The relics were still descending; and Livette feverishly told off _paters_ and _aves_ on her rosary.--Patience! on the day after the fête, the gipsies, she knows, will leave the town! Two more days and her agony will be at an end. Meanwhile--she makes this vow in presence of the relics--she will not gratify Renaud by showing that she is jealous, as she is, and not until later--when Zinzara is far away, and there is no chance of her coming back--will she, perhaps, tell her promised husband that he lied to her, that he is a traitor, because, instead of avenging her upon the gipsy, he was false to his fiancée with her--for of course he is false to her, as he is not there!--She will tell him, then, not in a passion, but to punish him. It will be no more than justice. By dint of uncoiling themselves by little jerks, the ropes have lowered the relics almost within reach of the hands stretched up to meet them. Thereupon the rabble of poor devils could contain itself no longer. Every one was determined to be the first to touch them. Those who were already in the choir, directly below the hanging relics, lost their footing, crowded as they were by those who were pressing in from the body of the church, jostling and crushing one another with a constant pressure. Livette was borne along on the wave, seeing nothing, and with but one thought in her mind--to touch the consecrated relics herself!--That she felt she must do, so that she might escape the influence of the glance the black woman had cast at her. She would seek to turn aside the fatal spell that had been upon her ever since her first meeting with the sorceress! But would she reach the shrines?--Livette felt that she was seized by two strong arms. She turned: it was Renaud! He had just entered the church with two other drovers, his friends. These three young men, glowing with the outside sunlight, healthy and strong, amid the lame and halt and blind, had the insolent bearing--cruel without meaning to be--of manly beauty, of life itself. They extricated the girl and made a ring about her. She was able to breathe. "Would you like to touch the relics, demoisellette?" Forcing their way before her, without great effort, but pitilessly, through the crowd of cripples, they cleared a passage for her. Livette walked quickly, she drew near the spot, and Renaud, seizing her around the waist, lifted her up like a child so that she touched the consecrated relics first of all! Still with the three youths as a body-guard, before whom all were fain to stand aside, and without further thought--poor you! it is the law of the world--of the innumerable, nameless perils by which she was encompassed, she left the church content. Peace had found its way into her heart once more. Her Renaud was there by her side. Was all that she had dreaded a dream and nothing more? "Ah! it is good to be outside!" he said, filling his lungs with the fresh air.