King of Camargue

Excerpt

LIVETTE AND ZINZARA

A shadow suddenly darkened the narrow window. Livette, who was running hither and thither, setting the table for supper, in the lower room of the farm-house of the Château d’Avignon, gave a little shriek of terror, and looked up.

The girl had an instinctive feeling that it was neither father nor grandmother, nor any of her dear ones, but some stranger, who sought amusement by thus taking her by surprise.

Nor a stranger, either, for that matter,—it was hardly possible!—But how was it that the dogs did not yelp? Ah! this Camargue is frequented by bad people, especially at this season, toward the end of May, on account of the festival of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, which attracts, like a fair, such a crowd of people, thieves and gulls, and so many mischievous gipsies!

The figure that was leaning on the outside of the window-sill, shutting out the light, looked to Livette like a black mass, sharply outlined against the blue sky; but by the thick, curly hair, surmounted by a tinsel crown, by the general contour of the bust, by the huge ear-rings with an amulet hanging at the ends, Livette recognized a certain gipsy woman who was universally known as the Queen, and who, for nearly two weeks, had been suddenly appearing to people at widely distant points on the island, always unexpectedly, as if she rose out of the ditches or clumps of thorn-broom or the water of the swamps, to say to the laborers, preferably the women: “Give me this or that;” for the Queen, as a general rule, would not accept what people chose to offer her, but only what she chose that they should offer her.

“Give me a little oil in a bottle, Livette,” said the young gipsy, darting a dark, flashing glance at the pretty girl with the fair, sun-flecked hair.

Livette, charitable as she was at every opportunity, at once felt that she must be on her guard against this vagabond, who knew her name. Her father and grandmother had gone to Arles, to see the notary, who would soon have to be drawing up the papers for her marriage to Renaud, the handsomest drover in all Camargue. She was alone in the house. Distrust gave her strength to refuse.

“Our Camargue isn’t an olive country,” said she curtly, “oil is scarce here. I haven’t any.”

“But I see some in the jar at the bottom of the cupboard, beside the water-pitcher.”

Livette turned hastily toward the cupboard. It was closed; but, in truth, the stock of olive oil was there in a jar beside the one in which they kept Rhône water for their daily needs.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Livette.

“The lie came from your mouth like a vile black wasp from a garden-flower, little one!” said the motionless figure, still leaning heavily on the window-sill, evidently determined to remain. “The oil is where I say it is, and more than twenty-five litres too; I can see it from here. Come, come, take a clean bottle and the tin funnel and give me quickly what I want. I’ll tell you, in exchange, what I see in your future.”

“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....