those french women , as they sat and knitted and chatted while the guillotine clanged down , must have had the same pale , thick chicken 's skin that scragged in little folds under the eyes and at the corners of the mouth and below the jaws , the same big peasant 's ears , the same tight , hard dimpled fists , like knobkerries , that , in the case of the russian woman , now lay tightly clenched on the red velvet table-top on either side of the big bundle of bosom .