Ramuntcho

Between times, the reply of Uncle Ignacio has reached Etchezar. If his nephew had spoken sooner, Ignacio has written, he would have been glad to receive him at his house; but, s...

“Ite missa est!” The high mass is finished and the antique church is emptying. Outside, in the yard, among the tombs, the assistants scatter. And all the joy of a sunny noon gre...

The sad curlews, annunciators of the autumn, had just appeared in a mass in a gray squall, fleeing from the high sea under the threat of approaching tempests. At the mouth of th...

He was returning, Ramuntcho, after his three years of absence, discharged from the army in that city of the North where his regiment was in garrison. He was returning with his h...

At the frontier, in a mountain hamlet. A black night, about one o'clock in the morning; a winter night inundated by cold and heavy rain. At the front of a sinister house which c...

Midnight, a winter night, black as Hades, with great wind and whipping rain. By the side of the Bidassoa, in the midst of a confused extent of ground with treacherous soil that...

Ramuntcho, the next morning, was wandering in the village, under a sun which had pierced the clouds of the night, a sun as radiant as that of yesterday. Careful in his dress, th...

Eight o'clock in the evening. They have dined at the cider mill, all the players except the vicar, under the patronage of Itchoua; they have lounged for a long time afterward, l...

And suddenly, it is a flood of light that dazzles their eyes. Outside, the spring is resplendent. Never had they seen, before this, summits so high and so near. But along the sl...

The febrile and somewhat artificial improvement of the morning had continued. Nursed by the old Doyanburu, Franchita said that she felt better, and, in the fear that Ramuntcho m...

Ramuntcho, that evening, had come to the meeting place earlier than usual--with more hesitation also in his walk, for one risks, on these June evenings, to find girls belated al...

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 assemble all in...

There was a grand ball-game arranged for the following Sunday at Erribiague, a far-distant village, near the tall mountains. Ramuntcho, Arrochkoa and Florentino were to play aga...

Seated on the bank of the Bidassoa, Ramuntcho and Florentino watch the arrival of a bark. A great silence now, and the bells sleep. The tepid twilight has been prolonged and, in...

The next day, Sunday, they went together religiously to hear one of the masses of the clear morning, in order to return to Etchezar the same day, immediately after the grand bal...

Ramuntcho,--who had slept for a few hours, in a bad, tired sleep, in a small room of the new house of his friend Florentino, at Ururbil,--awakened as the day dawned.

At the fall of night, while a bad mountain squall twisted the branches of the trees, Ramuntcho entered his deserted house where the gray of death seemed scattered everywhere. A...

The next day, Friday, was organized the departure for this village where the festival was to take place on the following Sunday. It is situated very far, in a shady region, at t...

Having started on foot and gone, with infinite precautions to be silent, through ravines, through woods, through fords of rivers, they were returning, as if they were people who...

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...

But, when she arrived in front of the Detcharry house, she saw Dolores who, instead of going in, as she intended, turned round and stood at the door to see her pass. Something n...

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 thei...

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...

It was their last evening, for, the day before yesterday, at the Mayor's office of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, he had, with a hand trembling a little, signed his engagement for three yea...

The winter, the real winter, extended itself by degrees over the Basque land, after the few days of frost that had come to annihilate the annual plants, to change the deceptive...

All the day had endured that sombre sky which is so often the sky of the Basque country--and which harmonizes well with the harsh mountains, with the roar of the sea, wicked, in...

One clear April morning, they were walking to the church, Gracieuse and Ramuntcho. She, with an air half grave, half mocking, with a particular and very odd air, leading him the...

“If she hesitates--and she will not hesitate, be sure of it--but if she hesitates, well! we will kidnap her.--Let me arrange this, my plan is all made. It will be in the evening...

Ramuntcho's lodging place was, in the house of his mother and above the stable, a room neatly whitewashed; he had there his bed, always clean and white, but where smuggling gave...

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...

Gracieuse's house was very ancient, like most houses in that Basque country, where, less than elsewhere, the years change the things.--It had two stories; a large projecting roo...

In her hands, burning with fever, she holds a letter from him, a letter which should have brought only joy without a cloud, since it announces his return, but which causes in he...

Already the fires of St. John have flamed, joyful and red in a clear, blue night, and the Spanish mountain seemed to burn, that night, like a sheaf of straw, so many were the bo...

Once, however, as he was watching, she called him suddenly with a poor voice of anguish, to throw her arms around him, to draw him to her, lean her head on his cheek. And, in th...

The parting day, good-byes to friends here and there; joyful wishes of former soldiers returned from the regiment. Since the morning, a sort of intoxication or of fever, and, in...

On her robust body, the malady had violently taken hold,--the malady recognized too late, and insufficiently nursed because of her stubbornness as a peasant, because of her incr...

“And whom did you see in the village, my son?” she asked, the next morning during the improvement which returned every time, in the first hours of the day, after the fever had s...

Franchita, however, was astonished by the unexplained attitude of her son, who, apparently, never saw Gracieuse and yet never talked of her. Then, while was amassing in her the...

“Well, Gatchutcha, you have at last spoken to your mother of Uncle Ignacio?” asked Ramuntcho, very late, the same night, in the alley of the garden, under rays of the moon.

The bell of Etchezar, the same dear, old bell, that of the tranquil curfew, that of the festivals and that of the agonies, rang joyously in the beautiful sun of June. The villag...