King of Camargue Part 18

The drover's saddle is his whole fortune. He cherishes it, loves it, takes pride in it.

"Your saddle?" rejoined Renaud suspiciously. "Come with me and get it! Bernard will give it to you."

He shrugged his shoulders, and without another word rode after the drove, leading back to it the emaciated horse which Rampal had sadly misused.

He was extremely glad that Blanchet had had no part in this duel. He recognized Blanchet from afar in among the mares, but sleeker and better cared for than the others. A true lady's horse, staunch as he was!--And now he would be able to return him to his mistress, as he had his former horse, in addition to Prince. And his nostrils dilated with the pride of victory. He inhaled long draughts of the bracing salt air.

He was thinking of two women--yes, of two, not one only!--who would say of him when they heard what had taken place: "That is a man!" And Renaud's n.o.ble horse shared his master's pride, as he capered about, in the liberty accorded him to choose his own pace, with the proud bearing of a stallion that had won the race in the sight of his whole drove.

XV

MONSIEUR LE CURe'S ARCHaeOLOGY

The cure of Saintes-Maries was a man of about sixty, well preserved, very tall and stout, with bright eyes whose light he quenched with spectacles, and energetic gestures which he purposely restrained.

The parsonage was near the church, the doorway shaded by a number of elms. The house, in accordance with the prevailing custom of the province, was whitewashed once a year, outside and in, like the houses of the Arabs.

The houses in Saintes-Maries are low. The streets are narrow, and wind about to escape the sun. The shadows under the awnings of the little shops have a bluish cast. In front of the doors, which open on the street, hang transparent curtains of common linen, in some cases of very fine net-work, to stop the flies and admit the light after it has pa.s.sed through the sieve, so to speak. And, behind them, the maidens of Saintes-Maries are confined like birdlings in a cage, or like very dangerous little wild beasts. Are not all maidens to be looked upon with more or less suspicion?

The maidens of Saintes-Maries wear the Arles head-dress and the neckerchief, with fold upon fold held in place by hundreds of pins, by as many pins as a rose-bush has thorns; and where the thick folds of the handkerchief open, in the depths of the _chapelle_, you can see the little golden cross gleaming upon the firm young flesh rising and falling with the maidenly sigh. The ap.r.o.n worn over the ample skirt seems like a skirt itself, it is so broad and full, and slender feet peep out from beneath it, as agile as the Camargue partridge's red claws, that love to scamper swiftly over the fields to escape the hunter, knowing that Camargue is broad and s.p.a.ce is plentiful.

Many are the pale faces at Saintes, for, whatever they may say, the marshes still breed fever, and this country, to which people come to be miraculously cured, is, generally speaking, a country of disease; but pallor goes well with the wavy black hair, worn in broad puffs on the temples and falling upon the neck in two heavy ma.s.ses which are turned up to meet the _chignon_. To help them to forget what is depressing in their lives, they resort, here as elsewhere, to coquetry--and the rest!--And then they are accustomed to the fever, which gives birth to dreams and visions; they tame it, as it were; it is not cruel to the people it knows, and does not lead them to the cemetery until they are old and gray.

The cemetery is a few steps from the village, a few steps from the sea. It lies at the foot of the sand-dunes, surrounded by a low wall.

The dead and gone villagers of Saintes-Maries lie sleeping there between the sea and the desert of Camargue: many fishermen who lived in their flat-bottomed boats; many herdsmen who lived on horseback in the plain.

All of them alike find there, in death, the things amid which their lives have been pa.s.sed: the salt sand, filled with tiny sh.e.l.ls, the _enganes_ that grow in spite of everything, reddened by the salt-laden winds, and heavy with soda,--and the thin shadow of the pink-plumed tamarisk. There they hear the neighing of the wild mares, the shouts of the herdsmen contending on the race-course on fete-days, or stirring up the black bulls in the arena under the walls of the church. They hear the sails flapping, and the _han_ of the bare-legged fishermen pushing their flat-bottomed boats or barges into the water; and night and day, the pounding of the sea in its efforts to push back the island of Camargue, while the Rhone, on the other hand, is constantly pushing it into the sea, and adding to its bulk with mud and stones brought down from its head-waters. The sea smites the island as if it would have none of it, but all in vain,--it, too, can but augment its size with the sand it casts up.

And the sand from the sea makes a broad hem of dunes along the sh.o.r.es of Camargue.

No one can fail to see that the dunes, those shifting, tomb-like hills of sand, must have served as models for the ma.s.sive pyramids, the tombs of kings, in the Egyptian desert.

