Then, awakened little by little by the smoking dishes, by the sweet
cider, they talk; soon their words interlace, light, rapid and sonorous,
with an excessive rolling of the /r/. They talk in their mysterious
language, the origin of which is unknown and which seems to the men of
the other countries in Europe more distant than Mongolian or Sanskrit.
They tell stories of the night and of the frontier, stratagems newly
invented and astonishing deceptions of Spanish carbineers. Itchoua, the
chief, listens more than he talks; one hears only at long intervals his
profound voice of a church singer vibrate. Arrochkoa, the most elegant of
all, is in striking contrast with his comrades of the mountain. (His name
was Jean Detcharry, but he was known only by his surname, which the
elders of his family transmitted from father to son for centuries.) A
smuggler for his pleasure, he, without any necessity, and possessing
beautiful lands in the sunlight; the face fresh and pretty, the blonde
mustache turned up in the fashion of cats, the eye feline also, the eye
caressing and fleeting; attracted by all that succeeds, by all that
amuses, by all that shines; liking Ramuntcho for his triumphs in the
ball-game, and quite disposed to give to him the hand of his sister,
Gracieuse, even if it were only to oppose his mother, Dolores. And
Florentino, the other great friend of Ramuntcho is, on the contrary, the
humblest of the band; an athletic, reddish fellow, with wide and low
forehead, with good eyes of resignation, soft as those of beasts of
burden; without father or mother, possessing nothing in the world except
a threadbare costume and three pink cotton shirts; unique lover of a
little fifteen year old orphan, as poor as he and as primitive.

At last Itchoua deigns to talk in his turn. He relates, in a tone of
mystery and of confidence, a certain tale of the time of his youth, in a
black night, on the Spanish territory, in the gorges of Andarlaza. Seized
by two carbineers at the turn in a dark path, he had disengaged himself