Camargue

“ Before leaving the roof of the church, Livette cast a glance upon the broad expanse of Camargue at her feet. Ah! how empty was that immense space! The few scattered houses which would have delighted her eyes in the plain, were hidden by the clumps of umbrella-like pines beneath which they stood. Nothing human replied to the cry of distress uttered by her poor heart, which longed to follow the bewitched drover into the desert, and which seemed to her to flutter down from the summit of the tower to the ground, where it was crushed by the fall like a bird fallen from its nest. ”

“ The apron 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 space is plentiful. ”

“ 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 passed: the salt sand, filled with tiny shells, 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. ”

“ This Camargue country, you see, is the home of malignant fever. It rises from the swamps in the sunshine, with fetid odors, exhalations that disturb the brain and the action of the blood. From the dead vegetation, from the dead water, bad dreams and fever rise like vapor. There is an evil atmosphere there; and the evil eye too, thinks Livette.
But who can say of what the mummy lying in Zinzara’s wagon is thinking all this time—the mummy of which Livette knows nothing, and which is of the same age as Livette, plus six thousand years? ”

“ Dismissed by several masters, a drover without a drove, he passed his life in these days, riding from town to town, from Aigues-Mortes to Nîmes, from Nîmes to Arles, from Arles to Martigues, and in each of these towns plied some doubtful trade, cheated a little at cards, winning the means of living a week without doing anything, and returning, for that week, to the Camargue he loved, where there were, in two or three farm-houses, women who smiled upon his mysterious, piratical existence. ”

“ Probably nowhere in the world is to be seen a spot so desolate and so wretched. The village is planted at the extreme west angle of the Camargue. It can be reached by one road only, rough to travel over, and impracticable in winter. This road leaves Arles, or rather Trinquetailles, opposite Arles, traverses the marsh of the Grand Mar, follows the dyke of the river, and then threads its way among morasses, and over soil white with salt, and burning under the rays of the sun. ”

“ Jacques Renaud, Livette’s betrothed, was, as we have said, one of the most fearless drovers in Camargue.
He could pursue and catch and subdue a wild horse, attack a rebellious bull and master it, as no other could; he was the king of the moor.
For occasions of public rejoicing, at Nîmes or Arles, he was always sent for when they desired a really fine performance in the arena. And he had so often called forth the exclamation, in all the arenas throughout Provence: “Oh! that fellow is the king of them all!” ”

“ Ah! if we should undertake to go to the bottom of the simplest facts, how they would puzzle us! Our Saracen mares of Camargue, sisters of Al-Borak, Mahomet’s white mare, and the bulls of the Vaccarès, brothers of Apis, sometimes absent-mindedly take into their mouths, in the heart of the swamps, the long, gently-waving stalk of the mysterious lotus that lives three lives at once, in the mud with its root, in the water with its stalk, in the blue air with its flower. ”

“ Moreover,—and Renaud himself had heard the story from the shepherds who pass the winter in Camargue and Crau, and spend their nights in summer counting the stars upon the summits of the Alps,—there are, in space, beyond the skies visible to our eyes, fires alight so far away from us, so far away that their light, now on its way toward our earth, will not reach us for centuries to come. The men who follow us centuries hence will see twinkling stars that even in our day were lighted and making signs we could not see. ”

“ Always superior, in her coldness, [Pg 127] to the passion she inspired, it was in that more than all else that she really felt herself a queen, a sorceress—aye, a goddess, by favor of the devil! The caress of the water in which she bathed afforded her more pleasure than it afforded others. She was like the female plant of the lambrusque, which is fertilized by the wind.
Like the mares of Camargue, that often assemble on the shore to breathe the fresh sea air,—when she opened her lips to the salty breeze, on those fine May evenings, she was happier than any man’s kiss could make her. ”

“ The life of a gamekeeper is miserable and hard in the Camargue. At least ours has his wife and children round him; but a little further on in the marsh, a horse-warden lives absolutely alone, from one year's end to the next, Robinson Crusoe like. In his home-made reed cabin, there isn't a single household utensil not made by him; the woven wicker-work hammock, the three black stones that form the hearth, the tamarisk roots made into stools, even the lock and key made from white wood that secures this unique accommodation.
The man himself is at least as strange as his dwelling. ”

“ Anything more forlorn than the little village that has grown up around the church is difficult to imagine. There is not a soul stirring, and scarcely a sound is to be heard indicating human life. The Camargue stretches to westward. The sea beats on the sandy beach a little way beyond the village square. ”

“ Already advanced in years when she came to Camargue, she had never suffered from the malevolence of the swamps. It was too late. The cypress-tree does not allow the worms to draw their lines upon its surface.
She was patiently awaiting death, sometimes mumbling paters upon her rosary of olive-nuts, gazing fearlessly, with her dimmed eyes, straight before her at the vague shadow wherein her departed old man, her good, faithful Tiennet, was waiting for her;—Tiennet, who had never, in forty years, caused her a pang, and whom she had never wronged by a smile, even in the days of her gayest youth. ”

“ Livette, charitable as she was at every opportunity, at once felt that she must be on her guard against this vagabond, who knew her name. Her father and grandmother had gone to Arles, to see the notary, who would soon have to be drawing up the papers for her marriage to Renaud, the handsomest drover in all Camargue. She was alone in the house. Distrust gave her strength to refuse.
“Our Camargue isn’t an olive country,” said she curtly, “oil is scarce here. ”

“ In loving Livette, Renaud experienced the pleasant feeling, so dear to the heart of strong men, of having some one to protect, a little wife, who was no more than a child. Because of Livette’s fragility and slender stature, the rough drover, made for violent passions, the horseman of the Camargue desert, the hard-fisted herdsman, the subduer of mares and bulls, felt the love that is based upon sweet compassion, upon respect for charming weakness ”

