In another part of town there is a match of _pelota_. This game is originally Basque; its pure form of sport lives still in the Basque village where boys play on a dirt court against a plaster wall, or against the wall of the church if the hamlet is very modest. The Spaniards, however, have taken to pelota. It has become a game for professionals; and although all the crack players are Basque, the spirit of the sport has been transformed. It is played in the _frontón_: a court, three sides of which are high walls of cement. The fourth side (the long one, to the right of the players who all face one way) is for the public whose tiers of seats are placed in a sort of open building. A pair of players make a team, and two teams make a match. To the right hand of each athlete is strapped a thin short wooden bat called _pala_, or else, in a variant of the game, a basket, known as _cesta_, or _remonte_, shaped a little like the curved beak of some bird, scooped and long and narrow. The principle of pelota is like our handball which may indeed be a derivation. But the Basque game with its great distance of service and return, its complexity of movement due to the use of three walls for the rebounds of the fast ball, achieves an extraordinary brilliance. Volleys last for minutes: the ball flashes back and forth from the front wall to the side and rear ones. There is something of the delicacy of billiards, the grace of tennis: and there is a spill of sheer physical prowess which tennis does not approach. It is a beautiful game: the game of a sane, healthily outward people. But in the hands of the Spaniard, all this becomes minor. Between the public and the court is a railing which until the game starts is empty. With the first volley, however, a large group of men in red _boinas_ line up here, facing the public, with their backs to the players. They are the _cobradores_, the bookies: the true principals in what Spain has made of pelota. With the first service, they gather their first odds and cry their bets. And until the last of the game, the shifting of odds, the placing of bets continue: the players themselves serving as a mere pretext for the gambling, like the _petits chevaux_ of wood at a gaming table.[29] * * * * * These are invasions of Spain upon the Basque land. There are whole towns in Guipúzcoa, Vizcaya, Alava, where Castile has rooted and worked havoc. Such a town is San Sebastián, summer capital of the king and of the intellectuals of Madrid. There are even towns which Castile has destroyed....