“Ite missa est!” The high mass is finished and the antique church is
emptying. Outside, in the yard, among the tombs, the assistants scatter.
And all the joy of a sunny noon greets them, as they come out of the
sombre nave where each, according to his naive faculties, had caught
more or less a glimpse of the great mystery and of the inevitable death.
Wearing all the uniform national cap, the men come down the exterior
stairway; the women, slower to be captivated by the lure of the blue
sky, retaining still under the mourning veil a little of the dream of
the church, come out of the lower porticoes in black troops; around a
grave freshly closed, some stop and weep.
The southern wind, which is the great magician of the Basque country,
blows softly. The autumn of yesterday has gone and it is forgotten.
Lukewarm breaths pass through the air, vivifying, healthier than those
of May, having the odor of hay and the odor of flowers. Two singers of
the highway are there, leaning on the graveyard wall, and they intone,
with a tambourine and a guitar, an old seguidilla of Spain, bringing
here the warm and somewhat Arabic gaieties of the lands beyond the
frontiers.
And in the midst of all this intoxication of the southern November,
more delicious in this country than the intoxication of the spring,
Ramuntcho, having come down one of the first, watches the coming out of
the sisters in order to greet Gracieuse.
The sandal peddler has come also to this closing of the mass, and
displays among the roses of the tombs his linen foot coverings
ornamented with woolen flowers. Young men, attracted by the dazzling
embroideries, gather around him to select colors.
The bees and the flies buzz as in June; the country has become again,
for a few hours, for a few days, for as long as this wind will blow,
luminous and warm. In front of the mountains, which have assumed violent
brown or sombre green tints, and which seem to have advanced to-day
until they overhang the church, houses of the village appear in relief,
very neat, very white under their coat of kalsomine,--old Pyrenean
houses with their wooden balconies and on their walls intercrossings of
beams in the fashion of the olden time. In the southwest, the visible
portion of Spain, the denuded and red peak familiar to smugglers, stands
straight and near in the beautiful clear sky.
Gracieuse does not appear yet, retarded doubtless by the nuns in
some altar service. As for Franchita, who never mingles in the Sunday
festivals, she takes the path to her house, silent and haughty, after a
smile to her son, whom she will not see again until to-night after the
dances have come to an end.
A group of young men, among whom is the vicar who has just taken off his
golden ornaments, forms itself at the threshold of the church, in
the sun, and seems to be plotting grave projects.--They are the great
players of the country, the fine flower of the lithe and the strong; it
is for the pelota game of the afternoon that they are consulting, and
they make a sign to Ramuntcho who pensively comes to them. Several old
men come also and surround them, caps crushed on white hair and faces
clean shaven like those of monks: champions of the olden time, still
proud of their former successes, and sure that their counsel shall be
respected in the national game, which the men here attend with pride
as on a field of honor.--After a courteous discussion, the game is
arranged; it will be immediately after vespers; they will play the
“blaid” with the wicker glove, and the six selected champions, divided
into two camps, shall be the vicar, Ramuntcho and Arrochkoa, Gracieuse's
brother, against three famous men of the neighboring villages: Joachim
of Mendiazpi; Florentino of Espelette, and Irrubeta of Hasparren--
Now comes the “convoy”, which comes out of the church and passes by
them, so black in this feast of light, and so archaic, with the envelope
of its capes, of its caps and of its veils. They are expressive of the
Middle Age, these people, while they pass in a file, the Middle Age
whose shadow the Basque country retains. And they express, above all,
death, as the large funereal slabs, with which the nave is paved,
express it, as the cypress trees and the tombs express it, and all the
things in this place, where the men come to pray, express it: death,
always death.--But a death very softly neighboring life, under the
shield of the old consoling symbols--for life is there marked also,
almost equally sovereign, in the warm rays which light up the cemetery,
in the eyes of the children who play among the roses of autumn, in
the smile of those beautiful brown girls who, the mass being finished,
return with steps indolently supple toward the village; in the muscles
of all this youthfulness of men, alert and vigorous, who shall soon
exercise at the ball-game their iron legs and arms.--And of this group
of old men and of boys at the threshold of a church, of this mingling,
so peacefully harmonious, of death and of life, comes the benevolent
lesson, the teaching that one must enjoy in time strength and love;
then, without obstinacy in enduring, submit to the universal law of
passing and dying, repeating with confidence, like these simple-minded
and wise men, the same prayers by which the agonies of the ancestors
were cradled.--
It is improbably radiant, the sun of noon in this yard of the dead.
