Renaud, the tall, strong, dashing blade, listened to these wise words, hanging his head, poor fellow, like a child scolded for not knowing his catechism. "If you are a man, make up your mind at once, and give me your word as a true-hearted drover." "Take my hand, Monsieur le curé. I give you my word. I was in a fair way to go wrong. A spell was on me." The two men exchanged a grasp of the hand. The curé walked away with an anxious heart. He knew that Renaud was sincere, but he knew the strength of man's passion and his ingenuity in lying. So the curé had been asking questions?--In that case, to consort with the gipsy was to risk a rupture with Livette. Renaud was about to leave the village,--or, if you please, the town,--with his mind firmly made up to renounce the gitana. Yes, he would sacrifice her to Livette, to his earnest desire to have a peaceful, happy home and a family, he, the wandering cowherd, the orphan, the foundling of the desert. That was happiness;--a roof to shelter one, a roof whose smoke one can see from afar on the horizon, thinking: the wife and little ones are there. He would renounce the gitana; yes, but he proposed to make known his resolution to her himself. At the thought of leaving Saintes-Maries without _seeing her again_, for the purpose of telling her that he would not _see her again_, a weary feeling came over him; it seemed to him that he was suddenly shut up in a narrow space, and left there without air, without horizon.--But he would see her again--he must. It would be better so. Must he not soothe her anger first of all? She would be angry enough in any event. Why exasperate her?--In very truth, if he did see her again, it was--he reached this conclusion after much thought--it was principally in order to protect poor Livette against her! Yes, yes, it was for her sake that he would see her again. See her again! At those words, which he repeated softly to himself, a joy in living, in moving, in breathing, took possession of him. Meanwhile, Zinzara, for her part, was vowing inwardly that she would enjoy a hearty laugh at the drover when he should presently seek her out! Why, in that case, had she answered _yes_ to his amorous questions? Oh! because at the moment when he whispered them in her ear, if she had been able, upon the spot, to give herself to this savage, all aglow from his conflict with bulls and heifers, doubtless she would have done it. He had awakened desire in her, as heat awakens thirst, as a summer evening awakens longing for a bath.--And then it had given her pleasure to say to herself that, over at the other end of the arena, the woman to whom he had paid queenly honor by giving her the smoking, red-hot iron, like the sceptre of a magician or a wicked zingaro king,--that that woman was suffering torments.