King of Camargue Part 10

Renaud mounted Blanchet once more, but he was moved to pity for him.

And the horse, sometimes letting himself slide upon his shoeless feet, his four legs perfectly stiff, sometimes putting one foot before the other, testing the ground, which was firm and hard beneath his weight, but soft beneath his sharp, scaly hoof, carried him at last away from the clayey tract.

Pity and remorse at once were awakened in Renaud's heart by Livette's horse.

What right had he, the drover, to ruin the favorite steed of his darling fiancee in the service of his pa.s.sion for a witch?

So Renaud dismounted, removed Blanchet's saddle and bridle, and said to him: "Go! do what you will." Then he cut a bundle of reeds with which he made himself a bed, and lay upon his back, with his saddle under his head and a handkerchief over his face, waiting for dawn.

He fell into a heavy sleep, during which his trouble swelled and burst within him, forced its way out, and took on form and feature.--The same vision constantly returned.

When he awoke, two hours later, he found his cheeks wet with tears and his hands over his face. Then he took pity upon himself, and, having begun to weep in his dream, he let the tears flow freely that he would have forced back had they sought an outlet on the previous day.

He deemed himself a miserable wretch, and wept over his fate, at first madly, convulsively, and then with joy, as if, in weeping, he had poured out all his sorrow forever. He wept to think that he was caught, powerless, between two contrary, irreconcilable things: that he wished for the one, and thirsted, against his will, for the other.

He beat his hands upon the ground; he tore his cravat, which strangled him; he ground the reeds with his teeth, and cried aloud like a child,--he, an orphan:

"O G.o.d! my mother!"

And he would have wept on for a long while, perhaps, and emptied the springs of bitterness in his heart, had he not suddenly felt a warm caress--two soft, warm, moist caresses upon his cheek, his forehead, his closed eyes.

He half opened his eyelids and saw Blanchet standing beside him, touching his face with his pendant lip as he used to touch Livette's hand when in search of a bit of sugar.

Another animal had imitated Blanchet; it was the _dondare_, Le Doux, the drover's favorite, the leader of his drove of wild bulls and cows, whose bell he had not heard, but who had recognized his master.

The compa.s.sion of these two dumb animals aggravated Renaud's bitter grief at first. Like children, who begin to howl as soon as you sympathize with them, he, when he found he was so wretched as to arouse the pity of beasts, cried aloud in his heart, but stifled the cry at his throat; then, touched at the sight of their kindly faces, and distracted thereby from his own thoughts, he became suddenly calm, sat up, put out his hand toward the muzzles of the powerful yet docile creatures, and spoke to them:

"Good fellows, good fellows! oh! yes, good fellows!"

Day began to break. And the great black bull and the white horse, both, as if in answer to the man and in answer likewise to the first gleam of returning day, which sent a thrill of delight over all the plain, stretched out their necks toward the east; and the neighing of the horse arose, loud and shrill as a flourish of trumpets, sustained by the ba.s.s of the bull's bellowing.

Instantly a chorus of neighs and bellows arose on all sides of Renaud.

His free drove had pa.s.sed the night in the neighborhood. He was surrounded by the familiar forms of his own beasts.

They came at the call of Blanchet and Le Doux and the drover's voice.

The mares were white as salt. Some of them came trotting up, some galloping, some followed by their foals; and pa.s.sed their heads between the reeds, peered curiously in, and stood there,--or else, with a cunning air, set off again, as who should say: "There's the tamer, let us be off!" And there was a great kicking and flinging of heels away from the man's side.

Some bulls, thin, nervous black fellows, whipping their sides with their long tails, also came up, took alarm, remembering that they had been punished for some shortcoming, and, turning tail, decamped in the same way, and when they were out of sight, suddenly stopped.

But as the _dondare_ remained there, few of the horses and cattle left the spot.

Some, the oldest or the wisest, slowly a.s.sumed a kneeling posture, as if to resume their interrupted repose, then, scenting the approaching sun, wound their tongues about the tufts of salt gra.s.s, drew them into their mouths and chewed placidly, while the silvery foam fell from their muzzles.

Others, in the same posture, lazily licked their sides. A mother, nursing her calf, watched him with a calm, gentle eye.

Here a stallion drew near a mare, reached her side in two bounds, with tail in air and bristling mane, and bold, sonorous, trumpet-like call--then reared, and when the mare leaped aside, bit at her and with a sudden sidewise movement dodged the kick she aimed at him.

More than one bull, too, paid court to the other s.e.x, rose clumsily on his hind legs, only to fall again on his four feet, with nothing beneath him.

The awakening of the drove was not complete. The animals were still dull and heavy. They were awaiting the coming of the sun.

Renaud approached a half-broken stallion he had sometimes ridden, and threw over his neck the _seden_ he had just coiled for that purpose--Livette's _seden_ and Blanchet's, all stained with mud from having brought so many beasts to earth.

He gave sugar to the wild creature, who allowed himself to be saddled without overmuch resistance, desirous, perhaps, to enjoy for a day the abundant supply of hay in the stables of the chateau, which he had not forgotten.

"Go and rest, old fellow!" said Renaud to Blanchet.

And he set off on his fresh steed, spear in hand, with the idea of seeking Rampal.

The stallion he rode was his favorite, the one he had named Prince.

And he felt a thrill of honest satisfaction as he said to himself that at all events Livette's horse would not have to put up with his whims and follies as a lover any more. He felt highly pleased at that thought, being lightened of a threefold responsibility, as rider, drover, and lover.

Prince seemed disappointed when Renaud compelled him to turn his back on the Chateau d'Avignon.

