"They are longer, and they are painted with lively colors, usually arranged in squares. Red and white is a very common combination."
"And the marriages, how are they celebrated?" inquired another young girl.
"And the cattle, are they as fine as ours?" an old man wanted to know.
"And have they like us brave fighting cocks?" asked a child.
The stranger was being assailed with such a shower of questions that Joel said to the questioners:
"Enough; enough.... Let our friend regain his breath. You are screaming around him like a flock of sea-gulls."
"Do they pay, as we do, the money they owe the dead?" asked Stumpy, despite Joel's orders to cease questioning the stranger.
"Yes; their custom and ours is the same as here," answered the stranger; "and they are not idolaters like a man from Asia whom I met at Marseilles, and who claimed that, according to his religion, we continued to live after death, but not clad in human shape, according to him we were clad in the form of animals."
"Her! ... Her!" cried Stumpy in great trouble. "If it were as those idolatrous people claim, then Gigel, who departed instead of old Mark, may be now inhabiting the body of a fish; and I would have sent him three pieces of silver with Armel who might now be inhabiting the body of a bird. How could a bird deliver silver pieces to a fish. Her! ... Her!"
"Our friend told you that that belief is idolatry, Stumpy," put in Joel with severity; "your fear is impious."