The air is exquisite and one becomes intoxicated by breathing it. The
Pyrenean horizons have been swept of their clouds, their least
vapors, and it seems as if the wind of the south had brought here the
limpidities of Andalusia or of Africa.
The Basque guitar and tambourine accompany the sung seguilla, which the
beggars of Spain throw, like a slight irony into this lukewarm breeze,
above the dead. And boys and girls think of the fandango of to-night,
feel ascending in them the desire and the intoxication of dancing.--
At last here come the sisters, so long expected by Ramuntcho; with
them advance Gracieuse and her mother, Dolores, who is still in widow's
weeds, her face invisible under a black cape closed by a crape veil.
What can this Dolores be plotting with the Mother Superior?--Ramuntcho,
knowing that these two women are enemies, is astonished and disquiet
to-day to see them walk side by side. Now they even stop to talk aside,
so important and secret doubtless is what they are saying; their similar
black caps, overhanging like wagon-hoods, touch each other and they talk
sheltered under them; a whispering of phantoms, one would say, under
a sort of little black vault.--And Ramuntcho has the sentiment of
something hostile plotted against him under these two wicked caps.
When the colloquy comes to an end, he advances, touches his cap for a
salute, awkward and timid suddenly in presence of this Dolores, whose
harsh look under the veil he divines. This woman is the only person in
the world who has the power to chill him, and, never elsewhere than in
her presence, he feels weighing upon him the blemish of being the child
of an unknown father, of wearing no other name than that of his mother.
To-day, however, to his great surprise, she is more cordial than usual,
and she says with a voice almost amiable: “Good-morning, my boy!” Then
he goes to Gracieuse, to ask her with a brusque anxiety: “To-night, at
eight o'clock, say if you will be on the square to dance with me?”
For some time, every Sunday had brought to him the same fear of being
deprived of dancing with her in the evening. In the week he hardly ever
saw her. Now that he was becoming a man, the only occasion for him to
have her company was this ball on the green of the square, in the light
of the stars or of the moon.
They had fallen in love with each other five years ago, Ramuntcho and
Gracieuse, when they were still children. And such loves, when by chance
the awakening of the senses confirms instead of destroying them, become
in young heads something sovereign and exclusive.
They had never thought of saying this to each other, they knew it so
well; never had they talked together of the future which did not appear
possible to one without the other. And the isolation of this mountain
village where they lived, perhaps also the hostility of Dolores to their
naive, unexpressed projects, brought them more closely together--
“To-night, at eight o'clock, say if you will be on the square to dance
with me?”
“Yes--” replies the little girl, fixing on her friend eyes of sadness, a
little frightened, as well as of ardent tenderness.
“Sure?” asked Ramuntcho again, whom these eyes make anxious.
“Yes, sure!”
So, he is quieted again this time, knowing that if Gracieuse has said
and decided something one may count on it. And at once the weather seems
to him more beautiful, the Sunday more amusing, life more charming--
The dinner hour calls the Basques now to the houses or to the inns, and,
under the light, somewhat gloomy, of the noon sun, the village seems
deserted.
Ramuntcho goes to the cider mill which the smugglers and pelota players
frequent. There, he sits at a table, his cap still drawn over his eyes,
with his friends: Arrochkoa, two or three others of the mountains and
the somber Itchoua, their chief.
A festive meal is prepared for them, with fish of the Nivelle, ham and
hares. In the foreground of the hall, vast and dilapidated, near the
windows, are the tables, the oak benches on which they are seated; in
the background, in a penumbra, are the enormous casks filled with new
cider.
