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"When I reached Calais on my homeward way, stopped there a day, awaiting the coming of Rouen, for whom I had nuncio communications, and in the evening went to visit a cottage where I had once been a great favourite with an old fellow called Sante-you know those Calais fishers, with painted sabots, and ochred trousers.
The darkness and the 'dead' silence are soon to be disturbed one or two birds fly out from the black eaves, a rat crosses the street, some distant chimes come upon the wind, and a faint clatter of sabots on the wet stones; the town clock strikes half-past three, and the watchman puts out his lantern, and goes to sleep.
Many of the men, women, and children wore sabots, or wooden shoes, which Paul compared to canal boats, and went clumping and clattering along the streets like champion clog-dancers. The Flemish cap, worn by some of the peasant women, also amused Paul very much.
Many a slave also received a considerable number of "tips" from guests, as well as perquisites and presents from his master. With economy he was thus enabled to purchase his own freedom. The master might also in some cases provide the slave with the essentials of his dress, to wit, a coarse tunic, a rough cloak, and a pair of shoes or sabots.
The sound of the bell, hard, rusty, grumbling, sounded on the other side of the wall. "Get up and don't be a fool," he said to himself, as he heard the clatter of a pair of sabots behind the door. This opened, and a very old monk, clad in the brown cloth of the Capuchins, looked at him inquiringly. "I come to make a retreat, and I wish to see Father Etienne."
Some of the boys yelled at him to let that thing go, but he poured that water on, and put out those fuses. Every fellow was dodging our own shells for a few minutes. A tin strap from one of the sabots struck Corporal John Watson on the tight seat of his pants, and he dropped flat, with his hands clapped on the place where he had felt the blow, yelling: "Oh, I'm wounded, I'm wounded."
It was he who told me that these sabots were to be worn. The miserable things nearly mademe break my neck when I entered the carriage; but they are something new. They attract attention. Everybody says, What are they? And when one has pretty feet, not too large, you know," etc., etc.
Albert de Chantonnay was arrested at Tours, and is now in La Rochelle. We may escape we may get away to-night " He paused and looked hurriedly toward the door, for some one was coming up the stairs some one who wore sabots. It was the servant, Marie, who came unceremoniously into the room with the exaggerated calm of one who realises the gravity of the situation and means to master it.
As she passed along, the dark quays were full of moving lights and figures; active women with short skirts and sabots, mingling in the groups of fishermen; while a buzz of harsh Breton speech resounded on all sides. She caught words about a gang of wreckers that had lately infested the coast: and the names of one or two "mauvais sujets" in the village, who were supposed to be their confederates.
An English critic, who visited the spot in the days of Millet's greatest celebrity, was astonished to find the painter, whom he had come to see, strolling about the village in rustic clothes, and even wearing the sabots or wooden shoes which are in France the social mark of the working classes, much as the smock-frock used once to be in the remoter country districts of England.
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