A group of young men, among whom is the vicar who has just taken off his golden ornaments, forms itself at the threshold of the church, in the sun, and seems to be plotting grave projects.--They are the great players of the country, the fine flower of the lithe and the strong; it is for the pelota game of the afternoon that they are consulting, and they make a sign to Ramuntcho who pensively comes to them. Several old men come also and surround them, caps crushed on white hair and faces clean shaven like those of monks: champions of the olden time, still proud of their former successes, and sure that their counsel shall be respected in the national game, which the men here attend with pride as on a field of honor.--After a courteous discussion, the game is arranged; it will be immediately after vespers; they will play the “blaid” with the wicker glove, and the six selected champions, divided into two camps, shall be the vicar, Ramuntcho and Arrochkoa, Gracieuse's brother, against three famous men of the neighboring villages: Joachim of Mendiazpi; Florentino of Espelette, and Irrubeta of Hasparren-- Now comes the “convoy”, which comes out of the church and passes by them, so black in this feast of light, and so archaic, with the envelope of its capes, of its caps and of its veils. They are expressive of the Middle Age, these people, while they pass in a file, the Middle Age whose shadow the Basque country retains. And they express, above all, death, as the large funereal slabs, with which the nave is paved, express it, as the cypress trees and the tombs express it, and all the things in this place, where the men come to pray, express it: death, always death.--But a death very softly neighboring life, under the shield of the old consoling symbols--for life is there marked also, almost equally sovereign, in the warm rays which light up the cemetery, in the eyes of the children who play among the roses of autumn, in the smile of those beautiful brown girls who, the mass being finished, return with steps indolently supple toward the village; in the muscles of all this youthfulness of men, alert and vigorous, who shall soon exercise at the ball-game their iron legs and arms.--And of this group of old men and of boys at the threshold of a church, of this mingling, so peacefully harmonious, of death and of life, comes the benevolent lesson, the teaching that one must enjoy in time strength and love; then, without obstinacy in enduring, submit to the universal law of passing and dying, repeating with confidence, like these simple-minded and wise men, the same prayers by which the agonies of the ancestors were cradled.-- It is improbably radiant, the sun of noon in this yard of the dead. The air is exquisite and one becomes intoxicated by breathing it. The Pyrenean horizons have been swept of their clouds, their least vapors, and it seems as if the wind of the south had brought here the limpidities of Andalusia or of Africa.