His pace quickens in his haste to embrace his mother; he turns around his village instead of going into it, in order to reach his house through a path which overlooks the square and church; passing quickly, he looks at everything with inexpressible pain. Peace, silence soar over this little parish of Etchezar, heart of the French Basque land and country of all the famous pelotaris of the past who have become heavy grandfathers, or are dead now. The immutable church, where have remained buried his dreams of faith, is surrounded by the same dark cypresses, like a mosque. The ball-game square, while he walks quickly above it, is still lighted by the sun with a finishing ray, oblique, toward the background, toward the wall which the ancient inscription surmounts,—as on the evening of his first great success, four years ago, when, in the joyous crowd, Gracieuse stood in a blue gown, she who has become a black nun to-day.—On the deserted benches, on the granite steps where the grass grows, three or four old men are seated, who were formerly the heroes of the place and whom their reminiscences bring back here incessantly, to talk at the end of the days, when the twilight descends from the summits, invades the earth, seems to emanate and to fall from the brown Pyrenees.—Oh, the folks who live here, whose lives run here; oh, the little cider inns, the little, simple shops and the old, little things—brought from the cities, from the other places—sold to the mountaineers of the surrounding country!—How all this seems to him now strange, separated from him, or set far in the background of the primitive past!—Is he truly not a man of Etchezar to-day, is he no longer the Ramuntcho of former times?—What particular thing resides in his mind to prevent him from feeling comfortable here, as the others feel? Why is it prohibited to him, to him alone, to accomplish here the tranquil destiny of his dreams, since all his friends have accomplished theirs?—
At last here is his house, there, before his eyes. It is as he expected to find it. As he expected, he recognizes along the wall all the persistent flowers cultivated by his mother, the same flowers which the frost has destroyed weeks ago in the North from which he comes: heliotropes, geraniums, tall dahlias and roses with climbing branches. And the cherished, strewn leaves, which fall every autumn from the vault-shaped plane-trees, are there also, and are crushed with a noise so familiar under his steps—!
In the lower hall, when he enters, there is already grayish indecision, already night. The high chimney, where his glance rests at first by an instinctive reminiscence of the fires of ancient evenings, stands the same with its white drapery; but cold, filled with shade, smelling of absence or death.
He runs up to his mother's room. She, from her bed having recognized her son's step, has straightened up, all stiff, all white in the twilight:
“Ramuntcho,” she says, in a veiled and aged voice.
She extends her arms to him and as soon as she holds him, enlaces and embraces him:
“Ramuntcho!—”
Then, having uttered this name without adding anything, she leans her head against his cheek, in the habitual movement of surrender, in the movement of the grand, tender feelings of other times.—He, then, perceives that his mother's face is burning against his. Through her shirt he feels the arms that surround him thin, feverish and hot. And for the first time, he is frightened; the notion that she is doubtless very ill comes to his mind, the possibility and the sudden terror that she might die—
“Oh, you are alone, mother! But who takes care of you? Who watches over you?”
“Who watches over me?—” she replies with her abrupt brusqueness, her ideas of a peasant suddenly returned. “Spending money to nurse me, why should I do it?—The church woman or the old Doyamburu comes in the day-time to give me the things that I need, the things that the physician orders.—But—medicine!—Well! Light a lamp, my Ramuntcho!—I want to see you—and I cannot see you—”