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 a.s.sociate 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, pa.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e.

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, f.a.gots 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 gla.s.ses, 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 gla.s.ses 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 b.u.t.tonhole and a wide c.r.a.pe around his sleeve.

At first he was not a.s.siduous at the village cider mill, where the men a.s.sembled 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 pa.s.sing 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, repet.i.tions 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate 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 pa.s.sed 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 coa.r.s.e 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--