“Are there any heifers?”
“One, a wicked one—Serpentine.”
“And bioulets?”
“Young bulls, do you mean? Renaud has kept six of them, expressly to give the strangers a chance to see a branding.”
“When will the branding come off?”
“In a moment. Suppose we go to see it.”
The gipsy was present at the branding.
The arena was against the church, at the end opposite the main entrance.
The many-sided irregular enclosure was formed on one side by the high wall of the church; on another, by a house standing by itself, against which was a series of roughly made benches, one above another; on still another side by three or four small houses, each of whose windows formed a frame for a dozen or more heads of young men and women, crowded together and all laughing gaily. At the base of one of these houses was a café with a glass door opening on the arena and barricaded by tables and overturned chairs. On each side of the door was drawn, in deepest black, a silhouette of a bull of the Camargue type, that is to say, with straight horns of ample proportions.
On all sides of the enclosure where there were no stone walls, their place was supplied by wagons bound firmly together by their shafts.