VI.
FROM my window in the old Rue du Bois-Morin,—which climbs the
foot of Morne Labelle by successions of high stone steps,—all
the southern end of the city is visible as in a bird's-eye view.
Under me is a long peaking of red-scaled roofs,—gables and
dormer-windows,—with clouds of bright green here and there,—
foliage of tamarind and corossolier;—westward purples and flames
the great circle of the Caribbean Sea;—east and south, towering
to the violet sky, curve the volcanic hills, green-clad from base
to summit;—and right before me the beautiful Morne d'Orange, all
palm-plumed and wood-wrapped, trends seaward and southward. And
every night, after the stars come out, I see moving lights
there,—lantern fires guiding the mountain-dwellers home; but I
look in vain for the light of Père Labat.
And nevertheless,—although no believer in ghosts,—I see thee
very plainly sometimes, thou quaint White Father, moving through
winter-mists in the narrower Paris of another century; musing
upon the churches that arose at thy bidding under tropic skies;
dreaming of the primeval valleys changed by thy will to green-gold
seas of cane,—and the strong mill that will bear thy name
for two hundred years (it stands solid unto this day),—and the
habitations made for thy brethren in pleasant palmy places,—and
the luminous peace of thy Martinique convent,—and odor of
roasting parrots fattened upon grains de bois d'Inde and
guavas,—"l'odeur de muscade et de girofle qui fait
plaisir." …
Eh, Père Labat!—what changes there have been since thy day!
The White Fathers have no place here now; and the Black Fathers,
too, have been driven from the land, leaving only as a memory of
them the perfect and ponderous architecture of the Perinnelle
plantation-buildings, and the appellation of the river still
known as the Rivière des Pères. Also the Ursulines are gone,
leaving only their name on the corner of a crumbling street. And
there are no more slaves; and there are new races and colors thou
wouldst deem scandalous though beautiful; and there are no more
parrots; and there are no more diablotins. And the grand woods
thou sawest in their primitive and inviolate beauty, as if fresh
from the Creator's touch in the morning of the world, are passing
away; the secular trees are being converted into charcoal, or
sawn into timber for the boat-builders: thou shouldst see two
hundred men pulling some forest giant down to the sea upon the
two-wheeled screaming thing they call a "devil" (yon diabe),—
cric-crac!—cric-crac!—all chanting together;—
"Soh-soh!—yaïe-yah!
Rhâlé bois-canot!"
And all that ephemeral man has had power to change has been
changed,—ideas, morals, beliefs, the whole social fabric. But
the eternal summer remains,—and the Hesperian magnificence of
azure sky and violet sea,—and the jewel-colors of the perpetual
hills;—the same tepid winds that rippled thy cane-fields two
hundred years ago still blow over Sainte-Marie;—the same purple
shadows lengthen and dwindle and turn with the wheeling of the
sun. God's witchery still fills this land; and the heart of the
stranger is even yet snared by the beauty of it; and the dreams
of him that forsakes it will surely be haunted—even as were
thine own, Père Labat—by memories of its Eden-summer: the sudden
leap of the light over a thousand peaks in the glory of tropic
dawn,—the perfumed peace of enormous azure noons,—and shapes of
palm wind-rocked in the burning of colossal sunsets,—and the
silent flickering of the great fire-flies through the lukewarm
darkness, when mothers call their children home … "Mi fanal Pè
Labatt!—mi Pè Labatt ka vini pouend ou!"
