"Mother, when we reach the top of the Issaritz slope you must go down!" he said tenderly. "You hear, Arrochkoa, you will stop where I say; I do not want mother to go further—"

At this Issaritz slope the horse had himself slackened his pace. The mother and the son, their eyes burned with suppressed tears, held each other's hands, and they were going slowly, slowly, in absolute silence, as if it were a solemn ascent toward some Calvary.

At last, at the top of the slope, Arrochkoa, who seemed mute also, pulled the reins slightly, with a simple little: "Ho!—" discreet as a lugubrious signal which one hesitates to give—and the carriage was stopped.

Then, without a word, Ramuntcho jumped to the road, helped his mother to descend, gave a long kiss to her, then remounted briskly to his seat:

"Go, Arrochkoa, quickly, race, let us go!"

And in two seconds, in the rapid descent, he lost sight of the one whose face at last was covered with tears.

Now they were going away from one another, Franchita and her son. In different directions, they were walking on that Etchezar road,—in the splendor of the setting sun, in a region of pink heather and of yellow fern. She was going up slowly toward her home, meeting isolated groups of farmers, flocks led through the golden evening by little shepherds in Basque caps. And he was going down quickly, through valleys soon darkened, toward the lowland where the railway train passes—



CHAPTER XXVII.

At twilight, Franchita was returning from escorting her son and was trying to regain her habitual face, her air of haughty indifference, to pass through the village.

But, when she arrived in front of the Detcharry house, she saw Dolores who, instead of going in, as she intended, turned round and stood at the door to see her pass. Something new, some sudden revelation must have impelled her to take this attitude of aggressive defiance, this expression of provoking irony,—and Franchita then stopped, she also, while this phrase, almost involuntary, came through her set teeth:

"What is the matter with that woman? Why does she look at me so—"

"He will not come to-night, the lover, will he?" responded the enemy.

"Then you knew that he came here to see your daughter?"

In truth, Dolores knew this since the morning: Gracieuse had told her, since no care needed to be taken of the morrow; Gracieuse had told it wearily, after talking uselessly of Uncle Ignacio, of Ramuntcho's future, of all that would serve their cause—

"Then you knew that he came here to see your daughter?"

By a reminiscence of other times, they regained instinctively their theeing and thouing of the sisters' school, those two women who for nearly twenty years had not addressed a word to each other. Why they detested each other, they hardly knew; so many times, it begins thus, with nothings, with jealousies, with childish rivalries, and then, at length, by dint of seeing each other every day without talking to each other, by dint of casting at each other evil looks, it ferments till it becomes implacable hatred.—Here they were, facing each other, and their two voices trembled with rancor, with evil emotion:

"Well," replied the other, "you knew it before I did, I suppose, you who are without shame and sent him to our house!—Anyway, one can understand your easiness about means, after what you have done in the past—"

And, while Franchita, naturally much more dignified, remained mute, terrified now by this unexpected dispute on the street, Dolores continued:

"No. My daughter marrying that penniless bastard, think of it!—"

"Well, I have the idea that she will marry him, in spite of everything!—Try to propose to her a man of your choice and see—"

Then, as if she disdained to continue, she went on her way, hearing behind her the voice and the insults of the other pursuing her. All her limbs trembled and she faltered at every step on her weakened legs.

At the house, now empty, what sadness she found!

The reality of this separation, which would last for three years, appeared to her under an aspect frightfully new, as if she had hardly been prepared for it—even as, on one's return from a graveyard, one feels for the first time, in its frightful integrity, the absence of the cherished dead—

And then, those words of insult in the street, those words the more crushing because she was cruelly conscious of her sin with the stranger! Instead of passing by, as she should have done, how had she found the courage to stop before her enemy and, by a phrase murmured between her teeth, provoke this odious dispute? How could she have descended to such a thing, forgotten herself thus, she who, for fifteen years, had imposed herself, little by little, on the respect of all by her demeanor, so perfectly dignified. Oh, to have attracted and to have suffered the insult of that Dolores,—whose past was irreproachable and who had, in effect, the right to treat her with contempt! When she reflected, she became frightened more and more by that sort of defiance of the future which she had had the imprudence to hurl; it seemed to her that she had compromised the cherished hope of her son in exasperating thus the hatred of that woman.

Her son!—her Ramuntcho, whom a wagon was carrying away from her at this hour in the summer night, was carrying away from her to a long distance, to danger, to war!—She had assumed very heavy responsibilities in directing his life with ideas of her own, with stubbornness, with pride, with selfishness.—And now, this evening, she had, perhaps, attracted misfortune to him, while he was going away so confident in the joy of his return!—This would be doubtless for her the supreme chastisement; she seemed to hear, in the air of the empty house, something like a threat of this expiation, she felt its slow and sure approach.

Then, she said for him her prayers, from a heart harshly revolted, because religion, as she understood it, remained without sweetness, without consolation, without anything confidential and tender. Her distress and her remorse were, at this moment, of so sombre a nature that tears, benevolent tears, came no longer to her—

And he, at this same instant of the night, continued to descend, through darker valleys, toward the lowland where the trains pass—carrying away men to a long distance, changing and upsetting all things. For about an hour he would continue to be on Basque soil; then, it would end. Along his route, he met some oxcarts, of indolent demeanor, recalling the tranquillities of the olden time; or vague human silhouettes, hailing him with the traditional goodnight, the antique "Gaou-one," which to-morrow he would cease to hear. And beyond, at his left, in the depth of a sort of black abyss, was the profile of Spain, Spain which, for a very long time doubtless, would trouble his nights no longer—



PART II.



CHAPTER I.

Three years have passed, rapidly.

Franchita is alone at home, ill and in bed, at the end of a November day.—And it is the third autumn since her son's departure.

In her hands, burning with fever, she holds a letter from him, a letter which should have brought only joy without a cloud, since it announces his return, but which causes in her, on the contrary, tormented sentiments, for the happiness of seeing him again is poisoned now by sadness, by worry especially, by frightful worry—

Oh, she had an exact presentiment of the sombre future, that night when, returning from escorting him on the road to departure, she returned to her house with so much anguish, after that sort of defiance hurled at Dolores on the street: it was cruelly true that she had broken then forever her son's life—!

Months of waiting and of apparent calm had followed that scene, while Ramuntcho, far from his native land, was beginning his military service. Then, one day, a wealthy suitor had presented himself for Gracieuse and she, to the entire village's knowledge, had rejected him obstinately in spite of Dolores's will. Then, they had suddenly gone away, the mother and the daughter, pretexting a visit to relatives in the highland; but the voyage had been prolonged; a mystery more and more singular had enveloped this absence,—and suddenly the rumor had come that Gracieuse was a novice among the sisters of Saint Mary of the Rosary, in a convent of Gascony where the former Mother Superior of Etchezar was the abbess—!

Dolores had reappeared alone in her home, mute, with a desolate and evil air. None knew what influence had been exercised over the little girl with the golden hair, nor how the luminous doors of life had been closed before her, how she had permitted herself to be walled in that tomb; but, as soon as the period of novitiate had been accomplished, without seeing even her brother, she had taken her vows there, while Ramuntcho, in a far-off colonial war, ever distant from the post-offices of France, among the forests of a Southern island, won the stripes of a sergeant and a military medal.

Franchita had been almost afraid that he would never return, her son.—But at last, he was coming back. Between her fingers, thin and warm, she held the letter which said: "I start day after to-morrow and I will be with you Saturday night." But what would he do, at his return, what would he make of his life, so sadly changed? In his letters, he had obstinately refrained from writing of this.

Anyway, everything had turned against her. The farmers, her tenants, had left Etchezar, leaving the barn empty, the house more lonely, and naturally her modest income was much diminished. Moreover, in an imprudent investment, she had lost a part of the money which the stranger had given for her son. Truly, she was too unskilful a mother, compromising in every way the happiness of her beloved Ramuntcho,—or rather, she was a mother upon whom justice from above fell heavily to-day, because of her past error.—And all this had vanquished her, all this had hastened and aggravated the malady which the physician, called too late, did not succeed in checking.

Now, therefore, waiting for the return of her son, she was stretched on her bed, burning with fever.



CHAPTER II.

He was returning, Ramuntcho, after his three years of absence, discharged from the army in that city of the North where his regiment was in garrison. He was returning with his heart in disarray, with his heart in a tumult and in distress.

His twenty-two year old face had darkened under the ardent sun; his mustache, now very long, gave him an air of proud nobility. And, on the lapel of the civilian coat which he had just bought, appeared the glorious ribbon of his medal.

At Bordeaux, where he had arrived after a night of travel, he had taken a place, with some emotion, in that train of Irun which descends in a direct line toward the South, through the monotony of the interminable moors. Near the right door he had installed himself in order to see sooner the Bay of Biscay open and the highlands of Spain sketch themselves.

Then, near Bayonne, he had been startled at the sight of the first Basque caps, at the tall gates, the first Basque houses among the pines and the oaks.

