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This is a great foil to old Roman Neuss, with its massive gates, its tower attributed to Drusus after whom so many bridges and towers on the Rhine are named and even to Düsseldorf, which, notwithstanding its modern part, twice as large as its old river front, has some beautiful antique pictures to show us, both in the costumes of its market-women, who wear red petticoats with white aprons and flapping caps, and stand laughing and scolding in a high key by their dog-drawn carts, and in its council-house, an early Renaissance building with square, high-roofed turrets overlooking the market-place.
Oh! how charming it would be to be a great painter, and give the character of the building, and the numberless groups round about it. The booths lighted up by the sun, the market-women in their gowns of brilliant hue, each group having a character and telling its little story, the troops of men lolling in all sorts of admirable attitudes of ease round the great lamp.
In the shop, when he had to deal with the lower classes, he showed himself acquainted with their modes of expression, and spoke the Billingsgate of the market-women, which he had acquired in the rue Comtesse d'Artois, treating them familiarly, and they generally addressed him as "gossip Denies." By his own account he easily judged the characters of the various people with whom he came in contact.
Those among the porters of the corn-market and charcoal carriers, who have a little manners, assemble on holidays, in public-houses of a more decent description, with good, plain-spoken market-women, and nosegay-girls. They drink unmixed liquor, and the conversation is somewhat more than free; but, in public, they get tipsy, and nothing farther!
That will stir them up, for they do respect the knitters, and if they fear the devil, they fear yet more his proud grandmother, and every one of us market-women and knitters is the devil's grandmother."
He lingered for some time in the square, answering the banter of the blooming market-women, inspecting the filigree-ornaments from Genoa, and watching a little yellow bitch in a hooped petticoat and lappets dance the furlana to the music of an armless fiddler who held the bow in his teeth.
The furies of the revolution, the market-women, went howling again through the streets on the 20th of June, 1791, uttering their horrid curses upon the king and the Austrian woman, and hurling their savage words and dirty songs against Madame Veto, against la chienne d'Autriche.
Besides the water-carriers, market-women and fruit-vendors there may be seen straight, stalwart lasses acting as portresses to convey loads to and from the boats which are fastened to the river-wall. Many of the servants and other laborers through Portugal come from Galicia, the inhabitants of that Spanish province enjoying a reputation for honesty and faithful service combined with stupidity.
The further out one went, the more open it was, and there were cherry-trees, plum-trees, wide-spreading old apple-trees, lichened and held up with props, and the pear-trees were so tall that it was incredible that there could be pears on them. This part of the garden was let to the market-women of our town, and it was guarded from thieves and starlings by a peasant an idiot who lived in a hut.
Three market-women, a pedlar, and a local policeman made up with me the train's complement of passengers. I gathered that their business could wait; and as for mine well, a Norman porch is by this time accustomed to waiting. Let me describe the scene.
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