You have received them, have you not ?" "Yes, they arrived last week, you know very well, and it was you who said that I should apply for them--" "Then you are a Frenchman to-day .-- Then, if you do not do your military service you are a deserter." "Yes .-- A deserter, no; but refractory, I think it is called .-- It isn't better, since one cannot come back .-- I was not thinking of that--" How she was tortured now to have caused this thought, to have impelled him herself to this act which made soar over his hardly seen joy a threat so black! Oh, a deserter, he, her Ramuntcho! That is, banished forever from the dear, Basque country!--And this departure for America becomes suddenly frightfully grave, solemn, similar to a death, since he could not possibly return!--Then, what was there to be done ?-- Now they were anxious and mute, each one preferring to submit to the will of the other, and waiting, with equal fright, for the decision which should be taken, to go or to remain.

From the depths of their two young hearts ascended, little by little, a similar distress, poisoning the happiness offered over there, in that America from which they would never return .-- And the little, nocturnal censers of jessamine, of honeysuckle, of linden, continued to throw into the air exquisite puffs to intoxicate them; the darkness that enveloped them seemed more and more caressing and soft; in the silence of the village and of the country, the tree-toads gave, from moment to moment, their little flute-note, which seemed a very discreet love call, under the velvet of the moss; and, through the black lace of the foliage, in the serenity of a June sky which one thought forever unalterable, they saw scintillate, like a simple and gentle dust of phosphorus, the terrifying multitude of the worlds.
The curfew began to ring, however, at the church.

The sound of that bell, at night especially, was for them something unique on earth.
At this moment, it was something like a voice bringing, in their indecision, its advice, its counsel, decisive and tender.

Mute still, they listened to it with an increasing emotion, of an intensity till then unknown, the brown head of the one leaning on the brown head of the other.

It said, the advising voice, the dear, protecting voice: "No, do not go forever; the far-off lands are made for the time of youth; but you must be able to return to Etchezar: it is here that you must grow old and die; nowhere in the world could you sleep as in this graveyard around the church, where one may, even when lying under the earth, hear me ring again--" They yielded more and more to the voice of the bell, the two children whose minds were religious and primitive.