WOMEN 451
piteous sounds filled the air. One gigantic curse un- coiled and crept from house to house, from door to door, from mouth to mouth, and the population began to move, to bestir themselves, to run hither and thither.
Half-naked, with parched bones and shrivelled skin, with sunken yet burning eyes, they crawled over one another like worms in a heap, fastened on to the bites in each other's mouth, and tore them away
But this is summer, and they are feeling compara- tively cheerful, bold, and free in their movements. They are stifled and suffocated, they are in a melting- pot with heat and exhaustion, but there are counter- balancing advantages; one can live for weeks at a time without heating the stove; indeed, it is pleasanter in- doors without fire, and lighting will cost very little, now the evenings are short.
In winter it was different. An inclement sky, an enfeebled sun, a sick day, and a burning, biting frost!
People, too, were different. A bitterness came over them, and they went about anxious and irritable, with hanging head, possessed by gloomy despair. It never even occurred to them to tear their neighbor's bite out of his mouth, so depressed and preoccupied did they become. The days were months, the evenings years, and the weeks oh ! the weeks were eternities !
And no one knew of their misery but the winter wind that tore at their roofs and howled in their all but smokeless chimneys like one bewitched, like a lost soul condemned to endless wandering.
But there were bright stars in the abysmal dark- ness; their one pride and consolation were the Pid-
