Livette, as she puts the question to herself, suddenly comes to the conclusion that she is insane, utterly insane, to have had such an idea! She smiles at it herself. And she seems to feel her smile. She does feel it. She fancies she can see it!
And at the moment she is conscious of a sensation—and a painful sensation it is—of being there, in that same room, surrounded by those creatures and in the presence of a priest—for the second time in her life!
Yes, all her present surroundings she has seen before—this that is happening to her has happened before. But the first time was a long while ago, oh! such a long while! The great reptile on the ceiling remembers, perhaps. That is why it laughs.—But she has forgotten all about it. Why is she here? She no longer knows even that. She was a fool to come here!
This Camargue country, you see, is the home of malignant fever. It rises from the swamps in the sunshine, with fetid odors, exhalations that disturb the brain and the action of the blood. From the dead vegetation, from the dead water, bad dreams and fever rise like vapor. There is an evil atmosphere there; and the evil eye too, thinks Livette.
But who can say of what the mummy lying in Zinzara’s wagon is thinking all this time—the mummy of which Livette knows nothing, and which is of the same age as Livette, plus six thousand years? Like Livette, it has wavy hair, very long, but somewhat faded by time. It was once as black as jet like that of the women of Arles. The mummy is of the same age as Livette, plus six thousand years! The gipsies believe that so long as the dead body retains its shape, something of its spirit continues to dwell within it. Zinzara affirms that this mummy, which she procured in Egypt, speaks to her sometimes and tells her things.
Ah! if we should undertake to go to the bottom of the simplest facts, how they would puzzle us! Our Saracen mares of Camargue, sisters of Al-Borak, Mahomet’s white mare, and the bulls of the Vaccarès, brothers of Apis, sometimes absent-mindedly take into their mouths, in the heart of the swamps, the long, gently-waving stalk of the mysterious lotus that lives three lives at once, in the mud with its root, in the water with its stalk, in the blue air with its flower.
Not without reason do the zingari, descendants of Çoudra, flock to the crypt of the three-storied church, there to adore the shrine of Sara, Pilate’s wife—the Egyptian woman.
Monsieur le curé, who is a profound student, is revolving all these things confusedly in his mind—with no very clear understanding of them himself—and pondering them.
Ah! if he could, how quickly he would sweep the island clear of the gipsy vermin! But he cannot. Tradition forbids. Sara in the crypt is their saint. There is a mixture of pagan and Christian in the affair, painful to contemplate certainly, but with which he has no right to interfere. The essential thing is that the Christian shall triumph over the pagan, that God shall prevail against Satan—for certain it is, whatever the gipsies may say, that they are not descended from the wise king who was a negro and who brought the myrrh to Jesus.
How to protect Livette?