And at Saint-Jean-de-Luz at last, when he set foot on the soil, he had felt like one drunk—After the mist and the cold already begun in Northern France, he felt the sudden and voluptuous impression of a warmer climate, the sensation of going into a hothouse. There was a festival of sunlight that day; the southern wind, the exquisite southern wind, blew, and the Pyrenees had magnificent tints on the grand, free sky. Moreover, girls passed, whose laughter rang of the South and of Spain, who had the elegance and the grace of the Basques—and who, after the heavy blondes of the North, troubled him more than all these illusions of summer.—But promptly he returned to himself: what was he thinking of, since that regained land was to him an empty land forever? How could his infinite despair be changed by that tempting gracefulness of the girls, by that ironical gaiety of the sky, the human beings and the things?—No! He would go home, embrace his mother—!

As he had expected, the stage-coach to Etchezar had left two hours ago. But, without trouble, he would traverse on foot this long road so familiar to him and arrive in the evening, before night.

So he went to buy sandals, the foot-gear of his former runs. And, with the mountaineer's quick step, in long, nervous strides, he plunged at once into the heart of the silent country, through paths which were for him full of memories.

November was coming to an end in the tepid radiance of that sun which lingers always here for a long time, on the Pyrenean slopes. For days, in the Basque land, had lasted this same luminous and pure sky, above woods half despoiled of their leaves, above mountains reddened by the ardent tint of the ferns. From the borders of the paths ascended tall grasses, as in the month of May, and large, umbellated flowers, mistaken about the season; in the hedges, privets and briars had come into bloom again, in the buzz of the last bees; and one could see flying persistent butterflies, to whom death had given several weeks of grace.

The Basque houses appeared here and there among the trees,—very elevated, the roof protruding, white in their extreme oldness, with their shutters brown or green, of a green ancient and faded. And everywhere, on their wooden balconies were drying the yellow gold pumpkins, the sheafs of pink peas; everywhere, on their walls, like beautiful beads of coral, were garlands of red peppers: all the things of the soil still fecund, all the things of the old, nursing soil, amassed thus in accordance with old time usage, in provision for the darkened months when the heat departs.

And, after the mists of the Northern autumn, that limpidity of the air, that southern sunlight, every detail of the land, awakened in the complex mind of Ramuntcho infinite vibrations, painfully sweet.

It was the tardy season when are cut the ferns that form the fleece of the reddish hills. And, large ox-carts filled with them rolled tranquilly, in the beautiful, melancholy sun, toward the isolated farms, leaving on their passage the trail of their fragrance. Very slowly, through the mountain paths, went these enormous loads of ferns; very slowly, with sounds of cow-bells. The harnessed oxen, indolent and strong,—all wearing the traditional head-gear of sheepskin, fallow colored, which gives to them the air of bisons or of aurochs, pulled those heavy carts, the wheels of which are solid disks, like those of antique chariots. The cowboys, holding the long stick in their hands, marched in front, always noiselessly, in sandals, the pink cotton shirt revealing the chest, the waistcoat thrown over the left shoulder—and the woolen cap drawn over a face shaven, thin, grave, to which the width of the jaws and of the muscles of the neck gives an expression of massive solidity.

Then, there were intervals of solitude when one heard, in these paths, only the buzz of flies, in the yellowed and finishing shade of the trees.

Ramuntcho looked at them, at these rare passers-by who crossed his road, surprised at not meeting somebody he knew who would stop before him. But there were no familiar faces. And the friends whom he met were not effusive, there were only vague good-days exchanged with folks who turned round a little, with an impression of having seen him sometime, but not recalling when, and fell back into the humble dream of the fields.—And he felt more emphasized than ever the primary differences between him and those farm laborers.

Over there, however, comes one of those carts whose sheaf is so big that branches of oaks in its passage catch it. In front, walks the driver, with a look of soft resignation, a big, peaceful boy, red as the ferns, red as the autumn, with a reddish fur in a bush on his bare chest; he walks with a supple and nonchalant manner, his arms extended like those of a cross on his goad, placed across his shoulders. Thus, doubtless, on these same mountains, marched his ancestors, farm laborers and cowboys like him since numberless centuries.

And this one, at Ramuntcho's aspect, touches the forehead of his oxen, stops them with a gesture and a cry of command, then comes to the traveller, extending to him his brave hands.—Florentino! A Florentino much changed, having squarer shoulders, quite a man now, with an assured and fixed demeanor.

The two friends embrace each other. Then, they scan each other's faces in silence, troubled suddenly by the wave of reminiscences which come from the depth of their minds and which neither the one nor the other knows how to express; Ramuntcho, not better than Florentino, for, if his language be infinitely better formed, the profoundness and the mystery of his thoughts are also much more unfathomable.

And it oppresses them to conceive things which they are powerless to tell; then their embarrassed looks return absent-mindedly to the two beautiful, big oxen:

"They are mine, you know," says Florentino. "I was married two years ago.—My wife works. And, by working—we are beginning to get along.—Oh!" he adds, with naive pride, "I have another pair of oxen like these at the house."

Then he ceases to talk, flushing suddenly under his sunburn, for he has the tact which comes from the heart, which the humblest possess often by nature, but which education never gives, even to the most refined people in the world: considering the desolate return of Ramuntcho, his broken destiny, his betrothed buried over there among the black nuns, his mother dying, Florentino is afraid to have been already too cruel in displaying too much his own happiness.

Then the silence returned; they looked at each other for an instant with kind smiles, finding no words. Besides, between them, the abyss of different conceptions has grown deeper in these three years. And Florentino, touching anew the foreheads of his oxen, makes them march again with a call of his tongue, and presses tighter the hand of his friend:

"We shall see each other again, shall we not?"

And the noise of the cow-bells is soon lost in the calm of the road more shady, where begins to diminish the heat of the day—

"Well, he has succeeded in life, that one!" thinks Ramuntcho lugubriously, continuing his walk under the autumn branches—

The road which he follows ascends, hollowed here and there by springs and sometimes crossed by big roots of oaks.

Soon Etchezar will appear to him and, before seeing it, the image of it becomes more and more precise in him, recalled and enlivened in his memory by the aspect of the surroundings.

Empty now, all this land, where Gracieuse is no more, empty and sad as a beloved home where the great Reaper has passed!—And yet Ramuntcho, in the depths of his being, dares to think that, in some small convent over there, under the veil of a nun, the cherished black eyes still exist and that he will be able at least to see them; that taking the veil is not quite like dying, and that perhaps the last word of his destiny has not been said irrevocably.—For, when he reflects, what can have changed thus the soul of Gracieuse, formerly so uniquely devoted to him?—Oh, terrible, foreign pressure, surely—And then, when they come face to face again, who knows?—When they talk, with his eyes in her eyes?—But what can he expect that is reasonable and possible?—In his native land has a nun ever broken her eternal vows to follow one to whom she was engaged? And besides, where would they go to live together afterward, when folks would get out of their way, would fly from them as renegades?—To America perhaps, and even there!—And how could he take her from these white houses of the dead where the sisters live, eternally watched?—Oh, no, all this is a chimera which may not be realized—All is at an end, all is finished hopelessly—!

Then, the sadness which comes to him from Gracieuse is forgotten for a moment, and he feels nothing except an outburst of his heart toward his mother, toward his mother who remains to him, who is there, very near, a little upset, doubtless, by the joyful trouble of waiting for him.

And now, on the left of his route, is a humble hamlet, half hidden in the beeches and the oaks, with its ancient chapel,—and with its wall for the pelota game, under very old trees, at the crossing of two paths. At once, in Ramuntcho's youthful head, the course of thoughts changes again: that little wall with rounded top, covered with wash of kalsomine and ochre, awakens tumultuously in him thoughts of life, of force and of joy; with a childish ardor he says to himself that to-morrow he will be able to return to that game of the Basques, which is an intoxication of movement and of rapid skill; he thinks of the grand matches on Sundays after vespers, of the glory of the fine struggles with the champions of Spain, of all this deprivation of his years of exile. But it is a very short instant, and mortal despair comes back to him: his triumphs on the squares, Gracieuse shall not see them; then, what is the use!—Without her, all things, even these, fall back discolored, useless and vain, do not even exist—

Etchezar!—Etchezar, is revealed suddenly at a turn of the road!—It is in a red light, something like a fantasmagoria image, illuminated purposely in a special manner in the midst of grand backgrounds of shade and of night. It is the hour of the setting sun. Around the isolated village, which the old, heavy belfry, surmounts, a last sheaf of rays traces a halo of the color of copper and gold, while clouds—and a gigantic obscurity emanating from the Gizune—darken the lands piled up above and under, the mass of brown hills, colored by the death of the ferns—

Oh! the melancholy apparition of the native land, to the soldier who returns and will not find his sweetheart—!

