Ramuntcho | Page 7

screen the red sun of evenings.--
He adored his Basque land, Ramuntcho,--and this morning was one of
the times when this adoration penetrated him more profoundly. In his
after life, during his exile, the reminiscence of these delightful returns
at dawn, after the nights of smuggling, caused in him an indescribable
and very anguishing nostalgia. But his love for the hereditary soil was
not as simple as that of his companions. As in all his sentiments, as in
all his sensations, there were mingled in it diverse elements. At first the
instinctive and unanalyzed attachment of his maternal ancestors to the
native soil, then something more refined coming from his father, an
unconscious reflection of the artistic admiration which had retained the
stranger here for several seasons and had given to him the caprice of
allying himself with a girl of these mountains in order to obtain a
Basque descendance.--
CHAPTER III.
It is eleven o'clock now, and the bells of France and Spain mingle
above the frontier their religious festival vibrations.
Bathed, rested, and in Sunday dress, Ramuntcho was going with his
mother to the high mass of All-Saints' Day. On the path, strewn with
reddish leaves, they descended toward their parish, under a warm sun
which gave to them the illusion of summer.
He, dressed in a manner almost elegant and like a city denizen, save for
the traditional Basque cap, which he wore on the side and pulled down
like a visor over his childish eyes. She, straight and proud, her head
high, her demeanor distinguished, in a gown of new form; having the
air of a society woman, except for the mantilla; made of black cloth,

which covered her hair and her shoulders. In the great city formerly she
had learned how to dress--and anyway, in the Basque country, where so
many ancient traditions have been preserved, the women and the girls
of the least important villages have all taken the habit of dressing in the
fashion of the day, with an elegance unknown to the peasants of the
other French provinces.
They separated, as etiquette ordains, in the yard of the church, where
the immense cypress trees smelled of the south and the Orient. It
resembled a mosque from the exterior, their parish, with its tall, old,
ferocious walls, pierced at the top only by diminutive windows, with its
warm color of antiquity, of dust and of sun.
While Franchita entered by one of the lower doors, Ramuntcho went up
a venerable stone stairway which led one from the exterior wall to the
high tribunes reserved for men.
The extremity of the sombre church was of dazzling old gold, with a
profusion of twisted columns, of complicated entablements, of statues
with excessive convolutions and with draperies in the style of the
Spanish Renaissance. And this magnificence of the tabernacle was in
contrast with the simplicity of the lateral walls, simply kalsomined. But
an air of extreme old age harmonized these things, which one felt were
accustomed for centuries to endure in the face of one another.
It was early still, and people were hardly arriving for this high mass.
Leaning on the railing of his tribune, Ramuntcho looked at the women
entering, all like black phantoms, their heads and dress concealed under
the mourning cashmere which it is usual to wear at church. Silent and
collected, they glided on the funereal pavement of mortuary slabs,
where one could read still, in spite of the effacing of ages, inscriptions
in Euskarian tongue, names of extinguished families and dates of past
centuries.
Gracieuse, whose coming preoccupied Ramuntcho, was late. But, to
distract his mind for a moment, a "convoy" advanced slowly; a convoy,
that is a parade of parents and nearest neighbors of one who had died
during the week, the men still draped in the long cape which is worn at

funerals, the women under the mantle and the traditional hood of full
mourning.
Above, in the two immense tribunes superposed along the sides of the
nave, the men came one by one to take their places, grave and with
rosaries in their hands: farmers, laborers, cowboys, poachers or
smugglers, all pious and ready to kneel when the sacred bell rang. Each
one of them, before taking his seat, hooked behind him, to a nail on the
wall, his woolen cap, and little by little, on the white background of the
kalsomine, came into line rows of innumerable Basque headgear.
Below, the little girls of the school entered at last, in good order,
escorted by the Sisters of Saint Mary of the Rosary. And, among these
nuns, wrapped in black, Ramuntcho recognized Gracieuse. She, too,
had her head enveloped with black; her blonde hair, which to-night
would be flurried in the breeze of the fandango, was hidden for