King of Camargue Part 24

But the elect, alas! are d.a.m.ned. Their heaven is the chapel up yonder, in which the power they invoke lies sleeping, beneath the stained wood of the boxes, like to a double coffin--the power that may remain deaf, the all-powerful power that will never perhaps awaken for any one, the marvellous power upon which cures depend and which withholds happiness!

Such was the interior of the three-storied church of Saintes-Maries on that day. And above the lofty chapel, there was the bell-tower overlooking the whole country-side. Surrounded by endless numbers of swallows and sea-gulls, for centuries past it has looked upon the glistening desert, the dazzling sea, the dumb infinitude of s.p.a.ce, which could explain things if it would, but only beams and laughs.

The hour drew near. The crowd was panting with heat and hope and fear.

Renaud was not there.

"Remember--we promised to burn three tapers each before the relics,"

Livette had said to him.

"I will come to-night," was his reply. "There's the branding to-day.

I have to look after my bulls."

So Livette was a little distraught. She was thinking of joining Renaud, of being present at the branding, of keeping an eye on her betrothed. Where was he?

But Monsieur le cure made a sign: Livette began to sing. Alas! why was not her lover there? Her voice, which she knew was pleasant to the ear, might have some effect on him. How eagerly he listened to the gipsy's singing the other day!--Livette sang, and the buzzing of prayers and litanies and invocations of all sorts, that every one was indulging in on his or her own account, subsided as her clear, pure voice arose. O G.o.d! what is this humanity of ours? It is vile and abject, but it has some sense of shame. The basest know how to pray that they may be cured of their baseness. And, however much they may have rolled in the mire of their natural inclinations, a time comes when they set the flame alight, when they burn incense, and when all keep silent to listen to the voice ascending to Heaven, imploring for them a grace that no one knows, that perhaps does not exist, but that every one imagines and desires!

"Eat your excrement, dog!" say the gipsies; "what care I? There is a light in the dog's eye that is not often seen in the eyes of kings."

Livette sang. The cure said to himself:

"O my G.o.d, mayhap this child of Thine will obtain favor in Thy sight!"

Livette's voice was as fresh as the water of salvation for which the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude thirsted. And how intently they listened! But, at the end of each stanza, weary of restraining their tumultuous e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of hope, they sent up from thousands of throats an inarticulate roar in which only the two words: _Saintes Maries!_ could be distinguished.

Livette sang:

"Quand vous etiez sur la grande eau, Sans rames a votre bateau, Saintes Maries!

Rien que la mer, rien que les cieux---- Vous appeliez de tous vos yeux La douceur des plages fleuries."[9]

"_Saintes Maries!_" roared the people; uttered at the same moment by a thousand voices acting upon a common impulse, the frenzied appeal was like an explosion.

Every one shouted with all his strength, for the saints must be made to hear! Every one shouted with all his lungs, with all his heart, with all his body, one might say. Heaven is so far away! Open-mouthed, their faces twitching convulsively, they gazed upward. The veins in their necks were swollen to the bursting-point. The muscles swelled and thickened in faces to which the blood rushed in torrents. The brothers, lovers, husbands, mothers, fathers, of the sufferers, availed themselves of their own strength to call for help, howling like wounded wild beasts turned toward the dawn. All this suffering mult.i.tude, all this swarming heap of tainted, diseased flesh, uttered the terrifying roar of a monster in pain--and still the preternaturally shrill shriek of some doting mother would soar above the horrid uproar. And all around the church, filled with the nameless appeals of these d.a.m.ned of earth, lay the calm, silent desert, the blue, foam-flecked sea, the brilliant sunlight, insensible to everything.

"Sous le soleil, sous les etoiles, De vos robes faisant des voiles (Vogue, bateau!) Sept jours, sept nuits vous naviguates, Sans voir ni trois-ponts ni fregates---- Rien que la mer et la grande eau!"[10]

"_Saintes Maries!_" roared the people, and each time the shout burst forth from thousands of throats, suddenly and at the same instant, with the effect of a strange kind of explosion.

