Tarare sees how the women can never let their hands fall idle, how they work them until their muscles wear to strings, work their hands into ragged claws, so that to Tarare’s young eyes they look like a tribe of great fire-worshipping birds, huddled there at the veillée in their black shawls. He will remember this, a breast in his mouth and the great birds gathered by the great fire, after he forgets most of what follows. It is where he comes from.