Three years have passed since he left here.—Well, three years, at his age, are an abyss of time, a period which changes all things. And, after that lone exile, how this village, which he adores, appears to him diminished, small, walled in the mountains, sad and hidden!—In the depth of his mind of a tall, uncultured boy, commences again, to make him suffer more, the struggle of those two sentiments of a too refined man, which are an inheritance of his unknown father: an attachment almost maladive to the home, to the land of childhood, and a fear of returning to be enclosed in it, when there exist in the world other places so vast and so free. —After the warm afternoon, the autumn is indicated now by the hasty fall of the day, with a coolness ascending suddenly from the valleys underneath, a scent of dying leaves and of moss. And then the thousand details of preceding autumns in the Basque country, of the former Novembers, come to him very precisely; the cold fall of night succeeding the beautiful, sunlit day; the sad clouds appearing with the night; the Pyrenees confounded in vapors inky gray, or, in places, cut in black silhouettes on a pale, golden sky; around the houses, the belated flowers of the gardens, which the frost spares for a long time here, and, in front of all the doors, the strewn leaves of the plane-trees, the yellow strewn leaves cracking under the steps of the man returning in sandals to his home for supper.—Oh, the heedless joy of these returns to the home, in the nights of other times, after days of marching on the rude mountain! Oh, the gaiety, in that time, of the first winter fires—in the tall, smoky hearth ornamented with a drapery of white calico and with a strip of pink paper. No, in the city, with its rows of houses one does not have the real impression of returning home, of earthing up like plants at night in the primitive manner, as one has it here, under those Basque roofs, solitary in the midst of the country, with the grand, surrounding black, the grand, shivering black of the foliage, the grand, changing black of the clouds and the summits.—But to-day, his travels, his new conceptions, have diminished and spoiled his mountaineer's home; he will doubtless find it almost desolate, especially in the thought that his mother shall not be there always—and that Gracieuse shall never be there again.

His pace quickens in his haste to embrace his mother; he turns around his village instead of going into it, in order to reach his house through a path which overlooks the square and church; passing quickly, he looks at everything with inexpressible pain. Peace, silence soar over this little parish of Etchezar, heart of the French Basque land and country of all the famous pelotaris of the past who have become heavy grandfathers, or are dead now. The immutable church, where have remained buried his dreams of faith, is surrounded by the same dark cypresses, like a mosque. The ball-game square, while he walks quickly above it, is still lighted by the sun with a finishing ray, oblique, toward the background, toward the wall which the ancient inscription surmounts,—as on the evening of his first great success, four years ago, when, in the joyous crowd, Gracieuse stood in a blue gown, she who has become a black nun to-day.—On the deserted benches, on the granite steps where the grass grows, three or four old men are seated, who were formerly the heroes of the place and whom their reminiscences bring back here incessantly, to talk at the end of the days, when the twilight descends from the summits, invades the earth, seems to emanate and to fall from the brown Pyrenees.—Oh, the folks who live here, whose lives run here; oh, the little cider inns, the little, simple shops and the old, little things—brought from the cities, from the other places—sold to the mountaineers of the surrounding country!—How all this seems to him now strange, separated from him, or set far in the background of the primitive past!—Is he truly not a man of Etchezar to-day, is he no longer the Ramuntcho of former times?—What particular thing resides in his mind to prevent him from feeling comfortable here, as the others feel? Why is it prohibited to him, to him alone, to accomplish here the tranquil destiny of his dreams, since all his friends have accomplished theirs?—

At last here is his house, there, before his eyes. It is as he expected to find it. As he expected, he recognizes along the wall all the persistent flowers cultivated by his mother, the same flowers which the frost has destroyed weeks ago in the North from which he comes: heliotropes, geraniums, tall dahlias and roses with climbing branches. And the cherished, strewn leaves, which fall every autumn from the vault-shaped plane-trees, are there also, and are crushed with a noise so familiar under his steps—!

In the lower hall, when he enters, there is already grayish indecision, already night. The high chimney, where his glance rests at first by an instinctive reminiscence of the fires of ancient evenings, stands the same with its white drapery; but cold, filled with shade, smelling of absence or death.

He runs up to his mother's room. She, from her bed having recognized her son's step, has straightened up, all stiff, all white in the twilight:

"Ramuntcho," she says, in a veiled and aged voice.

She extends her arms to him and as soon as she holds him, enlaces and embraces him:

"Ramuntcho!—"

Then, having uttered this name without adding anything, she leans her head against his cheek, in the habitual movement of surrender, in the movement of the grand, tender feelings of other times.—He, then, perceives that his mother's face is burning against his. Through her shirt he feels the arms that surround him thin, feverish and hot. And for the first time, he is frightened; the notion that she is doubtless very ill comes to his mind, the possibility and the sudden terror that she might die—

"Oh, you are alone, mother! But who takes care of you? Who watches over you?"

"Who watches over me?—" she replies with her abrupt brusqueness, her ideas of a peasant suddenly returned. "Spending money to nurse me, why should I do it?—The church woman or the old Doyamburu comes in the day-time to give me the things that I need, the things that the physician orders.—But—medicine!—Well! Light a lamp, my Ramuntcho!—I want to see you—and I cannot see you—"

And, when the clearness has come from a Spanish, smuggled match, she says in a tone of caress infinitely sweet, as one talks to a very little child whom one adores:

"Oh, your mustache! The long mustache which has come to you, my son!—I do not recognize my Ramuntcho!—Bring your lamp here, bring it here so that I can look at you!—"

He also sees her better now, under the new light of that lamp, while she admires him lovingly. And he is more frightened still, because the cheeks of his mother are so hollow, her hair is so whitened; even the expression of her eyes is changed and almost extinguished; on her face appears the sinister and irremediable labor of time, of suffering and of death—

And, now, two tears, rapid and heavy, fall from the eyes of Franchita, which widen, become living again, made young by desperate revolt and hatred.

"Oh, that woman," she says suddenly. "Oh, that Dolores!"

And her cry expresses and summarizes all her jealousy of thirty years' standing, all her merciless rancor against that enemy of her childhood who has succeeded at last in breaking the life of her son.

A silence between them. He is seated, with head bent, near the bed, holding the poor, feverish hand which his mother has extended to him. She, breathing more quickly, seems for a long while under the oppression of something which she hesitates to express:

"Tell me, my Ramuntcho!—I would like to ask you.—What do you intend to do, my son? What are your projects for the future?—"

"I do not know, mother.—I will think, I will see.—You ask—all at once.—We have time to talk of this, have we not?—To America, perhaps—"

"Oh, yes," she says slowly, with the fear that was in her for days, "to America—I suspected it. Oh, that is what you will do.—I knew it, I knew it—"

Her phrase ends in a groan and she joins her hands to try to pray—



CHAPTER III.

Ramuntcho, the next morning, was wandering in the village, under a sun which had pierced the clouds of the night, a sun as radiant as that of yesterday. Careful in his dress, the ends of his mustache turned up, proud in his demeanor, elegant, grave and handsome, he went at random, to see and to be seen, a little childishness mingling with his seriousness, a little pleasure with his distress. His mother had said to him:

"I am better, I assure you. To-day is Sunday; go, walk about I pray you—"

And passers-by turned their heads to look at him, whispered the news: "Franchita's son has returned home; he looks very well!"

A summer illusion persisted everywhere, with, however, the unfathomable melancholy of things tranquilly finishing. Under that impassible radiance of sunlight, the Pyrenean fields seemed dull, all their plants, all their grasses were as if collected in one knows not what resignation weary of living, what expectation of death.

The turns of the path, the houses, the least trees, all recalled hours of other times to Ramuntcho, hours wherein Gracieuse was mingled. And then, at each reminiscence, at each step, engraved itself and hammered itself in his mind, under a new form, this verdict without recourse: "It is finished, you are alone forever, Gracieuse has been taken away from you and is in prison—" The rents in his heart, every accident in the path renewed and changed them. And, in the depth of his being, as a constant basis for his reflections, this other anxiety endured: his mother, his mother very ill, in mortal danger, perhaps—!

He met people who stopped him, with a kind and welcoming air, who talked to him in the dear Basque tongue—ever alert and sonorous despite its incalculable antiquity; old Basque caps, old white heads, liked to talk of the ball-game to this fine player returned to his cradle. And then, at once, after the first words of greeting, smiles went out, in spite of this clear sun in this blue sky, and all were disturbed by the thought of Gracieuse in a veil and of Franchita dying.

A violent flush of blood went up to his face when he caught sight of Dolores, at a distance, going into her home. Very decrepit, that one, and wearing a prostrate air! She had recognized him, for she turned quickly her obstinate and hard head, covered by a mourning mantilla. With a sentiment of pity at seeing her so undone, he reflected that she had struck herself with the same blow, and that she would be alone now in her old age and at her death—

On the square, he met Marcos Iragola who informed him that he was married, like Florentino—and with the little friend of his childhood, he also.

"I did not have to serve in the army," Iragola explained, "because we are Guipuzcoans, immigrants in France; so I could marry her earlier!"

He, twenty-one years old; she eighteen; without lands and without a penny, Marcos and Pilar, but joyfully associated all the same, like two sparrows building their nest. And the very young husband added laughingly:

"What would you? Father said: 'As long as you do not marry I warn you that I shall give you a little brother every year.' And he would have done it! There are already fourteen of us, all living—"

Oh, how simple and natural they are! How wise and humbly happy!—Ramuntcho quitted him with some haste, with a heart more bruised for having spoken to him, but wishing very sincerely that he should be happy in his improvident, birdlike, little home.

Here and there, folks were seated in front of their doors, in that sort of atrium of branches which precedes all the houses of this country. And their vaults of plane-trees, cut in the Basque fashion, which in the summer are so impenetrable all open worked in this season, let fall on them sheafs of light. The sun flamed, somewhat destructive and sad, above those yellow leaves which were drying up—

And Ramuntcho, in his slow promenade, felt more and more what intimate ties, singularly persistent, would attach him always to this region of the earth, harsh and enclosed, even if he were there alone, abandoned, without friends, without a wife and without a mother—

Now, the high mass rings! And the vibrations of that bell impress him with a strange emotion that he did not expect. Formerly, its familiar appeal was an appeal to joy and to pleasure—

He stops, he hesitates, in spite of his actual religious unbelief and in spite of his grudge against that church which has taken his betrothed away from him. The bell seems to invite him to-day in so special a manner, with so peaceful and caressing a voice: "Come, come; let yourself be rocked as your ancestors were; come, poor, desolate being, let yourself be caught by the lure which will make your tears fall without bitterness, and will help you to die—"

Undecided, resisting still, he walks, however, toward the church—when Arrochkoa appears!

