The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist. The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist. At every station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds, and in all sorts of attire. At the very beginning of the seventeenth century it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the casualties of war proper being assisted by famine and disease. I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. I was evidently expected, for when I got near the door I faced a cheery-looking elderly woman in the usual peasant dress—white undergarment with long double apron, front, and back, of coloured stuff fitting almost too tight for modesty.