En fasent soun bas de coutoun.”
But presently the song died down in her throat, she threw herself down on her narrow, little bed, and burying her face in the pillow she burst into tears.
CHAPTER VI
ORANGE-BLOSSOM
And now it is spring once again: a glorious May-day with the sky of an intense blue, and every invisible atom in the translucent air quivering in the heat of the noon-day sun. All around the country-side the harvesting of orange-blossom has begun, and the whole atmosphere is filled with such fragrance that the workers who carry the great baskets filled to the brim with ambrosial petals feel the intoxicating perfume rising to their heads like wine.
At the mas they are harvesting the big grove to-day, the one that lies down in the valley, close to the road-side. There are over five hundred trees, so laden with flowers that, even after heavy thinning down, there will be a huge crop of fruit at Christmas-time. Through the fragrant air, the fresh young voices of the gatherers resound, echoing against the distant hills, chattering, shouting, laughing, oh! laughing all the time, for they are boys and girls together and all are betrothed to one another in accordance to old Provençal traditions which decrees that lads and maidens be tokened from the time when they emerge out of childhood and the life of labour on a farm begins: so that Meon is best known as the betrothed of Pétrone or Magdeleine as the fiancée of Gaucelme.
Large sheets are spread under the trees, and the boys, on ladders, pick the flowers and drop them lightly down. It requires a very gentle hand to be a good picker, because the delicate petals must on no account be bruised and all around the trees where the girls stand, holding up the sheet, the air is filled as with myriads of sweet-scented fluttering snowflakes.
Jaume Deydier, in addition to his special process for the manufacture of olive oil, has a secret one for the extraction of neroli, a sweet oil obtained from orange-blossom, and for distilling orange-flower water, a specific famed throughout the world for the cure of those attacks of nerves to which great ladies are subject. Therefore, at the mas, the fragrant harvest is of great importance.
And what a feast it is for the eye. Beneath the brilliant canopy above, a veritable riot of colour, an orgy of movement and of life! There stands Jaume Deydier himself in blouse and linen trousers, out from earliest dawn, tablets and pencil in hand, counting and checking the bags as they are carried from the grove to the road, where a row of carts is waiting to convey them to the distillery at Pertuis: the horses are gorgeously decked out with scarlet and blue ribbons plaited into their manes and tails, the bosses on their harness scintillating like gold in the sunshine: their drivers with bunches of lilac or lily-of-the-valley tied to their whips. Then the girls in red or pink or green kirtles, the tiny muslin caps on their heads embellished with a sprig of blue gentian or wild geranium that nestles against their curls or above the heavy plaits that hang like streamers down their backs; and the lads in grey or blue blouses, with gay kerchiefs tied loosely round their necks, and through it all from time to time a trenchant note of deep maroon or purple, a shawl, a kerchief, a piece of embroidery; or again ’tis M. le Curé’s soutane, a note of sober black, as he moves from group to group, admonishing, chaffing, bestowing blessings as he goes by, his well-worn soutane held high above his buckled shoes, his three-cornered hat pushed back above his streaming forehead.
“Eh! Mossou le Curé!” comes in a ringing shout from a chorus of young voices, “this way, Mossou le Curé, this way! bless this tree for us that it may yield the heaviest crop of the year.”
For there is a dole on every tree, according to the crop it yields to deft fingers, and M. le Curé hurries along, raises his wrinkled hand and murmurs a quick blessing, whilst for a minute or two dark heads and fair are bent in silent reverence and lips murmur a short prayer, only to break the next moment into irresponsible laughter again.