CHAPTER XII.
Ramuntcho's lodging place was, in the house of his mother and above the
stable, a room neatly whitewashed; he had there his bed, always clean and
white, but where smuggling gave him few hours for sleep. Books of travel
or cosmography, which the cure of the parish lent to him, posed on his
table--unexpected in this house. The portraits, framed, of different
saints, ornamented the walls, and several pelota-players' gloves were
hanging from the beams of the ceiling, long gloves of wicker and of
leather which seemed rather implements of hunting or fishing.
Franchita, at her return to her country, had bought back this house,
which was that of her deceased parents, with a part of the sum given to
her by the stranger at the birth of her son. She had invested the rest;
then she worked at making gowns or at ironing linen for the people of
Etchezar, and rented, to farmers of land near by, two lower rooms, with
the stable where they placed their cows and their sheep.
Different familiar, musical sounds rocked Ramuntcho in his bed. First,
the constant roar of a near-by torrent; then, at times, songs of
nightingales, salutes to the dawn of divers birds. And, in this spring
especially, the cows, his neighbors, excited doubtless by the smell of
new-mown hay, moved all night, were agitated in dreams, making their
bells tintillate continually.
Often, after the long expeditions at night, he regained his sleep in the
afternoon, extended in the shade in some corner of moss and grass. Like
the other smugglers, he was not an early riser for a village boy, and he
woke up sometimes long after daybreak, when already, between the
disjointed planks of his flooring, rays of a vivid and gay light came
from the stable below, the door of which remained open always to the
rising sun after the departure of the cattle to their pastures. Then, he
went to his window, pushed open the little, old blinds made of massive
chestnut wood painted in olive, and leaned on his elbows, placed on the
sill of the thick wall, to look at the clouds or at the sun of the new
morning.
What he saw, around his house, was green, green, magnificently green, as
are in the spring all the corners of that land of shade and of rain. The
ferns which, in the autumn, have so warm a rusty color, were now, in this
April, in the glory of their greenest freshness and covered the slopes of
the mountains as with an immense carpet of curly wool, where foxglove
flowers made pink spots. In a ravine, the torrent roared under branches.
Above, groups of oaks and of beeches clung to the slopes, alternating
with prairies; then, above this tranquil Eden, toward the sky, ascended
the grand, denuded peak of the Gizune, sovereign hill of the region of
the clouds. And one perceived also, in the background, the church and the
houses--that village of Etchezar, solitary and perched high on one of the
Pyrenean cliffs, far from everything, far from the lines of communication
which have revolutionized and spoiled the lowlands of the shores;
sheltered from curiosity, from the profanation of strangers, and living
still its Basque life of other days.
Ramuntcho's awakenings were impregnated, at this window, with peace and
humble serenity. They were full of joy, his awakenings of a man engaged,
since he had the assurance of meeting Gracieuse at night at the promised
place. The vague anxieties, the undefined sadness, which accompanied in
him formerly the daily return of his thoughts, had fled for a time,
dispelled by the reminiscence and the expectation of these meetings; his
life was all changed; as soon as his eyes were opened he had the
impression of a mystery and of an immense enchantment, enveloping him in
the midst of this verdure and of these April flowers. And this peace of
spring, thus seen every morning, seemed to him every time a new thing,
very different from what it had been in the previous years, infinitely
sweet to his heart and voluptuous to his flesh, having unfathomable and
ravishing depths.
