"Mais si! nous avons les avocats."
But to return to the coiffées.
Not only were the head-dresses picturesque, but the faces of the girls under the fluttering white coifs were often very lovely, and their forms were graceful. It is a sad thing to see how quickly beauty withers, when women are made to toil in the fields. Owing to the men, when young, being called away to serve in the army, field work devolves in France, Italy, Germany and Austria largely on the women. In the seasons of harvest, wives and daughters reap, shear, lade; and too often the husbands, fathers, brothers and even lovers, content themselves with giving general directions, or loll about in comparative indolence.
I remember at Cortina d'Ampezzo overtaking a young couple, engaged, but not married; he carried a great load of hay on his back, and she walked at his side. A few weeks later they were married, and I overtook them again, coming from the same field—but she was then laden and bowed under her burden, while he sauntered at her side, smoking, and with his hands in his pockets. But it was an unusual bit of gallantry in the former case for the man to burden himself with the woman's load.
The French or the Tyrolese girl has no chance of punishing the man who has been uncouth or ungallant before marriage. It is an accepted idea, that "Women must work and men may play"; and they accept it as an ass accepts the burden laid on the back.
Xerxes wept when he saw his vast armament deploy under his eyes, to think how many of them after the campaign would be dead or wounded; and it fills one's own heart with an ache to see these charming and happy girls, and to know that in a very few years they will be withered flowers. The beauty is of slow development, and when developed is transient.
I was wont on our journey south to go to the village well when the girls were filling their cruches with water, for the pleasure it afforded me of seeing their pretty faces and lithe forms, and to hear their merry voices and ringing laughter. How I longed to be able to sketch the exquisite groups I so frequently saw; but I doubt whether, had it been then possible to take a photograph, one could have steadied those lively butterflies so as to click the camera on a group.
