Part 9 (1/2)

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, s.h.i.+vers 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--!