King of Camargue Part 25

Forcing their way before her, without great effort, but pitilessly, through the crowd of cripples, they cleared a pa.s.sage for her. Livette walked quickly, she drew near the spot, and Renaud, seizing her around the waist, lifted her up like a child so that she touched the consecrated relics first of all!

Still with the three youths as a body-guard, before whom all were fain to stand aside, and without further thought--poor you! it is the law of the world--of the innumerable, nameless perils by which she was encompa.s.sed, she left the church content. Peace had found its way into her heart once more. Her Renaud was there by her side. Was all that she had dreaded a dream and nothing more?

"Ah! it is good to be outside!" he said, filling his lungs with the fresh air.

"Yes, but when will you light the tapers, Renaud, that you are to burn in the church as I promised for you?"

"Oh! I have a whole day before me," he replied. "Now let us go to the races."

XIX

THE BRANDING

The relics having descended, the majority of those present left the dark church and returned to the dazzling outside world.

As the crowd poured out through the narrow side-doors, another crowd was forcing its way in through the main entrance, making but slow progress,--two or three steps in a quarter of an hour,--all hot and perspiring, in a cloud of luminous dust.

Many young men were there, for the pleasure of being pressed by the crowd against the pretty girls, their sweethearts, whose sinuous bodies they could feel against their own, and who could not escape them there. How many hands and waists were squeezed which the mothers could not see!

And in undertones they said:

"I love you, Lionnette."

"Fie, Francois!"

"Let me go, Tiennet!----"

Thus, beside the infirm and incurable, who know naught of the good things of life, love saucily sports and laughs, feels its own force, and seeks return. The incense in the church serves only to inflame its desire, and more than one youth offers his beloved a rosary, whose boxwood cross he has ardently kissed before her eyes, so that she may find the kiss with her lips.

All day long, the pilgrims and invalids enter the church. Many will pa.s.s the night there, keeping vigil with the tapers, on their knees or prostrate before the relics; and more than one, each in his turn, will lie down upon them, on cushions brought expressly for the purpose.

For the moment--it is the first day of the fete--nothing is talked about in the streets of the town save the bulls and the sports.

"Are you going to the races?"

"Yes."

"Does Prince run? He's the best horse in all the droves."

"No, he won't run; Renaud, who usually handles him, told me that he was too tired."

"Pshaw! what a pity!"

"What about the bulls? Shall we have any that are a bit ugly?"

"There's _Sirous_ and _Dogue_ and _Machicoulis_. I cut them out myself with Bernard and Renaud. They gave us a lot of trouble! They refused to leave the herd. As soon as we got them out, back they would go again. But we set _Martin_ and _Commetoi_ at them, two bull-dogs that can't be matched anywhere; and even _Machicoulis_ obeyed at last!"

"_Martin_ and _Commetoi_?--Those are curious names for dogs!"

"It's a joke. When any one asks: 'How is your dog called?'[13] The dog's master replies: '_Commetoi!_' [Like yourself.] The other man gets angry, and it raises a laugh."

"And what about the full-blooded Spanish bull, with the horns twisted like a lyre; shall we see him?"

"_Angel Pastor?_ He is sick. I like our straight-horned bulls better.

The important thing is that the horns should be far enough apart for a man's body to go between them."

"Are there any heifers?"

"One, a wicked one--_Serpentine_."

"And _bioulets_?"

"Young bulls, do you mean? Renaud has kept six of them, expressly to give the strangers a chance to see a branding."

"When will the branding come off?"

"In a moment. Suppose we go to see it."

The gipsy was present at the branding.

The arena was against the church, at the end opposite the main entrance.

The many-sided irregular enclosure was formed on one side by the high wall of the church; on another, by a house standing by itself, against which was a series of roughly made benches, one above another; on still another side by three or four small houses, each of whose windows formed a frame for a dozen or more heads of young men and women, crowded together and all laughing gaily. At the base of one of these houses was a cafe with a gla.s.s door opening on the arena and barricaded by tables and overturned chairs. On each side of the door was drawn, in deepest black, a silhouette of a bull of the Camargue type, that is to say, with straight horns of ample proportions.

On all sides of the enclosure where there were no stone walls, their place was supplied by wagons bound firmly together by their shafts.

At the corner of the wall of the church, there were three great iron rings one above another, and through them were thrust three wooden bars, which could be moved back and forth at will.

These bars were to be let down for the young bulls which were to be turned out of the arena, one by one, after they had been branded, to find their way alone to the desert. Outside the bars, a system of barricades closed the streets of the town to them, and--by compelling them to go behind the few houses facing the arena--guided them, whether they would or not, to the margin of the open plain in less than a hundred steps.

Zinzara was present, as we have said, standing in a wagon. She followed with impa.s.sive glance all the happenings within the arena, grotesque and heroic alike.

These duels between man and beast are grand or disgusting according to the character of the adversaries. It sometimes happens that the man attacks in a cowardly fashion, or that the beast, from astonishment it may be, or fatigue, turns about and tries to return to the stable.

Fine contests are rare.

Sometimes a sharp stone is thrown from a safe distance by a disloyal foe. The surprised beast receives it full in the face; the blood flows in long streams from his nostrils to the ground. He looks straight before him, his great eyes filled with mirage, and does not budge, as if he were at once saddened and contemptuous.

Sometimes a mischievous rascal has the happy thought of coming very close to him and throwing sand in his eyes by the handful. Another, more mischievous than he, covers the bull with filth collected from the gutter! But the sand-thrower, being spattered thereby, himself picks up a handful, and the two heroes engage in a fierce battle with dung picked up smoking from the ground under the bull's very tail, amid the laughter and applause of a whole population, until the champions, reeking with filth, are abruptly separated by the bull, who bestirs himself at last and charges them.

"This way! this way, Livette!"

Livette had just come into the arena. Her young friends called her and gladly moved closer together to make room for her on the benches.

A stable just beside the cafe had been transformed into a _toril_.