he spirit of the
olden time; in its expectation of the pleasure, in its liveliness, in
its ardor, it is intensely Basque and very old,--under the great shade
of the Gizune, the overhanging mountain, which throws over it a twilight
charm.

And the game begins in the melancholy evening. The ball, thrown with
much strength, flies, strikes the wall in great, quick blows, then
rebounds, and traverses the air with the rapidity of a bullet.

This wall in the background, rounded like a dome's festoon on the sky,
has become little by little crowned with heads of children,--little
Basques, little cats, ball-players of the future, who soon will
precipitate themselves like a flight of birds, to pick up the ball every
time when, thrown too high, it will go beyond the square and fall in the
fields.

The game becomes gradually warmer as arms and legs are limbered, in an
intoxication of movement and swiftness. Already Ramuntcho is acclaimed.
And the vicar also shall be one of the fine players of the day, strange
to look upon with his leaps similar to those of a cat, and his athletic
gestures, imprisoned in his priest's gown.

This is the rule of the game: when one of the champions of the two
camps lets the ball fall, it is a point earned by the adverse camp,--and
ordinarily the limit is sixty points. After each point, the titled crier
chants with a full voice in his old time tongue: "The but has so much,
the refil has so much, gentlemen!" (The but is the camp which played
first, the refil is the camp opposed to the but.) And the crier's long
clamor drags itself above the noise of the crowd, which approves or
murmurs.

On the square, the zone gilt and reddened by the sun diminishes, goes,
devoured by the shade; more and more the great screen of the Gizune
predominates over everything, seems to enclose in this little corner
of the world at its feet, the very special life and the ardor of these
mountaineers--who are the fragments of a people very mysteriously
unique, without analogy among nations--The shade of night marches
forward and invades in silence, soon it will be sovereign; in the
distance only a few summits still lighted above so many darkened
valleys, are of a violet luminous and pink.

Ramuntcho plays as, in his life, he had never played before; he is
in one of those instants when one feels tempered by strength, light,
weighing nothing, and when it is a pure joy to move, to extend one's
arms, to leap. But Arrochkoa weak