"And finally, to make up for the horrors of the scene and of the
statues, to mitigate the grotesqueness of the inn-servants, who had
beards like sappers and clothes like little boys--the caps, and holland
blouses with belts, and shiny black breeches, like cast iron, of the
children at the Saint Nicolas school in Paris--extraordinary characters,
souls of divine simplicity expanded there."

And Durtal recollected the admirable scene he had watched there one
morning.

He was sitting on the little plateau, in the icy shade of the church,
gazing before him at the graveyard and the motionless swell of mountain
tops. Far away, in the very sky, a string of beads moved on, one by one,
on the ribbon of path that edged the precipice. And by degrees these
specks, at first merely dark, assumed the bright hues of dresses,
assumed the form of coloured bells surmounted by white knobs, and at
last took shape as a line of peasant women wearing white caps.

And still in single file they came down the square.

After crossing themselves as they passed the cemetery, they went each to
drink a cup of water at the spring and then turned round; and Durtal,
who was watching them, saw this:

At their head walked an old woman of at least a hundred, very tall and
still upright, her head covered by a sort of hood from which her stiff,
wavy hair escaped in tangled grey locks like iron wire. Her face was
shrivelled like the peel of an onion, and so thin that, looking at her
in profile, daylight could be seen through her skin.