witchcraft. She could, at will, order the frogs to be more numerous than the drops of water in the swamps, and she held in her hand a rod which, at her word, would change to a viper. Before Jesus she bowed, as did Magdalen, and Jesus loved her too. In the tempest, as they were crossing the sea, her wand pointed out the course to follow, and, to do that with safety, had no need to be very long. Must you have more pledges of my power and my knowledge? What more must I tell you to induce you to give me the oil I need so much? If you were a man, I would say: 'Look! I am dark, but I am beautiful! I am a descendant of that Sara the Egyptian who, when the boat of the three holy women drew near the sands of Camargue, paid the boatman by showing him her undefiled body, stripped naked, with no thought of evil and without sin, but knowing well that true beauty is rare and that the mere sight of it is better than all the treasures of Solomon. So be it!'"

Livette was thoroughly alarmed. The gipsy's a.s.surance, her hollow, penetrating voice, imperious by fits and starts, these strange tales filled with evil words on sacred subjects, this devilish mixture of things pagan and things mystic, the consciousness of her own loneliness, all combined to terrify her. She lost her head.

"Away with you, away with you," she cried, "queen of robbers! queen of brigands! away with you, or I will call for help!"

"Your drover won't hear you; he's tending his drove to-day beside the Vaccares. Come, give me the oil, I say, or I'll throw this black wand on the ground, and you will see how snakes bite!"

But Livette, brave and determined, said: "No!" shuddering as she said it, and, to glean a little comfort, cast a glance at the low beam along which her father's gun was hanging. The gipsy saw the glance.

"Oh! I am not afraid of your gun," said she, "and to prove it--wait a moment!"

She left the window. The light streamed into the room, bringing a little courage to Livette's terrified heart, as she followed the gipsy with her eyes. In the bright light of that beautiful May evening, the gipsy woman stood out, a tall figure, against the distant, unbroken horizon line of the Camargue desert, which could be seen through a vista between the lofty trees of the park.

Livette felt a thrill of joy as she saw a troop of mares trotting along the horizon, followed by their driver, spear in air--Jacques Renaud, her fiance, without doubt.--But how far away he was! the horses, from where she stood, looked smaller than a flock of little goats. And her eyes came back to the gipsy queen. A few steps from the farm-house, in front of the seigniorial chateau, a huge square structure, with numerous windows, long closed,--a structure of the sort that arouses thoughts of neglect and death and the grave,--the gipsy stood on tiptoe, drawing down the lowest branch of a thorn-tree.

The thorns were long, as long as one's finger. With a twig of a tree of that species the crown of the Crucified One was made.

She broke off a twig thickset with thorns, bent it into a circle, twisting the two ends together like serpents, and returned to the window.

Livette noticed at that moment that the two watch-dogs were following the gipsy, with their tails between their legs, their noses close to her heels, with little affectionate whines. And she, the gipsy Queen, as slender as haughty, erect upon her legs, in a ragged skirt with ample folds through the holes in which could be seen a bright red petticoat, her bust enveloped in orange-colored rags crossed below her well-rounded b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her amulets tinkling at her ears, medallions jangling on her forehead, which was encircled by a gaudy fillet of copper,--she, the Queen, came forward, holding in her hand the crown of long stiff thorns, to which a few tiny green leaves clung in quivering festoons;--and in a low, very low tone, she murmured the same caressing plaint that the two great cowed dogs were murmuring, saying to them, in their own language, mysterious things they understood.

"Take this," said the gipsy, "let your kind heart be rewarded as it deserves! Misfortune, which is at work for you, will soon make itself known to you. How, may G.o.d tell you! In love, the wind that blows for you is poisoned by the swamps. The charity your G.o.d enjoins is, so they say, another form of love that brings true love good fortune. And here is my queenly gift!"

She threw the crown of thorns through the window at Livette's feet.

"Madame!" exclaimed Livette in dismay.

But the gipsy had disappeared.

Infinite distress filled the poor child's heart. With her eyes fixed on the crown, Livette recalled the legends in which the good Lord Jesus appears disguised as a beggar--and in which He rewards those who have received Him with sweet compa.s.sion.

In one of those legends, the Poor Man, welcomed with harsh words, subjected to mockery and cowardly insults, struck with staves and goblets and bottles thrown by drunken revellers--at last, standing against the wall, begins to be transformed into a Christ upon the Cross, bleeding at the holes in his hands and feet!--And, sick with terror, she asked herself if she had not received with unkindness one of the three holy women who, after the death of Jesus, crossed the sea in a boat to the sh.o.r.es of Camargue, using their skirts for sails, and a.s.sisted by the oars of a boatman, whom one of their number, Sara the Egyptian, paid in heathen coin, by allowing him to see, as the price of a Christian action, her undefiled body, entirely naked, upon the self-same spot on which the church stands to-day.

Slowly she picked up the crown and threw it into the fire over which the soup was stewing. Before it melted into ashes, the crown of thorns seemed for a moment to be pure gold.

II

IN CAMARGUE

Every year, at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the village that stands at the southern end of Camargue, above the marshes, on a sand beach, the line of which is constantly changed by the action of the waves and high winds, every year, the feast of Saintes-Maries is celebrated on May 24th; and at the time of that festival the gipsies flock to Camargue in large numbers, impelled by a curious sort of piety, mingled with a desire to pilfer the pilgrims.

Legends, like trees, spring from the soil,--are its expression, so to speak. They are also its essence. At every step in Camargue, you find the everlasting legend of the holy women, just as you everlastingly see there the same tamarisk-trees, confused, against the horizon, with the same mirages.

The two Marys, so runs the legend, Jacobe, Salome, and--according to some authorities--Magdalen, and with them their bondwomen, Marcella and Sara, adrift on the sea in a boat without masts or sails, pursued by the accursed Jews, after the Saviour's death, spread to the breeze strips of their skirts and their long, thin veils, and the wind carried them to this beach at Camargue.

There a church was built. The sacred bones, found by King Rene, were enclosed in a reliquary, which has never ceased to perform miracles.

And every year, from every corner of Provence, from the Comtat and from Languedoc, the last of the believers throng to the spot, bringing their aspirations and their prayers, dragging with them their sick friends and kindred, or their own wretchedness, their wounds and their lamentations.

Nothing more strange can be imagined than this land of desolation, traversed every year by a mult.i.tude of cripples on their way to hope!

From afar, at the end of the desert tract, can be seen the battlemented church that tells of the wars of long ago, of Saracen invasions, of the precarious life led by the poor in the Middle Ages.

It stands there with its turrets and its bell-tower, which, like the stumps of gigantic masts, tower above the cl.u.s.ter of houses grouped about it; and the village, cut at about mid-height of the lower houses by the horizon line of the sea, seems drifting like a phantom s.h.i.+p among the billows of sand, like the boat of the holy women of the olden time, doomed to founder at last in the desolation of the desert.