Beyond the Limeiro the car winds through streets so narrow that pedestrians have to withdraw into the doorways of the small stores (boutequins), cafés, and wine shops lining the way. From the dim, low interiors peer out singly or in groups olive-skinned men and youths with broad-brimmed felt hats flapping over long-locked manes, and reaching to the nape of the neck, or wearing the familiar black or green woollen cap with the jaunty peak dangling over forehead or ear. Urchins in similar varicoloured caps, and girls with gaily-flowered kerchiefs tied round their hair, all black eyed and daring, dart across the track of the car which fills up the narrow street like some invading monster. In a low doorway crouches an aged crone—shrivelled and brown as the rind of a cocoa-nut, her white locks bound round by a black or coloured handkerchief—fanning gently the charcoal embers in a brazier of clay where she is roasting chestnuts for sale as her sole means of subsistence. Through the curious crescent-shaped windows above many of the little shops are seen women here and there, sewing or washing, or simply watching the passers-by. One of them wearing a rose-coloured cotton dress, with her thick waves of jet-black hair forming a halo for her pale, almost classical face, makes a picture that lingers in the mind.
Here a steep cul de sac, there a narrow alley, a broad calçada of curious steps, or little open spaces with lanes and stairways leading from them at grotesque or picturesque angles reveal glimpses of projecting terraces, overhanging balconies, verandahs, all forlornly dilapidated, with touches of greenery, a palm crest, or a neglected pateo glimpsed through a grilled doorway—suggestions of houses once important but now dwelt in by the poorest of the capital's populace.
The names of the streets strike notes reminiscent of the
29
