The regular alignment of the vineyard made it easy to oversee the gathering of the harvest. Already the tints of the leaves began to hint of October, and on the hills a more vivid earth opposed a paler sky. The various levels were distinguished more clearly than before by their new colours: La Mondeuse green and gold, the Grand Noir and the Douce Noire green and purple. Among the bare branches, the sombre patches of the grapes caught the eye. With knives open and dripping hands, the vintagers, prompt for the work of sacrifice, renewed their efforts, handling the grapes as if they were sacrificial victims, severing them with one sharp stroke and casting them into the baskets. The women one and all had raised their skirts, gathering and fixing them behind in order to be more free in their movements on the heavy soil, and wearing a motley handkerchief or scarf knotted round their heads to keep off the rays of the hot sun. From time to time some one of them, straightening up, would rise from the sea of branches like a salmon coming up to the surface a moment, and then plunge down again. Some among them were old women, knotted and wrinkled, slow and stiff in their joints, capable, nevertheless, of great endurance and with eyes always on the watch; they were not regular employees any longer and were struggling all the more to keep their last jobs. There were young women of twenty, more adroit and lively, exposing their faces and their bare forearms fearlessly, safe in the coat of tan that protects the flesh from a too caressing sky. There were young girls, too, immature as yet, and less persistent, changing their places, disturbing the ranks or sitting back quite simply, with the gaiety of school-girls on vacation, as supple and flexible as the vines they handled. There were even little children under care of mothers who could not leave them at home, gathering grapes on their own account, scampering about and besmearing lips and cheeks with juice like precocious bacchantes.