"Dieu qui fait son fouet d'un eclair, Pour fouetter le ciel et la mer, Saintes Maries!

Amena la barque a bon port---- Un ange, qui parut a bord, Vous montra des plages fleuries!"[11]

"_Saintes Maries!_" the people roared again. And the appealing cry, made up of so many cries, burst forth with a sound like that made by a great wave that breaks against a cliff and is instantly scattered about in foam! And again the young girl's voice arose above all the vociferating, grinning creatures. Might not one fancy that he saw a sea-swallow, white as the dove of the Ark, soaring over a bottomless abyss?

"Vous pour qui Dieu fit ce miracle, Voyez, devant son tabernacle, Tous a genoux, Souilles du peche de naissance, Nous invoquons votre puissance,---- Saintes femmes, protegez-nous!"[12]

And for the last time, the deafening, harsh cry arose:

"_Saintes Maries!_"

Oh! the thousand, two thousand e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of insane longing that flew upward, at a single flight, flapping all their wings at once, to fall back, dead, upon themselves.

It is very certain that there was in that frenzied appeal all the madness of suffering, all the wrath of unsatisfied longing, and rage as of unchained beasts, against the very beings they implored.

Meanwhile, the double shutter up above had not yet been thrown open.

And Livette, in accordance with the cure's instructions, was to repeat the last verse.

So she began again:

"Vous pour qui Dieu fit ce miracle----"

But these first words had hardly pa.s.sed her lips when her voice faltered and died away. For a few seconds there was a silence as of utter amazement in the church. Of what was Livette thinking? Of what?--For the last minute, just G.o.d! her eyes had been obstinately fixed upon the black opening leading to the crypt. In that opening, on a level with the floor of the church, she had seen a head: it was the gipsy queen, who had come up from the crypt, in mischievous mood, curious to see Livette singing. Immediately below the great altar she emerged from the dark depths of the cellar amid the ascending smoke of the tapers. She came from her kingdom below, and with her copper crown and gleaming ear-rings, her swarthy skin and her fiery black eyes, she seemed to Livette a genuine devil from h.e.l.l.

Zinzara ascended two steps more and her bust appeared. She darted a keen, penetrating glance at Livette. That is why Livette was confused, and why she called with all her strength upon the women of compa.s.sion, the holy women above, for help against this woman from the chapel below.

But the shutters that concealed the shrines were opened at last. And slowly, very slowly, they descended, swinging from side to side, with a slight jerky movement, at the ends of the two ropes, embellished here and there with little bunches of flowers.

Is not this the image of every life? Is there aught else in the world?

Something descends from heaven, something ascends from h.e.l.l; and we suffer with hope and fear.

"_Saintes Maries!_"

Amid the vociferations of the crowd, Livette lost her head, she forgot to sing, and, carried away by the prevailing excitement, hope, and terror, she began to cry aloud with all the rest, like a lost soul, while Zinzara, from below, continued to gaze fixedly at her.

What would you say, Monsieur le cure, to Livette's thoughts, who,--poor creature of the world we live in!--between the holy women and the woman devil, no longer knew which way to turn? Had she not reason to tremble? For the shrines descend to no purpose, they bring us naught but dead relics--while the sorceress is a creature of flesh and blood, whose feet walk, whose eyes see!

Far away from us, in the land of dreams, of supernatural hopes, above the sky and the stars, are the sainted souls that have pity for mankind; as far from man as Paradise itself are the chaste women who embalm the crucified ones in herbs and spices, while _she_ is close at hand, always ready, always armed against the repose of Christian souls, she, queen of diabolic love, who, seeking only to gratify her caprice, makes sport of everything!

Livette became more and more confused beneath Zinzara's steadfast glance, and she tried in vain, after silence had at last been restored, to resume the invocation. She faltered and stopped again.