He rode in the direction of the cabin mentioned by Audiffret. It was very possible, after all, that Rampal had taken up his quarters there, and he proposed to find out. Now, as this cabin was, as we have seen, not in Camargue, but in Crau, not far from the Icard farm, between nine and ten leagues to the eastward, it was necessary to cross the main stream of the Rhone. But, in that vast plain, men rode long distances for a _yes_ or a _no_, and thirty or forty kilometres had no terrors for Renaud.

From his present position, it seemed to him that his shortest road would be to skirt the southern sh.o.r.e of the Vaccares.

The cool, fresh morning air drove away all his black thoughts, his visions and nightmares; he felt something like tranquillity. Moreover, he was so overdone with weariness that he seemed half-asleep, and the feeling was delicious. He no longer had the strength to follow his thoughts, still less to guide them, so that he was submissive as a blade of gra.s.s, as any inanimate thing, to the pa.s.sing breeze, to the sun's rays.

The hour and the coloring of the earth and sky were in very truth enough to rejoice the heart, and physical gaiety took possession of him, as he had ceased to reflect.

A fresh breeze, smelling of the sea, sent a shiver over the water and the gra.s.s. The sun was rising. A moment more and he would appear to cast his net of gold horizontally over the plain. He appeared. The vague murmurs became distinct sounds; reflection changed to brilliant light, drowsiness to activity.

Renaud, who was galloping along with his spear resting in his stirrup, his head leaning heavily on the arm that held it and his eyes closed, under the influence of the rocking motion of the horse, suddenly reopened them, and looked about with the joyous glance of a king.

He paused a moment to gaze at a huge plough drawn by several horses, which was transforming a wretched stony field into cleared land ready for the vine.

The phylloxera, which has done so much harm in rich and healthy districts, affords Camargue a new opportunity to fight the fever and to gain ground on the swamp. The sand is, in fact, very favorable to the vine and very unfavorable to the parasitic insect, and this watery country will gradually become, please G.o.d, a genuine land of the vine!

Renaud watched the ploughman with a feeling of delight at the thought of his native country being enriched by honest toil; and with a confused feeling of regret, too, for he preferred that the moor should remain uncultivated and wild and free. The idea of a flat plain, tilled from end to end, where no room was left for the straying feet of horses as G.o.d made them--that idea saddened him.

He would always say to himself as he rode through more civilized regions: "Now there, you know, a man can neither live nor die."

The fields of wheat or oats, even in the summer season when they have such a lovely reddish tinge, so like the overheated earth, so like the turbid, gleaming waters of the Rhone, had no attraction for him. They gave him the impression of an obstacle that he must ride his horse around, and Renaud did not recognize the respectability of any obstacle--except the sea!

He was more inclined to look favorably upon the vine, because it seemed to him that it was a glorious thing for his country to produce wine, just at the time when other districts in France had exhausted their producing power. And then, the Rhone, the _mistral_, horses, bulls, and wine, all seemed to him to go together, as things that told of holiday-making, of manly strength and courage and joy. They knew how to drink, never fear, did the men of Saint-Gilles and Arles and Avignon. Renaud had attended wedding-parties more than once on the island of Barthela.s.se in the middle of the Rhone, opposite Avignon, and there he had tasted a red wine whose color he could still see. It was an old Rhone wine, so they had told him, and he remembered that, being desirous to do honor to the wine as well as to the bride, and being a little exhilarated, he had solemnly thrown his cup into the Rhone after the last b.u.mper. There are, at the bottom of the Rhone, many such cups, dead but not broken, from which joy was quaffed but yesterday. They go gently down, turning over and over, through the water to its sandy bed. There they sleep, covered with sand, and two or three thousand years hence--who knows?--the venerable scholars of that day will discover them, as they are discovering amphorae of baked earth at Trinquetaille to-day, and now and then beside them a gla.s.s urn, wherein all the colors of the rainbow chase one another about as soon as its robe of dust is removed.

Who can say that Renaud's brittle gla.s.s, from which he drank the best wine of his youth, will not remain for ages full of the sand and water of the Rhone, and that--in days to come--other youths will not find therein the same delight? For everything begins anew.

Thus did the wanderer's thoughts wander from point to point, from vine to gla.s.s. Ah! that gla.s.s of his, thrown into the Rhone! His mind recurred once more to that memory of a debauch. It seemed to him now, that, by throwing it into the river on the wedding-day, he had foretold his own destiny, and that he, Livette's fiance, would never be married! He would drink no more from the discarded gla.s.s.

The first impulse of delight that came to him with the newness of the morning had already pa.s.sed; his sadness had returned as the day lost the charm that attaches to a thing just beginning.

Dreaming thus, Renaud rode across the marshes, Prince splashing through the water up to his thighs.

Yes, my friends, he forgave the vine, did Renaud, for invading Camargue.

Moreover, after the harvest was gathered, did not the red and white vineyards afford excellent pasturage for the bulls? There are some that are all red in the autumn, and others all white, or of a light golden yellow--as if the vines had amused themselves by reproducing the two colors of the wine under the gorgeous sunsets. He has seen nothing who has not seen the beams of the setting sun, in November, now yellow as gold, now red as blood, spreading over a field of red vines, over a field of yellow vines, which themselves spread out as far as the eye can reach. Indeed, is not Camargue the home of the _lambrusque_? The _lambrusque_ is the wild, Camarguese vine, different from our cultivated vines in that the male and female are on separate plants. The grapes that grow on the female _lambrusque_ make a somewhat tart but pleasant wine, and the shoots of the vine make light, stout staves for the hand.