northern slope of the Pyrenees, the other was of the southern

slope--that is to say, they were of the same nation, although the first

was French and the latter Spanish. The Basques recognize no official

country. Mi madre se llama Montaña, my mother is called the mountain,

as Zalareus, the muleteer, used to say. Of the five men who were with

the two women, one was a Frenchman of Languedoc, one a Frenchman of

Provence, one a Genoese; one, an old man, he who wore the sombrero

without a hole for a pipe, appeared to be a German. The fifth, the

chief, was a Basque of the Landes from Biscarrosse. It was he who, just

as the child was going on board the hooker, had, with a kick of his

heel, cast the plank into the sea. This man, robust, agile, sudden in

movement, covered, as may be remembered, with trimmings, slashings, and

glistening tinsel, could not keep in his place; he stooped down, rose

up, and continually passed to and fro from one end of the vessel to the

other, as if debating uneasily on what had been done and what was going

to happen.

This chief of the band, the captain and the two men of the crew, all

four Basques, spoke sometimes Basque, sometimes Spanish, sometimes

French--these three languages being common on both slopes of the

Pyrenees. But generally speaking, excepting the women, all talked

something like French, which was the foundation of their slang. The

French language about this period began to be chosen by the peoples as

something intermediate between the excess of consonants in the north and

the excess of vowels in the south. In Europe, French was the language of

commerce, and also of felony. It will be remembered that Gibby, a London

thief, understood Cartouche.

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The Man Who Laughs