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III.
The Ossalais, however, have ordinarily a gentle, intelligent, and somewhat sad physiognomy. The soil is too poor to impart to their countenance that expression of impatient vivacity and lively spirit that the wine of the south and the easy life give to their neighbors of Languedoc. Three-score leagues in a carriage prove that the soil moulds the type. A little farther up, in the Cantal, a country of chest-nut-trees, where the people fill themselves with a hearty nourishment, you will see countenances red with sluggish blood and set with a thick beard, fleshy, heavy-limbed bodies, massive machines for labor. Here the men are thin and pale; their bones project, and their large features are weatherbeaten like those of their mountains. An endless struggle against the soil has stunted the women as well as the plants; it has left in their eyes a vague expression of melancholy and reflection. Thus the incessant impressions of body and soul in the long run modify body and soul; the race moulds the individual, the country moulds the race. A degree of heat in the air and of inclination in the ground is the first cause of our faculties and of our passions.
Disinterestedness is not a mountain virtue. In a poor country, the first want is want of money. The dispute is to know whether they shall consider strangers as a prey or a harvest; both opinions are true: we are a prey which every year yields a harvest. Here is an incident, trifling, but capable of showing the dexterity and the ardor with which they will skin a flint.
One day Paul told his servant to sew another button upon his trousers. An hour after she brings in the trousers, and, with an undecided, anxious air, as if fearing the effect of her demand: “It is a sou,” said she. I will explain later how great a sum the sou is in this place.
Paul draws out a sou in silence and gives it to her. Jeannette retires on tip-toe as far as the door, thinks better of it, returns, takes up the trousers and shows the button: “Ah! that is a fine button! (A pause.) I did not find that in my box. (Another and a longer pause.) I bought that at the grocer’s; it costs a sou!” She draws herself up anxiously; the proprietor of the trousers, still without speaking, gives a second sou.
It is clear that she has struck upon a mine of sous. Jeannette goes out, and a moment after reopens the door. She has resolved on her course, and in a shrill, piercing voice, with admirable volubility: “I had no thread; I had to buy some thread; I used a good deal of thread; good thread, too. The button won’t come off. I sewed it on fast: it cost a sou.” Paul pushes across the table the third sou.