To roll for hours on the small Pyrenean roads, to change places almost every day, to traverse the Basque country, to go from one village to another, called here by a festival, there by an adventure on the frontier--this was now Ramuntcho's life, the errant life which the ball-game made for him in the day-time and smuggling in the night-time.

Ascents, descents, in the midst of a monotonous display of verdure.

Woods of oaks and of beeches, almost inviolate, and remaining as they were in the quiet centuries.--When he pa.s.sed by some antique house, hidden in these solitudes of trees, he stopped to enjoy reading, above the door, the traditional legend inscribed in the granite: "Ave Maria!

in the year 1600, or in the year 1500, such a one, from such a village, has built this house, to live in it with such a one, his wife."

Very far from all human habitation, in a corner of a ravine, where it was warmer than elsewhere, sheltered from all breezes, they met a peddler of holy images, who was wiping his forehead. He had set down his basket, full of those colored prints with gilt frames that represent saints with Euskarian legends, and with which the Basques like to adorn their old rooms with white walls. And he was there, exhausted from fatigue and heat, as if wrecked in the ferns, at a turn of those little, mountain routes which run solitary under oaks.

Gracieuse came down and bought a Holy Virgin.

"Later," she said to Ramuntcho, "we shall put it in our house as a souvenir--"

And the image, dazzling in its gold frame, went with them under the long, green vaults--

They went out of their path, for they wished to pa.s.s by a certain valley of the Cherry-trees, not in the hope of finding cherries in it, in April, but to show to Gracieuse the place, which is renowned in the entire Basque country.

It was almost five o'clock, the sun was already low, when they reached there. It was a shaded and calm region, where the spring twilight descended like a caress on the magnificence of the April foliage. The air was cool and suave, fragrant with hay, with acacia. Mountains--very high, especially toward the north, to make the climate there softer, surrounded it on all sides, investing it with a melancholy mystery of closed Edens.

And, when the cherry-trees appeared, they were a gay surprise, they were already red.

There was n.o.body on these paths, above which the grand cherry-trees extended like a roof, their branches dripping with coral.

Here and there were some summer houses, still uninhabited, some deserted gardens, invaded by the tall gra.s.s and the rose bushes.

Then, they made their horse walk; then, each one in his turn, transferring the reins and standing in the wagon, amused himself by eating these cherries from the trees while pa.s.sing by them and without stopping. Afterward, they placed bouquets of them in their b.u.t.tonholes, they culled branches of them to deck the horse's head, the harness and the lantern. The equipage seemed ornamented for some festival of youth and of joy--

"Now let us hurry," said Gracieuse. "If only it be light enough, at least, when we reach Etchezar, for people to see us pa.s.s, ornamented as we are!"

As for Ramuntcho, he thought of the meeting place in the evening, of the kiss which he would dare to repeat, similar to that of yesterday, taking Gracieuse's lip between his lips like a cherry--

CHAPTER XVIII.

May! The gra.s.s ascends, ascends from everywhere like a sumptuous carpet, like silky velvet, emanating spontaneously from the earth.

In order to sprinkle this region of the Basques, which remains humid and green all summer like a sort of warmer Brittany, the errant vapors on the Bay of Biscay a.s.semble all in this depth of gulf, stop at the Pyrenean summits and melt into rain. Long showers fall, which are somewhat deceptive, but after which the soil smells of new flowers and hay.

In the fields, along the roads, the gra.s.ses quickly thicken; all the ledges of the paths are as if padded by the magnificent thickness of the bent gra.s.s; everywhere is a profusion of gigantic Easter daisies, of b.u.t.tercups with tall stems, and of very large, pink mallows like those of Algeria.

And, in the long, tepid twilights, pale iris or blue ashes in color, every night the bells of the month of Mary resound for a long time in the air, under the ma.s.s of the clouds hooked to the flanks of the mountains.

