Just about the same tyme on a stormy, vindy night a rich Candlemakers (which office is not so dishonorable heir as wt us, their daughters wil be going in their satins) booth was broken up, 40 pistols, which he had receaved in payment just the day before, and which he had left in a box of the table, stollen. Persones wil do weill then to keip quiet any mony they have as weill as they can: according the tenor of my fathers letter.
On the day after Toussaint is a feste til noon called les Trespassez[230]. The papists prayes for their dead ancestres, over their graves mumbling so many paters and so many ave'es.
[230] Trépassés, All Souls.
They have a apple in France called pomme de Calvile, its all rid thorow to the wery heart, pomme blanche.
In case of fire in a toune the neirest bel, or the bel of that paroiche wheir it is, ringes.
In Octobre heir, tho reasonably sharp, they have upright[231] Summer weather, its so fair.
[231] Equivalent to 'downright.'
Our peirs that growes at home are all out as delicious, vitness the carnock, as any we have eaten in France, tho they grow their in greater abondance. As to the Apples we most not conteste wt them, since beseids many brave sorts they have the pipin, which I conceive most be that they call Reynett, brought unto France from Italy by Queen Blanche, mother of St. Louis: it was first fund in Africk. The pomme Minion is better then any of ours: our Marican seimes to be a degenerat sort of it.
The silver hat-strings are much in use at present: they sell them by the weight. The tabby doublets wt the silk [called wats][232] furring wtin are also in faschion: wery warm in winter, cost 20 franks. Men and women from the least to the greatest, yea not the wery keel wifes and fruit wifes, but they have manchon muffes. A man cannot get a good one under a pistol: some of a meiner size are sold for 6 or 4 francks. Our best furrings comes out of Musco'e. Chamois gloves and linnens mad of goats skines, which are found better in Poictou then in any other province of France, are not in so great cont[233] wt them as wt us; yet they find them wondrously warm; some thinkes them strenthning and corroborative of a feeble hand. We have sein som buy them to lay swallings of their handes. Perruvicks, besydes they are most faschious, they are destructive both to the body, since they are wery unwholsome, engendring humeurs; as also to the purse, they being extravagantly dear thorow all France, especially at Paris, wheir its a wery mean one a man will get for 4 pistols; and a man can have no fewer then 2 at a tyme, on to change another.
[232] Interlined. Wats, ouates.