“ But I am encroaching on Carabas’s preserves, and must decline from rhapsody to commonplace. The prosaic fact is that the light railway from Arles to Les Saintes Maries bisects, roughly, the Camargue, and that the most of one’s journey by it is made through a monotonous and unpeopled solitude. It is a very impressive solitude, for those who can appreciate the charm of league-wide isolation from an overcrowded world, and its outstanding features are such as we should expect it to display, the natural offspring of primeval incoherence and desolation—the booming bittern ”

“ Without a word, he went to Blanchet, took off the woman’s saddle and carried it into the house, placed his own upon the beast, which the mosquitoes had at last made restive, and leaped upon his back.
Livette, assisted by the drover’s strong hand, leaped to the croup behind him with one spring; highly amused she was as she threw one arm around Renaud’s waist. It is the fashion among the Camarguese young women, all of whom, on fête-days, ride to the plains of Meyran, or to Saintes-Maries, “fitted” to the horses of their promised husbands. ”

“ Now we are approaching the land of the poet Mistral, the most romantic region in all modern France, where the inhabitant in his repose and his pleasure still lives in mediæval times and chants and dances himself (and herself) into a sort of semi-indifference to the march of time.
The Crau and the Camargue, lying south of Arles between Aigues-Mortes and the Etang de Berre, is the greatest fête-making pays, one might think, in all the world. ”

“ O fertile land of Arles, Heaven gives pure beauty to thy daughters, as it gives grapes to the autumn, and perfumes to the mountains and wings to the bird." The little fellow talks of many things and leads her to his home. From here the fisherman ferries her over the broad Rhone, and we accompany her over the Camargue, down to the sea. A mirage deceives her for a time, she sees the town and church, but it soon vanishes in air, and the maiden hurries on in the fierce heat. ”

“ The Camargue or Delta of the Rhône, commencing at the outskirts of Arles, is a triangular plain of 180,000 acres extending to the Mediterranean, bounded on the west by the Petit Rhône, and on the east by the Grand Rhône. It contains small villages and large farms, with extensive vineyards and grazing ground for cattle, sheep, and horses. It is best visited by the steamboat sailing between Arles and Port St. ”

“ It is at Mont-Majour, on the plains of the Camargue, that the old Kings of Arles sleep beneath the flag-stones of the cloisters, and in the grotto of the Vallon d’Enfer of Cordes that our fairies still wander, while among these ruins of old Roman and feudal days the Golden Goat lies buried.
My native village, Maillane, facing the Alpilles, holds the middle of the plain, a wide fertile plain, still called in Provençal, “Le Caieou,” no doubt in memory of the Consul Caius Marius. ”

“ The manades, or droves, of Camargue bulls and mares live at liberty in the vast moor, leaping the ditches, splashing through the swamps, browsing on the bitter grass, drinking from the Rhône, running, jumping, wallowing, neighing and lowing at the sun or the mirage, lashing vigorously with their tails the swarms of gadflies clinging to their sides, then lying down in groups on the edge of the swamp, knees doubled under their bulky bodies, tired and sleepy, their dreamy eyes fixed vaguely on the horizon. ”

“ On the other we have the Camargue, much greener, with its short grass and swamps full of reeds stretching all the way to the sea.
From time to time the boat pulls in at a landing stage, on the right or left bank, or on the Empire or the Kingdom, as it was known in the middle ages, in the time when Arles was a Kingdom. The old Rhone sailors still use these same words today. At every stop there was a white farm, and a clump of trees. The workmen getting off with their tools, and the women with their baskets under their arms, go straight onto the gangway. ”

“ Aigues-Mortes, like Les Baux, is one of those places which are apt to dawn upon the traveller only when he is in reach of them. I might hesitate to confess that I had never heard of Les Baux before my first journey in Provence, or of Aigues-Mortes even then, if I had not met so many well-informed and well-travelled people who had never heard of either of them.
And yet Aigues-Mortes is a place of absorbing interest. It is romantically situated on the edge of the great plain of the Camargue, surrounded by salt marshes, lagoons, canals, and only a few miles from the sea. ”

“ A label explained it to Livette, who thought at first that it was Renaud. Life is all repetition.
There were collections of plants and boxes filled with shells, and also many stuffed birds, all the varieties found in Camargue. For more than thirty years, fishermen [Pg 185] and hunters had presented Monsieur le curé with curious objects and animals. Here was an otter from the Rhône, 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 Rhône. ”

“ They remained bending forward, she over the rope which she seemed to be examining attentively, he over Livette’s hair. Livette wore her “morning head-dress,” consisting of a little white handkerchief which covered the chignon, and was tied in such fashion that the two ends stood up like little hollow, pointed ears on top of her head. When they are in full-dress, the women of Camargue surround the high chignon, covered by a fine white linen cap, with a broad velvet ribbon, almost always black, whose long, unequal ends fall behind the head, a little at one side. ”

“ One is a triumphal arch; the other, a magnificent mausoleum, of three stories, adorned with rich bas-reliefs and surmounted by a graceful cupola, supported by ten Corinthian pillars, through which are discerned two statues in a standing attitude. They are the last vestiges of Glanum, a Marseilles colony destroyed by the Barbarians.
2 Sambu, a hamlet in the territory of Arles, in the isle of Camargue.
3 Camargue is a vast delta, formed by the bifurcation of the Rhone. The island extends from Arles to the sea, and comprises 181,4821⁄4 acres. ”