The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ramuntcho, by Pierre Loti

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Title: Ramuntcho

Author: Pierre Loti

Translator: Henri Pene du Bois

Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9616]
Posting Date: June 16, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMUNTCHO ***

Produced by Dagny; and David Widger

RAMUNTCHO

By Pierre Loti

Translated by Henri Pene du Bois

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

The sad curlews, annunciators of the autumn, had just appeared in a
mass in a gray squall, fleeing from the high sea under the threat of
approaching tempests. At the mouth of the southern rivers, of the Adour,
of the Nivelle, of the Bidassoa which runs by Spain, they wandered above
the waters already cold, flying low, skimming, with their wings over the
mirror-like surfaces. And their cries, at the fall of the October night,
seemed to ring the annual half-death of the exhausted plants.

On the Pyrenean lands, all bushes and vast woods, the melancholy of the
rainy nights of declining seasons fell slowly, enveloping like a shroud,
while Ramuntcho walked on the moss-covered path, without noise, shod
with rope soles, supple and silent in his mountaineer's tread.

Ramuntcho was coming on foot from a very long distance, ascending the
regions neighboring the Bay of Biscay, toward his isolated house which
stood above, in a great deal of shade, near the Spanish frontier.

Around the solitary passer-by, who went up so quickly without trouble
and whose march in sandals was not heard, distances more and more
profound deepened on all sides, blended in twilight and mist.

The autumn, the autumn marked itself everywhere. The corn, herb of the
lowlands, so magnificently green in the Spring, displayed shades of dead
straw in the depths of the valleys, and, on all the summits, beeches
and oaks shed their leaves. The air was almost cold; an odorous humidity
came out of the mossy earth and, at times, there came from above a light
shower. One felt it near and anguishing, that season of clouds and of
long rains, which returns every time with the same air of bringing the
definitive exhaustion of saps and irremediable death,--bu