CHAPTER XXIII.
Already the fires of St.John have flamed, joyful and red in a clear, blue night, and the Spanish mountain seemed to burn, that night, like a sheaf of straw, so many were the bonfires lighted on its sides.

It has begun, the season of light, of heat and of storms, at the end of which Ramuntcho must depart.
And the saps, which in the spring went up so quickly, become languid already in the complete development of the verdure, in the wide bloom of the flowers.

And the sun, more and more burning, overheats all the heads covered with Basque caps, excites ardor and passion, causes to rise everywhere, in those Basque villages, ferments of noisy agitation and of pleasure.

While, in Spain, begin the grand bull-fights, this is here the epoch of so many ball-games, of so many fandangoes danced in the evening, of so much pining of lovers in the tepid voluptuousness of nights--! Soon will come the warm splendor of the southern July.

The Bay of Biscay has become very blue and the Cantabric coast has for a time put on its fallow colors of Morocco or of Algeria.
With the heavy rains alternates the marvellously beautiful weather which gives to the air absolute limpidities.