Already Ramuntcho is acclaimed.
And the vicar also shall be one of the fine players of the day, strange to look upon with his leaps similar to those of a cat, and his athletic gestures, imprisoned in his priest's gown.
This is the rule of the game: when one of the champions of the two camps lets the ball fall, it is a point earned by the adverse camp,--and ordinarily the limit is sixty points.

After each point, the titled crier chants with a full voice in his old time tongue: "The but has so much, the refil has so much, gentlemen!" (The but is the camp which played first, the refil is the camp opposed to the but.) And the crier's long clamor drags itself above the noise of the crowd, which approves or murmurs.
On the square, the zone gilt and reddened by the sun diminishes, goes, devoured by the shade; more and more the great screen of the Gizune predominates over everything, seems to enclose in this little corner of the world at its feet, the very special life and the ardor of these mountaineers--who are the fragments of a people very mysteriously unique, without analogy among nations--The shade of night marches forward and invades in silence, soon it will be sovereign; in the distance only a few summits still lighted above so many darkened valleys, are of a violet luminous and pink.
Ramuntcho plays as, in his life, he had never played before; he is in one of those instants when one feels tempered by strength, light, weighing nothing, and when it is a pure joy to move, to extend one's arms, to leap.

But Arrochkoa weakens, the vicar is fettered two or three times by his black cassock, and the adverse camp, at first distanced, little by little catches up, then, in presence of this game so valiantly disputed, clamor redoubles and caps fly in the air, thrown by enthusiastic hands.
Now the points are equal on both sides; the crier announces thirty for each one of the rival camps and he sings the old refrain which is of tradition immemorial in such cases: "Let bets come forward! Give drink to the judges and to the players." It is the signal for an instant of rest, while wine shall be brought into the arena at the cost of the village.

The players sit down, and Ramuntcho takes a place beside Gracieuse, who throws on his shoulders, wet with perspiration, the waistcoat which she was keeping for him, Then he asks of his little friend to undo the thongs which hold the glove of wood, wicker and leather on his reddened arm.

And he rests in the pride of his success, seeing only smiles of greeting on the faces of the girls at whom he looks.