it and to continue it--

O crux, ave, spes unica!--One sees them no longer, they have re-entered
their little, solitary convent.

The two men have not exchanged even a word on their abandoned
undertaking, on the ill-defined cause which for the first time has
undone their courage; they feel, toward one another, almost a sense of
shame of their sudden and insurmountable timidity.

For an instant their proud heads were turned toward the nuns slowly
fleeing; now they look at each other through the night.

They are going to part, and probably forever: Arrochkoa puts into his
friends hands the reins of the little wagon which, according to his
promise, he lends to him:

"Well, my poor Ramuntcho!" he says, in a tone of commiseration hardly
affectionate.

And the unexpressed end of the phrase signifies clearly:

"Go, since you have failed; and I have to go and meet my friends--"

Ramuntcho would have kissed him with all his heart for the last
farewell,--and in this embrace of the brother of the beloved one, he
would have shed doubtless good, hot tears which, for a moment at least,
would have cured him a little.

But no, Arrochkoa has become again the Arrochkoa of the bad days, the
gambler without soul, that only bold things interest. Absentmindedly, he
touches Ramuntcho's hand:

"Well, good-bye!--Good luck--"

And, with silent steps, he goes toward the smugglers, toward the
frontier, toward the propitious darkness.

Then Ramuntcho, alone in the world now, whips the little, mountain horse
who gallops with his light tinkling of bells.--That train which will
pass by Aranotz, that vessel which will start from Bordeaux--an instinct
impels Ramuntcho not to miss them. Mechanically he hastens, no longer
knowing why, like a body without a mind which continues to obey an
ancient impulsion, and, very quickly, he who has no aim and no hope in
the world, plunges into the savage country, into the thickness of the
woods, in all that profound blackness of the night of May, which the
nuns, from their elevated window, see around them--

For him the native land is closed, closed forever; finished are the
delicious dreams of his first years. He is a plant uprooted from the
dear, Basque soil and which a breath of adventure blows elsewhere.

At the horse's neck, gaily the bells tinkle, in the silence of the
sleeping woods; the light of the lantern, which runs hastily, shows to
the sad fugitive the under side of branches, fresh verdu