In this band of Ramuntcho, which is there entire, under the piercing
eye of its chief, reigns an emulation of audacity and a reciprocal,
fraternal devotion; during their night expeditions especially, they are
all one to live or to die.
Leaning heavily, benumbed in the pleasure of resting after the fatigues
of the night and concentrated in the expectation of satiating their
robust hunger, they are silent at first, hardly raising their heads to
look through the window-panes at the passing girls. Two are very young,
almost children like Ramuntcho: Arrochkoa and Florentino. The others
have, like Itchoua, hardened faces, eyes in ambuscade under the frontal
arcade, expressing no certain age; their aspect reveals a past of
fatigues, in the unreasonable obstinacy to pursue this trade of
smuggling, which hardly gives bread to the less skilful.
Then, awakened little by little by the smoking dishes, by the sweet
cider, they talk; soon their words interlace, light, rapid and sonorous,
with an excessive rolling of the _r_. They talk in their mysterious
language, the origin of which is unknown and which seems to the men of
the other countries in Europe more distant than Mongolian or Sanskrit.
They tell stories of the night and of the frontier, stratagems newly
invented and astonishing deceptions of Spanish carbineers. Itchoua, the
chief, listens more than he talks; one hears only at long intervals his
profound voice of a church singer vibrate. Arrochkoa, the most elegant
of all, is in striking contrast with his comrades of the mountain. (His
name was Jean Detcharry, but he was known only by his surname, which the
elders of his family transmitted from father to son for centuries.) A
smuggler for his pleasure, he, without any necessity, and possessing
beautiful lands in the sunlight; the face fresh and pretty, the blonde
mustache turned up in the fashion of cats, the eye feline also, the
eye caressing and fleeting; attracted by all that succeeds, by all that
amuses, by all that shines; liking Ramuntcho for his triumphs in the
ball-game, and quite disposed to give to him the hand of his sister,
Gracieuse, even if it were only to oppose his mother, Dolores. And
Florentino, the other great friend of Ramuntcho is, on the contrary,
the humblest of the band; an athletic, reddish fellow, with wide and
low forehead, with good eyes of resignation, soft as those of beasts of
burden; without father or mother, possessing nothing in the world except
a threadbare costume and three pink cotton shirts; unique lover of a
little fifteen year old orphan, as poor as he and as primitive.
At last Itchoua deigns to talk in his turn. He relates, in a tone of
mystery and of confidence, a certain tale of the time of his youth, in
a black night, on the Spanish territory, in the gorges of Andarlaza.
Seized by two carbineers at the turn in a dark path, he had disengaged
himself by drawing his knife to stab a chest with it: half a second,
a resisting flesh, then, crack! the blade entering brusquely, a jet of
warm blood on his hand, the man fallen, and he, fleeing in the obscure
rocks--
And the voice which says these things with implacable tranquility, is
the same which for years sings piously every Sunday the liturgy in the
old sonorous church,--so much so that it seems to retain a religious and
almost sacred character--!
“When you are caught”--adds the speaker, scrutinizing them all with his
eyes, become piercing again--“When you are caught--What is the life of a
man worth in such a case? You would not hesitate, either, I suppose, if
you were caught--?”
“Sure not,” replied Arrochkoa, in a tone of infantile bravado, “Sure
not! In such a case to take the life of a carabinero no one would
hesitate!--”
The debonair Florentino, turned from Itchoua his disapproving eyes.
Florentino would hesitate; he would not kill. This is divined in the
expression of his face.
“You would not hesitate,” repeated Itchoua, scrutinizing Ramuntcho this
time in a special manner; “you would not hesitate, either, I suppose, if
you were caught, would you?”
“Surely,” replied Ramuntcho, submissively. “Oh, no, surely--”
But his look, like that of Florentino, has turned from Itchoua. A terror
comes to him of this man, of this imperious and cold influence, so
completely felt already; an entire soft and refined side of his nature
is awakened, made disquiet and in revolt.
