Viva Maria!
New bands of pilgrims arrived, passed, disappeared. Here and there, in the shadow of the booths, under big blue parasols, or even in the sun, old women, broken by fatigue, lay on the dry grass, sleeping, their bodies bent forward, their faces between their hands. Others, seated in a ring, their legs wide apart, painfully and silently chewing carrots and bread, caring for naught, indifferent to the surrounding tumult; and one saw the too large mouthfuls pass with effort down their gullets as yellow and wrinkled as the membrane of a tortoise. Several were covered with sores, scabs or scars, without teeth, without eyelashes, without hair; they did not sleep, did not eat; they lay motionless and resigned, as if they awaited death; and upon their poor carcasses whirled a cloud of thick and eager flies as over carrion in a ditch.
But in the booths, beneath the tents heated by the mid-day sun, around the posts driven in the earth and ornamented with branches, was exercised the voracity of those who had laboriously scraped together until this day a few savings so as to accomplish the sacred vow, and also to satisfy an enormous desire to indulge in the feast, long anticipated during the meagre meals and rude toil. One saw their faces bent over their porringers, the movements of their grinding jaws, the gestures of their hands which rend, all their brutish actions in a desperate struggle with the unaccustomed aliments. Large saucepans full of a violet-colored mass were smoking in circular holes in the ground, transformed into furnaces; and the appetizing vapors spread all around. One young girl, lank and greenish as a locust, offered long rows of cheese, shaped like little horses, birds, or flowers. A man who had a face as smooth and soft as a woman's, with gold rings in his ears, with hands and arms colored by aniline like dyers', offered for sale sorbets which looked like poison.
Viva Maria!
New bands arrived, passed by. The mob surged about the portal, unable to penetrate into the church, already invaded and jammed. Jugglers, sharpers, sharks, gamesters, thieves, charlatans of all kinds, called them, misled them, cajoled them. This brotherhood of plunder scented its prey from afar, struck it like a thunderbolt, never missed its aim. They allured the simpleton in a thousand ways, raising in him the hope of rapid and sure gains; with infinite artifice, they persuaded him to take chances—they excited in him an almost feverish cupidity. Then, when he had lost all prudence and all clearsightedness, they robbed him of his last penny, merciless, by the easiest and quickest frauds; and they left him stupefied and miserable, laughing in his face and sneaking away. But the example did not prevent the others from falling into the trap. Each, deeming himself more clever and less gullible, offered to avenge his ridiculed comrade, and plunged furiously to his ruin. Incalculable privations, supported without respite in order to make a little money, amounting to the savings of an entire year scraped together penny by penny from the vital necessities—those inexpressible privations which make the avarice of the countryman as sordid and as greedy as that of mendicants—were all revealed in the trembling, callous hand which drew the money from the bottom of the pocket to expose it to chance.
Viva Maria!
New bands arrived, passed by. A constantly renewed torrent persisted in cleaving the confused and surging mob; a cadence, always the same, rose above the medley of all the acclamations. Gradually, against this rumbling background of discordant sounds, the ear no longer discerned anything but the distinct name of Mary. The hymn triumphed over the uproar. The continuous and unchained tide battered the walls of the Sanctuary heated by the sun.
Viva Maria!
Viva Maria!
For a few minutes longer George and Hippolyte, dismayed, afflicted, contemplated this formidable crowd, from which arose a nauseating stench, from which emerged here and there the painted faces of mimes and the hooded faces of the fortune-tellers. Disgust arose in their throats, impelled them to flee; and yet the attraction of this human spectacle was stronger, retained them in this heaped-up horde, led them to the spots where the worst misery was exhibited, where the worst excesses of cruelty, ignorance, and fraud were revealed, where voices howled or tears streamed.
"Let us get nearer the church," said Hippolyte, who, forgetting herself, seemed to be invaded by the flame of insanity diffused by the passing bands, whose wild fanaticism seemed to increase in fury as the sun beat down more furiously on their heads.