For an instant, he seemed to see it with his eyes, to see his vision realized in the dazzling splendor of the boundless sea, that lay glistening in the sunlight, with sharp, fitful flashes, like a mirror broken into narrow, moving fragments of irregular shape. It was an undulating sheet of diamonds and sapphires. The sun’s rays, as he sank lower and lower toward the horizon, assumed a ruddier hue as they fell obliquely upon the fast-subsiding waves, and soon the water was like a sheet of old burnished gold, moving slowly up and down; one would have said it was a vast melted treasure beneath a polished vitreous surface! At long intervals, a solitary wave greater than its fellows fell with a dull roar upon the beach, and ever and anon a cloud passed overhead; and in the mist flying from the gold-tipped wave, in the slow-moving shadow of the cloud, the water seemed a deep, dark blue. The sun sank lower, and broad bright red bands began to overshadow the bands of ochre, amethyst, light green, pale blue, that rose one above another on the horizon line. The changing sea was now like a cloak of royal purple, with fringe of azure, gold, and silver.
On the desert side, the marshes likewise were changed to vast floors carpeted with gorgeous drapery and rich embroidery. Everything was ablaze with sparkles—sea, sand, and salt. At intervals, a red flamingo rose from among the reeds, flew heavily along, seeming to carry on his side a little of the ruddy hue of sky and sea,—then lighted on the brink of the gleaming water.
The gulls were like white dream-birds in this enchanted country. They sat in lines, like brooding doves, on the crests of the waves in the offing, or on the hot sands, or on the surface of the ponds.
And, down in the northwest, Renaud was looking for the high, square terrace of the Château d’Avignon, for Livette sometimes went up there to see if she could not spy Blanchet and her dear Renaud’s straight spear somewhere in the plain.
Suddenly Renaud checked his horse and gazed fixedly at a black object moving on the surface of the water, rising and falling with the motion of the waves, some two hundred feet from shore.
He thought he could descry a woman’s head; a head covered with dripping black hair and surrounded by a copper circlet, from which depended glistening Oriental medallions.
The gipsy was swimming, disporting herself in the waves, which, coming from the deep sea, rose and fell slowly and at long intervals. She glided through them like a conger-eel, happy in the sensation caused by the gentle lapping of the salt water caressing her flesh. Her movements were undulating, like those of the waves themselves; she writhed and twisted like seaweed tossed about by the surf. Now and then a heavier, higher wave would come upon her. She would turn and face it, put her hands together in a point above her lowered head, as divers do, plunge into the broad wave horizontally, and cleave it through from front to rear.
From his horse, Renaud watched the dark head emerge on the other side of the swelling wave, which, as it approached the shore, curled over with whitening crest, broke upon the beach in snowy foam and spread out over the sand, beneath and all about him, in shallow, transparent, overlapping streams, all studded with sparks. He could not see the swimmer’s body distinctly. Its fleeting outlines could scarcely be made out beneath the clear, transparent water, ere they were blotted out again by the undulations and reflections.
Suddenly the swimmer turned toward the shore, apparently gained a footing, and, raising one arm out of the water, motioned to Renaud to be gone, shouting:
“Go your way!”