Arrochkoa, whose catlike mustache has lengthened a great deal and whose feline expression is accentuated, runs to him with extended hands, with an effusion that he did not expect, in an enthusiasm, perhaps sincere, for that ex-sergeant who has such a grand air, who wears the ribbon of a medal and whose adventures have made a stir in the land:

"Ah, my Ramuntcho, when did you arrive?—Oh, if I could have prevented—What do you think of my old, hardened mother and of all those church bigots?—Oh, I did not tell you: I have a son, since two months; a fine little fellow! We have so many things to say, my poor friend, so many things!—"

The bell rings, rings, fills the air more and more with its soft appeal, very grave and somewhat imposing also.

"You are not going there, I suppose?" asks Arrochkoa, pointing to the church.

"No, oh, no," replies Ramuntcho, sombrely decided.

"Well come then, let us go in here and taste the new cider of your country!—"

To the smugglers' cider mill, he brings him; both, near the open window, sit as formerly, looking outside;—and this place also, these old benches, these casks in a line in the back, these same images on the wall, are there to recall to Ramuntcho the delicious times of the past, the times that are finished.

The weather is adorably beautiful; the sky retains a rare limpidity; through the air passes that special scent of falling seasons, scent of woods despoiled, of dead leaves that the sun overheats on the soil. Now, after the absolute calm of the morning, rises a wind of autumn, a chill of November, announcing clearly, but with a melancholy almost charming, that the winter is near—a southern winter, it is true, a softened winter, hardly interrupting the life of the country. The gardens and all the old walls are still ornamented with roses—!

At first they talk of indifferent things while drinking their cider, of Ramuntcho's travels, of what happened in the country during his absence, of the marriages which occurred or were broken. And, to those two rebels who have fled from the church, all the sounds of the mass come during their talk, the sounds of the small bells and the sounds of the organ, the ancient songs that fill the high, sonorous nave—

At last, Arrochkoa returns to the burning subject:

"Oh, if you had been here it would not have occurred!—And even now, if she saw you—"

Ramuntcho looks at him then, trembling at what he imagines he understands:

"Even now?—What do you mean?"

"Oh, women—with them, does one ever know?—She cared a great deal for you and it was hard for her.—In these days there is no law to keep her there!—How little would I care if she broke her vows—"

Ramuntcho turns his head, lowers his eyes, says nothing, strikes the soil with his foot. And, in the silence, the impious thing which he had hardly dared to formulate to himself, seems to him little by little less chimerical, attainable, almost easy.—No, it is not impossible to regain her. And, if need be, doubtless, Arrochkoa, her own brother, would lend a hand. Oh, what a temptation and what a new disturbance in his mind—!

Drily he asks, "Where is she?—Far from here?"

"Far enough, yes. Over there, toward Navarre, five or six hours of a carriage drive. They have changed her convent twice. She lives at Amezqueta now, beyond the oak forests of Oyanzabal; the road is through Mendichoco; you know, we must have gone through it together one night with Itchoua."

The high mass is ended.—Groups pass: women, pretty girls, elegant in demeanor, among whom Gracieuse is no more: many Basque caps lowered on sunburnt foreheads. And all these faces turn to look at the two cider drinkers at their window. The wind, that blows stronger, makes dance around their glasses large, dead, plane-tree leaves.

A woman, already old, casts at them, from under her black cloth mantilla, a sad and evil glance:

"Ah," says Arrochkoa, "here is mother! And she looks at us crosswise.—She may flatter herself for her work!—She punished herself for she will end in solitude now.—Catherine—who is at Elsagarray's, you know—works by the day for her; otherwise, she would have nobody to talk to in the evening—"

A bass voice, behind them, interrupts them, with a Basque greeting, hollow like a sound in a cavern, while a large and heavy hand rests on Ramuntcho's shoulder as if to take possession of him: Itchoua, Itchoua who has just finished chanting his liturgy!—Not changed at all, this one; he has always his same ageless face, always his colorless mask which is at once that of a monk and that of a highwayman, and his same eyes, set in, hidden, absent. His mind also must have remained similar, his mind capable of impassible murder at the same time as devout fetichism.

"Ah," he says, in a tone which wishes to be that of a good fellow, "you have returned to us, my Ramuntcho! Then we are going to work together, eh? Business is brisk with Spain now, you know, and arms are needed at the frontier. You are one of us, are you not?"

"Perhaps," replies Ramuntcho. "We may talk of it—"

For several moments his departure for America has become a faint idea in his mind.—No!—He would rather stay in his native land, begin again his former life, reflect and wait obstinately. Anyway, now that he knows where she is, that village of Amezqueta, at a distance of five or six hours from here, haunts him in a dangerous way, and he hugs all sorts of sacrilegious projects which, until to-day, he would never have dared hardly to conceive.



CHAPTER IV.

At noon, he returned to his isolated house to see his mother.

The febrile and somewhat artificial improvement of the morning had continued. Nursed by the old Doyanburu, Franchita said that she felt better, and, in the fear that Ramuntcho might become dreamy, she made him return to the square to attend the Sunday ball-game.

The breath of the wind became warm again, blew from the south; none of the shivers of a moment ago remained; on the contrary, a summer sun and atmosphere, on the reddened woods, on the rusty ferns, on the roads where continued to fall the sad leaves. But the sky was gathering thick clouds, which suddenly came out from the rear of the mountains as if they had stayed there in ambush to appear all at the same signal.

The ball-game had not yet been arranged and groups were disputing violently when he reached the square. Quickly, he was surrounded, he was welcomed, designated by acclamation to go into the game and sustain the honor of his county. He did not dare, not having played for three years and distrusting his unaccustomed arm. At last, he yielded and began to undress—but to whom would he trust his waistcoat now?—The image reappeared to him, suddenly, of Gracieuse, seated on the nearest steps and extending her hands to receive it. To whom would he throw his waistcoat to-day? It is intrusted ordinarily to some friend, as the toreadors do with their gilt silk mantles.—He threw it at random, this time, anywhere, on the granite of the old benches flowered with belated scabwort—

The match began. Out of practice at first, uncertain, he missed several times the little bounding thing which is to be caught in the air.

Then, he went to his work with a rage, regained his former ease and became himself again superbly. His muscles had gained in strength what they had perhaps lost in skill; again he was applauded, he knew the physical intoxication of moving, of leaping, of feeling his muscles play like supple and violent springs, of hearing around him the ardent murmur of the crowd.

But then came the instant of rest which interrupts ordinarily the long disputed games; the moment when one sits halting, the blood in ebulition, the hands reddened, trembling,—and when one regains the course of ideas which the game suppresses.

Then, he realized the distress of being alone.

Above the assembled heads, above the woolen caps and the hair ornamented with kerchiefs, was accentuated that stormy sky which the southern winds, when they are about to finish, bring always. The air had assumed an absolute limpidity, as if it had become rarified, rarified unto emptiness. The mountains seemed to have advanced extraordinarily; the Pyrenees were crushing the village; the Spanish summits or the French summits were there, all equally near, as if pasted on one another, exaggerating their burned, brown colors, their intense and sombre, violet tints. Large clouds, which seemed as solid as terrestrial things, were displayed in the form of bows, veiling the sun, casting an obscurity which was like an eclipse. And here and there, through some rent, bordered with dazzling silver, one could see the profound blue green of a sky almost African. All this country, the unstable climate of which changes between a morning and an evening, became for several hours strangely southern in aspect, in temperature and in light.

Ramuntcho breathed that dry and suave air, come from the South in order to vivify the lungs. It was the true weather of his native land. It was even the characteristic weather of that land of the Bay of Biscay, the weather which he liked best formerly, and which to-day filled him with physical comfort—as much as with disturbance of mind, for all that was preparing, all that was amassing above, with airs of ferocious menace, impressed him with the sentiment of a heaven deaf to prayers, without thoughts as without master, a simple focus of storms, of blind forces creating, recreating and destroying. And, during these minutes of halting meditation, where men in Basque caps of a temperament other than his, surrounded him to congratulate him, he made no reply, he did not listen, he felt only the ephemeral plenitude of his own vigor, of his youth, of his will, and he said to himself that he wished to use harshly and desperately all things, to try anything, without the obstacle of vain fears, of vain church scruples, in order to take back the young girl whom his soul and his flesh desired, who was the unique one and the betrothed—

When the game had ended gloriously for him, he returned alone, sad and resolute,—proud of having won, of having known how to preserve his agile skilfulness, and realizing that it was a means in life, a source of money and of strength, to have remained one of the chief ball-players of the Basque country.

Under the black sky, there were still the same tints exaggerated by everything, the same sombre horizon. And still the same breaths from the south, dry and warm, agitors of muscles and of thought.

