IN THE ABRUZZI MOUNTAINS
and the blacksmith. The women do practically all the work of the community; they dig, plough, sow, and reap. The free, proud bearing this gives them is wonderful; their beauty surpasses belief. Michael Angelo's sibyls spin at every street corner, Raphael's Madonnas suckle their children at every doorway. The old women are either strong and upright, like Elena's grandmother, or, if they go to pieces and crouch into withered crones, it is with an admirable sombre dignity. We have only once been begged from: a very old woman,—she looked like Vedder's Cumæan sibyl,—evidently ill and suffering, and distinctly not a professional beggar, after looking furtively about to see if any one were in sight, laid hold of the hem of my dress and asked for money. She touched her hand to her lips before and after receiving it, as they do in the orient. We fancy we come across other traces of Saracen influence (they overran this part in the Dark Ages) in three-year-old Tina's tiny frock covering her down to the feet, and the way the women hide their mouths when a stranger passes. In a town to the southward the women wear veils, which they draw half over their faces when out of doors.
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