Hard at work, stand hundreds of strong and bare armed
women, who scrub and wring their linen, while they sing and reply to the
banter of passing bargee or canotier.
If the sun is shining and the water is clear, the blue cotton dresses
of the women contrast prettily with white linen and bare arms busily
employed. Though they earn but a pittance, about five cents an hour, yet
they are very independent; mutual assistance is their controlling creed,
and few, if any, honor more loyally the republican principle of liberty,
equality and fraternity. The women seemed to do all the hard work, while
the men in snowy shirts and blue cotton trousers, with scarlet girdles
about their waists, pushed deftly to and fro the hot flat or box irons
over white starched linen.
Each ironer has a bit of wax, which he passes over the hot iron when he
comes to the front, the collar, or the wrist-bands, and he boasts that he
can goffer a frill or "bring up" a pattern of lace better than a
Chinaman.
Alfonso and his party drove along the handsome Rue de Rivoli, with its
half-mile of arcades, attractive shops, and hotels of high grade, and
up the Rue Castiglione, which leads to the Place Vendome. Here in one
of a hundred open places in Paris rises the Column Vendome in imitation
of Trajan's column in Rome.
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