What was he to do? Ah! blessed saints! His betrothal had kept him virtuous for a long while, you know; had held him aloof from the frail damsels with whom he formerly consorted, and his youth was speaking now. The sea-bull must have the wild heifer. Lions that have loved gazelles, so says the Arabian legend, have died of it. Living creatures, by the law of nature, crave paroxysms of passion; so long as they have them not, they seek them; and pay for them, if need be, with their own and others’ blood. Who of us will blame them for becoming delirious sometimes, if we remember that life longs to live, and that that longing overshadows the fear of death?
“Come, go on!”
The queen uttered love’s command. And with one bound she jumped to the saddle behind him. In a twinkling she had wound her right arm about the horseman’s waist: “Go on!” she said again; and then, in an undertone, in a voice that was no more than a warm, speaking breath upon the man’s neck, and made him shudder to the very roots of his hair, she added: “I want you, do you understand? I want you! So go on, go on! The man who goes on, arrives!”
He was caught, fast bound. The sorceress’s arm was about his loins. He felt it against him, living, trembling, stronger than aught else.
The stupefied Renaud tried to regain his self-control,—to shake off the spell. He sat there, dazed, unable to disentangle his thoughts, to determine what he should do, trying to collect his ideas of a moment before, the good curé’s advice, his word of honor, none of which could he remember or repeat to himself in his mind, intelligibly. It had all gone from him, out of reach of the effort of his memory. When an intense amorous passion guides our movements, it is as legitimate as physical force,—honor is not betrayed: it has ceased to exist!
Those few seconds of hesitation afforded Zinzara perfect comprehension of what was taking place within him. His desire was no longer ardent enough to satisfy her pride, since it was possible for him to waver ever so little!
“Where are we going?” said she, resuming her sharp, jerky tone, in which there was a suspicion of a hiss. “Where are we going? You must know of a hiding-place somewhere, some deserted cabin in the midst of your swamps here,—a perfectly safe place, all your own, where you have taken other women—what do I care? Pardi! I don’t suppose that you waited for me, to learn! I will go wherever you take me. Remember this—it must be somewhere where nobody can find me, for my race doesn’t mix with yours: the zingara who gives herself to a Christian is the only despised one among us, and if one of our people should see me, there would be knives in the air, you may be sure, for you and for me!”
He still hesitated, remembering that he had reasons for hesitation, but unable to remember what they were. Mechanically he held back his horse (it was Blanchet!), who was acting badly.
At last, in the hurly-burly of his thoughts, he seized, at random, upon one thing he had entirely forgotten, the tapers promised by Livette to the Saintes Maries. He was to have lighted them devoutly in the church, during the night before or that morning. Yesterday his fiancée had reminded him again of the promise. Doubtless, Livette had lighted them for him, but that was not the same thing. And so the devil had him, do what he would. He lost his head. He felt that he was sliding down an inclined plane, and finding his struggles of no avail, he abandoned himself to his fate and hastened his fall.
“I know where we will go,” he said; “to the Conscript’s Hut, in the swamp.”