The birds of passage began anew their flight over the mirror-like island which promised them abundant prey. The eagle hurried from the Alps to make war upon the fish-hawks. And at night, when the wind howled and the rain fell in torrents, the storks and cranes and geese passed over in triangular flocks, at a great height in the drenched atmosphere, uttering cries like cries of alarm. Livette's suffering became more intense. She passed whole days sitting at her window. One evening, Renaud was sitting beside her, in silence, while the grandmother and Père Audiffret were dining in the room below. The room was dimly lighted by a lamp. Suddenly Livette sprang to her feet, then fell back, crying: "There she is! there she is! No! no! don't go with her! I don't want you to! no, no, Jacques!" Renaud also had risen, and was staring vacantly at Livette; following the direction of her gaze, he began to tremble. Outside the window stood a pale, uncertain, but very recognizable spectre, the gipsy herself! He had no sooner recognized her than she disappeared, after making a significant sign to him, that said: "Come!" It was not a vision of the sick girl's imagination, for he, too, had seen it! Perhaps the fever-laden island had sown its poison in the blood of both. The germs of fever were taking root and flourishing in them. The blight of the _paluns_ implanted in their brains, as in a cloudy mirror, the image everlastingly repeated of the familiar plaintive objects of the desert, with which the current of their thoughts was mingled. "Don't go! don't go! my Jacques!" She dragged herself along the floor on her knees, shaken with sobs, imploring the drover, as she clung with both hands to his jacket. The father and grandmother had hastened to the room. The father, too, was sobbing, and knew not what to do. The grandmother slowly seated herself by the bed on which Renaud had gently laid Livette. Calm and silent, the old woman gazed long and with a beautiful expression of perfect trust upon the copper crucifix and the images of the saints that hung on the wall of the recess. And, on the bed, Livette, uttering cries like a lost bird, twining her fingers about her as if clinging to life, to the reeds in the swamp wherein she still fancied that she was drowning--Livette breathed her last. Livette was dead. The drovers, on horseback, with spears reversed, attended her body to the cemetery. Her favorite dog followed her thither. Renaud placed lilies on her grave. She sleeps in the cemetery of Saintes-Maries, at the foot of the dunes, under the cultivated lilies, among the wild asphodels, on the sea-shore. Renaud returned to the desert, too much like the bull that, when wounded in the arena, returns to the solitude of the swamps, where he can lick his wounds, give free vent to his rage, bellow at the clouds, and to no purpose, but to his heart's content tear at the steel left in the wound.