It is eleven o'clock now, and the bells of France and Spain mingle above
the frontier their religious festival vibrations.
Bathed, rested, and in Sunday dress, Ramuntcho was going with his mother
to the high mass of All-Saints' Day. On the path, strewn with reddish
leaves, they descended toward their parish, under a warm sun which gave
to them the illusion of summer.
He, dressed in a manner almost elegant and like a city denizen, save for
the traditional Basque cap, which he wore on the side and pulled down
like a visor over his childish eyes. She, straight and proud, her head
high, her demeanor distinguished, in a gown of new form; having the air
of a society woman, except for the mantilla; made of black cloth, which
covered her hair and her shoulders. In the great city formerly she had
learned how to dress--and anyway, in the Basque country, where so many
ancient traditions have been preserved, the women and the girls of the
least important villages have all taken the habit of dressing in the
fashion of the day, with an elegance unknown to the peasants of the
other French provinces.
They separated, as etiquette ordains, in the yard of the church, where
the immense cypress trees smelled of the south and the Orient. It
resembled a mosque from the exterior, their parish, with its tall, old,
ferocious walls, pierced at the top only by diminutive windows, with its
warm color of antiquity, of dust and of sun.
While Franchita entered by one of the lower doors, Ramuntcho went up
a venerable stone stairway which led one from the exterior wall to the
high tribunes reserved for men.
The extremity of the sombre church was of dazzling old gold, with a
profusion of twisted columns, of complicated entablements, of statues
with excessive convolutions and with draperies in the style of the
Spanish Renaissance. And this magnificence of the tabernacle was in
contrast with the simplicity of the lateral walls, simply kalsomined.
But an air of extreme old age harmonized these things, which one felt
were accustomed for centuries to endure in the face of one another.
It was early still, and people were hardly arriving for this high mass.
Leaning on the railing of his tribune, Ramuntcho looked at the women
entering, all like black phantoms, their heads and dress concealed under
the mourning cashmere which it is usual to wear at church. Silent and
collected, they glided on the funereal pavement of mortuary slabs, where
one could read still, in spite of the effacing of ages, inscriptions
in Euskarian tongue, names of extinguished families and dates of past
centuries.
Gracieuse, whose coming preoccupied Ramuntcho, was late. But, to
distract his mind for a moment, a “convoy” advanced slowly; a convoy,
that is a parade of parents and nearest neighbors of one who had died
during the week, the men still draped in the long cape which is worn at
funerals, the women under the mantle and the traditional hood of full
mourning.
Above, in the two immense tribunes superposed along the sides of the
nave, the men came one by one to take their places, grave and with
rosaries in their hands: farmers, laborers, cowboys, poachers or
smugglers, all pious and ready to kneel when the sacred bell rang. Each
one of them, before taking his seat, hooked behind him, to a nail on the
wall, his woolen cap, and little by little, on the white background of
the kalsomine, came into line rows of innumerable Basque headgear.
Below, the little girls of the school entered at last, in good order,
escorted by the Sisters of Saint Mary of the Rosary. And, among these
nuns, wrapped in black, Ramuntcho recognized Gracieuse. She, too, had
her head enveloped with black; her blonde hair, which to-night would be
flurried in the breeze of the fandango, was hidden for the moment under
the austere mantilla of the ceremony. Gracieuse had not been a scholar
for two years, but was none the less the intimate friend of the sisters,
her teachers, ever in their company for songs, novenas, or decorations
of white flowers around the statues of the Holy Virgin.--Then, the
priests, in their most sumptuous costumes, appeared in front of
the magnificent gold of the tabernacle, on a platform elevated and
theatrical, and the mass began, celebrated, in this distant village,
with excessive pomp as in a great city. There were choirs of small
boys chanting in infantile voices with a savage ardor. Then choruses of
little girls, whom a sister accompanied at the harmonium and which the
clear and fresh voice of Gracieuse guided. From time to time a clamor
came, like a storm, from the tribunes above where the men were,
a formidable response animated the old vaults, the old sonorous
wainscoting, which for centuries have vibrated with the same song.--
To do the same things which for numberless ages the ancestors have done
and to tell blindly the same words of faith, are indications of supreme
wisdom, are a supreme force. For all the faithful who sang there came
from this immutable ceremony of the mass a sort of peace, a confused but
soft resignation to coming destruction. Living of the present hour, they
lost a little of their ephemeral personality to attach themselves better
to the dead lying under the slabs and to continue them more exactly, to
form with them and their future descendants only one of these resisting
entireties, of almost infinite duration, which is called a race.