Although born of a race that holds chastity in high esteem, she was not chaste; not that she loved debauchery above everything else, but she used it as a means of domination,--the more unfailing because she made little account of it. Always superior, in her coldness, to the passion she inspired, it was in that more than all else that she really felt herself a queen, a sorceress--aye, a goddess, by favor of the devil! The caress of the water in which she bathed afforded her more pleasure than it afforded others. She was like the female plant of the _lambrusque_, which is fertilized by the wind. Like the mares of Camargue, that often assemble on the shore to breathe the fresh sea air,--when she opened her lips to the salty breeze, on those fine May evenings, she was happier than any man's kiss could make her. The wandering spirit of her race breathed upon her lips, in the air, with the freedom of the boundless waste--a vague hope, vain and unending. Being thus constituted, she knew that she exercised a disturbing influence upon others, and that she was herself protected by something that relieved her of responsibility. That thought filled her with pride. There was a reflection of that pride in her smile. There was also the constant remembrance of the sensations she had experienced, known to her alone, and a certain number of men, who knew nothing of one another. Their ignorance, which was her work, also made her smile. And that smile was a mixture of irony and contempt. She knew her own strength and their weakness. So she was always smiling. With no other policy than this, she reigned over her nomadic tribe, changing her favorite, like a genuine queen, as chance or her own impulses willed, but giving each one of them to believe that he was the only man she had ever really loved, even if he were not her first lover. To deceive the _zingari_--that was a notable triumph for a _zingara_! Among the fifteen or twenty children in her party, there was a young dauphin, the queen's offspring; but since he had left her breast, she had bestowed no more care upon him than the bitch bestows upon her puppy some day to become her mate. When she came near her camping-ground, excited by her recent contact with the waves and the salt, which, as it dried upon her, pressed against her soft, velvety flesh, the gipsy, tingling with warmth in every vein, cast a sidelong glance at one of the male members of the tribe, a young man with a bronzed skin and thin, curly beard. And, in the darkness,--when they had eaten the soup cooked in the kettle that hung from three stakes in the open air,--the _zingaro_ glided to the _zingara's_ side. At that very moment, by her fault, two human beings were suffering in the inmost recesses of their consciences, where Livette and Renaud were gazing at each other with eyes in which there was no look of recognition.