with its tall, old,
ferocious walls, pierced at the top only by diminutive windows, with its
warm color of antiquity, of dust and of sun.

While Franchita entered by one of the lower doors, Ramuntcho went up
a venerable stone stairway which led one from the exterior wall to the
high tribunes reserved for men.

The extremity of the sombre church was of dazzling old gold, with a
profusion of twisted columns, of complicated entablements, of statues
with excessive convolutions and with draperies in the style of the
Spanish Renaissance. And this magnificence of the tabernacle was in
contrast with the simplicity of the lateral walls, simply kalsomined.
But an air of extreme old age harmonized these things, which one felt
were accustomed for centuries to endure in the face of one another.

It was early still, and people were hardly arriving for this high mass.
Leaning on the railing of his tribune, Ramuntcho looked at the women
entering, all like black phantoms, their heads and dress concealed under
the mourning cashmere which it is usual to wear at church. Silent and
collected, they glided on the funereal pavement of mortuary slabs, where
one could read still, in spite of the effacing of ages, inscriptions
in Euskarian tongue, names of extinguished families and dates of past
centuries.

Gracieuse, whose coming preoccupied Ramuntcho, was late. But, to
distract his mind for a moment, a "convoy" advanced slowly; a convoy,
that is a parade of parents and nearest neighbors of one who had died
during the week, the men still draped in the long cape which is worn at
funerals, the women under the mantle and the traditional hood of full
mourning.

Above, in the two immense tribunes superposed along the sides of the
nave, the men came one by one to take their places, grave and with
rosaries in their hands: farmers, laborers, cowboys, poachers or
smugglers, all pious and ready to kneel when the sacred bell rang. Each
one of them, before taking his seat, hooked behind him, to a nail on the
wall, his woolen cap, and little by little, on the white background of
the kalsomine, came into line rows of innumerable Basque headgear.

Below, the little girls of the school entered at last, in good order,
escorted by the Sisters of Saint Mary of the Rosary. And, among these
nuns, wrapped in black, Ramuntcho recognized Gracieuse. She, too, had
her head enveloped with black; her blonde hair, which to-night would be
flurried in the breeze of th