“It’s a deadly sin to seek to know what God doesn’t wish us to know,” said Livette, “and you can guess that oil is kept in cupboards and still be no more of a sorceress than I am. Go about your business, good-wife. I can give you some of this bread, fresh baked last night, if you wish, but I tell you I haven’t any oil.”
“And why do they call you Livette,” said the Queen calmly, “if it isn’t on account of the field of old olive-trees—the oldest and finest in the country—owned by your father, near Avignon? There you were born. There you remained until you were ten years old, and at that age—seven years ago, a mystic number—you came here, where your father was made farmer, overseer of drovers, manager of everything, by the Avignonese master of this ‘Château d’Avignon,’ the finest in all Camargue.—‘Livettes! livettes!’ that’s the way you used to ask for olivettes, olives, when you were a baby. You were very fond of them, and the nickname clung to you. A pretty nickname, on my word, and one that suits you well, for if you’re not dark like the ripe olive, you’re fair as the virgin oil, a pearl of amber in the sunlight, and then you are not yet ripe. Your face is oval, and not stupidly round like a Norman apple. You have the pallor of the olive-leaves seen from below.—And that you may soon see them so, little one, is the blessing I ask for you, as the curés of your chapels say, where they take us in for pity. Be compassionate as they are, in the name of your Lord Jesus Christ, and give me some oil quickly, I say—in the name of extreme unction and the garden of agony!”
The gipsy had said all this without stopping to breathe, in a dull, monotonous, muffled voice, but she added abruptly in loud, piercing, incisive tones: “Do you understand what I say?” imparting to those simple words an extraordinarily imperious and violent expression. Livette hastily crossed herself.
“Come, enough of this!” said she, “I have nothing here for you, and we keep the oil of extreme unction for better Christians! Begone, pagan, begone!” she added, trying to counterfeit courage.
“Of the three holy women,” continued the gipsy, “who took ship, after the death of Jesus Christ, to escape the crucifying Jews, one was like myself, an Egyptian and a fortune-teller. She knew the science of the Magi, of those with whom great Moses contended for mastery in witchcraft. She could, at will, order the frogs to be more numerous than the drops of water in the swamps, and she held in her hand a rod which, at her word, would change to a viper. Before Jesus she bowed, as did Magdalen, and Jesus loved her too. In the tempest, as they were crossing the sea, her wand pointed out the course to follow, and, to do that with safety, had no need to be very long. Must you have more pledges of my power and my knowledge? What more must I tell you to induce you to give me the oil I need so much? If you were a man, I would say: ‘Look! I am dark, but I am beautiful! I am a descendant of that Sara the Egyptian who, when the boat of the three holy women drew near the sands of Camargue, paid the boatman by showing him her undefiled body, stripped naked, with no thought of evil and without sin, but knowing well that true beauty is rare and that the mere sight of it is better than all the treasures of Solomon. So be it!’”
Livette was thoroughly alarmed. The gipsy’s assurance, her hollow, penetrating voice, imperious by fits and starts, these strange tales filled with evil words on sacred subjects, this devilish mixture of things pagan and things mystic, the consciousness of her own loneliness, all combined to terrify her. She lost her head.
“Away with you, away with you,” she cried, “queen of robbers! queen of brigands! away with you, or I will call for help!”
“Your drover won’t hear you; he’s tending his drove to-day beside the Vaccarès. Come, give me the oil, I say, or I’ll throw this black wand on the ground, and you will see how snakes bite!”
But Livette, brave and determined, said: “No!” shuddering as she said it, and, to glean a little comfort, cast a glance at the low beam along which her father’s gun was hanging. The gipsy saw the glance.
“Oh! I am not afraid of your gun,” said she, “and to prove it—wait a moment!”