During the month of May, with the little group of black nuns, with discreet babble, with puerile and lifeless laughter, Gracieuse, at all hours, went to church. Hastening their steps under the frequent showers, they went together through the graveyard, full of roses; together, always together, the little clandestine betrothed, in light colored gowns, and the nuns, with long, mourning veils; during the day they brought bouquets of white flowers, daisies and sheafs of tall lilies; at night they came to sing, in the nave still more sonorous than in the day-time, the softly joyful canticles of the Virgin Mary:

"Ave, Queen of the Angels! Star of the Sea, ave!--"

Oh, the whiteness of the lilies lighted by the tapers, their white petals and their yellow pollen in gold dust! Oh, their fragrance in the gardens or in the church, during the twilights of spring!

And as soon as Gracieuse entered there, at night, in the dying ring of the bells--leaving the pale half-light of the graveyard full of roses for the starry night of the wax tapers which reigned already in the church, quitting the odor of hay and of roses for that of incense and of the tall, cut lilies, pa.s.sing from the lukewarm and living air outside to that heavy and sepulchral cold that centuries ama.s.s in old sanctuaries--a particular calm came at once to her mind, a pacifying of all her desires, a renunciation of all her terrestrial joys. Then, when she had knelt, when the first canticles had taken their flight under the vault, infinitely sonorous, little by little she fell into an ecstasy, a state of dreaming, a visionary state which confused, white apparitions traversed: whiteness, whiteness everywhere; lilies, thousands of sheafs of lilies, and white wings, shivers of white wings of angels--

Oh! to remain for a long time in that state, to forget all things, and to feel herself pure, sanctified and immaculate, under that glance, ineffably fascinating and soft, under that glance, irresistibly appealing, which the Holy Virgin, in long white vestments, let fall from the height of the tabernacle--!

But, when she went outside, when the night of spring re-enveloped her with tepid breezes of life, the memory of the meeting which she had promised the day before, the day before as well as every day, chased like the wind of a storm the visions of the church. In the expectation of Ramuntcho, in the expectation of the odor of his hair, of the touch of his mustache, of the taste of his lips, she felt near faltering, like one wounded, among the strange companions who accompanied her, among the peaceful and spectral black nuns.

And when the hour had come, in spite of all her resolutions she was there, anxious and ardent, listening to the least noise, her heart beating if a branch of the garden moved in the night--tortured by the least tardiness of the beloved one.

He came always with his same silent step of a rover at night, his waistcoat on his shoulder, with as much precaution and artifice as for the most dangerous act of smuggling.

In the rainy nights, so frequent in the Basque spring-time, she remained in her room on the first floor, and he sat on the sill of the open window, not trying to go in, not having the permission to do so. And they stayed there, she inside, he outside, their arms laced, their heads touching each other, the cheek of one resting on the cheek of the other.

When the weather was beautiful, she jumped over this low window-sill to wait for him outside, and their long meetings, almost without words, occurred on the garden bench. Between them there were not even those continual whisperings familiar to lovers; no, there were rather silences. At first they did not dare to talk, for fear of being discovered, for the least murmurs of voices at night are heard. And then, as nothing new threatened their lives, what need had they to talk?

What could they have said which would have been better than the long contact of their joined hands and of their heads resting against each other?

The possibility of being surprised kept them often on the alert, in an anxiety which made more delicious afterward the moments when they forgot themselves more, their confidence having returned.--n.o.body frightened them as much as Arrochkoa, a smart, nocturnal prowler himself, and always so well-informed about the goings and comings of Ramuntcho--In spite of his indulgence, what would he do, if he discovered them?--

Oh, the old stone benches, under branches, in front of the doors of isolated houses, when fall the lukewarm nights of spring!--Theirs was a real lovers' hiding place, and there was for them, every night, a music, for, in all the stones of the neighbors' wall lived those singing tree-toads, beasts of the south, which, as soon as night fell, gave from moment to moment a little, brief note, discreet, odd, having the tone of a crystal bell and of a child's throat. Something similar might be produced by touching here and there, without ever resting on them, the scales of an organ with a celestial voice. There were tree-toads everywhere, responding to one another in different tones; even those which were under their bench, close by them, rea.s.sured by their immobility, sang also from time to time; then that little sound, brusque and soft, so near, made them start and smile. All the exquisite, surrounding obscurity was animated by that music, which continued in the distance, in the mystery of the leaves and of the stones, in the depths of all the small, black holes of rocks or walls; it seemed like chivies in miniature, or rather, a sort of frail concert somewhat mocking--oh!

