Books: Ramuntcho
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Pierre Loti >> Ramuntcho
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"Well, you do not kiss your brother?--"
Doubtless, the little Sister Mary Angelique asks for nothing better, to
kiss him with all her heart, with all her soul; to clasp him, her
brother, to lean on his shoulder and to seek his protection, at that hour
of superhuman sacrifice when she must let the cherished one leave her
without even a word of love.--And still, her kiss has in it something
frightened, at once drawn back; the kiss of a nun, somewhat similar to
the kiss of one dead.--When will she ever see him again, that brother,
who is not to leave the Basque country, however? When will she have news
of her mother, of the house, of the village, from some passer-by who will
stop here, coming from Etchezar?--
"We will pray," she says again, "to the Holy Virgin to protect you in
your long voyage--"
--And how they go; slowly they turn back, like silent shades, toward the
humble convent which the cross protects, and the two tamed smugglers,
immovable on the road, look at their veils, darker than the night of the
trees, disappearing in the obscure avenue.
Oh! she is wrecked also, the one who will disappear in the darkness of
the little, shady hill.--But she is nevertheless soothed by white,
peaceful vapors, and all that she suffers will soon be quieted under a
sort of sleep. To-morrow she will take again, until death, the course of
her strangely simple existence; impersonal, devoted to a series of daily
duties which never change, absorbed in a reunion of creatures almost
neutral, who have abdicated everything, she will be able to walk with
eyes lifted ever toward the soft, celestial mirage--
O crux, ave, spes unica!--
To live, without variety or truce to the end, between the white walls of
a cell always the same, now here, then elsewhere, at the pleasure of a
strange will, in one of those humble village convents to which one has
not even the leisure to become attached. On this earth, to possess
nothing and to desire nothing, to wait for nothing, to hope for nothing.
To accept as empty and transitory the fugitive hours of this world, and
to feel freed from everything, even from love, as much as by death.--The
mystery of such lives remains forever unintelligible to those young men
who are there, made for the daily battle, beautiful beings of instinct
and of strength, a prey to all the desires; created to enjoy life and to
suffer from it, to love it and to continue it--
O crux, ave, spes unica!--One sees them no longer, they have re-entered
their little, solitary convent.
The two men have not exchanged even a word on their abandoned
undertaking, on the ill-defined cause which for the first time has undone
their courage; they feel, toward one another, almost a sense of shame of
their sudden and insurmountable timidity.
For an instant their proud heads were turned toward the nuns slowly
fleeing; now they look at each other through the night.
They are going to part, and probably forever: Arrochkoa puts into his
friends hands the reins of the little wagon which, according to his
promise, he lends to him:
"Well, my poor Ramuntcho!" he says, in a tone of commiseration hardly
affectionate.
And the unexpressed end of the phrase signifies clearly:
"Go, since you have failed; and I have to go and meet my friends--"
Ramuntcho would have kissed him with all his heart for the last
farewell,--and in this embrace of the brother of the beloved one, he
would have shed doubtless good, hot tears which, for a moment at least,
would have cured him a little.
But no, Arrochkoa has become again the Arrochkoa of the bad days, the
gambler without soul, that only bold things interest. Absentmindedly, he
touches Ramuntcho's hand:
"Well, good-bye!--Good luck--"
And, with silent steps, he goes toward the smugglers, toward the
frontier, toward the propitious darkness.
Then Ramuntcho, alone in the world now, whips the little, mountain horse
who gallops with his light tinkling of bells.--That train which will pass
by Aranotz, that vessel which will start from Bordeaux--an instinct
impels Ramuntcho not to miss them. Mechanically he hastens, no longer
knowing why, like a body without a mind which continues to obey an
ancient impulsion, and, very quickly, he who has no aim and no hope in
the world, plunges into the savage country, into the thickness of the
woods, in all that profound blackness of the night of May, which the
nuns, from their elevated window, see around them--
For him the native land is closed, closed forever; finished are the
delicious dreams of his first years. He is a plant uprooted from the
dear, Basque soil and which a breath of adventure blows elsewhere.
At the horse's neck, gaily the bells tinkle, in the silence of the
sleeping woods; the light of the lantern, which runs hastily, shows to
the sad fugitive the under side of branches, fresh verdure of oaks; by
the wayside, flowers of France; from distance to distance, the walls of a
familiar hamlet, of an old church,--all the things which he will never
see again, unless it be, perhaps, in a doubtful and very distant old
age--
In front of his route, there is America, exile without probable return,
an immense new world, full of surprises and approached now without
courage: an entire life, very long, doubtless, during which his mind
plucked from here will have to suffer and to harden over there; his vigor
spend and exhaust itself none knows where, in unknown labors and
struggles--
Above, in their little convent, in their sepulchre with walls so white,
the tranquil nuns recite their evening prayers--
O crux, ave, spes unica!--
THE END.
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