river, with long, pointed sticks in
their hands, in order to assume, if perchance they were caught, airs of
people fishing innocently for "platuches."

The water of the Bidassoa is to-night an immovable and clear mirror, a
little more luminous than the sky, and in this mirror, are reproduced,
upside down, all the constellations, the entire Spanish mountain, carved
in so sombre a silhouette in the tranquil atmosphere. Summer, summer,
one has more and more the consciousness of its approach, so limpid and
soft are the first signs of night, so much lukewarm langour is scattered
over this corner of the world, where the smugglers silently manoeuvre.

But this estuary, which separates the two countries, seems in this
moment to Ramuntcho more melancholy than usual, more closed and more
walled-in in front of him by these black mountains, at the feet of which
hardly shine, here and there, two or three uncertain lights. Then, he
is seized again by his desire to know what there is beyond, and further
still.--Oh! to go elsewhere!--To escape, at least for a time, from the
oppressiveness of that land--so loved, however!--Before death, to escape
the oppressiveness of this existence, ever similar and without egress.
To try something else, to get out of here, to travel, to know things--!

Then, while watching the far-off, terrestrial distances where the bark
will appear, he raises his eyes from time to time toward what happens
above, in the infinite, looks at the new moon, the crescent of which, as
thin as a line, lowers and will disappear soon; looks at the stars,
the slow and regulated march of which he has observed, as have all the
people of his trade, during so many nocturnal hours; is troubled in the
depth of his mind by the proportions and the inconceivable distances of
these things.--

In his village of Etchezar, the old priest who had taught him the
catechism, interested by his young, lively intelligence, has lent books
to him, has continued with him conversations on a thousand subjects,
and, on the subject of the planets, has given to him the notion of
movements and of immensities, has half opened before his eyes the grand
abyss of space and duration. Then, in his mind, innate doubts, frights
and despairs that slumbered, all that his father had bequeathed to him
as a sombre inheritance, all these things have taken a black form which
stands before him. Under the great sky of night, his Basque faith has
commenced to weaken. His