I.
WHEN you find yourself for the first time, upon some unshadowed
day, in the delightful West Indian city of St. Pierre,—supposing
that you own the sense of poetry, the recollections of a
student,—there is apt to steal upon your fancy an impression of
having seen it all before, ever so long ago,—you cannot tell
where. The sensation of some happy dream you cannot wholly
recall might be compared to this feeling. In the simplicity and
solidity of the quaint architecture,—in the eccentricity of
bright narrow streets, all aglow with warm coloring,—in the
tints of roof and wall, antiquated by streakings and patchings of
mould greens and grays,—in the startling absence of window-sashes,
glass, gas lamps, and chimneys,—in the blossom-tenderness
of the blue heaven, the splendor of tropic light, and
the warmth of the tropic wind,—you find less the impression of a
scene of to-day than the sensation of something that was and is
not. Slowly this feeling strengthens with your pleasure in the
colorific radiance of costume,—the semi-nudity of passing
figures,—the puissant shapeliness of torsos ruddily swart like
statue metal,—the rounded outline of limbs yellow as tropic
fruit,—the grace of attitudes,—the unconscious harmony of
groupings,—the gathering and folding and falling of light robes
that oscillate with swaying of free hips,—the sculptural symmetry
of unshod feet. You look up and down the lemon-tinted streets,
—down to the dazzling azure brightness of meeting sky and sea; up
to the perpetual verdure of mountain woods—wondering at the
mellowness of tones, the sharpness of lines in the light, the
diaphaneity of colored shadows; always asking memory: "When? …
where did I see all this … long ago?". …
Then, perhaps, your gaze is suddenly riveted by the vast and solemn
beauty of the verdant violet-shaded mass of the dead Volcano,—
high-towering above the town, visible from all its ways, and umbraged,
maybe, with thinnest curlings of cloud,—like spectres of its ancient
smoking to heaven. And all at once the secret of your dream is
revealed, with the rising of many a luminous memory,—dreams of
the Idyllists, flowers of old Sicilian song, fancies limned upon
Pompeiian walls. For a moment the illusion is delicious: you
comprehend as never before the charm of a vanished world,—the
antique life, the story of terra-cottas and graven stones and
gracious things exhumed: even the sun is not of to-day, but of
twenty centuries gone;—thus, and under such a light, walked the
women of the elder world. You know the fancy absurd;—that the
power of the orb has visibly abated nothing in all the eras of
man,—that millions are the ages of his almighty glory; but for
one instant of reverie he seemeth larger,—even that sun
impossible who coloreth the words, coloreth the works of artist-lovers
of the past, with the gold light of dreams.
Too soon the hallucination is broken by modern sounds,
dissipated by modern sights,—rough trolling of sailors
descending to their boats,—the heavy boom of a packet's signal-gun,—the
passing of an American buggy. Instantly you become
aware that the melodious tongue spoken by the passing throng is
neither Hellenic nor Roman: only the beautiful childish speech of
French slaves.
