At last we reached Libourne, with a minute to spare for catching our train, and happily succeeded in boarding it. Just outside Libourne we could see great bunches of yellow bananas hanging up outside the cottage walls. The trees here were the softest carmine, mixed with others of burnt sienna, while some resembled nothing so much as a new door-mat. After Luxé begin the little low walls of loose stones separating meadow from meadow and then, later, a flat, dull-coloured stretch of country. On Ruffec platform the garment which the men here seemed most to affect was a sort of dark puce loose coat, with little pleats down the front. The women wore a sort of close lace cap, with streamers floating over their shoulders.
Out in the open again we came upon alternate dark green of broom and cloth of gold of foliage everywhere. The curtain of heavy cloud had lifted a little, and beneath shone a gorgeous flame sunset low over meadows of red-brown soil, the darker brick-red of dying bracken over the cold grey of the cottages, and the white gleam of the twisting stream winding in and out between the meadows.
[CHAPTER VIII]
One cannot but regret that in most parts of France to-day, the picturesque costumes of the peasants are almost a thing of the past. In out-of-the-way districts, it is true, they still linger here and there, but they have to be searched for, as a rule, to be seen.
"Ah! ces jolies costumes sont perdues," said the manageress of our hotel at Poitiers, and she assured us they were only now to be found far away in the country. However, we discovered a few examples at market time in the city. Some of the caps fit close to the head, and have a frill round the face. The opportunity for a little individuality in pattern occurs at the back, where is the fullness and body of the cap. Some again consist only of a plain fold of linen, and boast two long streamers at the back; while others have the added dignity of a high peak (as given in picture,) which always confers a certain air upon its wearer, "an air of distinguishment" which impresses itself always upon the beholder.
The long, striped, navy-blue blouses which the men affect here, reach to below the knees, and are loose and open at the neck. Over them they wear, in bad weather, the invariable loose black cape with pointed hood drawn over the head. I saw one or two blouses of soft lilac silk, fastened at the neck with quaintly shaped little silver buckles.
A French market is the purgatory of the innocent.
This was ruthlessly shewn forth on market day at Poitiers. The squealing, the clucking, the squawking are unceasing and insistent everywhere. No one can fail to hear them. But it requires the quiet, observant, sympathetic eye to see the other, less evident, forms of distress. By means of this last, however, one sees the mute suffering in the eyes of the turkeys, for instance. Sometimes a turkey would be blinking hard with one eye, while the lid of the other rose miserably every now and again. While I was standing by, some passing boy, with fiendish cruelty, set his dog at a pair of turkeys lying close at his feet, helpless and terrified, their feet tied tightly together. At a little distance off I could see one of these unhappy creatures hanging head downwards, its poor limp wing being brushed roughly and jerked carelessly by all who passed that way.
Then there were the rabbits. What words could describe the excruciating panic to which they are subjected, when one remembers their timidity and nervousness in a wild state. No worse misery could be devised for them than the prodding and punching and tossing up and down which they receive on all hands as they await, amidst the babel of noise around them, their last fate. The only members of the dumb creation who seemed fairly indifferent to their surroundings, and indeed to regard them with a certain grim humour, were the ducks. Everyone is aware that there exists in France the equivalent of our Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but my experience convinced me that it is not nearly so energetic as is our own society.