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Updated: May 13, 2025
She recognized from afar the steps of her son, the serious Franchita, pale and straight in her black clothes, the one who formerly had loved and followed the stranger; then, who, feeling her desertion approaching, had returned courageously to the village in order to inhabit alone the dilapidated house of her deceased parents.
While Franchita entered by one of the lower doors, Ramuntcho went up a venerable stone stairway which led one from the exterior wall to the high tribunes reserved for men. The extremity of the sombre church was of dazzling old gold, with a profusion of twisted columns, of complicated entablements, of statues with excessive convolutions and with draperies in the style of the Spanish Renaissance.
Franchita, before she would let them go, leaned her head again on her son's neck; then she escorted the two men to the threshold of her door, opened on the immense darkness, and recited piously the Pater for them, while they went into the dark night, into the rain, into the chaos of the mountains, toward the obscure frontier.
And that was all he could say, with this naive and rude good-day of which he was the bearer; on the subject of the exile he knew no more and perhaps, until she died, Franchita would learn nothing more of that brother, almost non-existing, like a phantom. Then, when he had emptied a glass of cider, he went on his road, the strange messenger, who was going to his village.
Gracieuse marrying Ramuntcho for his charm alone, in spite of and against maternal will! The rancor and vindictiveness that lurked in the mind of Franchita rejoiced suddenly at that great triumph over the pride of Dolores.
And, now, two tears, rapid and heavy, fall from the eyes of Franchita, which widen, become living again, made young by desperate revolt and hatred. "Oh, that woman," she says suddenly. "Oh, that Dolores!"
Now they were going away from one another, Franchita and her son. In different directions, they were walking on that Etchezar road, in the splendor of the setting sun, in a region of pink heather and of yellow fern. She was going up slowly toward her home, meeting isolated groups of farmers, flocks led through the golden evening by little shepherds in Basque caps.
At noon, he returned to his isolated house to see his mother. The febrile and somewhat artificial improvement of the morning had continued. Nursed by the old Doyanburu, Franchita said that she felt better, and, in the fear that Ramuntcho might become dreamy, she made him return to the square to attend the Sunday ball-game.
And then, at once, after the first words of greeting, smiles went out, in spite of this clear sun in this blue sky, and all were disturbed by the thought of Gracieuse in a veil and of Franchita dying. A violent flush of blood went up to his face when he caught sight of Dolores, at a distance, going into her home. Very decrepit, that one, and wearing a prostrate air!
When he ceased to be a child, when Ramuntcho began to desert from school, to wish to follow the smugglers in the mountain, Franchita would say to him: "Anyway, you take after your uncle Ignacio, we shall never make anything of you! And it was true that he took after his uncle Ignacio, that he was fascinated by all the things that are dangerous, unknown and far-off
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