He, dressed in a manner almost elegant and like a city denizen, save for
the traditional Basque cap, which he wore on the side and pulled down
like a visor over his childish eyes. She, straight and proud, her head
high, her demeanor distinguished, in a gown of new form; having the air
of a society woman, except for the mantilla; made of black cloth, which
covered her hair and her shoulders. In the great city formerly she had
learned how to dress--and anyway, in the Basque country, where so many
ancient traditions have been preserved, the women and the girls of the
least important villages have all taken the habit of dressing in the
fashion of the day, with an elegance unknown to the peasants of the other
French provinces.

They separated, as etiquette ordains, in the yard of the church, where
the immense cypress trees smelled of the south and the Orient. It
resembled a mosque from the exterior, their parish, with its tall, old,
ferocious walls, pierced at the top only by diminutive windows, with its
warm color of antiquity, of dust and of sun.

While Franchita entered by one of the lower doors, Ramuntcho went up a
venerable stone stairway which led one from the exterior wall to the high
tribunes reserved for men.

The extremity of the sombre church was of dazzling old gold, with a
profusion of twisted columns, of complicated entablements, of statues
with excessive convolutions and with draperies in the style of the
Spanish Renaissance. And this magnificence of the tabernacle was in
contrast with the simplicity of the lateral walls, simply kalsomined. But
an air of extreme old age harmonized these things, which one felt were
accustomed for centuries to endure in the face of one another.