“Well, Gatchutcha, you have at last spoken to your mother of Uncle Ignacio?” asked Ramuntcho, very late, the same night, in the alley of the garden, under rays of the moon. “Not yet, I have not dared.--How could I explain that I know all these things, since I am supposed not to talk with you ever, and she has forbidden me to do so?--Think, if I were to make her suspicious!--There would be an end to everything, we could not see each other again! I would like better to wait until you left the country, then all would be indifferent to me--” “It is true!--let us wait, since I am to go.” He was going away, and already they could count the evenings which would be left to them. Now that they had permitted their immediate happiness to escape, the happiness offered to them in the prairies of America, it seemed preferable to them to hasten the departure of Ramuntcho for the army, in order that he might return sooner. So they had decided that he would enlist in the naval infantry, the only part of the service where one may elect to serve for a period as short as three years. And as they needed, in order to be certain not to be lacking in courage, a precise epoch, considered for a long time in advance, they had fixed the end of September, after the grand series of ball-games. They contemplated this separation of three years duration with an absolute confidence in the future, so sure they thought they were of each other, and of themselves, and of their imperishable love. But it was, however, an expectation which already filled their hearts strangely; it threw an unforeseen melancholy over things which were ordinarily the most indifferent, on the flight of days, on the least indications of the next season, on the coming into life of certain plants, on the coming into bloom of certain species of flowers, on all that presaged the arrival and the rapid march of their last summer. CHAPTER XXIII. Already the fires of St. John have flamed, joyful and red in a clear, blue night, and the Spanish mountain seemed to burn, that night, like a sheaf of straw, so many were the bonfires lighted on its sides. It has begun, the season of light, of heat and of storms, at the end of which Ramuntcho must depart. And the saps, which in the spring went up so quickly, become languid already in the complete development of the verdure, in the wide bloom of the flowers. And the sun, more and more burning, overheats all the heads covered with Basque caps, excites ardor and passion, causes to rise everywhere, in those Basque villages, ferments of noisy agitation and of pleasure. While, in Spain, begin the grand bull-fights, this is here the epoch of so many ball-games, of so many fandangoes danced in the evening, of so much pining of lovers in the tepid voluptuousness of nights--! Soon will come the warm splendor of the southern July. The Bay of Biscay has become very blue and the Cantabric coast has for a time put on its fallow colors of Morocco or of Algeria.