The female confidant, who supports and guides her embarrassed friend with her right arm, brings her left hand into the sign of beautiful—­“See what a beauty she is!” This sign is made by the thumb and index open and severally lightly touching each side of the lower cheek, the other fingers open.  It is given on a larger scale and slightly varied in Fig. 84, evidently referring to a fat and rounded visage.  Almost the same sign is made by the Ojibwas of Lake Superior, and a mere variant of it is made by the Dakotas—­stroking the cheeks alternately down to the tip of the chin with the palm or surface of the extended fingers.

[Illustration:  Fig. 85.]

The mother-in-law greets the bride by making the sign mano in fica with her right hand.  This sign, made with the hand clenched and the point of the thumb between and projecting beyond the fore and middle fingers, is more distinctly shown in Fig. 85.  It has a very ancient origin, being found on Greek antiques that have escaped the destruction of time, more particularly in bronzes, and undoubtedly refers to the pudendum muliebre.  It is used offensively and ironically, but also—­which is doubtless the case in this instance—­as an invocation or prayer against evil, being more forcible than the horn-shaped gesture before described.  With this sign the Indian sign for female, see Fig. 132, page 357, infra, may be compared.

The mother-in-law also places her left hand hollowed in front of her abdomen, drawing with it her gown slightly forward, thereby making a pantomimic representation of the state in which “women wish to be who love their lords”; the idea being plainly an expressed hope that the household will be blessed with a new generation.

[Illustration:  Fig. 86.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 87.]

Next to her is a hunchback, who is present as a familiar clown or merrymaker, and dances and laughs to please the company, at the same time snapping his fingers.  Two other illustrations of this action, the middle finger in one leaving and in the other having left the thumb and passed to its base, are seen in Figs. 86, 87.  This gesture by itself has, like others mentioned, a great variety of significations, but here means joy and acclamation.  It is frequently used among us for subdued applause, less violent than clapping the two hands, but still oftener to express negation with disdain, and also carelessness.  Both these uses of it are common in Naples, and appear in Etruscan vases and Pompeian paintings, as well as in the classic authors.  The significance of the action in the hand of the contemporary statue of Sardanapalus at Anchiale is clearly worthlessness, as shown by the inscription in Assyrian, “Sardanapalus, the son of Anacyndaraxes, built in one day Anchiale and Tarsus.  Eat, drink, play; the rest is not worth that!”

[Illustration:  Fig. 88.]