laborious tasks of the fields. Their starched blue blouses, glossy as
if varnished, adorned at the neck and wrists with a bit of white
stitchwork, puffed out about their bony chests like balloons on the
point of taking flight, from which protrude a head, two arms, and two
feet.

Some of them led a cow or a calf at the end of a rope. And their
wives, walking behind the beast, lashed it with a branch still covered
with leaves, to hasten its pace. They carried on their arms great
baskets, from which heads of chickens or of ducks were thrust forth.
And they walked with a shorter and quicker step than their men, their
stiff, lean figures wrapped in scanty shawls pinned over their flat
breasts, their heads enveloped in a white linen cloth close to the
hair, with a cap over all.

Then a _char-à-bancs[2]_ passed, drawn by a jerky-paced nag, with two
men seated side by side shaking like jelly, and a woman behind, who
clung to the side of the vehicle to lessen the rough jolting.

On the square at Goderville there was a crowd, a medley of men and
beasts. The horns of the cattle, the high hats, with a long, hairy
nap, of the wealthy peasants, and the head dresses of the peasant
women, appeared on the surface of the throng. And the sharp, shrill,
high-pitched voices formed an incessant, uncivilized uproar, over
which soared at times a roar of laughter from the powerful chest of a
sturdy yokel, or the prolonged bellow of a cow fastened to the wall of
a house.

There was an all-pervading smell of the stable, of milk, of the
dunghill, of hay, and of perspiration--that acrid, disgusting odor of