And at moments, at every fifth or sixth measure, at the same time as her light and strong partner, she turned round completely, the bust bent with Spanish grace, the head thrown backward, the lips half open on the whiteness of the teeth, a distinguished and proud grace disengaging itself from her little personality, still so mysterious, which to Ramuntcho only revealed itself a little.

During all this beautiful evening of November, they danced before each other, mute and charming, with intervals of promenade in which they hardly talked--intoxicated in silence by the delicious thought with which their minds were filled.

And, until the curfew rang in the church, this dance under the branches of autumn, these little lanterns, this little festival in this corner closed to the world, threw a little light and joyful noise into the vast night which the mountains, standing everywhere like giants of shadow, made more dumb and more black.

CHAPTER VI.

There is to be a grand ball-game next Sunday, for the feast of Saint Damasus, in the borough of Hasparitz.

Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, companions in continual expeditions through the surrounding country, travelled for the entire day, in the little wagon of the Detcharry family, in order to organize that ball-game, which to them is a considerable event.

In the first place, they had to consult Marcos, one of the Iragola brothers. Near a wood, in front of his house in the shade, they found him seated on a stump of a chestnut tree, always grave and statuesque, his eyes inspired and his gesture n.o.ble, in the act of making his little brother, still in swaddling clothes, eat soup.

"Is he the eleventh?" they have asked, laughing.

"Oh! Go on!" the big eldest brother has replied, "the eleventh is running already like a hare in the heather. This is number twelve!--little John the Baptist, you know, the latest, who, I think, will not be the last."

And then, lowering their heads not to strike the branches, they had traversed the woods, the forests of oaks under which extends infinitely the reddish lace of ferns.

And they have traversed several villages also,--Basque villages, all grouped around these two things which are the heart of them and which symbolize their life: the church and the ball-game. Here and there, they have knocked at the doors of isolated houses, tall and large houses, carefully whitewashed, with green shades, and wooden balconies where are drying in the sun strings of red peppers. At length they have talked, in their language so closed to strangers of France, with the famous players, the t.i.tled champions, the ones whose odd names have been seen in all the journals of the southwest, on all the posters of Biarritz or of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and who, in ordinary life, are honest country inn-keepers, blacksmiths, smugglers, with waistcoat thrown over the shoulder and shirt sleeves rolled on bronze arms.

Now that all is settled and that the last words have been exchanged, it is too late to return that night to Etchezar; then, following their errant habits, they select for the night a village which they like, Zitzarry, for example, where they have gone often for their smuggling business. At the fall of night, then, they turn toward this place, which is near Spain. They go by the same little Pyrenean routes, shady and solitary under the old oaks that are shedding their leaves, among slopes richly carpeted with moss and rusty ferns. And now there are ravines where torrents roar, and then heights from which appear on all sides the tall, sombre peaks.

At first it was cold, a real cold, lashing the face and the chest. But now gusts begin to pa.s.s astonishingly warm and perfumed with the scent of plants: the southern wind, rising again, bringing back suddenly the illusion of summer. And then, it becomes for them a delicious sensation to go through the air, so brusquely changed, to go quickly under the lukewarm breaths, in the noise of their horse's bells galloping playfully in the mountains.

Zitzarry, a smugglers' village, a distant village skirting the frontier.

A dilapidated inn where, according to custom, the rooms for the men are directly above the stables, the black stalls. They are well-known travelers there, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, and while men are lighting the fire for them they sit near an antique, mullioned window, which overlooks the square of the ball-game and the church; they see the tranquil, little life of the day ending in this place so separated from the world.

On this solemn square, the children practice the national game; grave and ardent, already strong, they throw their pelota against the wall, while, in a singing voice and with the needful intonation, one of them counts and announces the points, in the mysterious tongue of the ancestors. Around them, the tall houses, old and white, with warped walls, with projecting rafters, contemplate through their green or red windows those little players, so lithe, who run in the twilight like young cats. And the carts drawn by oxen return from the fields, with the noise of bells, bringing loads of wood, loads of gorse or of dead ferns--The night falls, falls with its peace and its sad cold. Then, the angelus rings--and there is, in the entire village, a tranquil, prayerful meditation--

Then Ramuntcho, silent, worries about his destiny, feels as if he were a prisoner here, with his same aspirations always, toward something unknown, he knows not what, which troubles him at the approach of night.

And his heart also fills up, because he is alone and without support in the world, because Gracieuse is in a situation different from his and may never be given to him.

But Arrochkoa, very brotherly this time, in one of his good moments, slaps him on the shoulder as if he had understood his reverie, and says to him in a tone of light gaiety:

"Well! it seems that you talked together, last night, sister and you--she told me about it--and that you are both prettily agreed!--"

Ramuntcho lifts toward him a long look of anxious and grave interrogation, which is in contrast with the beginning of their conversation:

"And what do you think," he asks, "of what we have said?"

