bearing a frayed red ribbon in his threadbare button-hole, always
to be found walking together among these children, before dinnertime.
If they walked for an appetite, they doubtless lived en
pension – were contracted for – otherwise their poverty would have
made it a rash action. They were stooping, blear-eyed, dull old
men, slip-shod and shabby, in long-skirted short-waisted coats and
meagre trousers, and yet with a ghost of gentility hovering in
their company. They spoke little to each other, and looked as if
they might have been politically discontented if they had had
vitality enough. Once, we overheard red-ribbon feebly complain to
the other two that somebody, or something, was ‘a Robber;’ and then
they all three set their mouths so that they would have ground
their teeth if they had had any. The ensuing winter gathered redribbon
unto the great company of faded ribbons, and next year the
remaining two were there – getting themselves entangled with hoops
and dolls – familiar mysteries to the children – probably in the
eyes of most of them, harmless creatures who had never been like
children, and whom children could never be like. Another winter
came, and another old man went, and so, this present year, the last
of the triumvirate, left off walking – it was no good, now – and
sat by himself on a little solitary bench, with the hoops and the
dolls as lively as ever all about him.
In the Place d’Armes of this town, a little decayed market is held,
which seems to slip through the old gateway, like water, and go
rippling down the hill, to mingle with the murmuring market in the
lower town, and get lost in its movement and bustle. It is very
agreeable on an idle summer morning to pursue this market-stream
from the hill-top. It begins, dozingly and dully, with a few sacks
of corn; starts into a surprising collection of boots and shoes;
goes brawling down the hill in a diversified channel of old
cordage, old iron, old crockery, old clothes, civil and military,
old rags, new cotton goods, flaming prints of saints, little
looking-glasses, and incalculable lengths of tape; dives into a
backway, keeping out of sight for a little while, as streams will,
or only sparkling for a moment in the shape of a market drinkingshop;
and suddenly reappears behind the great church, shooting
itself into a bright confusion of white-capped women and bluebloused
men, poultry, vegetables, fruits, flowers, pots, pans,
praying-chairs, soldiers, country butter, umbrellas and other sunshades,
girl-porters waiting to be hired with baskets at their
backs, and one weazen little old man in a cocked hat, wearing a
cuirass of drinking-glasses and carrying on his shoulder a crimson
temple fluttering with flags, like a glorified pavior’s rammer
without the handle, who rings a little bell in all parts of the
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scene, and cries his cooling drink Hola, Hola, Ho-o-o! in a shrill
cracked voice that somehow makes itself heard, above all the
chaffering and vending hum. Early in the afternoon, the whole
course of the stream is dry. The praying-chairs are put back in
the church, the umbrellas are folded up, the unsold goods are
carried away, the stalls and stands disappear, the square is swept,
the hackney coaches lounge there to be hired, and on all the
country roads (if you walk about, as much as we do) you will see
the peasant women, always neatly and comfortably dressed, riding
home, with the pleasantest saddle-furniture of clean milk-pails,
bright butter-kegs, and the like, on the jolliest little donkeys in
the world.
We have another market in our French watering-place – that is to
say, a few wooden hutches in the open street, down by the Port –
devoted to fish. Our fishing-boats are famous everywhere; and our
fishing people, though they love lively colours, and taste is
neutral (see Bilkins), are among the most picturesque people we
ever encountered. They have not only a quarter of their own in the
town itself, but they occupy whole villages of their own on the
neighbouring cliffs. Their churches and chapels are their own;
they consort with one another, they intermarry among themselves,