However, the clouds had descended, descended, and soon this weather, these appearances would change and finish. He knew it, as do all the countrymen accustomed to look at the sky: it was only the announcement of an autumn squall to close the series of lukewarm winds,—of a decisive shake-up to finish despoiling the woods of their leaves. Immediately after would come the long showers, chilling everything, the mists making the mountains confused and distant. And it would be the dull rain of winter, stopping the saps, making temporary projects languid, extinguishing ardor and revolt—

Now the first drops of water were beginning to fall on the road, separate and heavy on the strewn leaves.

As the day before, when he returned home, at twilight, his mother was alone.

He found her asleep, in a bad sleep, agitated, burning.

Rambling in his house he tried, in order to make it less sinister, to light in the large, lower chimney a fire of branches, but it went out smoking. Outside, torrents of rain fell. Through the windows, as through gray shrouds, the village hardly appeared, effaced under a winter squall. The wind and the rain whipped the walls of the isolated house, around which, once more, would thicken the grand blackness of the country in rainy nights—that grand blackness, that grand silence, to which he had long been unaccustomed. And in his childish heart, came little by little, a cold of solitude and of abandonment; he lost even his energy, the consciousness of his love, of his strength and of his youth; he felt vanishing, before the misty evening, all his projects of struggle and of resistance. The future which he had formed a moment ago became miserable or chimerical in his eyes, that future of a pelota player, of a poor amuser of the crowds, at the mercy of a malady or of a moment of weakness—His hopes of the day-time were going out, based, doubtless, on unstable things, fleeing now in the night—

Then he felt transported, as in his childhood, toward that soft refuge which was his mother; he went up, on tiptoe, to see her, even asleep, and to remain there, near her bed, while she slept.

And, when he had lighted in the room, far from her, a discreet lamp, she appeared to him more changed than she had been by the fever of yesterday; the possibility presented itself, more frightful to his mind, of losing her, of being alone, of never feeling again on his cheek the caress of her head.—Moreover, for the first time, she seemed old to him, and, in the memory of all the deceptions which she had suffered because of him, he felt a pity for her, a tender and infinite pity, at sight of her wrinkles which he had not before observed, of her hair recently whitened at the temples. Oh, a desolate pity and hopeless, with the conviction that it was too late now to arrange life better.—And something painful, against which there was no possible resistance, shook his chest, contracted his young face; objects became confused to his view, and, in the need of imploring, of asking for mercy, he let himself fall on his knees, his forehead on his mother's bed, weeping at last, weeping hot tears—



CHAPTER V.

"And whom did you see in the village, my son?" she asked, the next morning during the improvement which returned every time, in the first hours of the day, after the fever had subsided.

"And whom did you see in the village, my son?—" In talking, she tried to retain an air of gaiety, of saying indifferent things, in the fear of attacking grave subjects and of provoking disquieting replies.

"I saw Arrochkoa, mother," he replied, in a tone which brought back suddenly the burning questions.

"Arrochkoa!—And how did he behave with you?"

"Oh, he talked to me as if I had been his brother."

"Yes, I know, I know.—Oh, it was not he who made her do it—"

"He said even—"

He did not dare to continue now, and he lowered his head.

"He said what, my son?"

"Well, that—that it was hard to put her in prison there—that perhaps—that, even now, if she saw me, he was not far from thinking—"

She straightened under the shock of what she had just suspected; with her thin hands she parted her hair, newly whitened, and her eyes became again young and sharp, in an expression almost wicked from joy, from avenged pride:

"He said that, he!—"

"Would you forgive me, mother—if I tried?"

She took his two hands and they remained silent, not daring, with their scruples as Catholics, to utter the sacrilegious thing which was fomenting in their heads. In the depth of her eyes, the evil spark went out.

"Forgive you?" she said in a low voice, "Oh, I—you know very well that I would.—But do not do this, my son, I pray you, do not do it; it would bring misfortune to both of you!—Do not think of it, my Ramuntcho, never think of it—"

Then, they hushed, hearing the steps of the physician who was coming up for his daily visit. And it was the only time, the supreme time when they were to talk of it in life.

But Ramuntcho knew now that, even after death, she would not condemn him for having attempted, or for having committed it: and this pardon was sufficient for him, and, now that he felt sure of obtaining it, the greatest barrier, between his sweetheart and him, had now suddenly fallen.



CHAPTER VI.

In the evening, when the fever returned, she seemed already much more dangerously affected.

On her robust body, the malady had violently taken hold,—the malady recognized too late, and insufficiently nursed because of her stubbornness as a peasant, because of her incredulous disdain for physicians and medicine.

And little by little, in Ramuntcho, the frightful thought of losing her installed itself in a dominant place; during the hours of watchfulness spent near her bed, silent and alone, he was beginning to face the reality of that separation, the horror of that death and of that burial,—even all the lugubrious morrows, all the aspects of his future life: the house which he would have to sell before quitting the country; then, perhaps, the desperate attempt at the convent of Amezqueta; then the departure, probably solitary and without desire to return, for unknown America—

The idea also of the great secret which she would carry with her forever,—of the secret of his birth,—tormented him more from hour to hour.

Then, bending over her, and, trembling, as if he were about to commit an impious thing in a church, he dared to say:

"Mother!—Mother, tell me now who my father is!"

She shuddered at first under the supreme question, realizing well, that if he dared to question her thus, it was because she was lost. Then, she hesitated for a moment: in her head, boiling from fever, there was a battle; her duty, she discerned well no longer; her obstinacy which had lasted for so many years faltered almost at this hour, in presence of the sudden apparition of death—

But, resolved at last forever, she replied at once, in the brusque tone of her bad days:

"Your father!—And what is the use, my son?—What do you want of your father who for twenty years has never thought of you?—"

No, it was decided, ended, she would not tell. Anyway, it was too late now; at the moment when she would disappear, enter into the inert powerlessness of the dead, how could she risk changing so completely the life of that son over whom she would no longer watch, how could she surrender him to his father, who perhaps would make of him a disbeliever and a disenchanted man like himself! What a responsibility and what an immense terror—!

Her decision having been taken irrevocably, she thought of herself, feeling for the first time that life was closing behind her, and joined her hands for a sombre prayer.

As for Ramuntcho, after this attempt to learn, after this great effort which had almost seemed a profanation to him, he bent his head before his mother's will and questioned no longer.



CHAPTER VII.

It went very quickly now, with the drying fevers that made her cheeks red, her nostrils pinched, or with the exhaustion of baths of perspiration, her pulse hardly beating.

And Ramuntcho had no other thought than his mother; the image of Gracieuse ceased to visit him during these funereal days.

She was going, Franchita; she was going, mute and as if indifferent, asking for nothing, never complaining—

Once, however, as he was watching, she called him suddenly with a poor voice of anguish, to throw her arms around him, to draw him to her, lean her head on his cheek. And, in that minute, Ramuntcho saw pass in her eyes the great Terror—that of the flesh which feels that it is finishing, that of the men and that of the beasts, the horrible and the same for all.—A believer, she was that a little; practising rather, like so many other women around her; timid in the face of dogmas, of observances, of services, but without a clear conception of the world beyond, without a luminous hope.—Heaven, all the beautiful things promised after life.—Yes, perhaps.—But still, the black hole was there, near and certain, where she would have to turn into dust.—What was sure, what was inexorable, was the fact that never, never more would her destroyed visage lean in a real manner on that of Ramuntcho; then, in the doubt of having a mind which would fly, in the horror and the misery of annihilation, of becoming powder and nothing, she wanted again kisses from that son, and she clutched at him as clutch the wrecked who fall into the black and deep waters—

He understood all this, which the poor, fading eyes said so well. And the pity so tender, which he had already felt at seeing the wrinkles and the white hairs of his mother, overflowed like a flood from his very young heart; he responded to this appeal with all that one may give of desolate clasps and embraces.

But it did not last long. She had never been one of those who are enervated for long, or at least, let it appear. Her arms unclasped, her head fallen back, she closed her eyes again, unconscious now,—or stoical—

And Ramuntcho, standing, not daring to touch her, wept heavy tears, without noise, turning his head,—while, in the distance, the parish bell began to ring the curfew, sang the tranquil peace of the village, filled the air with vibrations soft, protective, advising sound sleep to those who have morrows—

The following morning, after having confessed, she passed out of life, silent and haughty, having felt a sort of shame for her suffering,—while the same bell rang slowly her agony.

And at night, Ramuntcho found himself alone, beside that thing in bed and cold, which is preserved and looked at for several hours, but which one must make haste to bury in the earth—



CHAPTER VIII.

Eight days after.

At the fall of night, while a bad mountain squall twisted the branches of the trees, Ramuntcho entered his deserted house where the gray of death seemed scattered everywhere. A little of winter had passed over the Basque land, a little frost, burning the annual flowers, ending the illusory summer of December. In front of Franchita's door, the geraniums, the dahlias had just died, and the path which led to the house, which no one cared for, disappeared under the mass of yellow leaves.

For Ramuntcho, this first week of mourning had been occupied by the thousand details that rock sorrow. Proud also, he had desired that all should be done in a luxurious manner, according to the old usages of the parish. His mother had been buried in a coffin of black velvet ornamented with silver nails. Then, there had been mortuary masses, attended by the neighbors in long capes, the women enveloped and hooded with black. And all this represented a great deal of expense for him, who was poor.