At the feet of the little pyramids of sand sleep the dead of Camargue.

But whither has the thought of death led us? Why do we tarry here, while Livette is timidly lifting the knocker at monsieur le cure's door?

The blow echoed within the house, in the empty hall. Livette was much perturbed. What was she to say? Where should she begin? The beginning is always the most difficult part. She would like to run away now, but it is too late. She hears steps inside. Marion, the old servant, opens the door.

Marion has a practised eye. When any one knocks at Monsieur le cure's door, she knows, simply by examining his face, what he wants, and frames her answers accordingly, on her own responsibility; for Monsieur le cure is subject to rheumatism: he suffers from fever, too, and Marion nurses Monsieur le cure! If he listened to Marion, he would nurse himself so carefully that all the sick people would have to die unshriven, without extreme unction, for Marion would always have a good reason to give to prevent him from going out by day or night, when the _mistral_ was blowing or the wind was from the east, summer or winter, rain or shine.

But Monsieur le cure would smile and do just what he chose. He was a good priest. He never failed in his duty. He loved his parishioners.

He a.s.sisted them on all occasions with his purse and his advice. He was beloved by them all.

He loved his parishioners, his commune, and his curious church, which was once a fortress; he was familiar with the shape of its every stone. He loved it both as priest and as archaeologist, for Monsieur le cure is a scholar, and his church is, in very truth, one of the most interesting monuments in France, with its abnormally thick, high, and threatening walls, crowned with jutting galleries and surmounted by crenelated battlements, with an un.o.bstructed view of sea and land in all directions, and overlooked by four turrets, and a tower in the centre,--the highest of all,--from whose belfry the alarum bell, in the old days, often aroused the country-side, repeating in its shrillest tones: "Here come the heathens, good people of Saintes-Maries! Attention! Come and shut yourselves up here! Make ready your arrows and the boiling oil and pitch!"--Or else: "Hasten to the sh.o.r.e, good people of Saintes-Maries! A French vessel is sinking!"

And to this day it seems still to say, to all, far and near: "I see you! I see you!"

One could go on forever describing the church of Saintes-Maries, and relating anecdotes concerning it.

Behind the battlements at the top, and enclosing the roof of flat stones, runs a narrow pathway, where the archers and patrols in the old days used to make their rounds, surrounded by countless sea-swallows. Along the ridge-pole of the roof, of overlapping broad flat stones, between which thick tufts of _nasques_ are growing, rises a high carved comb, in ogive-like curves, surmounted by fleurs-de-lis.

All this is beautiful and grand, but there is a little thing of which the villagers are as proud as of the bell-tower and the turrets, and that is a marble tablet, about five courses in length by three in height, on which two lions are represented. One is protecting its whelp; the other seems to be protecting a little child, as if it were its own offspring. It seems that this tablet was carved by a Greek workman long, long ago.

The marble is set into the southern wall of the church, beside the small door.

You enter. The ogive arch of the nave compels you to raise your eyes to a great height. And as you enter by the main door, your attention is attracted by a romanesque arch, directly in front of you, at the far end of the church, at least five metres below the ogive arch of the nave; in the centre of this arch are the blessed reliquaries, resting upon the sill of an opening like a window, flanked by two columns. From that position they are lowered once in every year at the ends of two ropes.

The choir is some few feet higher than the flagging of the church. It is reached by two symmetrical staircases, between which is the grated door leading down into Sara's crypt. That door you can see, directly in front of you, at the end of the pa.s.sage through the centre of the church, between the rows of chairs. One would say that it was the air-hole of a dungeon.

Down below, in the damp crypt, with its low arched roof and naked walls,--a veritable dungeon,--upon a mutilated marble altar, is the little gla.s.s shrine containing the relics of Saint Sara, the patron saint of the gipsies. There, amid the smoke of their candles, in an atmosphere made foul by human exhalations, you can see them once a year, huddled together in a dense crowd, mumbling their questionable prayers.

In the days of the Saracen invasions this crypt served as a storehouse for supplies, when all the inhabitants of the little village were forced to take refuge in the fortress-church.

Aigues-Mortes has her walls and her Constance Tower, ma.s.sive as Babel; Nimes has her Arena and her Fountain--and the Pont du Gard, superb in its beauty, is also hers; Avignon her bridges, her ramparts, and her clocks with figures of armed men to strike the hours; Tarascon her Chateau, mirrored in the Rhone; Baux the fantastic ruins of her houses, hollowed, like the cells of a bee-hive, out of the solid rock of the hill-side; Montmajour has her tombs of little children, also dug, side by side, in the solid rock, and to-day filled with earth and flowers, like the troughs at which doves drink; Orange has her theatre and her triumphal arch; Arles has her theatre with the two pillars still upright in the centre; she has Saint-Trophime, too, with its sculptured facade and its _Allee des Alyscamps_, bordered with Christian sarcophagi and lofty poplars. But Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer has her church, which Monsieur le cure would not give for all the treasures of the other towns!

