His twenty-two year old face had darkened under the ardent sun; his mustache, now very long, gave him an air of proud nobility. And, on the lapel of the civilian coat which he had just bought, appeared the glorious ribbon of his medal.
At Bordeaux, where he had arrived after a night of travel, he had taken a place, with some emotion, in that train of Irun which descends in a direct line toward the South, through the monotony of the interminable moors. Near the right door he had installed himself in order to see sooner the Bay of Biscay open and the highlands of Spain sketch themselves.
Then, near Bayonne, he had been startled at the sight of the first Basque caps, at the tall gates, the first Basque houses among the pines and the oaks.
And at Saint-Jean-de-Luz at last, when he set foot on the soil, he had felt like one drunk—After the mist and the cold already begun in Northern France, he felt the sudden and voluptuous impression of a warmer climate, the sensation of going into a hothouse. There was a festival of sunlight that day; the southern wind, the exquisite southern wind, blew, and the Pyrenees had magnificent tints on the grand, free sky. Moreover, girls passed, whose laughter rang of the South and of Spain, who had the elegance and the grace of the Basques—and who, after the heavy blondes of the North, troubled him more than all these illusions of summer.—But promptly he returned to himself: what was he thinking of, since that regained land was to him an empty land forever? How could his infinite despair be changed by that tempting gracefulness of the girls, by that ironical gaiety of the sky, the human beings and the things?—No! He would go home, embrace his mother—!
As he had expected, the stage-coach to Etchezar had left two hours ago. But, without trouble, he would traverse on foot this long road so familiar to him and arrive in the evening, before night.
So he went to buy sandals, the foot-gear of his former runs. And, with the mountaineer's quick step, in long, nervous strides, he plunged at once into the heart of the silent country, through paths which were for him full of memories.
November was coming to an end in the tepid radiance of that sun which lingers always here for a long time, on the Pyrenean slopes. For days, in the Basque land, had lasted this same luminous and pure sky, above woods half despoiled of their leaves, above mountains reddened by the ardent tint of the ferns. From the borders of the paths ascended tall grasses, as in the month of May, and large, umbellated flowers, mistaken about the season; in the hedges, privets and briars had come into bloom again, in the buzz of the last bees; and one could see flying persistent butterflies, to whom death had given several weeks of grace.
The Basque houses appeared here and there among the trees,—very elevated, the roof protruding, white in their extreme oldness, with their shutters brown or green, of a green ancient and faded. And everywhere, on their wooden balconies were drying the yellow gold pumpkins, the sheafs of pink peas; everywhere, on their walls, like beautiful beads of coral, were garlands of red peppers: all the things of the soil still fecund, all the things of the old, nursing soil, amassed thus in accordance with old time usage, in provision for the darkened months when the heat departs.
And, after the mists of the Northern autumn, that limpidity of the air, that southern sunlight, every detail of the land, awakened in the complex mind of Ramuntcho infinite vibrations, painfully sweet.
It was the tardy season when are cut the ferns that form the fleece of the reddish hills. And, large ox-carts filled with them rolled tranquilly, in the beautiful, melancholy sun, toward the isolated farms, leaving on their passage the trail of their fragrance. Very slowly, through the mountain paths, went these enormous loads of ferns; very slowly, with sounds of cow-bells. The harnessed oxen, indolent and strong,—all wearing the traditional head-gear of sheepskin, fallow colored, which gives to them the air of bisons or of aurochs, pulled those heavy carts, the wheels of which are solid disks, like those of antique chariots. The cowboys, holding the long stick in their hands, marched in front, always noiselessly, in sandals, the pink cotton shirt revealing the chest, the waistcoat thrown over the left shoulder—and the woolen cap drawn over a face shaven, thin, grave, to which the width of the jaws and of the muscles of the neck gives an expression of massive solidity.