It's no use for me to spin, to work for you, to mend your clothes! you
never stop tearing and soiling them. You have run through my little
property, our six children are in the gutter, we live in a stable with
the beasts; here we are reduced to asking alms, and you're so ugly, so
revolting, so despised, that soon they will toss bread to us as they do
to the dogs. Alas! my poor _mondes_ [people], take pity on us! take pity
on me! I don't deserve my fate, and no woman ever had a filthier, more
detestable husband. Help me to pick him up, or else the wagons will
crush him like an old broken bottle, and I shall be a widow, which would
kill me with grief, although everybody says it would be great good
fortune for me."

Such is the rôle of the gardener's wife and her constant lamentation
throughout the play. For it is a genuine, spontaneous, improvised
comedy, played in the open air, on the highways, among the fields,
seasoned by all the incidents that happen to occur; and in it everybody
takes a part, wedding-guests and outsiders, occupants of the houses and
passers-by, for three or four hours in the day, as we shall see. The
theme is always the same, but it is treated in an infinite variety of
ways, and therein we see the instinct of mimicry, the abundance of
grotesque ideas, the fluency, the quickness at repartee, and even the
natural eloquence of our peasants.

The part of the gardener's wife is ordinarily entrusted to a slender,
beardless man with a fresh complexion, who is able to give great
verisimilitude to the character he assumes and to represent burlesque
despair so naturally that the spectators may be amused and saddened at
the same time as by the genuine article. Such thin, beardless men are
not rare in our country districts, and, strangely enough, they are
sometimes the most remarkable for muscular strength.