Here come the long, pale twilights of June, somewhat veiled like those of May, less uncertain, however, and more tepid¹ still. In the gardens, the rose-laurel which is beginning to bloom in profusion² is becoming already magnificently pink. At the end of each work day, the good folks sit outside, in front of their doors, to look at the night falling—the night which soon confuses, under the vaults³ of the plane-trees, their groups assembled for benevolent⁴ rest. And a tranquil⁵ melancholy⁶ descends⁷ over villages, in those interminable evenings—
 
For Ramuntcho, this is the epoch⁸ when smuggling⁹ becomes a trade almost without trouble, with charming hours, marching toward summits through spring clouds; crossing ravines, wandering in lands of springs and of wild fig-trees; sleeping, waiting for the agreed hour, with carbineers who are accomplices¹⁰, on carpets of mint and pinks.—The good odor of plants impregnated his clothes, his waistcoat which he never wore, but used as a pillow or a blanket—and Gracieuse would say to him at night: “I know where you went last night, for you smell of mint of the mountain above Mendizpi”—or: “You smell of absinthe of the Subernoa morass¹¹.”
 
Gracieuse regretted the month of Mary, the offices of the Virgin¹² in the nave¹³, decked with white flowers. In the twilights without rain, with the sisters and some older pupils of their class, she sat under the porch of the church, against the low wall of the graveyard¹⁴ from which the view plunges¹⁵ into the valleys beneath. There they talked, or played the childish games in which nuns¹⁶ indulge.
 
There were also long and strange meditations¹⁷, meditations to which the fall of day, the proximity

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