Now that they had permitted their immediate happiness
to escape, the happiness offered to them in the prairies
of America, it seemed preferable to them to hasten
the departure of Ramuntcho for the army, in order
that he might return sooner. So they had decided
that he would enlist in the naval infantry, the only
part of the service where one may elect to serve for
a period as short as three years. And as they
needed, in order to be certain not to be lacking in
courage, a precise epoch, considered for a long time
in advance, they had fixed the end of September, after
the grand series of ball-games.
They contemplated this separation of three years duration
with an absolute confidence in the future, so sure
they thought they were of each other, and of themselves,
and of their imperishable love. But it was, however,
an expectation which already filled their hearts strangely;
it threw an unforeseen melancholy over things which
were ordinarily the most indifferent, on the flight
of days, on the least indications of the next season,
on the coming into life of certain plants, on the coming
into bloom of certain species of flowers, on all that
presaged the arrival and the rapid march of their
last summer.
CHAPTER XXIII.
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 bonfires lighted on its sides.
It has begun, the season of light, of heat and of
storms, at the end of which Ramuntcho must depart.
And the saps, which in the spring went up so quickly,
become languid already in the complete development
of the verdure, in the wide bloom of the flowers.
And the sun, more and more burning, overheats all the
heads covered with Basque caps, excites ardor and
passion, causes to rise everywhere, in those Basque
villages, ferments of noisy agitation and of pleasure.
While, in Spain, begin the grand bull-fights, this
is here the epoch of so many ball-games, of so many
fandangoes danced in the evening, of so much pining
of lovers in the tepid voluptuousness of nights!—
Soon will come the warm splendor of the southern July.
The Bay of Biscay has become very blue and the Cantabric
coast has for a time put on its fallow colors of Morocco
or of Algeria.
With the heavy rains alternates the marvellously beautiful
weather which gives to the air absolute limpidities.
And there are days also when somewhat distant things
are as if eaten by light, powdered with sun dust;
then, above the woods and the village of Etchezar,
the Gizune, very pointed, becomes more vaporous and
more high, and, on the sky, float, to make it appear
bluer, very small clouds of a gilded white with a little
mother-of-pearl gray in their shades.
And the springs run thinner and rarer under the thickness
of the ferns, and, along the routes, go more slowly,
driven by half nude men, the ox-carts which a swarm
of flies surrounds.