Silence has followed the tale, and Itchoua, discontented with the effect
of it, proposes a song in order to change the course of ideas.
The purely material well-being which comes after dinner, the cider which
has been drunk, the cigarettes which are lighted and the songs that
begin, bring back quickly confident joy in these children's heads.
And then, there are in the band the two brothers Iragola, Marcos and
Joachim, young men of the mountain above Mendiazpi, who are renowned
extemporary speakers in the surrounding country and it is a pleasure to
hear them, on any subject, compose and sing verses which are so pretty.
“Let us see,” says Itchoua, “you, Marcos, are a sailor who wishes to
pass his life on the ocean and seek fortune in America; you, Joachim,
are a farm hand who prefers not to quit his village and his soil here.
Each of you will discuss alternately, in couplets of equal length, the
pleasures of his trade to the tune--to the tune of the 'Iru Damacho'. Go
on.”
They looked at each other, the two brothers, half turned toward each
other on the oak bench where they sit; an instant of reflection, during
which an imperceptible agitation of the eyelids alone betrays the
working of their minds; then, brusquely Marcos, the elder, begins, and
they will never stop. With their shaven cheeks, their handsome profiles,
their chins which advance somewhat imperiously above the powerful
muscles of the neck, they recall, in their grave immobility, the figures
engraved on the Roman medals. They sing with a certain effort of the
throat, like the muezzins in the mosques, in high tones. When one has
finished his couplet, without a second of hesitation or silence, the
other begins; more and more their minds are animated and inflamed.
Around the smugglers' table many other caps have gathered and all listen
with admiration to the witty or sensible things which the two brothers
know how to say, ever with the needed cadence and rhyme.
At the twentieth stanza, at last, Itchoua interrupts them to make them
rest and he orders more cider.
“How have you learned?” asked Ramuntcho of the Iragola brothers. “How
did the knack come to you?”
“Oh!” replies Marcos, “it is a family trait, as you must know. Our
father, our grandfather were extemporary composers who were heard with
pleasure in all the festivals of the Basque country, and our mother also
was the daughter of a grand improvisator of the village of Lesaca. And
then, every evening in taking back the oxen or in milking the cows, we
practice, or at the fireside on winter nights. Yes, every evening, we
make compositions in this way on subjects which one of us imagines, and
it is our greatest pleasure--”
But when Florentino's turn to sing comes he, knowing only the old
refrains of the mountain, intones in an Arabic falsetto voice the
complaint of the linen weaver; and then Ramuntcho, who had sung it
the day before in the autumn twilight, sees again the darkened sky of
yesterday, the clouds full of rain, the cart drawn by oxen going down
into a sad and closed valley, toward a solitary farm--and suddenly the
unexplained anguish returns to him, the one which he had before; the
fear of living and of passing thus always in these same villages, under
the oppression of these same mountains; the notion and the confused
desire for other places; the anxiety for unknown distances--His eyes,
become lifeless and fixed, look inwardly; for several strange minutes
he feels that he is an exile, from what country he does not know,
disinherited, of what he does not know, sad in the depths of his soul;
between him and the men who surround him have come suddenly irreducible,
hereditary barriers--
Three o'clock. It is the hour when vespers, the last office of the day,
comes to an end; the hour when leave the church, in a meditation grave
as that of the morning, all the mantillas of black cloth concealing the
beautiful hair of the girls and the form of their waists, all the
woolen caps similarly lowered on the shaven faces of men, on their eyes
piercing or somber, still plunged in the old time dreams.
It is the hour when the games are to begin, the dances, the pelota and
the fandango. All this is traditional and immutable.
The light of the day becomes more golden, one feels the approach of
night. The church, suddenly empty, forgotten, where persists the odor
of incense, becomes full of silence, and the old gold of the background
shines mysteriously in the midst of more shade; silence also is
scattered around on the tranquil enclosure of the dead, where the folks
this time passed without stopping, in their haste to go elsewhere.