Of the sum given formerly, at the time of his birth, by his unknown father, little remained, the greater part having been lost through unfaithful bankers. And now, he would have to quit the house, sell the dear familiar furniture, realize the most money possible for the flight to America—

This time, he returned home peculiarly disturbed, because he was to do a thing, postponed from day to day, about which his conscience was not at rest. He had already examined, picked out, all that belonged to his mother; but the box containing her papers and her letters was still intact—and to-night he would open it, perhaps.

He was not sure that death, as many persons think, gives the right to those who remain to read letters, to penetrate the secrets of those who have just gone. To burn without looking seemed to him more respectful, more honest. But it was also to destroy forever the means of discovering the one whose abandoned son he was.—Then what should he do?—And from whom could he take advice, since he had no one in the world?

In the large chimney he lit the evening fire: then he got from an upper room the disquieting box, placed it on a table near the fire, beside his lamp, and sat down to reflect again. In the face of these papers, almost sacred, almost prohibited, which he would touch and which death alone could have placed in his hands, he had in this moment the consciousness, in a more heartbreaking manner, of the irrevocable departure of his mother; tears returned to him and he wept there, alone, in the silence—

At last he opened the box—

His arteries beat heavily. Under the surrounding trees, in the obscure solitude, he felt that forms were moving, to look at him through the window-panes. He felt breaths strange to his own chest, as if some one was breathing behind him. Shades assembled, interested in what he was about to do.—The house was crowded with phantoms—

They were letters, preserved there for more than twenty years, all in the same handwriting,—one of those handwritings, at once negligent and easy, which men of the world have and which, in the eyes of the simple minded, are an indication of great social difference. And at first, a vague dream of protection, of elevation and of wealth diverted the course of his thoughts.—He had no doubt about the hand which had written them, those letters, and he held them tremblingly, not daring to read them, nor even to look at the name with which they were signed.

One only had retained its envelope; then he read the address: "To Madame Franchita Duval."—Oh! yes, he remembered having heard that his mother, at the time of her disappearance from the Basque country, had taken that name for a while.—Following this, was an indication of street and number, which it pained him to read without his being able to understand why, which made the blood come to his cheeks; then the name of that large city, wherein he was born.—With fixed eyes, he stayed there, looking no longer.—And suddenly, he had the horrible vision of that clandestine establishment: in a suburban apartment, his mother, young, elegant, mistress of some rich idler, or of some officer perhaps!—In the regiment he had known some of these establishments, which doubtless are all alike, and he had found in them for himself unexpected adventures.—A dizziness seized him, to catch a glimpse thus under a new aspect of the one whom he had venerated so much; the dear past faltered behind him, as if to fall into a desolating abyss. And his despair turned into a sudden execration for the one who had given life to him through a caprice—

Oh! to burn them, to burn them as quickly as possible, these letters of misfortune!—And he began to throw them one by one into the fire, where they were consumed by sudden flames.

A photograph, however, came out of them, fell on the floor; then he could not refrain from taking it to the lamp to see it.

And his impression was heart-rending, during the few seconds when his eyes met the half effaced ones of the yellowed image!—It resembled him!—He found, with profound fear, something of himself in the unknown. And instinctively he turned round, asking himself if the spectres in the obscure corners had not come near behind him to look also.

It had hardly an appreciable duration, that silent interview, unique and supreme, with his father. To the fire also, the image! He threw it, with a gesture of anger and of terror, among the ashes of the last letters, and all left soon only a little mass of black dust, extinguishing the clear flames of the branches.

Finished! The box was empty. He threw on the floor his cap which gave him a headache, and straightened himself, with perspiration on his forehead and a buzzing at the temples.

Finished! Annihilated, all these memories of sin and of shame. And now the things of life appeared to him to regain their former balance; he regained his soft veneration for his mother, whose memory it seemed to him he had purified, avenged also a little, by this disdainful execution.

Therefore, his destiny had been fixed to-night forever. He would remain the Ramuntcho of other times, the "son of Franchita," player of pelota and smuggler, free, freed from everything, owing nothing to and asking nothing from anybody. And he felt serene, without remorse, without fright, either, in this mortuary house, from which the shades had just disappeared, peaceful now and friendly—



CHAPTER IX.

At the frontier, in a mountain hamlet. A black night, about one o'clock in the morning; a winter night inundated by cold and heavy rain. At the front of a sinister house which casts no light outside, Ramuntcho loads his shoulders with a heavy smuggled box, under the rippling rain, in the midst of a tomb-like obscurity. Itchoua's voice commands secretly,—as if one hardly touched with a bow the last strings of a bass viol,—and around him, in the absolute darkness, one divines the presence of other smugglers similarly loaded, ready to start on an adventure.

It is now more than ever Ramuntcho's life, to run almost every night, especially on the cloudless and moonless nights when one sees nothing, when the Pyrenees are an immense chaos of shade. Amassing as much money as he can for his flight, he is in all the smuggling expeditions, as well in those that bring a suitable remuneration as in those where one risks death for a hundred cents. And ordinarily, Arrochkoa accompanies him, without necessity, in sport and for a whim.

They have become inseparable, Arrochkoa, Ramuntcho,—and they talk freely of their projects about Gracieuse, Arrochkoa seduced especially by the attraction of some fine prowess, by the joy of taking a nun away from the church, of undoing the plans of his old, hardened mother,—and Ramuntcho, in spite of his Christian scruples which affect him still, making of this dangerous project his only hope, his only reason for being and for acting. For a month, almost, the attempt has been decided upon in theory and, in their long talks in the December nights, on the roads where they walk, or in the corners of the village cider mills where they sit apart, the means of execution are discussed by them, as if the question was a simple frontier undertaking. They must act very quickly, concludes Arrochkoa always, they must act in the surprise of a first interview which shall be for Gracieuse a very disturbing thing; they must act without giving her time to think or to recant, they must try something like kidnapping—

"If you knew," he says, "what is that little convent of Amezqueta where they have placed her: four old, good sisters with her, in an isolated house!—I have my horse, you know, who gallops so quickly; once the nun is in a carriage with you, who can catch her?—"

And to-night they have resolved to take into their confidence Itchoua himself, a man accustomed to suspicious adventures, valuable in assaults at night, and who, for money, is capable of everything.

The place from which they start this time for the habitual smuggling expedition is named Landachkoa, and it is situated in France at ten minutes' distance from Spain. The inn, solitary and old, assumes as soon as the night falls, the air of a den of thieves; at this moment while the smugglers come out of one door, it is full of Spanish carbineers who have familiarly crossed the frontier to divert themselves here and who drink while singing. And the hostess, accustomed to these nocturnal affairs, has said joyfully, a moment ago, in Basque tongue to Itchoua's folks:

"It is all right! They are all drunk, you can go out!"

Go out! It is easier to advise than to do! You are drenched at the first steps and your feet slip on the mud, despite the aid of your sticks, on the stiff slopes of the paths. They do not see one another; they see nothing, neither the walls of the hamlet along which they pass nor the trees afterward, nor the rocks; they are like blind men, groping and slipping under a deluge, with the music of rain in their ears which makes them deaf.

And Ramuntcho, who makes this trip for the first time, has no idea of the passages which they are to go through, strikes here and there his load against black things which are branches of beeches, or slips with his two feet, falters, straightens up, catches himself by planting at random his iron-pointed stick in the soil. They are the last on the march, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, following the band by ear;—and those who precede them make no more noise with their sandals than wolves in a forest.

In all, fifteen smugglers on a distance of fifty metres, in the thick black of the mountain, under the incessant sprinkling of the shower; they carry boxes full of jewels, of watches, of chains, of rosaries, or bundles of Lyons silk, wrapped in oilcloth; in front, loaded with merchandise less valuable, walk two men who are the skirmishers, those who will attract, if necessary, the guns of the Spaniards and will then take flight, throwing away everything. All talk in a low voice, despite the drumming of the rain which already stifles sounds—

The one who precedes Ramuntcho turns round to warn him:

"Here is a torrent in front of us—" (Its presence would have been guessed by its noise louder than that of the rain—) "We must cross it!"

"Ah!—Cross it how? Wade in the water?—"

"No, the water is too deep. Follow us. There is a tree trunk over it."

Groping, Ramuntcho finds that tree trunk, wet, slippery and round. He stands, advancing on this monkey's bridge in a forest, carrying his heavy load, while under him the invisible torrent roars. And he crosses, none knows how, in the midst of this intensity of black and of this noise of water.

On the other shore they have to increase precaution and silence. There are no more mountain paths, frightful descents, under the night, more oppressing, of the woods. They have reached a sort of plain wherein the feet penetrate; the sandals attached to nervous legs cause a noise of beaten water. The eyes of the smugglers, their cat-like eyes, more and more dilated by the obscurity, perceive confusedly that there is free space around, that there is no longer the closing in of branches. They breathe better also and walk with a more regular pace that rests them—

But the bark of dogs immobilizes them all in a sudden manner, as if petrified under the shower. For a quarter of an hour they wait, without talking or moving; on their chests, the perspiration runs, mingled with the rain that enters by their shirt collars and falls to their belts.

By dint of listening, they hear the buzz of their ears, the beat of their own arteries.

