AT THE FOIRE
CHAPTER XIV
AURAY
When we arrived in Auray it was market-day, and chatter filled the streets. There were avenues of women ranged along the pavement, their round wicker baskets full of lettuce, cabbages, carrots, turnips, chestnuts, pears, and what not—women in white flimsy caps, coloured cross-over shawls, and sombre black dresses. Their aprons were of many colours—reds, mauves, blues, maroons, and greens—and the wares also were of various hues. All the women knit between the intervals of selling, and even during the discussion of a bargain, for a purchase in Brittany is no small matter in the opinion of housewives, and engenders a great deal of conversation. All the feminine world of Auray seemed to have sallied forth that morning. Processions of them passed down the avenue of market women, most of them peasants in the cap of Auray, with snuff-coloured, large-bibbed aprons, carrying bulky black baskets with double handles.
Now and then one saw a Frenchwoman walking through the avenue of vegetables, just as good at bargaining, just as keen-eyed and sharp-tongued, as her humbler sisters. Sometimes she was pretty, walking with an easy swinging gait, her baby on one arm, her basket on the other, in a short trim skirt and altogether neatly dressed. More often she was dressed in unbecoming colours, her hair untidily arranged, her skirt trailing in the mud—a striking contrast to the well-to-do young Breton matron, with neatly braided black hair and clean rosy face, her white-winged lawn cap floating in the breeze, her red shawl neatly crossed over her lace-trimmed corsage. In her black velvet-braided skirt and wooden sabots the Breton is a dainty little figure, her only lapse into frivolity consisting of a gold chain at her neck and gold earrings.
Vegetables do not engender much conversation in a Breton market: they are served out and paid for very calmly. It is over the skeins of coloured wool, silks, and laces, that there is much bargaining. Round these stalls you will see girls and old hags face to face, and almost nose to nose, their arms crossed, speaking rapidly in shrill voices.
