nd flowers; troubles about everything that moves in the green foliage,
about the lizards that might be caught, about the birds that might be
taken out of their nests, and about the beautiful trout swimming in the
water; he jumps, he leaps; he wishes he had fishing lines, sticks,
guns; truly he reveals his savagery in the bloom of his robust eighteen
years.--Ramuntcho calms himself quickly; after breaking a few branches,
plucking a few flowers, he begins to meditate; and he thinks--

Here they are stopped now at a cross-road where no human habitation is
visible. Around them are gorges full of shade wherein grand oaks grow
thickly, and above, everywhere, a piling up of mountains, of a reddish
color burned by the sun. There is nowhere an indication of the new
times; there is an absolute silence, something like the peace of the
primitive epochs. Lifting their heads toward the brown peaks, they
perceive at a long distance persons walking on invisible paths,
pushing before them donkeys of smugglers: as small as insects at such
a distance, are these silent passers-by on the flank of the gigantic
mountain; Basques of other times, almost confused, as one looks at them
from this place, with this reddish earth from which they came--and where
they are to return, after having lived like their ancestors without a
suspicion of the things of our times, of the events of other places--

They take off their caps, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, to wipe their
foreheads; it is so warm in these gorges and they have run so much,
jumped so much, that their entire bodies are in a perspiration. They are
enjoying themselves, but they would like to come, nevertheless, near
the two little, blonde girls who are waiting for them. But of whom shall
they ask their way now, since there is no one?

"Ave Maria," cries at them from the thickness of the branches an old,
rough voice.

And the salutation is prolonged by a string of words spoken in a rapid
decrescendo, quick; quick; a Basque prayer rattled breathlessly, begun
very loudly, then dying at the finish. And an old beggar comes out of
the fern, all earthy, all hairy, all gray, bent on his stick like a man
of the woods.

"Yes," says Arrochkoa, putting his hand in his pocket, "but you must
take us to the Olhagarray house."

"The Olhagarray house," replies the old man. "I have come from it, my
children, and you are near it."

In truth, how had they failed to see, at a hundred steps further, that
black