Three o'clock
replies Marcos , `` it is a family trait , as you must know . Our father , our grandfather were extemporary composers who were heard with pleasure in all the festivals of the Basque country , and our mother also was the daughter of a grand improvisator of the village of Lesaca . And then , every evening in taking back the oxen or in milking the cows , we practice , or at the fireside on winter nights . Yes , every evening , we make compositions in this way on subjects which one of us imagines , and it is our greatest pleasure -- '' But when Florentino 's turn to sing comes he , knowing only the old refrains of the mountain , intones in an Arabic falsetto voice the complaint of the linen weaver ; and then Ramuntcho , who had sung it the day before in the autumn twilight , sees again the darkened sky of yesterday , the clouds full of rain , the cart drawn by oxen going down into a sad and closed valley , toward a solitary farm -- and suddenly the unexplained anguish returns to him , the one which he had before ; the fear of living and of passing thus always in these same villages , under the oppression of these same mountains ; the notion and the confused desire for other places ; the anxiety for unknown distances -- His eyes , become lifeless and fixed , look inwardly ; for several strange minutes he feels that he is an exile , from what country he does not know , disinherited , of what he does not know , sad in the depths of his soul ; between him and the men who surround him have come suddenly irreducible , hereditary barriers -- Three o'clock . It is the hour when vespers , the last office of the day , comes to an end ; the hour when leave the church , in a meditation grave as that of the morning , all the mantillas of black cloth concealing the beautiful hair of the girls and the form of their waists , all the woolen caps similarly lowered on the shaven faces of men , on their eyes piercing or somber , still plunged in the old time dreams . It is the hour when the games are to begin , the dances , the pelota and the fandango . All this is traditional and immutable .