"People would never stop talking about it all over our Camargue," said she, with laughter in her voice. "A drover like you, the terror of riders, _en croupe_ like a girl? No, no; no false shame, that is my place. We will take off my saddle, and you can bring it to me to-morrow." "Very luckily," said Renaud, "Rampal didn't take mine, which I never lend." Livette jumped down from her horse; and at the breeze made by her skirt a cloud of great flies and enormous mosquitoes rose and flew buzzing about her. Blanchet's snow-white rump looked as if it were covered with a net of purple silk, there was such a labyrinth of little streams of blood crossing and recrossing one another. Another instant, and gadflies and mosquitoes settled down again upon the bleeding surface and dotted it with a myriad of black spots; but Blanchet, albeit somewhat cross, was used to that annoyance. Livette fastened him to one of the rings in the wall, and sat down upon the stone bench, waiting until Renaud had finished his _séden_. The wheel turned and turned, striking its dull blow with perfect regularity at every turn. "That was a pretty song, Renaud," said Livette suddenly, answering her thoughts without intention; "that was a pretty song you were singing just now." "I learned it," said Renaud, "from a boatman, a friend of my father, with whom I went up the Rhône as far as Lyon--and then came down again----" "And is all that country very beautiful up there?" said she. "Yes," he answered, "it is beautiful." And he said nothing more. "You don't look as if you meant what you say, Renaud. Pray, didn't you like the city of Lyon we hear so much about?" There was a long silence, broken only by the monotonous rhythm of the wheel. "No sun!" said Renaud abruptly. "It's a city in a cold cloud!--The Rhône isn't fine till you come down again," he added. Livette looked at him, and her wide-open eyes seemed to say: "Why is that?" He answered her look. "When one of us goes up yonder, young lady, you understand, he leaves everything to go nowhere, and when he gets there, all he asks is to start back again!--When he comes from there here, on the contrary, he leaves nothing at all, and knows that, at the end of the journey, he will have arrived somewhere! You see, young lady, the best horse must, of necessity, stop at the sea--and that is the only place where I am willing to consent to go no farther. Where the sea is not, you have all the rest of the journey still to do.--Enough, my boy!" he added, raising his voice. The wheel stopped. He examined the _séden_. The rope, of black and white strands in regular alternation, was finished. "That's a good piece of work," said he; "look, young lady."