Part 36 (1/2)

He suffers, therefore, incessantly, awaiting the hour when his suffering shall be allayed. He is like the camping-grounds abandoned by shepherds and flocks, the _ja.s.ses_ of the desert, still black from an old conflagration, and surrounded by briers where rose-bushes once flourished. He is like the aloes that wither instantly in desolation, after the stalk their love has caused to bloom has risen high into the air.

The dream in which Renaud saw Livette was explained to him several times by Monsieur le cure, but always to no purpose.

How, indeed, could his remorse cease, when his pa.s.sion still endured, and when he was constantly committing anew, in desire, the sin that caused all the misery?

My friends, there is but one wise course to pursue: ”Plant a tree, build a house, rear a child. Be patient--everything comes in due time.

The thing that does not happen in a hundred years, may happen in six thousand. The future is still yours!”

When Renaud, in the dreams of his unhealthy life, feels, as he sometimes does, that his love is stronger in him than his pa.s.sion, it seems to him as if Livette were drawing him toward death, but truthful, kindly beings never inspire thoughts of self-destruction.

Of one thing, at least, he is certain. He feels that voluntary death would not remove him from the circle of the accursed. He would, on the contrary, descend still lower in the spiral pit of mortals d.a.m.ned by love.

They say that persons drowned in the Rhone, borne along without doubt by the irresistible current, which brings them all together at the mouth of the river, return, on certain evenings, to hold a carnival of despair on the surface of the water.

Happy are they since they are, on those occasions, united.

But they who are drowned in stagnant waters, and they who, to join them, die by their own hand, are never aught but solitary spectres.

They seek each other all the time, but always unavailingly. They are the souls of the d.a.m.ned. They wander through the desert, calling to one another; but never even approach or see one another; and at night, in the deserts of Crau and Camargue, the traveller hears long-drawn, wailing cries, flying unavailingly hither and thither over the vast plains, forever and forever.

Even the clouds call and answer one another in their aerial flight.

NOTES

[1] ”Do not wear out your shoes on the hard roads; Rather take boat and so descend the Rhone.

”Leave Lyon and Valence behind; Salute them with a nod as you pa.s.s beneath their bridges.

”Avignon is the queen,--but pa.s.s her by as well; Not till you come to Arles will you find your love----

”The plain is fair and broad, O comrade,---- Take your love _en croupe_, and off you go!”

[2] ”On the bridge of Avignon every one must pay toll.”