Part 23 (2/2)

And with that, the old peasant-woman, straight and stiff and withered,--the image of a by-gone time, when it was deemed a praiseworthy thing to remain true to a single sentiment,--sought the bed of her old age, which was soon to see her lying dead, with the tranquillity of a simple, loving, faithful heart upon her parchment-like face.

XVIII

THE BLESSED RELICS

The great day has arrived. From all parts of Languedoc and Provence, pilgrims, rich and poor, have come to Saintes-Maries. There are fully ten thousand strangers in the town.

For three days past they have been arriving in vehicles of all shapes and of all ages.

Many of these pilgrims lodge with the villagers at extraordinary, princely rates. A bunch of straw on the floor brings twenty francs.

The villager himself sleeps on a chair, or pa.s.ses the night in the open air on the warm sand of the dunes. If the bulls arrive during the night for the sports of the following day, he a.s.sists the drovers to drive them into the compound, in the wake of the _dondare_, the enormous ox with a bell.

The houses are soon filled to overflowing. New-comers are obliged to camp. Tents are pitched. People live in carts and wagons, in breaks, tilburys, caleches, omnibuses, as far away as possible, be it understood, from the gipsy encampment.

Around the little town, the hundreds of vehicles const.i.tute a roving town of their own, resting there like a flock of birds of pa.s.sage around a swamp.

And on all sides naught can be seen but tattered, crippled, hunchbacked, deformed, blind, or one-eyed creatures, broken in health, lame, maimed, scrofulous, and paralytic, dragging themselves along or dragged by others, carried in men's arms or on litters, some with bandages over their faces, others displaying unhealed wounds from which one turns aside in horror.

Here a poor fellow who has been bitten by a mad dog wanders about with gloomy brow, tormented by insane anxiety and hope, for a pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries is especially efficacious against hydrophobia.

All varieties of misfortune are represented. All the children of Job and Tobias have journeyed hither to find the healing angel and the miraculous fish.

A motley crowd swarms upon the public square in the bright sunlight, and in the narrow streets, under the luminous shadow of the awnings.

From time to time, it parts, with loud shouts, before a drover, who rides proudly by, his sweetheart _en croupe_ with her arms about his waist.

Here and there flat baskets laden with rosaries, sacred images, Catalan knives, and handkerchiefs of brilliant hue stand out like islets in the midst of the sea of promenaders, and all the merchandise displayed for sale takes on a pink or pale-blue tint through the great stationary umbrellas that s.h.i.+eld it from the sun.

Amid the fantastic piercing notes of a _galoubet_, or high-pitched flute, tambourines can be heard humming in cadence in the interior of a wine-shop, where young girls of the province are dancing in Provencal costume, dark-skinned girls with white teeth beneath their sensuous lips; very like Moors they are, the descendants of some Saracen pirate who ravaged the Ligurian sh.o.r.e.

The town is flooded with joyous light. Everybody is in his Sunday dress. Upon the fever-haunted strand, whither a whole people flocks to pray to the Saintes Maries for bodily health, that joyous sun is dangerous. The whole scene has the appearance of a hospital ball, a fete given by dying men. The devil wields the baton, it may be. One would think it, to see the faces of the gipsies, whose expression, notwithstanding certain cunning leers, is and remains undecipherable.

In the church with the black, dirt-begrimed walls, filled with a fetid odor by such an acc.u.mulation of misery, diseased flesh, and perspiring humanity, the people crowd about the iron bal.u.s.trade of the little well, as if it were the Fountain of Youth. The poor, green, dilapidated pitcher humbly descends at the end of its cord to bring up from the sand below brackish water that to-day seems sweet.

Keep faith with them, O saints!--Faith gives what one wishes.

They are waiting for four o'clock, the hour at which the relics descend.

At four o'clock precisely, the shutter of the high window up yonder, under the ogive arch of the nave, will open. The relics will come down toward the outstretched arms. The little children will be lifted up toward them. The dead arms of the paralytics will be raised toward them. The blind will turn toward them their sightless eyes, or their empty, blood-stained orbits.

Meanwhile, Livette, who is standing there in the centre of the crowd, directly in front of the altar, facing the grated door through which you go down into the crypt, is preparing to sing the solo of invocation. Her fresh, pure voice is to be the voice of all these wretched creatures, crushed under the weight of impurity and disease.

Just below the high altar, which is studded with tapers, the gipsies are huddled together in their crypt, with tapers in their hands, invoking Saint Sara. The vault is dark. The gipsies are black. The little gla.s.s shrine of Saint Sara has become black under the acc.u.mulated filth of years. From the centre of the church you can see through the grated opening, which resembles an air-hole of h.e.l.l, the innumerable twinkling lights of the tapers below, waving to and fro in the hands that hold them. A m.u.f.fled sound of praying comes up through the opening.

In the church, every hand now has its taper, and they are rapidly lighted one from another. The lights dance about in the air. But the interior of the nave is dark. The high walls, pierced by narrow windows, are grimy with age. And all this obscurity, where suffering and misery crawl and cower, is studded with stars like heaven. To the gipsies in the crypt, who will not see the blessed relics descend, the body of the church, which they can see from below through the air-hole, is a heaven beyond their reach, the world of the elect.

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