but the words of love
or of violence, the words die before passing the lips.--And this peace,
more and more establishes itself; it seems as if a white shroud little
by little is covering everything, in order to calm and to extinguish.

There is nothing very peculiar, however, in this humble parlor: four
walls absolutely bare under a coat of whitewash; a wooden ceiling; a
floor where one slips, so carefully waxed it is; on a table, a plaster
Virgin, already indistinct, among all the similar white things of the
background where the twilight of May is dying. And a window without
curtains, open on the grand Pyrenean horizons invaded by night.--But,
from this voluntary poverty, from this white simplicity, is exhaled a
notion of definitive impersonality, of renunciation forever; and the
irremediability of accomplished things begins to manifest itself to the
mind of Ramuntcho, while bringing to him a sort of peace, of sudden and
involuntary resignation.

The two smugglers, immovable on their chairs, appear as silhouettes,
of wide shoulders on all this white of the walls, and of their lost
features one hardly sees the black more intense of the mustache and the
eyes. The two nuns, whose outlines are unified by the veil, seem already
to be two spectres all black--

"Wait, Sister Mary Angelique," says the Mother Superior to the
transformed young girl who was formerly named Gracieuse, "wait sister
till I light the lamp in order that you may at least see your brother's
face!"

She goes out, leaving them together, and, again, silence falls on
this rare instant, perhaps unique, impossible to regain, when they are
alone--

She comes back with a little lamp which makes the eyes of the smugglers
shine,--and with a gay voice, a kind air, asks, looking at Ramuntcho:

"And this one? A second brother, I suppose?--"

"Oh, no," says Arrochkoa in a singular tone. "He is only my friend."

In truth, he is not their brother, that Ramuntcho who stays there,
ferocious and mute.--And how he would frighten the quiet nuns if they
knew what storm brings him here--!

The same silence returns, heavy and disquieting, on these beings who, it
seems, should talk simply of simple things; and the old Mother Superior
remarks it, is astonished by it.--But the quick eyes of Ramuntcho become
immovable, veil themselves as if they are fascinated by some invisible
tamer. Under the harsh envelope, still beating, of his chest, the
calmness, the imposed calmne