At the fall of night, while a bad mountain squall twisted the branches of the trees, Ramuntcho entered his deserted¹ house where the gray of death seemed scattered² everywhere. A little of winter had passed over the Basque land, a little frost, burning the annual flowers, ending the illusory summer of December. In front of Franchita's door, the geraniums, the dahlias had just died, and the path which led to the house, which no one cared for, disappeared under the mass of yellow leaves.  
For Ramuntcho, this first week of mourning had been occupied by the thousand details that rock sorrow. Proud also, he had desired that all should be done in a luxurious³ manner, according to the old usages of the parish. His mother had been buried in a coffin⁴ of black velvet⁵ ornamented⁶ with silver nails. Then, there had been mortuary masses, attended by the neighbors in long capes⁷, the women enveloped⁸ and hooded⁹ with black. And all this represented a great deal of expense for him, who was poor.
 
Of the sum given formerly¹⁰, at the time of his birth, by his unknown father, little remained, the greater part having been lost through unfaithful bankers. And now, he would have to quit the house, sell the dear familiar furniture, realize the most money possible for the flight to America—
 
This time, he returned home peculiarly disturbed, because he was to do a thing, postponed¹¹ from day to day, about which his conscience was not at rest. He had already examined, picked out, all that belonged to his mother; but the box containing her papers and her letters was still intact—and to-night he would open it, perhaps.
 
He was not sure that death, as many persons think, gives the right to those who remain to read letters, to penetrate¹² the secrets of those who have just gone. To burn without looking seemed to him more respectful, more honest. But it was also to destroy forever the means of discovering the one whose abandoned son he was.—Then what should he do?—And from whom could he take advice, since he had no one in the world?
 
In the large chimney he lit the evening fire: then he got from an upper room the disquieting¹³ box, placed it on a table near the fire, beside his lamp, and sat down to reflect again. In the face of these papers, almost sacred, almost prohibited, which he would touch and which death alone could have placed in his hands, he had in this moment the consciousness, in a more heartbreaking manner, of the irrevocable departure of his mother; tears returned to him and he wept there, alone, in the silence—
 
At last he opened the box—
 
His arteries¹⁴ beat heavily. Under the surrounding trees, in the obscure solitude¹⁵, he felt that forms were moving, to look at him through the window-panes. He felt breaths strange to his own chest, as if some one was breathing behind him. Shades assembled, interested in what he was about to do.—The house was crowded with phantoms—
 
They were letters, preserved there for more than twenty years, all in the same handwriting,—one of those handwritings, at once negligent¹⁶ and easy, which men of the world have and which, in the eyes of the simple minded, are an indication of great social difference. And at first, a vague dream of protection, of elevation¹⁷ and of wealth diverted the course of his thoughts.—He had no doubt about the hand which had written them, those letters, and he held them tremblingly, not daring to read them, nor even to look at the name with which they were signed.
 
One only had retained its envelope; then he read the address: &ld............