It is Easter night, after the village bells have ceased to mingle¹ in the air so many holy vibrations² that came from Spain and from France.
 
Seated on the bank of the Bidassoa, Ramuntcho and Florentino watch the arrival of a bark. A great silence now, and the bells sleep. The tepid³ twilight⁴ has been prolonged and, in breathing, one feels the approach of summer.
 
As soon as the night falls, it must appear from the coast of Spain, the smuggling⁵ bark, bringing the very prohibited phosphorus. And, without its touching⁶ the shore, they must go to get that merchandise, by advancing on foot in the bed of the river, with long, pointed⁷ sticks in their hands, in order to assume, if perchance they were caught, airs of people fishing innocently for “platuches.”
 
The water of the Bidassoa is to-night an immovable and clear mirror, a little more luminous⁸ than the sky, and in this mirror, are reproduced, upside down, all the constellations⁹, the entire Spanish mountain, carved in so sombre a silhouette¹⁰ in the tranquil¹¹ atmosphere. Summer, summer, one has more and more the consciousness of its approach, so limpid¹² and soft are the first signs of night, so much lukewarm langour is scattered¹³ over this corner of the world, where the smugglers silently manoeuvre¹⁴.
 
But this estuary¹⁵, which separates the two countries, seems in this moment to Ramuntcho more melancholy¹⁶ than usual, more closed and more walled-in in front of him by these black mountains, at the feet of which hardly shine, here and there, two or three uncertain lights. Then, he is seized again by his desire to know what there is beyond, and further still.—Oh! to go elsewhere!—To escape, at least for a time, from the oppressiveness of that land—so loved, however!—Before death, to escape the oppressiveness of this existence, ever similar and without egress¹⁷. To try something else, to get out of here, to travel, to know things—!
 
Then, while watching the far-off, terrestrial distances where the bark will appear, he raises his eyes from time to time toward what happens above, in the infinite, looks at the new moon, the crescent of which, as thin as a line, lowers and will disappear soon; looks at the stars, the slow and regulated march of which he has observed, as have all the people of his trade, during so many nocturnal hours; is troubled in the depth of his mind by the proportions and the inconceivable distances of these things.—
 
In his village of Etchezar, the old priest who had taught him the catechism, interested by his young, lively intelligence, has lent books to him, has continued with him conversations on a thousand subjects, and, on the subject of the planets, has given to him the notion of movements and of immensities, has half opened before his eyes the grand abyss of space and duration. Then, in his mind, innate¹⁸ doubts, frights and despairs that slumbered¹⁹, all that his father had............