On the square of the ball-game, people are beginning to arrive from
everywhere, from the village itself and from the neighboring hamlets,
from the huts of the shepherds or of the smugglers who perch above,
on the harsh mountains. Hundreds of Basque caps, all similar, are now
reunited, ready to judge the players, to applaud or to murmur; they
discuss the chances, comment upon the relative strength of the players
and make big bets of money. And young girls, young women gather also,
having nothing of the awkwardness of the peasants in other provinces of
France, elegant, refined, graceful in costumes of the new fashions;
some wearing on their hair the silk kerchief, rolled and arranged like
a small cap; others bareheaded, their hair dressed in the most
modern manner; most of them pretty, with admirable eyes and very long
eyebrows--This square, always solemn and ordinarily somewhat sad, is
filled to-day, Sunday, with a lively and gay crowd.
The most insignificant hamlet in the Basque country has a square for
the ball-game, large, carefully kept, in general near the church, under
oaks.
But here, this is a central point and something like the Conservatory of
French ball-players, of those who become celebrated, in South America
as well as in the Pyrenees, and who, in the great international games,
oppose the champions of Spain. So the place is particularly beautiful
and pompous, surprising in so distant a village. It is paved with large
stones, between which grass grows expressing its antiquity and giving
to it an air of being abandoned. On the two sides are extended, for the
spectators, long benches--made of the red granite of the neighboring
mountain and, at this moment, all overgrown with autumn scabwort.
And in the back, the old monumental wall rises, against which the balls
will strike. It has a rounded front which seems to be the silhouette
of a dome and bears this inscription, half effaced by time: “Blaidka
haritzea debakatua.” (The blaid game is forbidden.)
Still, the day's game is to be the blaid; but the venerable inscription
dates from the time of the splendor of the national game, degenerated at
present, as all things degenerate. It had been placed there to preserve
the tradition of the “rebot”, a more difficult game, exacting more
agility and strength, and which has been perpetuated only in the Spanish
province of Guipuzcoa.
While the graded benches are filling up, the paved square, which the
grass makes green, and which has seen the lithe and the vigorous men
of the country run since the days of old, remains empty. The beautiful
autumn sun, at its decline, warms and lights it. Here and there some
tall oaks shed their leaves above the seated spectators. Beyond are the
high church and the cypress trees, the entire sacred corner, from which
the saints and the dead seem to be looking at a distance, protecting the
players, interested in this game which is the passion still of an entire
race and characterises it--
At last they enter the arena, the Pelotaris, the six champions among
whom is one in a cassock: the vicar of the parish. With him are some
other personages: the crier, who, in an instant, will sing the points;
the five judges, selected among the experts of different villages to
intervene in cases of litigation, and some others carrying extra balls
and sandals. At the right wrist the players attach with thongs a strange
wicker thing resembling a large, curved fingernail which lengthens the
forearm by half. It is with this glove (manufactured in France by a
unique basket-maker of the village of Ascain) that they will have
to catch, throw and hurl the pelota,--a small ball of tightened cord
covered with sheepskin, which is as hard as a wooden ball.
Now they try the balls, selecting the best, limbering, with a few
points that do not count, their athletic arms. Then, they take off their
waistcoats and carry them to preferred spectators; Ramuntcho gives
his to Gracieuse, seated in the first row on the lower bench. And all,
except the priest, who will play in his black gown, are in battle array,
their chests at liberty in pink cotton shirts or light thread fleshings.
The assistants know them well, these players; in a moment, they shall be
excited for or against them and will shout at them, frantically, as it
happens with the toreadors.
At this moment the village is entirely animated by the spirit of the
olden time; in its expectation of the pleasure, in its liveliness, in
its ardor, it is intensely Basque and very old,--under the great shade
of the Gizune, the overhanging mountain, which throws over it a twilight
charm.
And the game begins in the melancholy evening. The ball, thrown with
much strength, flies, strikes the wall in great, quick blows, then
rebounds, and traverses the air with the rapidity of a bullet.
