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Half a dozen old hags with the parchment also sat upon the rocks in the sun, spinning from distaffs, exactly as their ancestors did in Greece two thousand years ago, I doubt not. I do not know that it is true, as Tasso wrote, that this climate is so temperate and serene that one almost becomes immortal in it.
"Come, quick, darling; Monsieur Jacques Dechartre dines at the house to-night, and I should not like to make him wait." And while they were driving through the silence of the night, through the pathways full of the fresh perfume of wildflowers, she said: "Do you see over there, darling, the black distaffs of the Fates, the cypresses of the cemetery? It is there I wish to sleep."
"Nay, how can I stop it when my lady will not have the maidens kept ever at their distaffs and needles in seemly fashion," cried a small but stout and self-assertive dame, known as "Mother of the Maidens," then starting, "Oh! my lady, I crave your pardon, I knew not you were in this coil!
Young Jerome-Denis Rogron entered the establishment of one of the largest wholesale mercers in the same street, the Maison Guepin, at the "Three Distaffs." When Sylvie Rogron, aged twenty-one, had risen to be forewoman at a thousand francs a year Jerome-Denis, with even better luck, was head-clerk at eighteen, with a salary of twelve hundred francs.
In Schoonhoven the authorities attempted one Sunday by main force to induct a Contra-Remonstrant into the pulpit from which a Remonstrant had just been expelled. The women of the place turned out with their distaffs and beat them from the field.
When we were pages together the bower-maidens of the queen always made much of you, while they called me impudent, and would give me many a slap on the cheek." "Well, you deserved it richly, Wulf, for you were always playing tricks upon them-hiding their distaffs or tangling their thread, and giving them pert answers when they wanted you to do their errands.
Up and across another mighty hall, and then up again, and into a great women's-room, full of looms and spinning-wheels, where a buxom English housewife and half-a-dozen red-cheeked maids were gaping over their distaffs at the tale a jolly old monk was telling between swallows of wine.
Officers quitted the armies, the nobility their chateaux, whole companies deserted to enlist on the frontiers. Distaffs were sent to those who wavered; and those who did not emigrate were threatened with the loss of the position when the nobility should return victorious. In the Austrian Low Countries and the bordering electorates, there was formed what was called La France exterieure.
It is only by glimpses that we catch sight of the first steps towards civic life, of market and market-toll, of flax-growing and women with distaffs at their door, of fullers at work along the abbey-stream, of gate-keepers for the rude walls, of town-meetings summoned in old Teutonic fashion by blast of horn. It is the Great Survey of the Conqueror that gives us our first clear peep at the town.
She did not appear to notice the actors in the drama; and now, when three young girls, in gayest holiday attire, came forward with distaffs that streamed with bright ribbons, and knelt before her, she reached forth a hand as if to bless them, but kept her eyes turned meekly upon the ground.
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