“Oh, well! I understand!—Then, shake once more—and it's a sort of revenge on Detcharry for me, to know that his son has gone into smuggling like us!—”
They send for cider and they drink together, while the old men tell again the exploits and the tricks of former times, all the ancient tales of nights in the mountains; they speak a variety of Basque different from that of Etchezar, the village where the language is preserved more clearly articulated, more incisive, more pure, perhaps. Ramuntcho and Arrochkoa are surprised by this accent of the high land, which softens the words and which chants them; those white-haired story tellers seem to them almost strangers, whose talk is a series of monotonous stanzas, repeated infinitely as in the antique songs expressive of sorrow. And, as soon as they cease talking, the slight sounds in the sleep of the country come from peaceful and fresh darkness. The crickets chirp; one hears the torrent bubbling at the base of the inn; one hears the dripping of springs from the terrible, overhanging summits, carpeted with thick foliage.—It sleeps, the very small village, crouched and hidden in the hollow of a ravine, and one has the impression that the night here is a night blacker than elsewhere and more mysterious.
“In truth,” concludes the old chief, “the customhouse and smuggling, at bottom, resemble each other; it is a game where the smartest wins, is it not? I will even say that, in my own opinion, an officer of customs, clever and bold, a customs officer like your father, for example, is as worthy as any of us!”
After this, the hostess having come to say that it was time to put out the lamp—the last lamp still lit in the village—they go away, the old defrauders. Ramuntcho and Arrochkoa go up to their rooms, lie down and sleep, always in the chirp of the crickets, always in the sound of fresh waters that run or that fall. And Ramuntcho, as in his house at Etchezar, hears vaguely during his sleep the tinkling of bells, attached to the necks of cows moving in a dream, under him, in the stable.
CHAPTER XVI.
Now they open, to the beautiful April morning, the shutters of their narrow windows, pierced like portholes in the thickness of the very old wall.
And suddenly, it is a flood of light that dazzles their eyes. Outside, the spring is resplendent. Never had they seen, before this, summits so high and so near. But along the slopes full of leaves, along the mountains decked with trees, the sun descends to radiate in this valley on the whiteness of the village, on the kalsomine of the ancient houses with green shutters.
Both awakened with veins full of youth and hearts full of joy. They have formed the project this morning to go into the country, to the house of Madame Dargaignaratz's cousins, and see the two little girls, who must have arrived the night before in the carriage, Gracieuse and Pantchika.—After a glance at the ball-game square, where they shall return to practice in the afternoon, they go on their way through small paths, magnificently green, hidden in the depths of the valleys, skirting the cool torrents. The foxglove flowers start everywhere like long, pink rockets above the light and infinite mass of ferns.
It is at a long distance, it seems, that house of the Olhagarray cousins, and they stop from time to time to ask the way from shepherds, or they knock at the doors of solitary houses, here and there, under the cover of branches. They had never seen Basque houses so old nor so primitive, under the shade of chestnut trees so tall.