And this tension of their senses is, in their trade, what they all like; it gives to them a sort of joy almost animal, it doubles the life of the muscles in them, who are beings of the past; it is a recall of the most primitive human impressions in the forests or the jungles of original epochs.—Centuries of civilization will be necessary to abolish this taste for dangerous surprises which impels certain children to play hide and seek, certain men to lie in ambush, to skirmish in wars, or to smuggle—

They have hushed, the watch-dogs, quieted or distracted, their attentive scent preoccupied by something else. The vast silence has returned, less reassuring, ready to break, perhaps, because beasts are watching. And, at a low command from Itchoua, the men begin again their march, slower and more hesitating, in the night of the plain, a little bent, a little lowered on their legs, like wild animals on the alert.

Before them is the Nivelle; they do not see it, since they see nothing, but they hear it run, and now long, flexible things are in the way of their steps, are crushed by their bodies: the reeds on the shores. The Nivelle is the frontier; they will have to cross it on a series of slippery rocks, leaping from stone to stone, despite the loads that make the legs heavy.

But before doing this they halt on the shore to collect themselves and rest a little. And first, they call the roll in a low voice: all are there. The boxes have been placed in the grass; they seem clearer spots, almost perceptible to trained eyes, while, on the darkness in the background, the men, standing, make long, straight marks, blacker than the emptiness of the plain. Passing by Ramuntcho, Itchoua has whispered in his ear:

"When will you tell me about your plan?"

"In a moment, at our return!—Oh, do not fear, Itchoua, I will tell you!"

At this moment when his chest is heaving and his muscles are in action, all his faculties doubled and exasperated by his trade, he does not hesitate, Ramuntcho; in the present exaltation of his strength and of his combativeness he knows no moral obstacles nor scruples. The idea which came to his accomplice to associate himself with Itchoua frightens him no longer. So much the worse! He will surrender to the advice of that man of stratagem and of violence, even if he must go to the extreme of kidnapping and housebreaking. He is, to-night, the rebel from whom has been taken the companion of his life, the adored one, the one who may not be replaced; he wants her, at the risk of everything.—And while he thinks of her, in the progressive languor of that halt, he desires her suddenly with his senses, in a young, savage outbreak, in a manner unexpected and sovereign—

The immobility is prolonged, the respirations are calmer. And, while the men shake their dripping caps, pass their hands on their foreheads to wipe out drops of rain and perspiration that veil the eyes, the first sensation of cold comes to them, of a damp and profound cold; their wet clothes chill them, their thoughts weaken; little by little a sort of torpor benumbs them in the thick darkness, under the incessant winter rain.

They are accustomed to this, trained to cold and to dampness, they are hardened prowlers who go to places where, and at hours when, other men never appear, they are inaccessible to vague frights of the darkness, they are capable of sleeping without shelter anywhere in the blackest of rainy nights, in dangerous marshes or hidden ravines—

Now the rest has lasted long enough. This is the decisive instant when the frontier is to be crossed. All muscles stiffen, ears stretch, eyes dilate.

First, the skirmishers; then, one after another, the bundle carriers, the box carriers, each one loaded with a weight of forty kilos, on the shoulders or on the head. Slipping here and there among the round rocks, stumbling in the water, everybody crosses, lands on the other shore. Here they are on the soil of Spain! They have to cross, without gunshots or bad meetings, a distance of two hundred metres to reach an isolated farm which is the receiving shop of the chief of the Spanish smugglers, and once more the game will have been played!

Naturally, it is without light, obscure and sinister, that farm. Noiselessly and groping they enter in a file; then, on the last who enter, enormous locks of the door are drawn. At last! Barricaded and rescued, all! And the treasury of the Queen Regent has been frustrated, again tonight, of a thousand francs—!

Then, fagots are lighted in the chimney, a candle on the table; they see one another, they recognize one another, smiling at the success. The security, the truce of rain over their heads, the flame that dances and warms, the cider and the whiskey that fill the glasses, bring back to these men noisy joy after compelled silence. They talk gaily, and the tall, white-haired, old chief who receives them all at this undue hour, announces that he will give to his village a beautiful square for the pelota game, the plans of which have been drawn and the cost of which will be ten thousand francs.

"Now, tell me your affair," insists Itchoua, in Ramuntcho's ear. "Oh, I suspect what it is! Gracieuse, eh?—That is it, is it not?—It is hard you know.—I do not like to do things against my religion, you know.—Then, I have my place as a chorister, which I might lose in such a game.—Let us see, how much money will you give me if I succeed?—"

He had foreseen, Ramuntcho, that this sombre aid would cost him a great deal, Itchoua being, in truth, a churchman, whose conscience would have to be bought; and, much disturbed, with a flush on his cheeks, Ramuntcho grants, after a discussion, a thousand francs. Anyway, if he is piling up money, it is only to get Gracieuse, and if enough remains for him to go to America with her, what matters it?—

And now that his secret is known to Itchoua, now that his cherished project is being elaborated in that obstinate and sharp brain, it seems to Ramuntcho that he has made a decisive step toward the execution of his plan, that all has suddenly become real and approaching. Then, in the midst of the lugubrious decay of the place, among these men who are less than ever similar to him, he isolates himself in an immense hope of love.

They drink for a last time together, all around, clinking their glasses loudly; then they start again, in the thick night and under the incessant rain, but this time on the highway, in a band and singing. Nothing in the hands, nothing in the pockets: they are now ordinary people, returning from a natural promenade.

In the rear guard, at a distance from the singers, Itchoua on his long legs walks with his hands resting on Ramuntcho's shoulder. Interested and ardent for success, since the sum has been agreed upon, Itchoua whispers in Ramuntcho's ear imperious advices. Like Arrochkoa, he wishes to act with stunning abruptness, in the surprise of a first interview which will occur in the evening, as late as the rule of a convent will permit, at an uncertain and twilight hour, when the village shall have begun to sleep.

"Above all," he says, "do not show yourself beforehand. She must not have seen you, she must not even know that you have returned home! You must not lose the advantage of surprise—"

While Ramuntcho listens and meditates in silence, the others, who lead the march, sing always the same old song that times their steps. And thus they re-enter Landachkoa, village of France, crossing the bridge of the Nivelle, under the beards of the Spanish carbineers.

They have no sort of illusion, the watching carbineers, about what these men, so wet, have been doing at an hour so black.



CHAPTER X.

The winter, the real winter, extended itself by degrees over the Basque land, after the few days of frost that had come to annihilate the annual plants, to change the deceptive aspect of the fields, to prepare the following spring.

And Ramuntcho acquired slowly his habits of one left alone; in his house, wherein he lived still, without anybody to serve him, he took care of himself, as in the colonies or in the barracks, knowing the thousand little details of housekeeping which careful soldiers practice. He preserved the pride of dress, dressed himself well, wore the ribbon of the brave at his buttonhole and a wide crape around his sleeve.

At first he was not assiduous at the village cider mill, where the men assembled in the cold evenings. In his three years of travel, of reading, of talking with different people, too many new ideas had penetrated his already open mind; among his former companions he felt more outcast than before, more detached from the thousand little things which composed their life.

Little by little, however, by dint of being alone, by dint of passing by the halls where the men drank,—on the window-panes of which a lamp always sketches the shadows of Basque caps,—he had made it a custom to go in and to sit at a table.

It was the season when the Pyrenean villages, freed from the visitors which the summers bring, imprisoned by the clouds, the mist, or the snow, are more intensely as they were in ancient times. In these cider mills—sole, little, illuminated points, living, in the midst of the immense, empty darkness of the fields—something of the spirit of former times is reanimated in winter evenings. In front of the large casks of cider arranged in lines in the background where it is dark, the lamp, hanging from the beams, throws its light on the images of saints that decorate the walls, on the groups of mountaineers who talk and who smoke. At times someone sings a plaintive song which came from the night of centuries; the beating of a tambourine recalls to life old, forgotten rhythms; a guitar reawakens a sadness of the epoch of the Moors.—Or, in the face of each other, two men, with castanets in their hands, suddenly dance the fandango, swinging themselves with an antique grace.

And, from these innocent, little inns, they retire early—especially in these bad, rainy nights—the darkness of which is so peculiarly propitious to smuggling, every one here having to do some clandestine thing on the Spanish side.

In such places, in the company of Arrochkoa, Ramuntcho talked over and commented upon his cherished, sacrilegious project; or,—during the beautiful moon-light nights which do not permit of undertakings on the frontier—they talked on the roads for a long time.

Persistent religions scruples made him hesitate a great deal, although he hardly realized it. They were inexplicable scruples, since he had ceased to be a believer. But all his will, all his audacity, all his life, were concentrated and directed, more and more, toward this unique end.

And the prohibition, ordered by Itchoua, from seeing Gracieuse before the great attempt, exasperated his impatient dream.

The winter, capricious as it is always in this country, pursued its unequal march, with, from time to time, surprises of sunlight and of heat. There were rains of a deluge, grand, healthy squalls which went up from the Bay of Biscay, plunged into the valleys, bending the trees furiously. And then, repetitions of the wind of the south, breaths as warm as in summer, breezes smelling of Africa, under a sky at once high and sombre, among mountains of an intense brown color. And also, glacial mornings, wherein one saw, at awakening, summits become snowy and white.

The desire often seized him to finish everything.—But he had the frightful idea that he might not succeed and might fall again, alone forever, without a hope in life.

Anyway, reasonable pretexts to wait were not lacking. He had to settle with men of affairs, he had to sell the house and realize, for his flight, all the money that he could obtain. He had also to wait for the answer of Uncle Ignacio, to whom he had announced his emigration and at whose house he expected to find an asylum.

