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—
“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.
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.
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—
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—
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.
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—