Of what value was this sacrifice of her pride beside this irreparable disaster? Standing straight beside the bed she closed her eyes a moment, keeping back her tears—a hand which trembled rested upon hers. There he was in front of her, trembling, wretched and overwhelmed by an effusion of heart which he dared not show.
“Kiss each other,” said Hortense.
Rosalie bent her brow forward and Numa kissed it timidly. “No, no, not that way—both arms, the way one does when one really loves.”
Numa seized his wife and clasped her with one long sob, whilst the twilight fell in the great chamber as an act of pity for the girl who had thrown them one upon the other’s heart.
This was her last manifestation of life. From that moment she remained absorbed, indifferent and unaware of what passed about her, never answering those disconsolate appeals of farewell to which there is no answer, but still keeping upon her young face that expression of haughty underlying anger which those show who die too early for the ardor of the life that is in them—those to whom the disillusions of existence have not had time to speak their last word.
CHAPTER XX.
THE BAPTISM.
The important day at Aps is Monday because it is market day.
Long before daylight the roads that lead to the city, the great solitary turnpikes from Arles and Avignon, where the white dust lies as quiet as a fall of snow, are enlivened by the slow grinding noise of the carts and the squawking of chickens in their osier crates and the barking of dogs running alongside; or by that rustling sound of a shower which the passage of a flock of sheep produces, accompanied by the long blouse of the shepherd which one perceives as he is carried along by the bounding wave of his beasts. Then there are cries of the cow-boys panting in the rear of their cattle and the dull sound of sticks falling upon humpy backs and outlines of horsemen armed with cowpunches in trident form. Slowly and gropingly all these phantoms are swallowed up by the dark gateways whose crenelations are seen in festoons against the starry sky; thence it spreads wide again into the corso which surrounds the sleepy city.
At that hour the town takes on itself again its character of an old Roman and Saracen city, with its irregular roofs and pointed moucharabies above the broken and dangerous stairways. This confused murmur of men and sleepy beasts penetrates with but little noise between the silvery trunks of the big plane-trees, overflows upon the avenue and even into the courtyards of the houses and stirs up warm odors of litters and fragrances of herbs and ripe fruit. When it wakes, therefore, the town discovers that it has been captured in every quarter by an enormous, lively and noisy market, just as if the entire agricultural part of Provence, men and beasts, fruits and seeds, had roused up and come together in one great nocturnal inundation.
In truth it is a magnificent sight, a pouring forth of rustic wealth that changes with the seasons. In certain places set apart by immemorial usage the oranges and pomegranates, golden colored quinces, sorbs, green and yellow melons, are piled up near the booths in rows and in heaps by the thousand; peaches, figs and grapes destroy themselves by their own weight in their baskets of transportation side by side with vegetables in sacks. Sheep and silky pigs and little cabris (kids) show airs of weariness within the palisades of their small reservations. Oxen fastened to the yoke stride along before the buyer, while bulls with smoking nostrils drag at the iron ring which holds them to the wall. And farther on, quantities of horses, the little horses from the Camargue—dwarf Arabs—prance about mingling their brown, white or russet manes; upon being called by name, “Té! Lucifer—Té! l’Esterel—” they run up to eat oats from the hands of their keepers, veritable Gauchos of the pampas with boots above the knee. Then come the poultry two by two, red and fastened by the legs, guinea fowl and chickens lying, not without much banging of the earth with their wings, at the feet of their mistresses who are drawn up in a line. Then there is the fish market, with eels alive on fennel and trout from the Sorgue and the Durance, mixing their shining scales in rainbow agonies with all the rest of the color. And last of all, at the very end, in a sort of dry winter forest are the wooden spades and hay-forks and rakes, new and very white, which rise between the plows and harrows.