The winter, the real winter, extended itself by degrees over the Basque land, after the few days of frost that had come to annihilate¹ the annual plants, to change the deceptive² aspect of the fields, to prepare the following spring.  
And Ramuntcho acquired slowly his habits of one left alone; in his house, wherein he lived still, without anybody to serve him, he took care of himself, as in the colonies or in the barracks, knowing the thousand little details of housekeeping which careful soldiers practice. He preserved the pride of dress, dressed himself well, wore the ribbon of the brave at his buttonhole and a wide crape around his sleeve.
 
At first he was not assiduous at the village cider mill, where the men assembled in the cold evenings. In his three years of travel, of reading, of talking with different people, too many new ideas had penetrated³ his already open mind; among his former companions he felt more outcast than before, more detached from the thousand little things which composed their life.
 
Little by little, however, by dint⁴ of being alone, by dint of passing by the halls where the men drank,—on the window-panes of which a lamp always sketches⁵ the shadows of Basque caps,—he had made it a custom to go in and to sit at a table.
 
It was the season when the Pyrenean villages, freed from the visitors which the summers bring, imprisoned⁶ by the clouds, the mist, or the snow, are more intensely as they were in ancient times. In these cider mills—sole, little, illuminated⁷ points, living, in the midst of the immense, empty darkness of the fields—something of the spirit of former times is reanimated in winter evenings. In front of the large casks of cider arranged in lines in the background where it is dark, the lamp, hanging from the beams, throws its light on the images of saints that decorate the walls, on the groups of mountaineers who talk and who smoke. At times someone sings a plaintive⁸ song which came from the night of centuries; the beating of a tambourine⁹ recalls to life old, forgotten rhythms; a guitar reawakens a sadness of the epoch¹⁰ of the Moors¹¹.—Or, in the face of each other, two men, with castanets in their hands, suddenly dance the fandango, swinging themselves with an antique grace.
 
And, from these innocent, little inns, they retire early—especially in these bad, rainy nights—the darkness of which is so peculiarly propitious¹² to smuggling¹³, every one here having to do some

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