No more was said, and Livette, having nothing else to do, looked closely for the first time at the carved stone escutcheon in the centre of the high arched wall above the spring. It is the town crest, and it is needless to say that it includes a boat, a boat without mast or oars, in which the two Maries--Jacobé and Salomé--are standing. "I have often wondered," said Livette, "why they put only the figures of two holy women in the boat. For haven't our mothers always told us there were three of them? Were there three or not?" "Certainly there were three, my pretty innocent," said the older of the two women, "but Sara was the servant, and no honor is due to her." "If the third was Saint Sara, then there were not three Marys, eh? But I have always heard it said that the Magdalen was there, and that she went away from here and died at Sainte-Baume." "Yes, so she was, and many others besides! Lazarus was in the boat, too, but when they were once on shore, every one went his own way: Magdalen went to Baume, and the two Maries and Sara remained with us. That was when a spring came out of the sand, by the favor of our Lord. When they built the church, they walled in the spring in the centre of it." "Faith, they would have done well to leave the spring outside the church!" "Why so? is the water spoiled by it?" "It's only good on the fête-day." "After so many years! And there's so little of it!" "We ought to have asked the saints to make it pure and abundant. If we had all set about it with our prayers, they would have done it for us." "One miracle more or less!" "The miracles, my dear, are only for strangers." "And that is just what we need, neighbor. If it wasn't so, you see, strangers wouldn't come any more--and without them what would the country live on? poor we! Where are our harvests? Where are our wheat and our grain, good people, tell me that? If it wasn't for the saints, this would be a cursed country! One fête-day a year, and the pilgrims--God bless them!--fill our purses for us." "Miracle days are only too few and far between. We ought to have two fête-days a year!" "What are you saying, you foolish woman? Two fête-days a year! Mother of God! That would mean death to pilgrimages. To keep the custom going, everything must be just as it is and nothing change at all. Our men know that well enough. Remember the visit the Archbishop of Aix and those great ladies paid us twenty years ago." And once more the story was told of the visit of the Archbishop of Aix to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer twenty or thirty years before.