, now, two tears, rapid and heavy, fall from the eyes of Franchita,
which widen, become living again, made young by desperate revolt and
hatred.

"Oh, that woman," she says suddenly. "Oh, that Dolores!"

And her cry expresses and summarizes all her jealousy of thirty years'
standing, all her merciless rancor against that enemy of her childhood
who has succeeded at last in breaking the life of her son.

A silence between them. He is seated, with head bent, near the bed,
holding the poor, feverish hand which his mother has extended to him.
She, breathing more quickly, seems for a long while under the oppression
of something which she hesitates to express:

"Tell me, my Ramuntcho!--I would like to ask you.--What do you intend to
do, my son? What are your projects for the future?--"

"I do not know, mother.--I will think, I will see.--You ask--all
at once.--We have time to talk of this, have we not?--To America,
perhaps--"

"Oh, yes," she says slowly, with the fear that was in her for days, "to
America--I suspected it. Oh, that is what you will do.--I knew it, I
knew it--"

Her phrase ends in a groan and she joins her hands to try to pray--

CHAPTER III.

Ramuntcho, the next morning, was wandering in the village, under a sun
which had pierced the clouds of the night, a sun as radiant as that of
yesterday. Careful in his dress, the ends of his mustache turned up,
proud in his demeanor, elegant, grave and handsome, he went at
random, to see and to be seen, a little childishness mingling with his
seriousness, a little pleasure with his distress. His mother had said to
him:

"I am better, I assure you. To-day is Sunday; go, walk about I pray
you--"

And passers-by turned their heads to look at him, whispered the news:
"Franchita's son has returned home; he looks very well!"

A summer illusion persisted everywhere, with, however, the unfathomable
melancholy of things tranquilly finishing. Under that impassible
radiance of sunlight, the Pyrenean fields seemed dull, all their plants,
all their grasses were as if collected in one knows not what resignation
weary of living, what expectation of death.

The turns of the path, the houses, the least trees, all recalled hours
of other times to Ramuntcho, hours wherein Gracieuse was mingled. And
then, at each reminiscence, at each step, engraved itself and hammered
itself in his mind, under a new form, this verdict without recourse: "It
is finished, you are alone fore