And now, for the first time, they are face to face, Gracieuse and Ramuntcho; their eyes have met and gazed on one another. She does not lower her head before him; but it is as from an infinite distance that she looks at him, it is as from behind white mists that none may scale, as from the other side of an abyss, as from the other side of death; very soft, nevertheless, her glance indicates that she is as if she were absent, gone to tranquil and inaccessible other places.—And it is Ramuntcho at last who, still more tamed, lowers his ardent eyes before her virgin eyes.
They continue to babble, the Sisters; they would like to retain them both at Amezqueta for the night: the weather, they say, is so black, and a storm threatens.—M. the Cure, who went out to take communion to a patient in the mountain, will come back; he has known Arrochkoa at Etchezar when a vicar there; he would be glad to give him a room in the parish house—and one to his friend also, of course—
But no, Arrochkoa refuses, after a questioning glance at Ramuntcho. It is impossible to stay in the village; they will even go at once, or after a few moments of conversation, for they are expected on the Spanish frontier.—Gracieuse who, at first, in her mortal disturbance of mind, had not dared to talk, begins to question her brother. Now in Basque, then in French, she asks for news of those whom she has forever abandoned:
“And mother? All alone now in the house, even at night?”
“Oh, no,” says Arrochkoa, “Catherine watches over her and sleeps at the house.”
“And how is your child, Arrochkoa, has he been christened? What is his name? Lawrence, doubtless, like his grandfather.”
Etchezar, their village, is separated from Amezqueta by some sixty kilometres, in a land without more means of communication than in the past centuries:
“Oh, in spite of the distance,” says the little nun, “I get news of you sometimes. Last month, people here had met on the market place of Hasparren, women of our village; that is how I learned—many things.—At Easter I had hoped to see you; I was told that there would be a ball-game at Erricalde and that you would come to play there; then I said to myself that perhaps you would come here—and, while the festival lasted, I looked often at the road through this window, to see if you were coming—”
And she shows the window, open on the blackness of the savage country—from which ascends an immense silence, with, from time to time, the noise of spring, intermittent musical notes of crickets and tree-toads.
Hearing her talk so quietly, Ramuntcho feels confounded by this renunciation of all things; she appears to him still more irrevocably changed, far-off—poor little nun!—Her name was Gracieuse; now her name is Sister Mary Angelique, and she has no relatives; impersonal here, in this little house with white walls, without terrestrial hope and without desire, perhaps—one might as well say that she has departed for the regions of the grand oblivion of death. And yet, she smiles, quite serene now and apparently not even suffering.