This wall in the background, rounded like a dome's festoon on the sky,
has become little by little crowned with heads of children,--little
Basques, little cats, ball-players of the future, who soon will
precipitate themselves like a flight of birds, to pick up the ball every
time when, thrown too high, it will go beyond the square and fall in the
fields.
The game becomes gradually warmer as arms and legs are limbered, in an
intoxication of movement and swiftness. Already Ramuntcho is acclaimed.
And the vicar also shall be one of the fine players of the day, strange
to look upon with his leaps similar to those of a cat, and his athletic
gestures, imprisoned in his priest's gown.
This is the rule of the game: when one of the champions of the two
camps lets the ball fall, it is a point earned by the adverse camp,--and
ordinarily the limit is sixty points. After each point, the titled crier
chants with a full voice in his old time tongue: “The but has so much,
the refil has so much, gentlemen!” (The but is the camp which played
first, the refil is the camp opposed to the but.) And the crier's long
clamor drags itself above the noise of the crowd, which approves or
murmurs.
On the square, the zone gilt and reddened by the sun diminishes, goes,
devoured by the shade; more and more the great screen of the Gizune
predominates over everything, seems to enclose in this little corner
of the world at its feet, the very special life and the ardor of these
mountaineers--who are the fragments of a people very mysteriously
unique, without analogy among nations--The shade of night marches
forward and invades in silence, soon it will be sovereign; in the
distance only a few summits still lighted above so many darkened
valleys, are of a violet luminous and pink.
Ramuntcho plays as, in his life, he had never played before; he is
in one of those instants when one feels tempered by strength, light,
weighing nothing, and when it is a pure joy to move, to extend one's
arms, to leap. But Arrochkoa weakens, the vicar is fettered two or three
times by his black cassock, and the adverse camp, at first distanced,
little by little catches up, then, in presence of this game so
valiantly disputed, clamor redoubles and caps fly in the air, thrown by
enthusiastic hands.
Now the points are equal on both sides; the crier announces thirty for
each one of the rival camps and he sings the old refrain which is of
tradition immemorial in such cases: “Let bets come forward! Give drink
to the judges and to the players.” It is the signal for an instant of
rest, while wine shall be brought into the arena at the cost of the
village. The players sit down, and Ramuntcho takes a place beside
Gracieuse, who throws on his shoulders, wet with perspiration, the
waistcoat which she was keeping for him, Then he asks of his little
friend to undo the thongs which hold the glove of wood, wicker and
leather on his reddened arm. And he rests in the pride of his success,
seeing only smiles of greeting on the faces of the girls at whom he
looks. But he sees also, on the side opposed to the players' wall, on
the side of the approaching darkness, the archaic assemblage of Basque
houses, the little square of the village with its kalsomined porches and
its old plane-trees, then the old, massive belfry of the church, and,
higher than everything, dominating everything, crushing everything, the
abrupt mass of the Gizune from which comes so much shade, from which
descends on this distant village so hasty an impression of night--Truly
it encloses too much, that mountain, it imprisons, it impresses--And
Ramuntcho, in his juvenile triumph, is troubled by the sentiment of
this, by this furtive and vague attraction of other places so often
mingled with his troubles and with his joys--
The game continues and his thoughts are lost in the physical
intoxication of beginning the struggle again. From instant to instant,
clack! the snap of the pelotas, their sharp noise against the glove
which throws them or the wall which receives them, their same noise
giving the notion of all the strength displayed--Clack! it will snap
till the hour of twilight, the pelota, animated furiously by arms
powerful and young. At times the players, with a terrible shock, stop it
in its flight, with a shock that would break other muscles than theirs.
Most often, sure of themselves, they let it quietly touch the soil,
almost die: it seems as if they would never catch it: and clack! it goes
off, however, caught just in time, thanks to a marvellous precision of
the eye, and strikes the wall, ever with the rapidity of a bullet--When
it wanders on the benches, on the mass of woolen caps and of pretty hair
ornamented with silk kerchiefs, all the heads then, all the bodies,
are lowered as if moved by the wind of its passage: for it must not be
touched, it must not be stopped, as long as it is living and may
still be caught; then, when it is really lost, dead, some one of the
assistants does himself the honor to pick it up and throw it back to the
players.
