Up on that high hill-side, open to the west, a little of the dying daylight lingers. Eastward, like a big black mirror, lies the great étang; and far away across its still waters the mountain chain above Berre and Rognac rises purple-grey against the darker sky. In the west still are faint crimson blotches, or dashes of dull blood-red—reflected again, and made brighter, in the Étang de Caronte: that stretches away between the long downward slopes of the hills, on which stone-pines stand out in black patches, until its gleaming waters merge into the faint glow upon the waters of the Mediterranean. Above me is the sanctuary of Notre Dame de la Garde, a dark mass on the height above the olive-trees: of old a refuge for sinful bodies, and still a refuge where sinful souls may seek grace in prayer from their agony. And below me, on the slope far downward, is the graveyard: where the death-fires multiply each moment, as more and more lamps are lighted, until at last it is like a little fallen heaven of tiny stars. Only in its midst is an island of darkness where no lamps are. That is where the children lie together: the blessed innocents who have died sinless, and who wander not on All Souls Eve because when sweet death came to them their pure spirits went straight home to God. And beyond the graveyard, below it, is the black outspread of the town: its blackness deepened by a bright window here and there, and by the few street lamps, and by the bright reflections which shine up from the waters of its canals.
Seeing all this—yet only half seeing it, for my heart is full of other things—I sit there at the foot of the Crime Cross in the darkness, prayerful, sorrowful, while the night wears on. Sometimes I hear footsteps coming up the rocky path, and then the shadowy figure of a man or of a woman breaks out from the gloom and suddenly is close beside me—and I hear the rattle of little stones cast upon the heap behind me, on the other side of the cross. Presently, the rite ended, whoever it is fades back into the gloom again and passes away. And I know that another sinful soul has been close beside my sinful soul for a moment: seeking in penitent supplication, as I am seeking, rest in forgiveness for an undiscovered crime. But I am sure that none of them sees—as I see in the gloom there always—a man's white face on which the moonlight is shining, and beyond that white face the glint of moonlight on a raging sea; and I am sure that on none of their blackened souls rests a burden as heavy as that which rests on mine.
I am very weary of my burden, and old and broken too. It is my comfort to know that I shall die soon. But, also, the thought of that comfort troubles me. For I am a lone man, and childless. When I go, none of Magali's race, none of my race, will be left alive here in Les Martigues. Our death-fires will not be lighted. We shall wander in darkness on All Souls Eve.
II
"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!"
My old mother, God rest her, said that to me when first she began to see that my love was set on Magali—and saw, too, that I was winning from Magali the love that belonged to Jan, who had her promise.
"It is an old man's lifetime, mother," I said, "since a wolf has been seen near Les Martigues." And I laughed and kissed her.
"Worse than a wolf is a heart that covets what it may not have, Marius," she answered. "Magali is as good as Jan's wife, and you know it. For a year she has been promised to him. She is my dead sister's child, and she is in my care—and in your care too, because you and she and I are all that is left of us, and you are the head of our house, the man. You are doing wickedness in trying to take her away from Jan—and Jan your own close friend, who saved your life out of the sea. The match is a good match for Magali, and she was contented with it until you—living here close beside her in your own house—began to steal away her heart from him. It is rascal work, Marius, that you are doing. You are playing false as a house-father and false as a friend—and God help me that I must speak such words to my own son! That is why I say, and I say it solemnly, 'God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!' That desire has no right to be in your heart, Marius. Drag it out of your heart and cast it away!"
But I only laughed and kissed her again, and told her that I would take good care of myself if a she-wolf tried to eat me—and so I went away, still laughing, to my fishing in the Gulf of Fos.
But I did not laugh when I was alone in my boat, slipping down the Étang de Caronte seaward. What she had said had made me see things clearly which until then had been half hid in a haze. We had slipped into our love for each other, Magali and I, softly and easily—just as my boat was slipping down the étang. Every day of our lives we were together, in the close way that housemates are together in a little house of four rooms. Before I got up in the morning I could hear her moving near me, only a thin wall between us; and her movements, again, were the last sounds that I heard at night. She waited on me at my meals. She helped my mother to mend my clothes—the very patches on my coat would bring to my mind the sight of her as she sat sewing at night beside the lamp. We were as close together as a brother and a sister could be; and in my dulness I had fancied for a long while that what I had felt for her was only what a brother would feel.