the changeable month of march had arrived, and with it the intoxication of spring, joyful for the young, sad for those who are declining.
and gracieuse had commenced again to sit, in the twilight of the lengthened days, on the stone bench in front of her door.
oh! the old stone benches, around the houses, made, in the past ages, for the reveries of the soft evenings and for the eternally similar conversations of lovers—!
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 roof in a steep slope; walls like a fortress which were whitewashed every summer; very small windows, with settings of cut granite and green blinds. above the front door, a granite lintel bore an inscription in relief; words complicated and long which, to french eyes resembled nothing known. it said: “may the holy virgin bless this home, built in the year 1630 by peter detcharry, beadle, and his wife damasa irribarne, of the village of istaritz.” a small garden two yards wide, surrounded by a low wall so that one could see the passers-by, separated the house from the road; there was a beautiful rose-laurel, extending its southern foliage above the evening bench, and there were yuccas, a palm tree, and enormous bunches of those hortensias which are giants here, in this land of shade, in this lukewarm climate, so often enveloped by clouds. in the rear was a badly closed orchard which rolled down to an abandoned path, favorable to escalades of lovers.
what mornings radiant with light there were in that spring, and what tranquil, pink evenings!
after a week of full moon which kept the fields till day-light blue with rays, and when the band of itchoua ceased to work,—so clear was their habitual domain, so illuminated were the grand, vaporous backgrounds of the pyrenees and of spain—the frontier fraud was resumed more ardently, as soon as the thinned crescent had become discreet and early setting. then, in these beautiful times, smuggling by night was exquisite; a trade of solitude and of meditation when the mind of the naive and very pardonable defrauders was elevated unconsciously in the contemplation of the sky and of the darkness animated by stars—as it happens to the mind of the sea folk watching, on the nocturnal march of vessels, and as it happened formerly to the mind of the shepherds in antique chaldea.
it was favorable also and tempting for lovers, that tepid period which followed the full moon of march, for it was dark everywhere around the houses, dark in all the paths domed with trees,—and very dark, behind the detcharry orchard, on the abandoned path where nobody ever passed.
gracieuse lived more and more on her bench in front of her door.
it was here that she was seated, as every year, to receive and look at the carnival dancers: those groups of young boys and of young girls of spain or of france, who, every spring, organize themselves for several days in a wandering band, and, all dressed in the same pink or white colors, traverse the frontier village, dancing the fandango in front of houses, with castanets—
she stayed later and later in this place which she liked, under the shelter of the rose-laurel coming into bloom, and sometimes even, she came out noiselessly through the window, like a little, sly fox, to breathe there at length, after her mother had gone to bed. ramuntcho knew this and, every night, the thought of that bench troubled his sleep.
