They have no sort of illusion, the watching carbineers,
about what these men, so wet, have been doing at an
hour so black.
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 aspect of the fields, to prepare
the following spring.
And Ramuntcho acquired slowly his habits of one left
alone; in his house, wherein he lived still, without
anybody to serve him, he took care of himself, as
in the colonies or in the barracks, knowing the thousand
little details of housekeeping which careful soldiers
practice. He preserved the pride of dress, dressed
himself well, wore the ribbon of the brave at his
buttonhole and a wide crape around his sleeve.
At first he was not assiduous at the village cider
mill, where the men assembled in the cold evenings.
In his three years of travel, of reading, of talking
with different people, too many new ideas had penetrated
his already open mind; among his former companions
he felt more outcast than before, more detached from
the thousand little things which composed their life.
Little by little, however, by dint of being alone,
by dint of passing by the halls where the men drank,—on
the window-panes of which a lamp always sketches the
shadows of Basque caps,—he had made it a
custom to go in and to sit at a table.
It was the season when the Pyrenean villages, freed
from the visitors which the summers bring, imprisoned
by the clouds, the mist, or the snow, are more intensely
as they were in ancient times. In these cider
mills—sole, little, illuminated points,
living, in the midst of the immense, empty darkness
of the fields—something of the spirit of
former times is reanimated in winter evenings.
In front of the large casks of cider arranged in lines
in the background where it is dark, the lamp, hanging
from the beams, throws its light on the images of saints
that decorate the walls, on the groups of mountaineers
who talk and who smoke. At times someone sings
a plaintive song which came from the night of centuries;
the beating of a tambourine recalls to life old, forgotten
rhythms; a guitar reawakens a sadness of the epoch
of the Moors.—Or, in the face of each other,
two men, with castanets in their hands, suddenly dance
the fandango, swinging themselves with an antique grace.
And, from these innocent, little inns, they retire
early—especially in these bad, rainy nights—the
darkness of which is so peculiarly propitious to smuggling,
every one here having to do some clandestine thing
on the Spanish side.
In such places, in the company of Arrochkoa, Ramuntcho
talked over and commented upon his cherished, sacrilegious
project; or,—during the beautiful moon-light
nights which do not permit of undertakings on the
frontier—they talked on the roads for a
long time.
