“L’Égyptienne au doux œil sombre,
Debout auprès d’un olivier,
Regarda le beau batelier.
“Elle prit son voile de lin,
Et découvrit sa chair de vierge
Pure et luisante, ainsi qu’un cierge,
Sous le soleil à son déclin.
Elle fut toute nue, et comme
Sur le sable roux, le jeune homme
S’agenouillait, la lèvre en feu,
Tendant ses bras comme vers Dieu,
La sainte, sans robe ni voiles,
Pareille aux célestes étoiles,
Lui dit: ‘Tu vois, mon batelier,
Je n’ai que Moi pour te payer!’”
(Translation.)
“The Egyptian of the soft dark eye, standing beside an olive-tree, gazed upon the comely boatman.
“She put aside her linen veil and discovered her virgin flesh, all pure and glistening, like a wax taper, beneath the setting sun. She was quite naked, and, as the young man knelt on the red sand, with lips on fire, holding out his arms to her as if to God, the saint, like the stars in heaven, wearing no gown or veil, said to him: ‘Thou seest, my boatman, I have naught but Myself wherewith to pay thee!’”
[6] The spirit, indeed, is willing, but the flesh is weak.
[7] The tarasque, perhaps, is nothing more than a reproduction of the crocodile of the Rhône, increased in size to an absurd degree by the popular imagination. This one, the last that was seen in Camargue, so they say, is hanging to-day in the Hôpital des Antiquailles at Lyon, with an inscription stating the source from whence it came: “Gift of M. le Curé of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.”
[8] C’est le sort.—Sort may mean fate, and it may also mean spell, being used in the latter sense almost synonymously with sortilège. It may also mean chance.
[9] “When you were upon the great deep, without oars to row your boat, Saintes Maries! Naught but the sea and sky about you—with all your eyes you appealed to the verdant shore to be gentle.”