Ramuntcho Part 20

O crux, ave, spes unica!--One sees them no longer, they have re-entered their little, solitary convent.

The two men have not exchanged even a word on their abandoned undertaking, on the ill-defined cause which for the first time has undone their courage; they feel, toward one another, almost a sense of shame of their sudden and insurmountable timidity.

For an instant their proud heads were turned toward the nuns slowly fleeing; now they look at each other through the night.

They are going to part, and probably forever: Arrochkoa puts into his friends hands the reins of the little wagon which, according to his promise, he lends to him:

"Well, my poor Ramuntcho!" he says, in a tone of commiseration hardly affectionate.

And the unexpressed end of the phrase signifies clearly:

"Go, since you have failed; and I have to go and meet my friends--"

Ramuntcho would have kissed him with all his heart for the last farewell,--and in this embrace of the brother of the beloved one, he would have shed doubtless good, hot tears which, for a moment at least, would have cured him a little.

But no, Arrochkoa has become again the Arrochkoa of the bad days, the gambler without soul, that only bold things interest. Absentmindedly, he touches Ramuntcho's hand:

"Well, good-bye!--Good luck--"

And, with silent steps, he goes toward the smugglers, toward the frontier, toward the propitious darkness.

Then Ramuntcho, alone in the world now, whips the little, mountain horse who gallops with his light tinkling of bells.--That train which will pa.s.s by Aranotz, that vessel which will start from Bordeaux--an instinct impels Ramuntcho not to miss them. Mechanically he hastens, no longer knowing why, like a body without a mind which continues to obey an ancient impulsion, and, very quickly, he who has no aim and no hope in the world, plunges into the savage country, into the thickness of the woods, in all that profound blackness of the night of May, which the nuns, from their elevated window, see around them--

For him the native land is closed, closed forever; finished are the delicious dreams of his first years. He is a plant uprooted from the dear, Basque soil and which a breath of adventure blows elsewhere.

At the horse's neck, gaily the bells tinkle, in the silence of the sleeping woods; the light of the lantern, which runs hastily, shows to the sad fugitive the under side of branches, fresh verdure of oaks; by the wayside, flowers of France; from distance to distance, the walls of a familiar hamlet, of an old church,--all the things which he will never see again, unless it be, perhaps, in a doubtful and very distant old age--

In front of his route, there is America, exile without probable return, an immense new world, full of surprises and approached now without courage: an entire life, very long, doubtless, during which his mind plucked from here will have to suffer and to harden over there; his vigor spend and exhaust itself none knows where, in unknown labors and struggles--

Above, in their little convent, in their sepulchre with walls so white, the tranquil nuns recite their evening prayers--

O crux, ave, spes unica--!

THE END.