“Come to Paris, my boy, your fortune is assured!”
“Oh, my sister never would let me go,” he explained with a quiet smile.
His mother was dead and he lived with his father and sister on a farm that bore the family name some three leagues distant from Aps on the Cordova mountain. Numa swore he would go to see him before he returned to Paris; he would talk to his relations—he was sure to make it a go.
“And I will help you, Numa,” said a girlish voice behind him.
Valmajour bowed without speaking, turned on his heel and walked down the broad carpet of the platform, his tabor under his arm, his head held high and in his gait that light, swaying motion of the hips common to the Provençal, a lover of dancing and rhythm. Down below his comrades were waiting for him and shook him by the hand.
Suddenly a cry arose, “The farandole, the farandole,” a shout without end doubled by the echoes of the stone passages and corridors from which the shadows and freshness seemed to come which were now invading the arena and ever diminishing the zone of sunlight. In a moment the arena was crowded, crammed to suffocation with merry dancers, a regular village crowd of girls in white neckscarfs and bright dresses, velvet ribbons nodding on lace caps, and of men in braided blouses and colored waistcoats.
At the signal from the tabor that mob fell into line and filed off in bands, holding each other’s hands, their legs all eager for the steps. A prolonged trill from the fife made the whole circus undulate, and led by a man from Barbantane, a district famous for its dancers, the farandole slowly began its march, unwinding its rings, executing its figures almost on one spot, filling with its confused noise of rustling garments and heavy breathing the huge vaulted passage of the outlet in which, bit by bit, it was swallowed up.
Valmajour followed them with even steps, solemnly, managing his long tabor with his knee, while he played louder and louder upon the fife, as the closely packed crowd in the arena, already plunged in the bluish gray of the twilight, unwound itself like a bobbin filled with silk and gold thread.
“Look up there!” said Roumestan all of a sudden.
It was the head of the line of dancers pouring in through the arches of the second tier, while the musician and the last line of dancers were still stepping about in the arena. As it proceeded the farandole took up in its folds everybody whom the rhythm forced to join in the dance. What Provençal could have resisted the magic flute of Valmajour? Upborne and shot forward by the rebounding undernote of the tabor, his music seemed to be playing on every tier at the same time, passing the gratings and the open donjons, overtopping the cries of the crowd. So the farandole climbed higher and higher, and reached at last the uppermost tier, where the sun was yet glowing with a tawny light. The outlines of the long procession of dancers, bounding in their solemn dance, etched themselves against the high panelled bays of the upper tier in the hot vibration of that July afternoon, like a row of fine silhouettes or a series of bas-reliefs in antique stone on the sculptured pediment of some ruined temple.