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Updated: May 8, 2025
And there are days also when somewhat distant things are as if eaten by light, powdered with sun dust; then, above the woods and the village of Etchezar, the Gizune, very pointed, becomes more vaporous and more high, and, on the sky, float, to make it appear bluer, very small clouds of a gilded white with a little mother-of-pearl gray in their shades.
At this moment the village is entirely animated by the spirit of the olden time; in its expectation of the pleasure, in its liveliness, in its ardor, it is intensely Basque and very old, under the great shade of the Gizune, the overhanging mountain, which throws over it a twilight charm. And the game begins in the melancholy evening.
While he walked on the road, powdered and clear, the powerful charm of change, of travel, dulled his sensitiveness; almost without any precise thought, he looked at his shadow, which the moon made clear and harsh, marching in front of him. And the great Gizune dominated impassibly everything, with its cold and spectral air, in all this white radiance of midnight.
But he sees also, on the side opposed to the players' wall, on the side of the approaching darkness, the archaic assemblage of Basque houses, the little square of the village with its kalsomined porches and its old plane-trees, then the old, massive belfry of the church, and, higher than everything, dominating everything, crushing everything, the abrupt mass of the Gizune from which comes so much shade, from which descends on this distant village so hasty an impression of night Truly it encloses too much, that mountain, it imprisons, it impresses And Ramuntcho, in his juvenile triumph, is troubled by the sentiment of this, by this furtive and vague attraction of other places so often mingled with his troubles and with his joys
On the square, the zone gilt and reddened by the sun diminishes, goes, devoured by the shade; more and more the great screen of the Gizune predominates over everything, seems to enclose in this little corner of the world at its feet, the very special life and the ardor of these mountaineers who are the fragments of a people very mysteriously unique, without analogy among nations The shade of night marches forward and invades in silence, soon it will be sovereign; in the distance only a few summits still lighted above so many darkened valleys, are of a violet luminous and pink.
Around the isolated village, which the old, heavy belfry, surmounts, a last sheaf of rays traces a halo of the color of copper and gold, while clouds and a gigantic obscurity emanating from the Gizune darken the lands piled up above and under, the mass of brown hills, colored by the death of the ferns
Through paths of the Gizune, they had returned on foot from Spain, heavy with copper coin bearing the effigy of the gentle, little King Alfonso XIII. A new trick of the smugglers: for Itchoua's account, they had exchanged over there with profit, a big sum of money for this debased coin, destined to be circulated at par at the coming fairs, in different villages of the Landes where Spanish cents are current.
Above all, filling the sky, the gigantic Gizune, confused and sombre, is as if it were the centre and the source of the darkness, little by little scattered over all things. And at the church, suddenly the pious bells ring, recalling to distracted minds the enclosure where the graves are, the cypress trees around the belfry, and the entire grand mystery of the sky, of prayer, of inevitable death.
Above, groups of oaks and of beeches clung to the slopes, alternating with prairies; then, above this tranquil Eden, toward the sky, ascended the grand, denuded peak of the Gizune, sovereign hill of the region of the clouds.
Above them, occupying only a small corner of the old, granite amphitheatre, ascended rows of empty benches in ruins; then, the houses of Etchezar, so peacefully isolated from the rest of the world; then, in fine, the obscure, encumbering mass of the Gizune, filling up the sky and mingling with thick clouds asleep on its sides.
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