CHAPTER XIV
JOURNEY TO LES SAINTES-MARIES
All my life I had heard of the Camargue and of Les Saintes-Maries and the pilgrimage to their shrine, but I had never as yet been there. In the spring of the year 1855 I wrote to my friend Mathieu, ever ready for a little trip, and proposed we should go together and visit the saints.
He agreed gladly, and we met at Beaucaire in the Condamine quarter, from where a pilgrim party annually started on May 24 to the sea-coast village of Les Saintes-Maries.
A little after midnight Mathieu and I set forth with a crowd of country men and women, young girls and children, packed into waggons close as sardines in a tin; we numbered fourteen in our conveyance.
Our worthy charioteer, one of those typical Provenceaux whom nothing dismays, seated us on the shaft, our legs dangling. Half the time he walked by the side of his horse, the whip round his neck, constantly relighting his pipe. When he wanted a rest he sat on a small seat niched in between the wheels, which the drivers call “carrier of the weary.”
Just behind me, enveloped in her woollen wrap and stretched on a mattress by her mother’s side, her feet planted unconcernedly in my back, was a young girl named Alarde. Not having, however, as yet made the acquaintance of these near neighbours, Mathieu and I conversed with the driver, who at once inquired from whence we hailed. On our replying from Maillane, he remarked that he had already guessed by our speech that we had not travelled far.
“The Maillane drivers,” he added, “‘upset on a flat plain’; you know that saying?”
“Not all of them,” we laughed.
“’Tis but a jest,” he answered. “Why there was one I knew, a carter of Maillane, who was equipped, I give you my word, like Saint George himself—Ortolan, his name was.”