CHAPTER VI.
There is to be a grand ball-game next Sunday, for the feast of Saint Damasus, in the borough of Hasparitz.
Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, companions in continual expeditions through the surrounding country, travelled for the entire day, in the little wagon of the Detcharry family, in order to organize that ball-game, which to them is a considerable event.
In the first place, they had to consult Marcos, one of the Iragola brothers.

Near a wood, in front of his house in the shade, they found him seated on a stump of a chestnut tree, always grave and statuesque, his eyes inspired and his gesture noble, in the act of making his little brother, still in swaddling clothes, eat soup.
"Is he the eleventh ?" they have asked, laughing.
"Oh! Go on!" the big eldest brother has replied, "the eleventh is running already like a hare in the heather.

This is number twelve!--little John the Baptist, you know, the latest, who, I think, will not be the last." And then, lowering their heads not to strike the branches, they had traversed the woods, the forests of oaks under which extends infinitely the reddish lace of ferns.
And they have traversed several villages also,--Basque villages, all grouped around these two things which are the heart of them and which symbolize their life: the church and the ball-game.

Here and there, they have knocked at the doors of isolated houses, tall and large houses, carefully whitewashed, with green shades, and wooden balconies where are drying in the sun strings of red peppers.

At length they have talked, in their language so closed to strangers of France, with the famous players, the titled champions, the ones whose odd names have been seen in all the journals of the southwest, on all the posters of Biarritz or of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and who, in ordinary life, are honest country inn-keepers, blacksmiths, smugglers, with waistcoat thrown over the shoulder and shirt sleeves rolled on bronze arms.
Now that all is settled and that the last words have been exchanged, it is too late to return that night to Etchezar; then, following their errant habits, they select for the night a village which they like, Zitzarry, for example, where they have gone often for their smuggling business.