At every third step
you behold a bare-chested negro cultivating the precious leaf or a Grand
Seigneur, attired like the theatrical Turk, smoking a colossal pipe.
Boxes of cigars, with their more or less fallacious vignettes and
labels, figure, symmetrically disposed, in the ornamentation of the
shop-fronts. There must be very little tobacco left at Havana, if we can
have faith in these displays, so rich in famous brands.
As I have said, it was early morning. Servant-maids, kneeling on the
steps or standing on the window-sills, were going on with the Saturday
scrubbing. Notwithstanding the keen air, they made a display of robust
arms bare to the shoulder, tanned and sunburned, red with that
astonishing vermilion that we see in some of Rubens' paintings, which is
the joint result of the biting of the north wind and the action of water
upon these blond skins; little girls belonging to the poorer classes,
with braided hair, bare arms, and low-necked frocks, were going out to
obtain articles of food; I shivered in my paletot, to see them so
lightly clad. There is something strange about this; the women of
northern countries cut their dresses out in the neck, they go about
bare-headed and bare-armed, while the women of the South cover
themselves with vests, haicks, pelisses, and warm garments of every
description.
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