But the streets are full of animation when we leave the club. The market has just ended. Buyers and sellers are preparing to return home. Before the smaller inns men commence harnessing grey donkeys to little two-wheeled carts which stand in rows two deep, the shafts in the air. Five or six women squeeze into each of them, their backs leaning against the sides of the cart, the chin between the knees, or even lying flat one against the other lengthways, their muddy feet and bare legs hanging outside. The husband or brother seats himself at the side on one of the shafts, and when they have wished the neighbours good-bye, they slowly start on their way home to the small thatched house standing on the edge of some bog, which they will only leave once more during a whole week, when they go to mass on Sunday next.
In front of the houses on the market-place there is an interminable line of old women; each has in front of her on the edge of the pavement a small heap of nuts, potatoes, or turnips. The purchasers do not seem numerous, but the poor old women do not appear uneasy about it. They evidently return there every market day, less to sell anything than to see the people, to meet each other, to gossip together about the good old times, when potatoes were more plentiful, the sun hotter, the girls prettier, and the “boys” more gallant than they are now! There they are, seated in the mud, their bare legs twisted on one side to leave room for passers by, their heads wrapped in old shawls, a few grey locks peeping through the holes in them, the majority smoking short black pipes. Myriads of children, charming, but very dirty, roll in the gutter around them. Poor old women! In their dull, sad lives these market days stand out like nails placed at intervals in a wall, on which their recollections are hung. I remember at Tamatave seeing the old Malagachy women arrive from all sides, almost naked, their ribs projecting under their sickly skin, emaciated, hideous, yet having walked twelve or fifteen miles to sell two eggs and a cabbage palm--in reality to gossip with their neighbours. Human nature is the same everywhere.
But I have not time now to continue my observations. As soon as the grand jury had finished luncheon they started to go to the town-hall, and since these gentlemen had kindly invited me to be present at their work, I hastened to accompany them.