The most of them carried something in their
hands,--faggots, covered baskets, small sacks of potatoes, or corn, or
beans; and when the load was heavy they walked with a sharp, jerking
turn of the hips to right and left that was almost like a dislocation,
and the wrinkles in the faces of these heavy-laden ones were deep folds,
as in the hide of a loose-skinned beast. For in that country to be
strong is to be cursed; it means double work and double burden, where
everything that breathes and moves and can be found to labour is driven
to the very breaking point of strain.
But as Veronica drove on, there were fewer men and women in the road,
and only once in an hour or so, a huge cart, piled up with wine barrels,
lumbered along, drawn by four or five deathly-looking mules that
stumbled when they had to stop or start--shadowy creatures, the ghosts
of their kind, as it were.
The villages were worse than the open country, for in them the appalling
poverty was gathered together in its muddiest colours and set in fixed
pictures which Veronica never forgot. In the May weather, the doors of
low dwellings were open, and the black and white pigs wandered
unhindered from the filthy street without to the misery within,
fattening on the poor waste of the desperately poor, fattening in the
sun that drove their wretched betters to the daily fight with
starvation, fattening in the vile filth to which starvation was dully
indifferent, since cleanliness meant labour that brought no bread.
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