The Salzburg Tales Read Online Free PDF Page B

untinted face. Her eyebrows were long, crescent-shaped and dark, and the flesh swelled under the eyebrow like an almond lying above the eye. Her eye was large and grey. She had the attentive, startled looks of a rabbit-girl, a soft and trustful smile; and in everything she did appeared so strong a desire to sleep on a faithful heart that both men and women looked after her with a tender smile. She spoke ina hesitating voice, almost under her breath, and her throat creaked and whirred out of pure timidity; and when she had once stated her opinion she at once deferred to another and deplored her haste in statement. Only in matters of behaviour her opinion was strong, her judgments were harsh, her rules inflexible: and her rule of behaviour was this, that no one should hurt a fly, and that no one should tell a lie. Her shoulders were broad, her arms white and her breast soft and prominent. Her waist was narrow and her hips round like a clock: she had little flesh and that was light and almost translucent, but it was elegantly massed and disposed. Among the valleys one can see a little landscape, verdant, hilly and lovely to the eye, which has no rocks, thick, bristling woods, sharp precipices or loud streams, and over which the clouds, hours and seasons, pass with a thousand superficial moods while beneath the place is always soft and mild. She was like that. Her legs were not long, but her feet were very small and she always wore expensive shoes, with thin leathers and small toes, and with high heels like threads. Her pale, small hands had large round nails like rock-crystal. She always wore a scarf over her shoulders, which were rounded a bit, as if in modesty; out of timidity she blinked when she was spoken to suddenly. But although she was not vain and not assured like the others, she was full of romantic ideas and was anxious to please, so that if they asked her to amuse them, she did not demur but did her best to speak.
    Then there stood behind the rope a band of German youths and girls on a walking trip. The youths wore thick woollen stockings, white, green and blue, embroidered in cross-stitch, linen coats in white or blue and heavy corduroy shorts, the shorts very dirty. The girls wore short socks, discoloured with dust, skirts and sweaters; they wore no corsets, and some of them wore no belts; they had no hats; their faces were brown and dirty. In town, over their blouses they wore blue linen coats or a shawl: they leaned forward as they walked, tramping heavily, with sweating cheeks and wrinkled foreheads, like peasant women who must carry a great burden up a mountain-side. Sometimes they all sang together; they yodelled inthe mountains. They stopped at cheap wayside houses to drink bad beer and eat some meat stew with heavy piquant sauce: or they went into a chapel to pray, the men taking off their mountain hats of felt and clanking over the flagged pavement with their hobnailed boots till they reached the altar; the women, kneeling down farther back, bending their fair, unkempt heads, their large bellies and bosoms unstayed, while the studded soles of their boots turned up in line along the bench. These students stood at the barrier in the cathedral place and waited, for this day and hour had been carefully reckoned with in their schedules. When an hour had passed they would be on their way with their road-maps flapping, in celluloid cases, on their hips. They could not afford lodging or entertainments; they were all poor, and though most were University students, some were unemployed, and some were clerks and factory hands. They had to be on their way long before sunset. They had many exhausting miles by cloudy thicket and mountain stream, on hobnailed boots or leather-soled bare feet uphill and down dale, to cities, rivers and mountain outlooks, to cathedrals, birthplaces of famous men and picturesque old streets, such as are starred in Baedeker, before they could return, contented, to their homes. Their cheeks