Marion saw plainly that Livette was depressed; Marion was touched when Livette said: "I must see Monsieur le cure," and as her master would not be seriously discommoded, there being no occasion for him to leave the house, Marion ushered Livette into the parlor.

It was a whitewashed room, but the cure had transformed it into a veritable museum, and the walls were completely hidden behind wooden cabinets, made by himself, and all filled with his collections.

There were pieces of antique pottery and of rainbow-hued antique gla.s.s. There were old medals.

One of the latter attracted Livette's attention. It represented a bull in the act of falling; one of his fore-legs had given way. A man, his conqueror, had seized him by the horns. That Grecian medal was struck centuries upon centuries ago. A label explained it to Livette, who thought at first that it was Renaud. Life is all repet.i.tion.

There were collections of plants and boxes filled with sh.e.l.ls, and also many stuffed birds, all the varieties found in Camargue. For more than thirty years, fishermen and hunters had presented Monsieur le cure with curious objects and animals. Here was an otter from the Rhone, there a beaver, with his trowel-shaped tail and hooked teeth.

It is a question of serious importance whether the beavers do not injure the dikes of the Rhone. The important point, you see, is that the water from the swamps should empty into the river or the sea through the ca.n.a.ls, which run in all directions. Therefore, the dikes must hold firm and not let the Rhone overflow the swamps. And the beavers, they say, destroy the dikes. They gnaw into them when the great freshets come, to avoid the drift, and take refuge inside; and when the water comes in after them, they make a vertical hole through which to escape, and there is your dike, undermined, eaten into by the water! That is a bad state of affairs.

Livette raised her eyes. A reptile, with his mouth open, was hanging from the ceiling; he was very fat, and well he might be! he was a little crocodile, the last one killed in Camargue, a very long while ago!

In every nook left free by the natural curiosities some pious image was to be seen. Here the two Maries in their boat. There the Holy Women wrapping the Christ in his shroud. In another place, Magdalen at La Baume, kneeling in front of the death's-head. But Livette saw no image of Saint Sara.

Livette sat down and waited. Monsieur le cure did not come. The fact was, that Monsieur le cure, who had already written two monographs, one ent.i.tled _La Cure de Boismaux_, and the other _La Villa de la Mar_, was at that moment at work upon a third: _Concordance of the Legends of the Blessed Maries_, with this sub-t.i.tle: _Concerning the strange and regrettable confusion that seems to exist between Saint Sara and Marie the Egyptian._

_La Cure de Boismaux_ also had a sub-t.i.tle: _Monograph concerning the domains of the Chateau d'Avignon in Camargue._ Monsieur le cure recalled the fact that the domains of the Chateau d'Avignon formerly const.i.tuted a separate commune. That commune naturally had a cure, and in those days the proprietor of the Chateau d'Avignon was General Miollis, brother of the Bishop of Digne mentioned by Monsieur Victor Hugo in _Les Miserables_ under the name of Myriel.

In a special chapter, Monsieur le cure sought, to no purpose, to find a reason, telluric or otherwise, for the fact that the estates of the Chateau d'Avignon are particularly subject to invasion by locusts, which sometimes have to be fought in Camargue, as in Africa, by regiments.

As to the _Concordance_, that was a very important and very necessary work. It was based, in great measure, upon the authority of the _Black Book_. That Latin work, preserved in the archives of Saintes-Maries, was written, in 1521, by Vincent Philippon, who signed himself: 2000 Philippon![3] (Jesus himself did not disdain the pun.) There is a French translation of the _Black Book_. It was published in 1682, and begins thus:

"Au nom de Dieu mon oeuvre comancee Par Jesus-Christ soit toujours advancee.

Le Saint-Esprit conduise sagement Ma main, ma plume, et mon entendement."[4]

Here follows the true version of the story of the patron saints of Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer.

Marie Jacobe, mother of Saint James the Less, Marie Salome, mother of Saint James the Greater and of Saint John the Evangelist, came not alone to the sh.o.r.es of Camargue. The boat without sail or oars contained also their servants Marcella and Sara, Lazarus and all his family, and several of the Christ's disciples.