“Sous le soleil, sous les étoiles,
De vos robes faisant des voiles
(Vogue, bateau!)
Sept jours, sept nuits vous naviguâtes,
Sans voir ni trois-ponts ni frégates——
Rien que la mer et la grande eau!”[10]
“Saintes Maries!” roared the people, and each time the shout burst forth from thousands of throats, suddenly and at the same instant, with the effect of a strange kind of explosion.
“Dieu qui fait son fouet d’un éclair,
Pour fouetter le ciel et la mer,
Saintes Maries!
Amena la barque à bon port——
Un ange, qui parut à bord,
Vous montra des plages fleuries!”[11]
“Saintes Maries!” the people roared again. And the appealing cry, made up of so many cries, burst forth with a sound like that made by a great wave that breaks against a cliff and is instantly scattered about in foam! And again the young girl’s voice arose above all the vociferating, grinning creatures. Might not one fancy that he saw a sea-swallow, white as the dove of the Ark, soaring over a bottomless abyss?
“Vous pour qui Dieu fit ce miracle,
Voyez, devant son tabernacle,
Tous à genoux,
Souillés du péché de naissance,
Nous invoquons votre puissance,——
Saintes femmes, protégez-nous!”[12]
And for the last time, the deafening, harsh cry arose:
“Saintes Maries!”
Oh! the thousand, two thousand ejaculations of insane longing that flew upward, at a single flight, flapping all their wings at once, to fall back, dead, upon themselves.
It is very certain that there was in that frenzied appeal all the madness of suffering, all the wrath of unsatisfied longing, and rage as of unchained beasts, against the very beings they implored.
Meanwhile, the double shutter up above had not yet been thrown open. And Livette, in accordance with the curé’s instructions, was to repeat the last verse.