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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sion 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 ca.s.sock: 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 a.s.sistants 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.