King of Camargue Part 22

"Allow the romichal, the tzigane, to pa.s.s. He is the spectre of a true king. Kingly is his tattered cloak. A saddle is his throne. Is the whole earth thy kingdom, Romichal?

"At Boerenthal they speak the language of the Zend. Oh! the coudra would become pope! Thinkst thou it was the evil-doer who invented evil? Nay, nay; put not thy trust in G.o.d, and remain free, Romichal!

"The Rhine, too, is a Nile. And the Rhone likewise. But thy mare prefers to drink in the river of Chal! The Nile alone can make thy hope neigh aloud, O Romichal!"

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 G.o.d 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!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chapter XVI

_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 s.p.a.ce! 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.

XVII

THE OLD WOMAN

Renaud rode at a foot-pace to the _Menage_, one of the farms belonging to the Chateau d'Avignon. He had ordered Bernard to bring Blanchet to him there, intending to take him back to the chateau. It was but a short distance from one to the other.

He was exceedingly astonished to find that the more he reflected upon what had happened to him--and it was really what he had hoped for--the more dissatisfied he was.

He believed that he had finally formed, in spite of everything, a fairly accurate estimate of the gipsy's character--a fact that pleased him. He had simply said to himself that she was an uncivilized creature, since she could forget all shame of her nakedness in her haste to punish as best she could a man she deemed overbold. From her very immodesty, from the arrogance and malignity she had exhibited at their first meeting, he had, strangely enough, evolved a proof of chast.i.ty so sure of itself, so disdainful of peril, that the shameless creature seemed to him only the more desirable.

He knew that the gipsy women esteem thieves, but not prost.i.tutes, and he had enjoyed seeing in Zinzara a sort of savage virgin, ferocious as a wild beast of the Orient, over whom he, the tamer of beasts, would be the first to enjoy the pride of triumph. And, lo! she suddenly aroused in him a feeling of repulsion which he could not explain.

Simply because he had heard her p.r.o.nounce a few words, of obscure meaning, like all gipsy words, and threatening in tone as he ought to expect,--more amiable, in point of fact, than he had any right to hope,--he believed her, as if it had been revealed to him in a dream, capable of anything, a _wicked woman_! He felt that the devil was in her.

He had no precise knowledge as to her age. Was she seventeen or twenty-five? The swarthy tint of her impa.s.sive yet smiling face told nothing, hid blushes and pallor alike.

Her face was extremely young, and its expression was of no age. Renaud had undergone the inexplicable fascination of that face, whereon the malignity born of a woman's experience of the world, false for the sake of omnipotence, was mingled with something child-like.

Stronger men than he would have been caught in the snare. Neither king nor priest could have escaped the evil fascination of the gitana! She would have had but to will. The very things that repelled one were attractive!

So Renaud was caught, and his manner showed it. Sitting upon his tired horse, upon the stallion whose fiery nature was subdued by so much hard riding in all directions, and who carried his head less high, the drover, supporting the head of his spear upon his stirrup while the handle rested against his arm, seemed like a vanquished king, humiliated by the feeling that he was a prisoner in the free air.

He found Bernard at the _Menage_, in the huge room on the lower floor, like those in all the farm-houses of the province, with the high mantelpiece, the long ma.s.sive table in the centre, the kneading-trough of well-waxed walnut, the carved bread-cupboard with little columns, fastened to the wall like a cage, and the s.h.i.+ning copper pans. Upon the whitewashed wall a few colored pictures were hanging: the Saintes-Maries in their boat; Napoleon I. on the Bridge of Arcola, and Genevieve de Brabant, with the roe, in the depths of a forest.

An old shepherd was seated at the table, beside Bernard, slowly eating his slice of bread.

"Is it you, king?" said he as Renaud entered. "I have seen you hold your head higher! What's the matter with you? you look downhearted.

Aren't you still a cattle-herder, my boy? A shepherd's virtue, young man, is patience, remember that. What you can't find in a day you may find in a hundred years."

"Ah! there you are, Sigaud, eh?" Renaud replied, without answering his questions. "When do you start for the Alps?"

"Right away, my son. We are behindhand this year. I am just getting ready."

Nothing more was said. When they had eaten in silence their bread and sheep's-milk cheese, and drunk a cup of sour wine made from the wild grape, they rose.

The shepherd threw his cloak over his arm, took his staff from a corner, and having doffed his broad-brimmed hat before an old image of the Nativity, that hung on the wall, embellished with a branch laden with coc.o.o.ns, and beneath which, on a carved oak stand, stood a little lamp, long unlighted, he went slowly from the room.

When Renaud, mounted upon Prince and leading Blanchet, left the _Menage_, he rode some time with the shepherds, by the side of the enormous flock on their way to the Alps, where they were to pa.s.s the summer season.

Two thousand sheep, led by the rams, and arranged in battalions and companies, under the care of several shepherds of whom old Sigaud was the chief, were trotting along the road with hanging heads, making with their eight thousand feet a dull, smothered pattering, as of falling hailstones, in the dense clouds of dust. The Labry dogs ran to and fro along the edges of the flock, full of business, but frequently turning their eyes toward their master.

A few a.s.ses scattered among the different companies bore upon their backs, jolting about in double wicker-baskets, the sleepy, bleating lambs.

Old Sigaud was in high feather, thinking of the cool, fresh air of the Alps, where the gra.s.s is green and the water pure, and where he could gaze in peace every night at Ca.s.siopeia's Chair and the Three Kings and the Pleiades in the heavens studded with myriads of stars.

"Adieu, Sigaud," said Renaud, drawing rein when the time came for him to part from the flock and its guardians.

Sigaud also stopped in front of him.

"Adieu, Renaud," said he gravely. "There must be a woman at the bottom of your trouble. You are too sad. But we called you _King_ to do honor to your courage, you mustn't forget that. Remember, too, that everything is of some use, my boy, and that good may come out of evil.

It takes all kinds to make the world!"

Renaud found Livette sitting on the stone bench in front of the door of the chateau. He had not leaped down from Prince before she was covering Blanchet with kisses. Audiffret was very glad to learn that the stolen horse had returned to the drove, but when Renaud explained that he had come, on this occasion, to return Blanchet, Livette showed some feeling.

"So you are not satisfied with what he has done for you?" said she.

"Such a pretty horse! and so clever!--or perhaps you are tired of teaching him for me, of preventing him from learning bad tricks in the stable, of training him so that I can have the pleasure of seeing him return a winner from the races at Beziers, where my father is anxious to send him next month?"

"Certainly, Renaud," said Audiffret, "you ought to keep him. He gets rusty here in the stable. But I am surprised at what Livette says.

Why, would you believe that she was regretting him this very morning, saying that she proposed to ask you to bring him back to-day. And now she doesn't want him!--It takes a very shrewd man to understand these girls!"

But what Audiffret could not understand, Renaud, for his part, understood very well. The lovelorn damsel said to herself that, by returning the horse, her fiance would rid himself of a reminder of her, which was a cause of remorse to him perhaps--whereas, he ought, like a jealous lover, to have wanted to look after Blanchet, and take care of him for her, as long as possible.

Renaud resisted as best he could. He would have a deal of hard riding to do at the time of the fetes, he said, and he did not want to overwork Blanchet or to leave him with the drove to become wild again.

Thereupon, Audiffret, easily influenced by the last who spoke, agreed with Renaud.

While the discussion was in progress, Renaud had put up both horses in the stable. That done, he went slowly up to the hay-loft, whence he threw down an armful of hay into the racks through the openings in the floor.