"Oh, my friend," replied Arrochkoa, become more serious also, "on my word of honor, it suits me very well--And even, as I fear that there shall be trouble with mother, I promise to help you if you need help--"

And Ramuntcho's sadness is dispelled as a little dust on which one has blown. He finds the supper delicious, the inn gay. He feels himself much more engaged to Gracieuse, now, when somebody is in the secret, and somebody in the family who does not repulse him. He had a presentiment that Arrochkoa would not be hostile to him, but his co-operation, so clearly offered, far surpa.s.ses Ramuntcho's hope--Poor little abandoned fellow, so conscious of the humbleness of his situation, that the support of another child, a little better established in life, suffices to return to him courage and confidence!

CHAPTER VII.

At the uncertain and somewhat icy dawn, he awoke in his little room in the inn, with a persistent impression of his joy on the day before, instead of the confused anguish which accompanied so often in him the progressive return of his thoughts. Outside, were sounds of bells of cattle starting for the pastures, of cows lowing to the rising sun, of church bells,--and already, against the wall of the large square, the sharp snap of the Basque pelota: all the noises of a Pyrenean village beginning again its customary life for another day. And all this seemed to Ramuntcho the early music of a day's festival.

At an early hour, they returned, Arrochkoa and he, to their little wagon, and, crushing their caps against the wind, started their horse at a gallop on the roads, powdered with white frost.

At Etchezar, where they arrived at noon, one would have thought it was summer,--so beautiful was the sun.

In the little garden in front of her house, Gracieuse sat on a stone bench:

"I have spoken to Arrochkoa!" said Ramuntcho to her, with a happy smile, as soon as they were alone--"And he is entirely with us, you know!"

"Oh! that," replied the little girl, without losing the sadly pensive air which she had that morning, "oh, that!--my brother Arrochkoa, I suspected it, it was sure! A pelota player like you, you should know, was made to please him, in his mind there is nothing superior to that--"

"But your mother, Gatchutcha, for several days has acted much better to me, I think--For example, Sunday, you remember, when I asked you to dance--"

"Oh! don't trust to that, my Ramuntcho! you mean day before yesterday, after the high ma.s.s?--It was because she had just talked with the Mother Superior, have you not noticed?--And the Mother Superior had insisted that I should not dance with you on the square; then, only to be contrary, you understand--But, don't rely on that, no--"

"Oh!" replied Ramuntcho, whose joy had already gone, "it is true that they are not very friendly--"

"Friendly, mama and the Mother Superior?--Like a dog and a cat, yes!--Since there was talk of my going into the convent, do you not remember that story?"

He remembered very well, on the contrary, and it frightened him still.

The smiling and mysterious black nuns had tried once to attract to the peace of their houses that little blonde head, exalted and willful, possessed by an immense necessity to love and to be loved--

"Gatchutcha! you are always at the sisters', or with them; why so often?

explain this to me: they are very agreeable to you?"

"The sisters? no, my Ramuntcho, especially those of the present time, who are new in the country and whom I hardly know--for they change them often, you know--The sisters, no--I will even tell you that I am like mama about the Mother Superior. I cannot endure her--"

"Well, then, what?--"

"No, but what will you? I like their songs, their chapels, their houses, everything--I cannot explain that to you--Anyway, boys do not understand anything--"

The little smile with which she said this was at once extinguished, changed into a contemplative expression or an absent expression, which Ramuntcho had often seen in her. She looked attentively in front of her, although there were on the road only the leafless trees, the brown ma.s.s of the crushing mountain; but it seemed as if Gracieuse was enraptured in melancholy ecstasy by things perceived beyond them, by things which the eyes of Ramuntcho could not distinguish--And during their silence the angelus of noon began to ring, throwing more peace on the tranquil village which was warming itself in the winter sun; then, bending their heads, they made naively together their sign of the cross--

Then, when ceased to vibrate the holy bell, which in the Basque villages interrupts life as in the Orient the song of the muezzins, Ramuntcho decided to say:

"It frightens me, Gatchutcha, to see you in their company always--I cannot but ask myself what ideas are in your head--"

Fixing on him the profound blackness of her eyes, she replied, in a tone of soft reproach:

"It is you talking to me in that way, after what we have said to each other Sunday night!--If I were to lose you, yes then, perhaps--surely, even!--But until then, oh! no--oh! you may rest in peace, my Ramuntcho--"

He bore for a long time her look, which little by little brought back to him entire delicious confidence, and at last he smiled with a childish smile:

"Forgive me," he asked--"I say silly things often, you know!--"

"That, at least, is the truth!"