swayed her head from shoulder to shoulder, and actually wept. She could not
speak much French, but she said as well as she could that she did not know
that she had grown so ugly. I have noticed, however, that my photographs
have a tendency to draw tears or angry expressions from most of those on
whom I operate, which I can only account for by the reason that these
people have not the pleasure of paying for their portraits. What is
done for nothing is seldom appreciated. Suzette, not wishing to hurt my
feelings, soon wiped out her eyes with her largest knuckle, and, having
composed her countenance, thanked me for having photographed her. She
had had a rough life, but as she had known little else but hardship and
privation, she was contented with what Providence considered enough for
her. This was now a two-roomed cottage to live in, and for food a bunch of
grapes, a peach or a pear to eat with her bread in the fruit season, a few
walnuts to go with it in autumn or winter, chestnuts to boil or roast, and
a piece of fat bacon hanging to a beam, from which she cut only just enough
at a time to disguise the water which, when thickened with bread, a handful
of haricots, and some scraps of other vegetables, made her daily soup. She
was a widow now, but although whenever she spoke of her dead husband her
head began to wag and the tears to start from her eyes, she had less care
and worry and pain as a lonely woman than when she was bearing children
and working harder than any pack-mule to bring them up. Her husband was a
fisherman of the Dordogne, and she sold his fish in the Sarlat market, some
eight miles distant from where they lived by the river. In order to be
early in the market, she had to start at about two in the morning, and the
road, which was uphill all the way, ran between woods where the wolves,
descending from the vaster forests of Black Perigord, often howled in
winter. She told me it frequently happened when she reached the market that
her arms and hands were so benumbed with the cold that she could not take
the basket of fish from her head. As a widow, she had lived for a while
with a married son, but the young woman soon turned the old one out. Poor