Behind him stretched an ashen-gray plain, which could be seen only in spots—where the salt emerged in efflorescent crystals—glistening through a vast violet net-work of flowering saladelles; for the saladelles spread out in broad, graceful tufts, with many ramifications, but without foliage, dotted with a multitude of lilac blossoms, between which the ground can be seen. And farther away the fields of glasswort began, with their plump, juicy leaves; they are a beautiful rich green when they are young, but the salt air soon turns them blood-red, so that the oldest and those nearest the sea are the darkest.
Here and there the stunted tamarisk, with its gnarled trunk, dotted the plain, its sparse foliage tinged with pink by the blossoms hanging in tiny clusters, which, tiny though they be, are a heavy burden for its flexible branches.
And in the dry, seamy bottoms were great patches of siagnes, triangles, apaïuns of every kind, canéous or dwarf reeds used in making roofs and matting, thorn-broom and all sorts of aquatic plants, bright green, and straight as fields of grain; their angular battalions, harvested in summer, go down before the scythe in broad half-circles. Above these patches of verdure, which bend and rustle with the faintest breath of air, hovered dragon-flies with enormous heads,—swallow-like insects, voracious devourers of gnats. They flew about with the swallows over the waters where the mosquito is born, making a metallic sound among the reeds when their wings of transparent, black-veined mica came in contact with them.
Renaud gazed at these familiar things and forgot himself in them. For a second he fancied that he was watching his drove there, and that he had nothing else to do but remain with his beasts, absorbed, as they were, in calm, unreasoning contemplation of the desert that surrounded him. He ceased to love, to hate, to desire, and to pursue.
The shadow of wings passed him by. He raised his eyes and saw, above his head, two red flamingoes.
“They built their nest here this year,” he thought.
But Prince, the good horse, had recognized his favorite mares, and, stretching out his neck, opening his nostrils wide to inhale the fresh breeze of the swamp and the plain, raising his lips and displaying his teeth, he gave a neigh that made all the mares spring to their feet at a single bound, the bulls raise their heads, and Bernard himself jump up from the ground, spear in hand.
Renaud, pressing his knees together and pulling his horse back, held him in hand, although he trembled under him and pranced up and down in the soft sand.
At the same time, a sudden gust of the mistral swept across the plain and broke the mirror-like surface of the Vaccarès into little waves.
“If it is Rampal you are looking for,” said Bernard, “he isn’t far away, you may be sure. When he saw me here, all of a sudden—just a moment ago—he rode off that way. And as he went out of my sight very soon, I believe he has gone into some cabin. You had better look around the Méjeane tower.”