Ramuntcho | Page 8

the
moment under the austere mantilla of the ceremony. Gracieuse had not
been a scholar for two years, but was none the less the intimate friend
of the sisters, her teachers, ever in their company for songs, novenas, or
decorations of white flowers around the statues of the Holy
Virgin.--Then, the priests, in their most sumptuous costumes, appeared
in front of the magnificent gold of the tabernacle, on a platform
elevated and theatrical, and the mass began, celebrated, in this distant
village, with excessive pomp as in a great city. There were choirs of
small boys chanting in infantile voices with a savage ardor. Then
choruses of little girls, whom a sister accompanied at the harmonium
and which the clear and fresh voice of Gracieuse guided. From time to
time a clamor came, like a storm, from the tribunes above where the
men were, a formidable response animated the old vaults, the old
sonorous wainscoting, which for centuries have vibrated with the same
song.--
To do the same things which for numberless ages the ancestors have
done and to tell blindly the same words of faith, are indications of
supreme wisdom, are a supreme force. For all the faithful who sang
there came from this immutable ceremony of the mass a sort of peace, a
confused but soft resignation to coming destruction. Living of the

present hour, they lost a little of their ephemeral personality to attach
themselves better to the dead lying under the slabs and to continue
them more exactly, to form with them and their future descendants only
one of these resisting entireties, of almost infinite duration, which is
called a race.
CHAPTER IV.
"Ite missa est!" The high mass is finished and the antique church is
emptying. Outside, in the yard, among the tombs, the assistants scatter.
And all the joy of a sunny noon greets them, as they come out of the
sombre nave where each, according to his naive faculties, had caught
more or less a glimpse of the great mystery and of the inevitable death.
Wearing all the uniform national cap, the men come down the exterior
stairway; the women, slower to be captivated by the lure of the blue sky,
retaining still under the mourning veil a little of the dream of the
church, come out of the lower porticoes in black troops; around a grave
freshly closed, some stop and weep.
The southern wind, which is the great magician of the Basque country,
blows softly. The autumn of yesterday has gone and it is forgotten.
Lukewarm breaths pass through the air, vivifying, healthier than those
of May, having the odor of hay and the odor of flowers. Two singers of
the highway are there, leaning on the graveyard wall, and they intone,
with a tambourine and a guitar, an old seguidilla of Spain, bringing
here the warm and somewhat Arabic gaieties of the lands beyond the
frontiers.
And in the midst of all this intoxication of the southern November,
more delicious in this country than the intoxication of the spring,
Ramuntcho, having come down one of the first, watches the coming
out of the sisters in order to greet Gracieuse.
The sandal peddler has come also to this closing of the mass, and
displays among the roses of the tombs his linen foot coverings
ornamented with woolen flowers. Young men, attracted by the dazzling
embroideries, gather around him to select colors.

The bees and the flies buzz as in June; the country has become again,
for a few hours, for a few days, for as long as this wind will blow,
luminous and warm. In front of the mountains, which have assumed
violent brown or sombre green tints, and which seem to have advanced
to-day until they overhang the church, houses of the village appear in
relief, very neat, very white under their coat of kalsomine,--old
Pyrenean houses with their wooden balconies and on their walls
intercrossings of beams in the fashion of the olden time. In the
southwest, the visible portion of Spain, the denuded and red peak
familiar to smugglers, stands straight and near in the beautiful clear
sky.
Gracieuse does not appear yet, retarded doubtless by the nuns in some
altar service. As for Franchita, who never mingles in the Sunday
festivals, she takes the path to her house, silent and haughty, after a
smile to her son, whom she will not see again until to-night after the
dances have come to an end.
A group of young men, among whom is the vicar who has just taken
off his golden ornaments, forms itself at the threshold of the church, in
the sun, and seems to be plotting grave projects.--They are the great
players of the country, the fine flower of the lithe and the strong; it is
for the