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 against three celebrated ones of spain; they were to practice that evening, limber their arms on the square of etchezar, and gracieuse, with other little girls of her age, had taken seats on the granite benches to look at them. the girls, all pretty; with elegant airs in their pale colored waists cut in accordance with the most recent vagary of the season. and they were laughing, these little girls, they were laughing! they were laughing because they had begun laughing, without knowing why. nothing, a word of their old basque tongue, without any appropriateness, by one of them, and there they were all in spasms of laughter.—this country is truly one of the corners of the world where the laughter of girls breaks out most easily, ringing like clear crystal, ringing youthfulness and fresh throats.
arrochkoa had been there for a long time, with the wicker glove at his arm, throwing alone the pelota which, from time to time, children picked up for him. but ramuntcho, florentino, what were they thinking of? how late they were! they came at last, their foreheads wet with perspiration, their walk heavy and embarrassed. and, while the little, laughing girls questioned them, in that mocking tone which girls, when they are in a troupe, assume ordinarily to interpellate boys, these smiled, and each one struck his chest which gave a metallic sound.—through paths of the gizune, they had returned on foot from spain, heavy with copper coin bearing the effigy of the gentle, little king alfonso xiii. a new trick of the smugglers: for itchoua's account, they had exchanged over there with profit, a big sum of money for this debased coin, destined to be circulated at par at the coming fairs, in different villages of the landes where spanish cents are current. they were bringing, in their pockets, in their shirts, some forty kilos of copper. they made all this fall like rain on the antique granite of the benches, at the feet of the amused girls, asking them to keep and count it for them; then, after wiping their foreheads and puffing a little, they began to play and to jump, being light now and lighter than ordinarily, their overload being disposed of.
except three or four children of the school who ran like young cats after the lost pelotas, there were only the girls, seated in a group on the lowest one of these deserted steps, the old, reddish stones of which bore at this moment their herbs and their flowers of april. calico gowns, clear white or pink waists, they were all the gaiety of this solemnly sad place. beside gracieuse was pantchika dargaignaratz, another fifteen year old blonde, who was engaged to arrochkoa and would soon marry him, for he, being the son of a widow, had not to serve in the army. and, criticizing the players, placing in lines on the granite rows of piled-up copper cents, they laughed, they whispered, in their chanted accent, with ends of syllables in “rra” or in “rrik,” making the “r's” roll so sharply that one would have thought every instant sparrows were beating their wings in their mouths.
they also, the boys, were laughing, and they came frequently, under the pretext of resting, to sit among the girls. these troubled and intimidated them three times more than the public, because they mocked so!
ramuntcho learned from his little betrothed something which he would not have dared to hope for: she had obtained her mother's permission to go to that festival of erribiague, see the ball-game and visit that country, which she did not know. it was agreed that she should go in a carriage, with pantchika and madame dargaignaratz; and they would meet over there; perhaps it would be possible to return all together.
during the two weeks since their evening meetings had begun, this was the first time when he had had the opportunity to talk to her thus in the day-time and before the others—and their manner was different, more ceremonious apparently, with, beneath it, a very suave mystery. it was a long time, also, since he had seen her so well and so near in the daylight: she was growing more beautiful that spring; she was pretty, pretty!—her bust had become rounder and her waist thinner; her manner gained, day by day, an elegant suppleness. she resembled her brother still, she had the same regular features, the same perfect oval of the face; but the difference in their eyes went on increasing: while those of arrochkoa, of a blue green shade which seemed fleeting, avoided the glances of others, hers, on the contrary, black pupils and lashes, dilated themselves to look at you fixedly. ramuntcho had seen eyes like these in no other person; he adored the frank tenderness of them and also their anxious and profound questioning. long before he had become a man and accessible to the trickery of the senses, those eyes had caught, of his little, childish mind, all that was best and purest in it.—and now around such eyes, the grand transformer, enigmatic and sovereign, had placed a beauty of flesh which irresistibly called his flesh to a supreme communion.—
they were made very inattentive to their game, the players, by the group of little girls, of white and pink waists, and they laughed themselves at not playing so well as usual. above them, occupying only a small corner of the old, granite amphitheatre, ascended rows of empty benches in ruins; then, the houses of etchezar, so peacefully isolated from the rest of the world; then, in fine, the obscure, encumbering mass of the gizune, filling up the sky and mingling with thick clouds asleep on its sides. clouds immovable, inoffensive and without a threat of rain; clouds of spring, which were of a turtle-dove color and which seemed tepid, like the air of that evening. and, in a rent, much less elevated than the summit predominating over this entire site, a round moon began to silver as the day declined.
they played, in the beautiful twilight, until the hour when the first bats appeared, until the hour when the flying pelota could hardly be seen in the air. perhaps they felt, unconsciously, that the moment was rare and might not be regained: then, as much as possible, they should prolong it—
and at last, they went together to take to itchoua his spanish coins. in two lots, they had been placed in two thick, reddish towels which a boy and a girl held at each end, and they walked in cadence, singing the tune of “the linen weaver.”
how long, clear and soft was that twilight of april!—there were roses and all sorts of flowers in front of the walls of the venerable, white houses with brown or green blinds. jessamine, honeysuckle and linden filled the air with fragrance. for gracieuse and ramuntcho, it was one of those exquisite hours which later, in the anguishing sadness of awakenings, one recalls with a regret at once heart-breaking and charming.
oh! who shall say why there are on earth evenings of spring, and eyes so pretty to look at, and smiles of young girls, and breaths of perfumes which gardens exhale when the nights of april fall, and all this delicious cajoling of life, since it is all to end ironically in separation, in decrepitude and in death—