not very mocking, and without any maliciousness--led timidly by inoffensive gnomes. And this made the night more living and more loving--

After the intoxicated audacities of the first nights, fright took a stronger hold of them, and, when one of them had something special to say, one led the other by the hand without talking; this meant that they had to walk softly, softly, like marauding cats, to an alley behind the house where they could talk without fear.

"Where shall we live, Gracieuse?" asked Ramuntcho one night.

"At your house, I had thought."

"Ah! yes, so thought I--only I thought it would make you sad to be so far from the parish, from the church and the square--"

"Oh--with you, I could find anything sad?--"

"Then, we would send away those who live on the first floor and take the large room which opens on the road to Hasparitz--"

It was an increased joy for him to know that Gracieuse would accept his house, to be sure that she would bring the radiance of her presence into that old, beloved home, and that they would make their nest there for life--

CHAPTER XIX.

Here come the long, pale twilights of June, somewhat veiled like those of May, less uncertain, however, and more tepid still. In the gardens, the rose-laurel which is beginning to bloom in profusion is becoming already magnificently pink. At the end of each work day, the good folks sit outside, in front of their doors, to look at the night falling--the night which soon confuses, under the vaults of the plane-trees, their groups a.s.sembled for benevolent rest. And a tranquil melancholy descends over villages, in those interminable evenings--

For Ramuntcho, this is the epoch when smuggling becomes a trade almost without trouble, with charming hours, marching toward summits through spring clouds; crossing ravines, wandering in lands of springs and of wild fig-trees; sleeping, waiting for the agreed hour, with carbineers who are accomplices, on carpets of mint and pinks.--The good odor of plants impregnated his clothes, his waistcoat which he never wore, but used as a pillow or a blanket--and Gracieuse would say to him at night: "I know where you went last night, for you smell of mint of the mountain above Mendizpi"--or: "You smell of absinthe of the Subernoa mora.s.s."

Gracieuse regretted the month of Mary, the offices of the Virgin in the nave, decked with white flowers. In the twilights without rain, with the sisters and some older pupils of their cla.s.s, she sat under the porch of the church, against the low wall of the graveyard from which the view plunges into the valleys beneath. There they talked, or played the childish games in which nuns indulge.

There were also long and strange meditations, meditations to which the fall of day, the proximity of the church, of the tombs and of their flowers, gave soon a serenity detached from material things and as if free from all alliance with the senses. In her first mystic dreams as a little girl,--inspired especially by the pompous rites of the cult, by the voice of the organ, the white bouquets, the thousand flames of the wax tapers--only images appeared to her--very radiant images, it is true: altars resting on mists, golden tabernacles where music vibrated and where fell grand flights of angels. But those visions gave place now to ideas: she caught a glimpse of that peace and that supreme renunciation which the certainty of an endless celestial life gives; she conceived, in a manner more elevated than formerly, the melancholy joy of abandoning everything in order to become an impersonal part of that entirety of nuns, white, or blue, or black, who, from the innumerable convents of earth, make ascend toward heaven an immense and perpetual intercession for the sins of the world--

However, as soon as night had fallen quite, the course of her thoughts came down every evening fatally toward intoxicating and mortal things.

Her wait, her feverish wait, began, more impatient from moment to moment. She felt anxious that her cold companions with black veils should return into the sepulchre of their convent and that she should be alone in her room, free at last, in the house fallen asleep, ready to open her window and listen to the slight noise of Ramuntcho's footsteps.

The kiss of lovers, the kiss on the lips, was now a thing possessed and of which they had not the strength to deprive themselves. And they prolonged it a great deal, not wishing, through charming scruples, to accord more to each other.

Anyway, if the intoxication which they gave to each other thus was a little too carnal, there was between them that absolute tenderness, infinite, unique, by which all things are elevated and purified.