On the square of the ball-game, people are beginning to arrive from everywhere, from the village itself and from the neighboring hamlets, from the huts of the shepherds or of the smugglers who perch above, on the harsh mountains. Hundreds of Basque caps, all similar, are now reunited, ready to judge the players, to applaud or to murmur; they discuss the chances, comment upon the relative strength of the players and make big bets of money. And young girls, young women gather also, having nothing of the awkwardness of the peasants in other provinces of France, elegant, refined, graceful in costumes of the new fashions; some wearing on their hair the silk kerchief, rolled and arranged like a small cap; others bareheaded, their hair dressed in the most modern manner; most of them pretty, with admirable eyes and very long eyebrows--This square, always solemn and ordinarily somewhat sad, is filled to-day, Sunday, with a lively and gay crowd. The most insignificant hamlet in the Basque country has a square for the ball-game, large, carefully kept, in general near the church, under oaks. But here, this is a central point and something like the Conservatory of French ball-players, of those who become celebrated, in South America as well as in the Pyrenees, and who, in the great international games, oppose the champions of Spain. So the place is particularly beautiful and pompous, surprising in so distant a village. It is paved with large stones, between which grass grows expressing its antiquity and giving to it an air of being abandoned. On the two sides are extended, for the spectators, long benches--made of the red granite of the neighboring mountain and, at this moment, all overgrown with autumn scabwort. And in the back, the old monumental wall rises, against which the balls will strike. It has a rounded front which seems to be the silhouette of a dome and bears this inscription, half effaced by time: “Blaidka haritzea debakatua.” (The blaid game is forbidden.) Still, the day's game is to be the blaid; but the venerable inscription dates from the time of the splendor of the national game, degenerated at present, as all things degenerate. It had been placed there to preserve the tradition of the “rebot”, a more difficult game, exacting more agility and strength, and which has been perpetuated only in the Spanish province of Guipuzcoa. While the graded benches are filling up, the paved square, which the grass makes green, and which has seen the lithe and the vigorous men of the country run since the days of old, remains empty. The beautiful autumn sun, at its decline, warms and lights it. Here and there some tall oaks shed their leaves above the seated spectators. Beyond are the high church and the cypress trees, the entire sacred corner, from which the saints and the dead seem to be looking at a distance, protecting the players, interested in this game which is the passion still of an entire race and characterises it--