The night falls, falls, the last golden colors scatter with serene
melancholy over the highest summits of the Basque country. In the
deserted church, profound silence is established and antique images
regard one another alone through the invasion of night--Oh! the sadness
of ends of festivals, in very isolated villages, as soon as the sun
sets--!
Meanwhile Ramuntcho is more and more the great conqueror. And the
plaudits, the cries, redouble his happy boldness; each time he makes a
point the men, standing now on the old, graded, granite benches, acclaim
him with southern fury.
The last point, the sixtieth--It is Ramuntcho's and he has won the game!
Then there is a sudden crumbling into the arena of all the Basque caps
which ornamented the stone amphitheatre; they press around the players
who have made themselves immovable, suddenly, in tired attitudes. And
Ramuntcho unfastens the thongs of his glove in the middle of a crowd of
expansive admirers; from all sides, brave and rude hands are stretched
to grasp his or to strike his shoulder amicably.
“Have you asked Gracieuse to dance with you this evening?” asks
Arrochkoa, who in this instant would do anything for him.
“Yes, when she came out of the high mass I spoke to her--She has
promised.”
“Good! I feared that mother--Oh! I would have arranged it, in any case;
you may believe me.”
A robust old man with square shoulders, with square jaws, with a
beardless, monkish face, before whom all bowed with respect, comes also:
it is Haramburu, a player of the olden time who was celebrated half a
century ago in America for the game of rebot, and who earned a small
fortune. Ramuntcho blushes with pleasure at the compliment of this old
man, who is hard to please. And beyond, standing on the reddish benches,
among the long grasses and the November scabwort, his little friend,
whom a group of young girls follows, turns back to smile at him, to
send to him with her hand a gentle adios in the Spanish fashion. He is a
young god in this moment, Ramuntcho; people are proud to know him, to
be among his friends, to get his waistcoat for him, to talk to him, to
touch him.
Now, with the other pelotaris, he goes to the neighboring inn, to a
room where are placed the clean clothes of all and where careful friends
accompany them to rub their bodies, wet with perspiration.
And, a moment afterward, elegant in a white shirt, his cap on the side,
he comes out of the door, under the plane-trees shaped like vaults,
to enjoy again his success, see the people pass, continue to gather
compliments and smiles.
The autumnal day has declined, it is evening at present. In the lukewarm
air, bats glide. The mountaineers of the surrounding villages depart
one by one; a dozen carriages are harnessed, their lanterns are lighted,
their bells ring and they disappear in the little shady paths of the
valleys. In the middle of the limpid penumbra may be distinguished the
women, the pretty girls seated on benches in front of the houses, under
the vaults of the plane-trees; they are only clear forms, their Sunday
costumes make white spots in the twilight, pink spots--and the pale blue
spot which Ramuntcho looks at is the new gown of Gracieuse.--Above all,
filling the sky, the gigantic Gizune, confused and sombre, is as if
it were the centre and the source of the darkness, little by little
scattered over all things. And at the church, suddenly the pious bells
ring, recalling to distracted minds the enclosure where the graves are,
the cypress trees around the belfry, and the entire grand mystery of the
sky, of prayer, of inevitable death.
Oh! the sadness of ends of festivals in very isolated villages, when the
sun ceases to illuminate, and when it is autumn--
They know very well, these men who were so ardent a moment ago in
the humble pleasures of the day, that in the cities there are other
festivals more brilliant, more beautiful and less quickly ended; but
this is something separate; it is the festival of the country, of their
own country, and nothing can replace for them these furtive instants
whereof they have thought for so many days in advance--Lovers who will
depart toward the scattered houses flanking the Pyrenees, couples who
to-morrow will begin over their monotonous and rude life, look at one
another before separating, look at one another under the falling night,
with regretful eyes that say: “Then, it is finished already? Then, that
is all?--”