On the other side of the corso against the rampart the unhitched wagons stand in line, with their canopies and linen covers and high curtains and dusty wheels, and all through the space left vacant the noisy crowd circulates with difficulty, with calls and discussions and chattering in all kinds of dialects and accents—the Provençal accent, which is refined and full of airs and graces and requires certain movements of the head and shoulder and a bold sort of mimicry, while that of Languedoc is harder and heavier and almost Spanish in its articulation. From time to time this mass of felt hats and head-dresses from Arles or the Comté, this difficult circulation of a mob of buyers and sellers, splits in two at the cries from some lagging cart which comes slowly forward with great difficulty at a snail’s pace.
The burgesses of the city hardly appear, so full of scorn are they at this invasion from the country, which nevertheless is the occasion of its originality and the source of its wealth. From morning to night the peasants are walking through the streets, stopping at the booths, at the harness-makers, shoemakers and watchmakers, staring at the metal figures of the clock on the City Hall and into the shop windows, dazzled by the gilding and mirrors of the restaurants, just as the rustics in Theocritus stood and stared at the Palace of the Ptolemies. Some issue from the drug shops laden with parcels and big bottles; others, and they form a wedding procession, enter the jeweller’s to choose, after long and cunning bargains, ear-rings with long pendent pieces and the necklace for the coming bride. And these coarse gowns, these brown and wild-looking faces and their eager, businesslike manner make one think of some town in La Vendée taken by the Chouans at the time of the great wars.
That morning, the third Monday of February, animation was very lively; the crowd was as thick as on the finest summer days, which indeed it suggested through its cloudless sky warmed by a golden sun. People were talking and gesticulating in groups, but what agitated them was less the buying and selling than a certain event which caused all traffic to cease and turned all looks and heads and even the broad eyes of the oxen and the twitching ears of the little Camargue horses toward the Church of Sainte Perpétue. The fact was that a rumor had just spread through the market, where it occasioned an emotion that ran to extraordinary height, to the effect that to-day the son of Numa would be baptized—that same little Roumestan whose birth three weeks before had been received with transports of joy in Aps and the entire Provençal South. Unfortunately this baptism, which had been delayed because of the deep mourning the family was in, had to preserve the appearance of incognito for the very same reason, and it is probable that the ceremony would have passed unperceived had it not been for certain old sorceresses belonging to the country about Les Baux who every Monday install upon the front steps of Sainte Perpétue a little market of aromatic herbs and dried and perfumed simples culled among the Alpilles. Seeing the coach of Aunt Portal stopping in front of the church, the old herb-sellers gave the alarm to the women who sell aïets (garlic), who move about pretty much everywhere from one end of the corso to the other with their arms crammed with the shining wreaths of their wares. The garlic women notified the fish dames and very soon the little street which leads to the church poured forth upon the little square all the gossip and excitement of the market-place. They pressed about Ménicle, who sat erect on the box in deep mourning with crape on his arm and hat and merely answered all questions with a silent and indifferent play of his shoulders. Spite of everything, they insisted upon waiting, and in the mercer’s street beneath the bands of calico the crowd piled itself up to suffocation while the bolder spirits mounted the well-curb—all eyes fixed on the grand portal of the church, which at last opened.
There was a murmur of “ah!” as when fireworks are let off, a triumphant and modulated sound which was cut short by the sight of a tall old man dressed in black, very much overwhelmed and very melancholy, who gave his arm to Madame Portal, who as far as she was concerned was very proud to have served as godmother along with the First President, proud of their two names side by side on the parish register; but she was saddened by the recent mourning and the sorrowful impressions which she had just renewed once more in the church. The crowd had a feeling of severe deception at sight of this austere couple, who were followed by the great man of Aps, also entirely in black and with gloves on—Numa, penetrated by the solitude and cold of this baptism performed in the midst of four candles without any other music than the wailing of the little child, upon whom the Latin of the function and the baptismal water dropping on a tender little head like that of an unfledged bird had caused the most disagreeable impression. But the appearance of a richly fed nurse, large, heavy and decked with ribbons like a prize at an agricultural meet, and the sparkling little parcel of laces and white embroidery which she carried like a sash, dissipated the melancholy of the spectators and roused a new cry that sounded like a mounting rocket, a joy scattered into a thousand enthusiastic exclamations:
“Lou vaqui!—there he is! Vé! vé!”
Surprised and dazzled, winking in the bright sunlight, Numa stopped a moment on the high porch in order to look at these Moorish faces, this closely packed herding together of a black flock from which a crazy tenderness mounted up to where he stood. And although tired of ovations, at that moment he had one of the most lively emotions in his existence as a public man, a proud intoxication which an entirely new and already very lively sentiment of paternity ennobled. He was about to speak and then remembered that this platform in front of the church was not the place for it.
“Get in, nurse,” said he to the tranquil wet-nurse from Bourgogne, whose eyes, like those of a milch cow, were staring wide open in amazement. And while she was bestowing herself with her light burden in the coach he advised Ménicle to return quickly by the cross streets. But a tremendous clamor answered him:
“No, no, the grand round—the grand round!”
They meant that he should pass the entire length of the market place.
“Well then, the grand round be it!” said Roumestan after having consulted his father-in-law with a look; for he wished to spare him this joyful procession; and so the coach, starting with many crackings of its ancient and heavy carcass, entered the little street and debouched upon the corso in the midst of vivas from the crowd, which grew excited over its own cries and culminated in a whirl of enthusiasm so as to block the way of horses and wheels at every moment. With the windows open they marched slowly on through these acclamations, raised hats, fluttering handkerchiefs and all the odors and hot breaths which the market exhaled as they passed. The women stuck their ardent bronzed heads forward right into the carriage and at seeing no more than the cap of the little baby would exclaim: