ge, seems always to close
the southwestern horizon, while it changes in appearance according to
the clouds and the hours; a country which is the first to be lighted by
the pale sun of mornings and which masks afterward, like a sombre screen
the red sun of evenings.--

He adored his Basque land, Ramuntcho,--and this morning was one of the
times when this adoration penetrated him more profoundly. In his after
life, during his exile, the reminiscence of these delightful returns at
dawn, after the nights of smuggling, caused in him an indescribable and
very anguishing nostalgia. But his love for the hereditary soil was not
as simple as that of his companions. As in all his sentiments, as in all
his sensations, there were mingled in it diverse elements. At first the
instinctive and unanalyzed attachment of his maternal ancestors to the
native soil, then something more refined coming from his father, an
unconscious reflection of the artistic admiration which had retained the
stranger here for several seasons and had given to him the caprice of
allying himself with a girl of these mountains in order to obtain a
Basque descendance.--

CHAPTER III.

It is eleven o'clock now, and the bells of France and Spain mingle above
the frontier their religious festival vibrations.

Bathed, rested, and in Sunday dress, Ramuntcho was going with his mother
to the high mass of All-Saints' Day. On the path, strewn with reddish
leaves, they descended toward their parish, under a warm sun which gave
to them the illusion of summer.

He, dressed in a manner almost elegant and like a city denizen, save for
the traditional Basque cap, which he wore on the side and pulled down
like a visor over his childish eyes. She, straight and proud, her head
high, her demeanor distinguished, in a gown of new form; having the air
of a society woman, except for the mantilla; made of black cloth, which
covered her hair and her shoulders. In the great city formerly she had
learned how to dress--and anyway, in the Basque country, where so many
ancient traditions have been preserved, the women and the girls of the
least important villages have all taken the habit of dressing in the
fashion of the day, with an elegance unknown to the peasants of the
other French provinces.

They separated, as etiquette ordains, in the yard of the church, where
the immense cypress trees smelled of the south and the Orient. It
resembled a mosque from the exterior, their parish,