You meet her, pale
and demure, plodding along to mass with her mother. The sisters will
marry laborers and fishermen; Mariquinha will marry a small shop-keeper
or the mate of a vessel, or else die single. It is not very pleasant for
the poor girl in the mean time; she is neither healthy nor happy; but
"let us be genteel or die."
On _festa_-days she and her mother draw their hoods so low and their
muffling handkerchiefs so high that the costume is as good as a
_yashmak_, and in passing through the streets these one-eyed women seem
like an importation from the "Arabian Nights." Ladies of higher rank,
also, wear the hooded cloak for disguise and greater freedom, and at a
fashionable wedding in the cathedral I have seen the jewelled fingers of
the uninvited acquaintances gleam from the blue folds of broadcloth. But
very rarely does one see the aristocratic lady in the street in her own
French apparel, and never alone. There must be a male relative, or a
servant, or, at the very least, a female companion. Even the ladies of
the American Consul's family very rarely go out singly,--not from any
fear, for the people are as harmless as birds, but from etiquette. The
first foreign lady who walked habitually alone in the streets was at
once christened "The Crazy American." A lady must not be escorted home
from an evening party by a gentleman, but by a servant with a lantern;
and as the streets have no lamps, I never could see the breaking-up of
any such entertainment without recalling Retzsch's quaint pictures of
the little German towns, and the burghers plodding home with their
lanterns,--unless, perchance, what a foreign friend of ours called a
"sit-down chair" came rattling by, and transferred our associations to
Cranford and Mr.
Pages:
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79