"We, the _pelotarie_ playing here, can play either on _frontones_ of the Spanish or Basque form; but there is no doubt that the latter is the better game, and we feel we must state that the measures of the court, and the wall, and its top curves are the same in the Paris _fronton_ as at St. Jean-de-Luz, which is considered by all authorities an ideal court. Here we play three against three, and all the '_aficionados_' who have witnessed a game of Basque _pelota_ are unanimous in saying it is a sport of a high grade, although different from the three-wall game. "We, the undersigned, are the recognized champions of _pelota Basque_. ELOY, _of the Barcelona's Fronton_. MELCHIOR, _of San Sebastian's Fronton_. VELASCO, _of Biarritz and Bilbao's Fronton_. LEON DIHARCE, _of Paris and Buenos Ayres Fronton_." It is by the word _euskualdunac_ that the Basques are known among themselves. Their speech has an extraordinary sound, the vowels jumping out from between the consonants as a nut shell crushes in a _casse-noisette_. No tongue of Europe sounds more strange to foreign ears, not even Hungarian. On the other hand a Basque will speak French perfectly, without the slightest accent, when he feels like it, but his Béarnais neighbour makes a horrible mess of it, mixing Parisian French with his chattering _patois_. What a language and what a people the Basques are, to be sure! Some day some one will study them profoundly and tell us much about them that at present we only suspect. This much we know, they are allied to no other race in Europe. Perhaps the Basques _were_ originally Arabs. Who knows? A young Basque woman who carries a water-jug on her head, and marches along with a subtle undulation of the hips that one usually sees only in a desert Arab or a Corsican girl, certainly is the peer of any of the northern Europeans when it comes to a ravishing grace and carriage. It is the Pays Basque which is the real frontier of France and Spain, and yet it resembles neither the country to the north nor south, but stands apart, an exotic thing quite impossible to place in comparison with anything else; and this is equally true of the men and women and their manners and customs; the country, even, is wild and savage, but gay and lively withal. One may not speak of two peoples here. It is an error, a heresy. On one side, as on the other, it is the same race, the same tongue, the same peoples--in the Basses-Pyrenees of modern France as in the Provinces of Guipuzcoa, Navarre and Biscaye of modern Spain. The only difference is that in France the peasant's _béret_ is blue, while in Spain it is red. The antiquity of _la langue escuara_ or _eskual-dunac_ is beyond question, but it is doubtful if it was the speech of Adam and Eve in their terrestrial paradise, as all genuine and patriotic Basques have no hesitancy in claiming.