XXV.
… IN most of the old stone houses you will occasionally see
spiders of terrifying size,—measuring across perhaps as much as
six inches from the tip of one out-stretched leg to the tip of
its opposite fellow, as they cling to the wall. I never heard of
anyone being bitten by them; and among the poor it is deemed
unlucky to injure or drive them away. … But early this morning
Yzore swept her house clean, and ejected through door-way quite a
host of these monster insects. Manm-Robert is quite dismayed:—
—"Fesis-Maïa!—ou 'lè malhè encó pou fai ça, chè?" (You want to
have still more bad luck, that you do such a thing?)
And Yzore answers:—
—"Toutt moune içitt pa ni yon sou!—gouôs conm ça fil zagrignin,
et moin pa menm mangé! Epi laverette encó. … Moin couè toutt ça ka
póté malhè!" (No one here has a sou!—heaps of cobwebs like that,
and nothing to eat yet; and the verette into the bargain … I think
those things bring bad luck.)
—"Ah! you have not eaten yet!" cries Manm-Robert. "Vini épi
moin!" (Come with me!)
And Yzore—already feeling a little remorse for her treatment of the
spiders—murmurs apologetically as she crosses over to Manm-Robert's
little shop:—"Moin pa tchoué yo; moin chassé yo—ké
vini encó." (I did not kill them; I only put them out;—they will
come back again.)
But long afterwards, Manm-Robert remarked to me that they never went
back. …
