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.
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 there to make him do a penance
which she had ordered.
In the holy enclosure, the flowerbeds of the tombs
were coming into bloom again, as also the rose bushes
on the walls. Once more the new saps were awakening
above the long sleep of the dead. They went in
together, through the lower door, into the empty church,
where the old “benoite” in a black mantilla
was alone, dusting the altars.
