At the right wrist the players attach with thongs a strange wicker thing resembling a large, curved fingernail which lengthens the forearm by half.

It is with this glove (manufactured in France by a unique basket-maker of the village of Ascain) that they will have to catch, throw and hurl the pelota,--a small ball of tightened cord covered with sheepskin, which is as hard as a wooden ball.
Now they try the balls, selecting the best, limbering, with a few points that do not count, their athletic arms.

Then, they take off their waistcoats and carry them to preferred spectators; Ramuntcho gives his to Gracieuse, seated in the first row on the lower bench.

And all, except the priest, who will play in his black gown, are in battle array, their chests at liberty in pink cotton shirts or light thread fleshings.
The assistants know them well, these players; in a moment, they shall be excited for or against them and will shout at them, frantically, as it happens with the toreadors.
At this moment the village is entirely animated by the spirit of the olden time; in its expectation of the pleasure, in its liveliness, in its ardor, it is intensely Basque and very old,--under the great shade of the Gizune, the overhanging mountain, which throws over it a twilight charm.
And the game begins in the melancholy evening.

The ball, thrown with much strength, flies, strikes the wall in great, quick blows, then rebounds, and traverses the air with the rapidity of a bullet.
This wall in the background, rounded like a dome's festoon on the sky, has become little by little crowned with heads of children,--little Basques, little cats, ball-players of the future, who soon will precipitate themselves like a flight of birds, to pick up the ball every time when, thrown too high, it will go beyond the square and fall in the fields.
The game becomes gradually warmer as arms and legs are limbered, in an intoxication of movement and swiftness.