Cori.—“I have been i’ the market place;
...
...all’s in anger.”
Coriolanus.
Of all French towns, perhaps Charville is the most under female influence. I do not know how the power has grown up, or whether it is of any great antiquity, but it is so hard to conceive any thing modern in connection with the place, that one supposes it to have existed in remote ages. Women’s rights in France are of a more muscular character than in England; women go out into the fields, dig, reap, and plough: it is a severe training, from which they come out brown and weather-beaten. There is plenty of such work in the great monotonous cornfields round Charville all the year round; but inside the town, a more important, and, in their eyes, a more honourable occupation, is intrusted to women. The measuring and selling the grain in the corn-market is carried on by a corporation of their number. They do their work very quickly and efficiently. Their code of laws is of long standing, and seldom meets with a hitch. The owners leave all in their hands; in fact, their trustworthiness is so proverbial, that as soon might the character of a judge be assailed, as the honesty of one of this corporate body. Saturdays are the days when you may see the carts coming in from the farms laden with little golden grain: the Charville sleepiness seems to rouse itself into action; there is activity, energy, sometimes even a little spice of hurry. Those that enter the town at the lower suburb find it no easy matter to get up the narrow steep streets; the carts jolt and creak, the horses labour, while all the time there is an unceasing chorus of the sharp “Heep, heep!”
Inside the market, as I have said, matters move with all imaginable rapidity and gravity. The women receive the grain, weigh it, and the sale goes on so briskly that all is over before the end of an hour. Outside, in the Place, are a crowd of carts, people idling, old women standing about in their stuff gowns and snowy caps; the country people meet their relations; there is a din of good-humoured chatter about the price of corn, the value of samples, the health of the bishop, the ambition of Madame the Préfet’s wife, the chance of gaining a few sous,—all kinds of matters, great and small, but rarely any more serious disturbance. Monsieur Deshoulières was surprised one morning as he passed through the Place to find himself the centre of a hubbub. Quite a crowd had gathered together at the entrance to the market—men and women with grave excited faces, a torrent of shrill voices. People looked out of their windows; the horses, standing unheeded in the carts, tossed their great manes, and stamped and shook themselves to get rid of the tormenting flies. The time when business usually concluded was past; it was evident that something still hindered it, something unusual.
“What is the matter?” asked M. Deshoulières, elbowing his way through a throng of women.
So many voices answered him that he lifted his low hat, and said, with an appealing gesture, “One at a time, if you please, mesdames.”
“Such an affair has never before happened in our town.”
“It is a scandal!”
“One will hear next that one sells short measure one’s self!”
“Could monsieur conceive the audacity of that unhappy boy!”