Ramuntcho | Page 6

custom house officers, through the Bidassoa river.
All the mass of mountains and of clouds, all the sombre chaos of the
preceding night had disentangled itself almost suddenly, as under the
touch of a magic wand. The Pyrenees, returned to their real proportions,
were only average mountains, with slopes bathed in a shadow still
nocturnal, but with peaks neatly cut in a sky which was already clearing.
The air had become lukewarm, suave, exquisite, as if the climate or the
season had suddenly changed,--and it was the southern wind which was
beginning to blow, the delicious southern wind special to the Basque
country, which chases before it, the cold, the clouds and the mists,
which enlivens the shades of all things, makes the sky blue, prolongs
the horizons infinitely and gives, even in winter, summer illusions.
The boatman who was bringing the smugglers back to France pushed
the bottom of the river with his long pole, and the bark dragged, half
stranded. At this moment, that Bidassoa by which the two countries are
separated, seemed drained, and its antique bed, excessively large, had
the flat extent of a small desert.
The day was decidedly breaking, tranquil and slightly pink. It was the
first of the month of November; on the Spanish shore, very distant, in a
monastery, an early morning bell rang clear, announcing the religious
solemnity of every autumn. And Ramuntcho, comfortably seated in the
bark, softly cradled and rested after the fatigues of the night, breathed
the new breeze with well-being in all his senses. With a childish joy, he
saw the assurance of a radiant weather for that All-Saints' Day which
was to bring to him all that he knew of this world's festivals: the
chanted high mass, the game of pelota before the assembled village,
then, at last, the dance of the evening with Gracieuse, the fandango in
the moon-light on the church square.
He lost, little by little, the consciousness of his physical life,
Ramuntcho, after his sleepless night; a sort of torpor, benevolent under

the breath of the virgin morning, benumbed his youthful body, leaving
his mind in a dream. He knew well such impressions and sensations,
for the return at the break of dawn, in the security of a bark where one
sleeps, is the habitual sequel of a smuggler's expedition.
And all the details of the Bidassoa's estuary were familiar to him, all its
aspects, which changed with the hour, with the monotonous and regular
tide.--Twice every day the sea wave comes to this flat bed; then,
between France and Spain there is a lake, a charming little sea with
diminutive blue waves--and the barks float, the barks go quickly; the
boatmen sing their old time songs, which the grinding and the shocks
of the cadenced oars accompany. But when the waters have withdrawn,
as at this moment, there remains between the two countries only a sort
of lowland, uncertain and of changing color, where walk men with bare
legs, where barks drag themselves, creeping.
They were now in the middle of this lowland, Ramuntcho and his band,
half dozing under the dawning light. The colors of things began to
appear, out of the gray of night. They glided, they advanced by slight
jerks, now through yellow velvet which was sand, then through a
brown thing, striped regularly and dangerous to walkers, which was
slime. And thousands of little puddles, left by the tide of the day before,
reflected the dawn, shone on the soft extent like mother-of-pearl shells.
On the little yellow and brown desert, their boatman followed the
course of a thin, silver stream, which represented the Bidassoa at low
tide. From time to time, some fisherman crossed their path, passed near
them in silence, without singing as the custom is in rowing, too busy
poling, standing in his bark and working his pole with beautiful plastic
gestures.
While they were day-dreaming, they approached the French shore, the
smugglers. On the other side of the strange zone which they were
traversing as in a sled, that silhouette of an old city, which fled from
them slowly, was Fontarabia; those highlands which rose to the sky
with figures so harsh, were the Spanish Pyrenees. All this was Spain,
mountainous Spain, eternally standing there in the face of them and
incessantly preoccupying their minds: a country which one must reach

in silence, in dark nights, in nights without moonlight, under the rain of
winter; a country which is the perpetual aim of dangerous expeditions;
a country which, for the men of Ramuntcho's village, seems always to
close the southwestern horizon, while it changes in appearance
according to the clouds and the hours; a country which is the first to be
lighted by the pale sun of mornings and which masks afterward, like a
sombre