Thus the days went by, and soon the hasty spring was to ferment. Already the yellow primrose and the blue gentian, in advance here by several weeks, were in bloom in the woods and along the paths, in the last suns of January—



CHAPTER XI.

They are this time in the cider mill of the hamlet of Gastelugain, near the frontier, waiting for the moment to go out with boxes of jewelry and weapons.

And it is Itchoua who is talking:

"If she hesitates—and she will not hesitate, be sure of it—but if she hesitates, well! we will kidnap her.—Let me arrange this, my plan is all made. It will be in the evening, you understand?—We will bring her anywhere and imprison her in a room with you.—If it turns out badly—if I am forced to quit the country after having done this thing to please you; then, you will have to give me more money than the amount agreed upon, you understand?—Enough, at least, to let me seek for my bread in Spain—"

"In Spain!—What? What are you going to do, Itchoua? I hope you have not in your head the idea to do things that are too grave."

"Oh, do not be afraid, my friend. I have no desire to assassinate anybody."

"Well! You talk of running away—"

"I said this as I would have said anything else, you know. For some time, business has been bad. And then, suppose the thing turns out badly and the police make an inquiry. Well, I would prefer to go, that is sure.—For whenever these men of justice put their noses into anything, they seek for things that happened long ago, and the inquiry never ends—"

In his eyes, suddenly expressive, appeared crime and fear. And Ramuntcho looked with an increase of anxiety at this man, who was believed to be solidly established in the country with lands in the sunlight, and who accepted so easily the idea of running away. What sort of a bandit is he then, to be so much afraid of justice?—And what could be these things that happened long ago?—After a silence between them, Ramuntcho said in a lower voice, with extreme distrust:

"Imprison her—you say this seriously, Itchoua?—And where imprison her, if you please? I have no castle to hide her in—"

Then Itchoua, with the smile of a faun which no one had seen before, tapped his shoulder:

"Oh, imprison her—for one night only, my son!—It will be enough, you may believe me.—They are all alike, you see: the first step costs; but the second one, they make it all alone, and quicker than you may think. Do you imagine that she would wish to return to the good sisters, afterward?—"

The desire to slap that dull face passed like an electric shock through the arm and the hand of Ramuntcho. He constrained himself, however, through a long habit of respectfulness for the old singer of the liturgies, and remained silent, with a flush on his cheeks, and his look turned aside. It revolted him to hear one talk thus of her—and surprised him that the one who spoke thus was that Itchoua whom he had always known as the quiet husband of an ugly and old woman. But the blow struck by the impertinent phrase followed nevertheless, in his imagination, a dangerous and unforeseen path.—Gracieuse, "imprisoned a room with him!" The immediate possibility of such a thing, so clearly presented with a rough and coarse word, made his head swim like a very violent liquor.

He loved her with too elevated a tenderness, his betrothed, to find pleasure in brutal hopes. Ordinarily, he expelled from his mind those images; but now that man had just placed them under his eye, with a diabolical crudity, and he felt shivers in his flesh, he trembled as if the weather were cold—

Oh, whether the adventure fell or not under the blow of justice, well, so much the worse, after all! He had nothing to lose, all was indifferent to him! And from that evening, in the fever of a new desire, he felt more boldly decided to brave the rules, the laws, the obstacles of this world. Saps ascended everywhere around him, on the sides of the brown Pyrenees; there were longer and more tepid nights; the paths were bordered with violets and periwinkles.—But religious scruples held him still. They remained, inexplicably in the depth of his disordered mind: instinctive horror of profanation; belief, in spite of everything, in something supernatural enveloping, to defend them, churches and cloisters—



CHAPTER XII.

The winter had just come to an end.

Ramuntcho,—who had slept for a few hours, in a bad, tired sleep, in a small room of the new house of his friend Florentino, at Ururbil,—awakened as the day dawned.

The night,—a night of tempest everywhere, a black and troubled night,—had been disastrous for the smugglers. Near Cape Figuier, in the rocks where they had just landed from the sea with silk bundles, they had been pursued with gunshots, compelled to throw away their loads, losing everything, some fleeing to the mountain, others escaping by swimming among the breakers, in order to reach the French shore, in terror of the prisons of San Sebastian.

At two o'clock in the morning, exhausted, drenched and half drowned, he had knocked at the door of that isolated house, to ask from the good Florentino his aid and an asylum.

And on awakening, after all the nocturnal noise of the equinoctial storm, of the rain, of the groaning branches, twisted and broken, he perceived that a grand silence had come. Straining his ear, he could hear no longer the immense breath of the western wind, no longer the motion of all those things tormented in the darkness. No, nothing except a far-off noise, regular, powerful, continued and formidable; the roll of the waters in the depth of that Bay of Biscay—which, since the beginning, is without truce and troubled; a rhythmic groan, as might be the monstrous respiration of the sea in its sleep; a series of profound blows which seemed the blows of a battering ram on a wall, continued every time by a music of surf on the beaches.—But the air, the trees and the surrounding things were immovable; the tempest had finished, without reasonable cause, as it had begun, and the sea alone prolonged the complaint of it.

To look at that land, that Spanish coast which he would perhaps never see again, since his departure was so near, he opened his window on the emptiness, still pale, on the virginity of the desolate dawn.

A gray light emanating from a gray sky; everywhere the same immobility, tired and frozen, with uncertainties of aspect derived from the night and from dreams. An opaque sky, which had a solid air and was made of accumulated, small, horizontal layers, as if one had painted it by superposing pastes of dead colors.

And underneath, mountains black brown; then Fontarabia in a morose silhouette, its old belfry appearing blacker and more worn by the years. At that hour, so early and so freshly mysterious, when the ears of most men are not yet open, it seemed as if one surprised things in their heartbreaking colloquy of lassitude and of death, relating to one another, at the first flush of dawn, all that they do not say when the day has risen.—What was the use of resisting the storm of last night? said the old belfry, sad and weary, standing in the background in the distance; what was the use, since other storms will come, eternally others, other storms and other tempests, and since I will pass away, I whom men have elevated as a signal of prayer to remain here for incalculable years?—I am already only a spectre, come from some other time; I continue to ring ceremonies and illusory festivals; but men will soon cease to be lured by them; I ring also knells, I have rung so many knells for thousands of dead persons whom nobody remembers! And I remain here, useless, under the effort, almost eternal, of all those western winds which blow from the sea—

At the foot of the belfry, the church, drawn in gray tints, with an air of age and abandonment, confessed also that it was empty, that it was vain, peopled only by poor images made of wood or of stone, by myths without comprehension, without power and without pity. And all the houses, piously grouped for centuries around it, avowed that its protection was not efficacious against death, that it was deceptive and untruthful—

And especially the clouds, the clouds and the mountains, covered with their immense, mute attestation what the old city murmured beneath them; they confirmed in silence the sombre truths: heaven empty as the churches are, serving for accidental phantasmagoria, and uninterrupted times rolling their flood, wherein thousands of lives, like insignificant nothings, are, one after another, dragged and drowned.—A knell began to ring in that distance which Ramuntcho saw whitening; very slowly, the old belfry gave its voice, once more, for the end of a life; someone was in the throes of death on the other side of the frontier, some Spanish soul over there was going out, in the pale morning, under the thickness of those imprisoning clouds—and he had almost the precise notion that this soul would very simply follow its body in the earth which decomposes—

And Ramuntcho contemplated and listened. At the little window of that Basque house, which before him had sheltered only generations of simple-minded and confident people, leaning on the wide sill which the rubbing of elbows had worn, pushing the old shutter painted green, he rested his eyes on the dull display of that corner of the world which had been his and which he was to quit forever. Those revelations which things made, his uncultured mind heard them for the first time and he lent to them a frightened attention. An entire new labor of unbelief was going on suddenly in his mind, prepared by heredity to doubts and to worry. An entire vision came to him, sudden and seemingly definitive, of the nothingness of religions, of the nonexistence of the divinities whom men supplicate.

And then—since there was nothing, how simple it was to tremble still before the white Virgin, chimerical protector of those convents where girls are imprisoned—!

The poor agony bell, which exhausted itself in ringing over there so puerilely to call for useless prayers, stopped at last, and, under the closed sky, the respiration of the grand waters alone was heard in the distance, in the universal silence. But the things continued, in the uncertain dawn, their dialogue without words: nothing anywhere; nothing in the old churches venerated for so long a time; nothing in the sky where clouds and mists amass; but always, in the flight of times, the eternal and exhausting renewal of beings; and always and at once, old age, death, ashes—

That is what they were saying, in the pale half light, the things so dull and so tired. And Ramuntcho, who had heard, pitied himself for having hesitated so long for imaginary reasons. To himself he swore, with a harsher despair, that this morning he was decided; that he would do it, at the risk of everything; that nothing would make him hesitate longer.



CHAPTER XIII.

Weeks have elapsed, in preparations, in anxious uncertainties on the manner of acting, in abrupt changes of plans and ideas.

Between times, the reply of Uncle Ignacio has reached Etchezar. If his nephew had spoken sooner, Ignacio has written, he would have been glad to receive him at his house; but, seeing how he hesitated, Ignacio had decided to take a wife, although he is already an old man, and now he has a child two months old. Therefore, there is no protection to be expected from that side; the exile, when he arrives there, may not find even a home—