Arrochkoa, whose catlike mustache has lengthened a great deal and whose feline expression is accentuated, runs to him with extended hands, with an effusion that he did not expect, in an enthusiasm, perhaps sincere, for that ex-sergeant who has such a grand air, who wears the ribbon of a medal and whose adventures have made a stir in the land:
“Ah, my Ramuntcho, when did you arrive?—Oh, if I could have prevented—What do you think of my old, hardened mother and of all those church bigots?—Oh, I did not tell you: I have a son, since two months; a fine little fellow! We have so many things to say, my poor friend, so many things!—”
The bell rings, rings, fills the air more and more with its soft appeal, very grave and somewhat imposing also.
“You are not going there, I suppose?” asks Arrochkoa, pointing to the church.
“No, oh, no,” replies Ramuntcho, sombrely decided.
“Well come then, let us go in here and taste the new cider of your country!—”
To the smugglers' cider mill, he brings him; both, near the open window, sit as formerly, looking outside;—and this place also, these old benches, these casks in a line in the back, these same images on the wall, are there to recall to Ramuntcho the delicious times of the past, the times that are finished.
The weather is adorably beautiful; the sky retains a rare limpidity; through the air passes that special scent of falling seasons, scent of woods despoiled, of dead leaves that the sun overheats on the soil. Now, after the absolute calm of the morning, rises a wind of autumn, a chill of November, announcing clearly, but with a melancholy almost charming, that the winter is near—a southern winter, it is true, a softened winter, hardly interrupting the life of the country. The gardens and all the old walls are still ornamented with roses—!
At first they talk of indifferent things while drinking their cider, of Ramuntcho's travels, of what happened in the country during his absence, of the marriages which occurred or were broken. And, to those two rebels who have fled from the church, all the sounds of the mass come during their talk, the sounds of the small bells and the sounds of the organ, the ancient songs that fill the high, sonorous nave—
At last, Arrochkoa returns to the burning subject: