"She wore no furs, nor cloak, nor anything else, poor me! She was taking a bath as God made her. The plain isn't a safe place for that sort of thing. You think you can't be seen because you think you can see a long distance yourself, but a tuft of heather is enough for the lizard to hide his two eyes behind while he looks." Again the women began to chuckle and laugh, but for a moment only. Meanwhile, Livette's friends were saying to her: "No, we haven't seen your sweetheart, my dear; but they are already putting the benches in place against the church for the branding, and he can't fail to be here soon." At that moment, a strain of weird music arose not far away. It was produced by a flute, and the notes, softly modulated at first, were abruptly changed to heart-rending shrieks. A strange, dull, monotonous accompaniment seemed to encourage the sick heart, that called for help with piercing cries. "Hark! there are the gipsies and their devil's music, Livette. Just go and look--it is such an amusing sight. We will join you in a little while." "What about my horse?" said Livette. "If you haven't come to stay, there's a heavy iron bracelet just set into the wall of the church to hold the bars of the enclosure for the branding. Tie your horse to that, and don't be afraid that he will disappear. Every one will know he's yours by those pretty letters in copper nails you have had put on your saddle-bow." Livette fastened her horse to the ring in the church-wall, and walked in the direction of the gipsy music. It seemed to her that she might probably learn something there. Now, Zinzara the Egyptian had seen Livette ride into the village, and her music had no other purpose than to attract her, and Renaud, her fiancé, with her, if he were there. Why? to see;--to bring together for an instant, with no fixed purpose, upon the same point of the vast world through which she wandered, two of the personages with whom she "beguiled her time;" to look on at the comedy of life, and to watch the sequel, with the inclination to give an evil turn to it, chance aiding. She loved the anomalies that result from the chaotic jumbling together of circumstances. Zinzara was turning a kaleidoscope whose field was vast like the horizon of her never-ending travels, and whose bits of glass, multicolored, were living souls.--She turned the wheel to see what calamity destiny, with her assistance, would bring to pass. The amusement of a woman, of a sorceress. XIII THE SNAKE-CHARMER Life is an enigma. The everlasting silence of space is but the endless murmuring of invisible circles which, twining in and out, part and meet again, lose and never find one another, or are inextricably interwoven forever. Life is an enigma. We can see something of its beginning, nothing of its close; its meaning escapes us, but all the links make the chain, and some one knows the rest.