I saw it from a distance - the perfect witch's hat.
Up close, a significant carving.
"I found her in the inn sitting in the chimney-corner, in one of the high backed oaken chairs carved with barbaric hieroglyphics which are particular to the country. The firelight threw into relief her fine sibylline features. She had flung aside her mourning-cloak but her head was still muffled in a black woolen hood, the flaps of which fluttered over her shoulders with every breath of wind let in by the opening door, like the wings of some ill-omened crow, just poised for flight. With her hooked nose and burning eyes, her dry and sunken mouth and the curve of her lips, she had an almost Dantesque expression, nor did it surprise me in the least when our hostess said to her quite simply and without a touch of mockery:
'It's true, old Nanna, is it not? that you went once to purgatory, and that there has been a burning smell about you ever since?' "
All Soul's Eve in Lower Brittany
Anatole Le Braz
1897
What hidden beauty! A reward for looking closely.
ReplyDeleteIt so happened that just nearby was a good spot for a picnic!
ReplyDeleteI have admired your eye for roofs and rooflines before here (and now, I read, your appetite for picnics before, too), but this is very witty and the literary allusion is even more so.
ReplyDeleteDear, dear Laurent, we all have our specialties, don't we?
ReplyDelete