the falling night,
with regretful eyes that say: "Then, it is finished already? Then, that
is all?--"

CHAPTER V.

Eight o'clock in the evening. They have dined at the cider mill, all
the players except the vicar, under the patronage of Itchoua; they have
lounged for a long time afterward, languid in the smoke of smuggled
cigarettes and listening to the marvellous improvisations of the two
Iragola brothers, of the Mendiazpi mountain--while outside, on the
street, the girls in small groups holding one another's arms, looked at
the windows, found pleasure in observing on the smoky panes the round
shadows of the heads of the men covered with similar caps--

Now, on the square, the brass band plays the first measures of the
fandango, and the young men, the young girls, all those of the village
and several also of the mountain who have remained to dance, arrive in
impatient groups. There are some dancing already on the road, not to
lose anything.

And soon the fandango turns, turns, in the light of the new moon the
horns of which seem to pose, lithe and light, on the enormous and heavy
mountain. In the couples that dance without ever touching each other,
there is never a separation; before one another always and at an equal
distance, the boy and the girl make evolutions with a rhythmic grace, as
if they were tied together by some invisible magnet.

It has gone into hiding, the crescent of the moon, fallen, one would
think, in the black mountain; then lanterns are brought and hooked to
the trunks of the plane-trees and the young men can see better their
partners who, opposite them swing with an air of fleeing continually,
but without increasing their distance ever: almost all pretty, their
hair elegantly dressed, a kerchief on the neck, and wearing with
ease gowns in the fashion of to-day. The men, somewhat grave always,
accompany the music with snaps of their fingers in the air: shaven and
sunburnt faces to which labor in the fields, in smuggling or at sea,
has given a special thinness, almost ascetic; still, by the ampleness
of their brown necks, by the width of their shoulders, one divines their
great strength, the strength of that old, sober and religious race.

The fandango turns and oscillates, to the tune of an ancient waltz. All
the arms, extended and raised, agitate themselves in the air, rise or
fall with pretty, cadenced motions following the oscillations of bodies.
The rope soled sandals make this danc