Already the fires of St. John have flamed, joyful and red in a clear,
blue night, and the Spanish mountain seemed to burn, that night, like a
sheaf of straw, so many were the bonfires lighted on its sides. It has
begun, the season of light, of heat and of storms, at the end of which
Ramuntcho must depart.
And the saps, which in the spring went up so quickly, become languid
already in the complete development of the verdure, in the wide bloom of
the flowers. And the sun, more and more burning, overheats all the heads
covered with Basque caps, excites ardor and passion, causes to rise
everywhere, in those Basque villages, ferments of noisy agitation and of
pleasure. While, in Spain, begin the grand bull-fights, this is here
the epoch of so many ball-games, of so many fandangoes danced in the
evening, of so much pining of lovers in the tepid voluptuousness of
nights--!
Soon will come the warm splendor of the southern July. The Bay of Biscay
has become very blue and the Cantabric coast has for a time put on its
fallow colors of Morocco or of Algeria.
With the heavy rains alternates the marvellously beautiful weather which
gives to the air absolute limpidities. And there are days also when
somewhat distant things are as if eaten by light, powdered with sun
dust; then, above the woods and the village of Etchezar, the Gizune,
very pointed, becomes more vaporous and more high, and, on the sky,
float, to make it appear bluer, very small clouds of a gilded white with
a little mother-of-pearl gray in their shades.
And the springs run thinner and rarer under the thickness of the ferns,
and, along the routes, go more slowly, driven by half nude men, the
ox-carts which a swarm of flies surrounds.
At this season, Ramuntcho, in the day-time, lived his agitated life of
a pelotari, running with Arrochkoa from village to village, to organize
ball-games and play them.
But, in his eyes, evenings alone existed.
Evenings!--In the odorous and warm darkness of the garden, to be seated
very near Gracieuse; to put his arm around her, little by little to draw
her to him and hold her against his breast, and remain thus for a long
time without saying anything, his chin resting on her hair, breathing
the young and healthy scent of her body.
He enervated himself dangerously, Ramuntcho, in these prolonged contacts
which she did not prohibit. Anyway, he divined her surrendered enough to
him now, and confident enough, to permit everything; but he did not wish
to attempt supreme communion, through childish reserve, through respect
for his betrothed, through excess and profoundness of love. And it
happened to him at times to rise abruptly, to stretch himself--in the
manner of a cat, she said, as formerly at Erribiague--when he felt a
dangerous thrill and a more imperious temptation to leave life with her
in a moment of ineffable death--