The wages of a laboring man are one
hundred and fifty livres the year, a woman's sixty to sixty-six livres,
and fed. Their bread is half wheat, half rye, made once in three or four
weeks, to prevent too great a consumption. In the morning they eat bread
with an anchovy, or an onion. Their dinner in the middle of the day
is bread, soup, and vegetables. Their supper the same. With their
vegetables, they have always oil and vinegar. The oil costs about eight
sous the pound. They drink what is called _piquette_. This is made after
the grapes are pressed, by pouring hot water on the pumice. On Sunday
they have meat and wine. Their wood for building comes mostly from the
Alps, down the Durance and Rhone. A stick of pine, fifty feet long,
girting six feet and three inches at one end, and three feet three
inches at the other, costs, delivered here, from fifty-four to sixty
livres. Sixty pounds of wheat cost seven livres. One of their little
asses will travel with his burthen about five or six leagues a day, and
day by day; a mule from six to eight leagues.*
* It is twenty American miles from Aix to Marseilles, and
they call it five leagues.
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