find it
almost desolate, especially in the thought that his mother shall not be
there always--and that Gracieuse shall never be there again.

His pace quickens in his haste to embrace his mother; he turns around
his village instead of going into it, in order to reach his house
through a path which overlooks the square and church; passing quickly,
he looks at everything with inexpressible pain. Peace, silence soar
over this little parish of Etchezar, heart of the French Basque land and
country of all the famous pelotaris of the past who have become heavy
grandfathers, or are dead now. The immutable church, where have remained
buried his dreams of faith, is surrounded by the same dark cypresses,
like a mosque. The ball-game square, while he walks quickly above it,
is still lighted by the sun with a finishing ray, oblique, toward the
background, toward the wall which the ancient inscription surmounts,--as
on the evening of his first great success, four years ago, when, in the
joyous crowd, Gracieuse stood in a blue gown, she who has become a black
nun to-day.--On the deserted benches, on the granite steps where the
grass grows, three or four old men are seated, who were formerly
the heroes of the place and whom their reminiscences bring back here
incessantly, to talk at the end of the days, when the twilight descends
from the summits, invades the earth, seems to emanate and to fall from
the brown Pyrenees.--Oh, the folks who live here, whose lives run here;
oh, the little cider inns, the little, simple shops and the old, little
things--brought from the cities, from the other places--sold to the
mountaineers of the surrounding country!--How all this seems to him
now strange, separated from him, or set far in the background of the
primitive past!--Is he truly not a man of Etchezar to-day, is he no
longer the Ramuntcho of former times?--What particular thing resides
in his mind to prevent him from feeling comfortable here, as the others
feel? Why is it prohibited to him, to him alone, to accomplish here the
tranquil destiny of his dreams, since all his friends have accomplished
theirs?--

At last here is his house, there, before his eyes. It is as he expected
to find it. As he expected, he recognizes along the wall all the
persistent flowers cultivated by his mother, the same flowers which
the frost has destroyed weeks ago in the North from which he comes:
heliotropes, geraniums, tall dahlias and roses with climbing branches