Like the rest of the Briard population, they are fine
fellows, tall, with regular features and frank good-humoured
countenances.
Some of these farmers and millers give enormous dowries to their
daughters. A million francs is sometimes heard of, and in our own
immediate neighbourhood we heard of several rustic heiresses who would
have a hundred thousand. Many a farmer, tenant-farmer, too, who toils
with his men, has, irrespective of his earnings as a farmer, capital
bringing in several thousand francs yearly; in fact, some of them are in
receipt of what is considered a fair income for an English curate or
vicar, but they work all the same.
At Coulommiers, there is nothing to see but a fine old church with an
imposing tower, rising from the centre of the town. I went inside, and,
though the doors stood wide open, found it empty, except for a little
market-girl, who, having deposited her basket, was bent, not on prayer,
but on counting her money. In Brittany, on market-days, there is never a
lack of pious worshippers; here it is not so, the good folks of Seine et
Marne evidently being inclined to materialism. The interior of this
picturesque church is very quaintly coloured, and, as a whole, it is
well worth seeing.
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