From afar, at the end of the desert tract, can be seen the battlemented church that tells of the wars of long ago, of Saracen invasions, of the precarious life led by the poor in the Middle Ages. It stands there with its turrets and its bell-tower, which, like the stumps of gigantic masts, tower above the cluster of houses grouped about it; and the village, cut at about mid-height of the lower houses by the horizon line of the sea, seems drifting like a phantom ship among the billows of sand, like the boat of the holy women of the olden time, doomed to founder at last in the desolation of the desert. In this Camargue everything is strange. There are ponds like the huge central pond, the Vaccarès, in the centre of which one can wade with ease; there are tracts of land where the pedestrian sinks out of sight and is drowned. Here deception is easy. Yonder green slime that you take for a level plain--beware!--men are drowned therein; those vast stretches of water which seem to you small seas--return that way to-morrow; they will have evaporated, leaving only a mirror of white salt that crackles beneath your feet. Yonder, do you see the calm, deep water? and trees on the shore? Ah! no, you can run along the surface of that water; it is dry land; the mirage alone formed those trees, just as it showed you the little child walking a league away, apparently near at hand and very tall. A land of visions, dreams, and hard work. A land of sedentary folk, who inhabit a vast space on the shore of endless waters, with an infinity of variations of mirages, sunbeams, reflections, and bright colors. A land of fever, where strong men daily bring wild bulls to earth. A land of leave-takings, for it is on the confines of an almost uninhabited land, on the shore of that great blue and white thoroughfare, the sea; just at the point where the Rhône, coming from the mountains, sets out upon its long journey to the bottomless waters, where the sun will take it up again to restore it to its source. An impressive land, which one feels to be the end of so many things; of the great city-making river, of the great expiring Faith, which flies to the sands to breathe its last, with its dying waves beating at the foundations of a poor battlemented church, amid the psalms, mingled with lamentations of a dying race. The ceremony of May 24th, at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, is unquestionably one of the most barbarous spectacles which men of modern times are permitted to witness. Since science made the conquest of men's minds, the faith of the last believers has changed. The most bigoted know, of course, that God can manifest Himself when and how He pleases, but they also know that He never pleases, in our positive days, to modify the movements of the vast mechanism of His creation, not even for the lowly pleasure of proving His existence to His creatures. The faith of civilized men no longer expects anything from Heaven in this world.