ing of, since that regained land was to him an empty land forever?
How could his infinite despair be changed by that tempting gracefulness
of the girls, by that ironical gaiety of the sky, the human beings and
the things?--No! He would go home, embrace his mother--!

As he had expected, the stage-coach to Etchezar had left two hours
ago. But, without trouble, he would traverse on foot this long road so
familiar to him and arrive in the evening, before night.

So he went to buy sandals, the foot-gear of his former runs. And, with
the mountaineer's quick step, in long, nervous strides, he plunged at
once into the heart of the silent country, through paths which were for
him full of memories.

November was coming to an end in the tepid radiance of that sun which
lingers always here for a long time, on the Pyrenean slopes. For days,
in the Basque land, had lasted this same luminous and pure sky, above
woods half despoiled of their leaves, above mountains reddened by the
ardent tint of the ferns. From the borders of the paths ascended tall
grasses, as in the month of May, and large, umbellated flowers, mistaken
about the season; in the hedges, privets and briars had come into bloom
again, in the buzz of the last bees; and one could see flying persistent
butterflies, to whom death had given several weeks of grace.

The Basque houses appeared here and there among the trees,--very
elevated, the roof protruding, white in their extreme oldness, with
their shutters brown or green, of a green ancient and faded. And
everywhere, on their wooden balconies were drying the yellow gold
pumpkins, the sheafs of pink peas; everywhere, on their walls, like
beautiful beads of coral, were garlands of red peppers: all the things
of the soil still fecund, all the things of the old, nursing soil,
amassed thus in accordance with old time usage, in provision for the
darkened months when the heat departs.

And, after the mists of the Northern autumn, that limpidity of the
air, that southern sunlight, every detail of the land, awakened in the
complex mind of Ramuntcho infinite vibrations, painfully sweet.

It was the tardy season when are cut the ferns that form the fleece
of the reddish hills. And, large ox-carts filled with them rolled
tranquilly, in the beautiful, melancholy sun, toward the isolated farms,
leaving on their passage the trail of their fragrance. Very slowly,
through the mountain paths, went these enormous loads of ferns; very