Thereupon there was great confusion among the waiting mult.i.tude. All those men and women who were holding their peace in order to listen to the outpouring of their own souls in the maiden's voice, to the pure, unspoken prayer which was in their hearts, but which they could not put in words, had been thrown back once more, and more despairingly than ever, upon themselves, upon their own helplessness, when Livette's voice died away. Just at the decisive moment, their interpreter failed them! They were afraid of their profound silence, so contrary to the impulses of their hearts. In order to be heard on high, their prayer must be offered; and, seized by the same thought, every one began to shout or sing on his own account, some beginning again at the very beginning, others taking the stanza they knew by heart or had before them in a book, others repeating at random bits of the litanies, one the _credo_, another the _pater_, and never did prayers offered up to G.o.d create such a h.e.l.lish uproar, since the discordant cries of all the sorrows of mankind ascended to Heaven.

Stronger women than Livette would have been disturbed as she was, would have felt their powers failing. She put her hand to her forehead to detain her mind that seemed to be making its escape. Was not she the cause of all this trouble? What would become of her, in this state? She was afraid and ashamed at once.

Instead of looking up, instead of watching the blessed relics that had now accomplished half of their descent, she could not refrain from returning the fixed stare of the gipsy woman below, whose eyes seemed to pierce her soul.

Livette suffered keenly. The gipsy's gaze entered into her very being, and she felt that she could do nothing. It seemed to her as if a sharp-toothed beast were gnawing at her heart. Instead of praying, she listened to the terrible thoughts within her. She fancied that she could feel the hatred go out from her with the glances that shot from her eyes! She tried to stab to the heart with it that creature who was defying her down there. Would not somebody kill the witch, who was the cause of everything? Ah! Saintes Maries! what thoughts for such a place! at such a time!

The relics slowly descended, and, amid the roars that greeted them, Livette, in her overwrought imagination, fancied that she saw herself clinging to Renaud, beseeching him to be faithful and kind to her, and not to go to that other woman; and when he refused and left her, she leaped at the gipsy's face and scratched her and clawed at her like a cat.

Thus the sorceress's soul pa.s.sed into Livette. Already, without suspecting it, she had begun to resemble her enemy, the gitana who leaped at the nostrils of Renaud's horse the other day. And yet this little fair-haired girl was not one of the dark-skinned maidens of Arles, who have African and Asian blood in their veins! No matter; she, too, has a wild beast's fits of pa.s.sion. Love and jealousy are at work making a woman's soul.

The relics were still descending; and Livette feverishly told off _paters_ and _aves_ on her rosary.--Patience! on the day after the fete, the gipsies, she knows, will leave the town! Two more days and her agony will be at an end.

Meanwhile--she makes this vow in presence of the relics--she will not gratify Renaud by showing that she is jealous, as she is, and not until later--when Zinzara is far away, and there is no chance of her coming back--will she, perhaps, tell her promised husband that he lied to her, that he is a traitor, because, instead of avenging her upon the gipsy, he was false to his fiancee with her--for of course he is false to her, as he is not there!--She will tell him, then, not in a pa.s.sion, but to punish him. It will be no more than justice.

By dint of uncoiling themselves by little jerks, the ropes have lowered the relics almost within reach of the hands stretched up to meet them. Thereupon the rabble of poor devils could contain itself no longer. Every one was determined to be the first to touch them. Those who were already in the choir, directly below the hanging relics, lost their footing, crowded as they were by those who were pressing in from the body of the church, jostling and crus.h.i.+ng one another with a constant pressure. Livette was borne along on the wave, seeing nothing, and with but one thought in her mind--to touch the consecrated relics herself!--That she felt she must do, so that she might escape the influence of the glance the black woman had cast at her. She would seek to turn aside the fatal spell that had been upon her ever since her first meeting with the sorceress! But would she reach the shrines?--Livette felt that she was seized by two strong arms. She turned: it was Renaud! He had just entered the church with two other drovers, his friends. These three young men, glowing with the outside sunlight, healthy and strong, amid the lame and halt and blind, had the insolent bearing--cruel without meaning to be--of manly beauty, of life itself. They extricated the girl and made a ring about her. She was able to breathe.

"Would you like to touch the relics, demoisellette?"