University of Virginia Library

5. LA VÉRETTE.

I. —ST. PIERRE, 1887.

ONE returning from the country to the city in the Carnival season is lucky to find any comfortable rooms for rent. I have been happy to secure one even in a rather retired street,—so steep that it is really dangerous to sneeze while descending it, lest one lose one's balance and tumble right across the town. It is not a fashionable street, the Rue du Morne Mirail; but, after all, there is no particularly fashionable street in this extraordinary city, and the poorer the neighborhood, the better one's chance to see something of its human nature.

One consolation is that I have Manm-Robert for a next-door neighbor, who keeps the best bouts in town (those long thin Martinique cigars of which a stranger soon becomes fond), and who can relate more queer stories and legends of old times in the island than anybody else I know of. Manm-Robert is yon màchanne lapacotte, a dealer in such cheap articles of food as the poor live upon: fruits and tropical vegetables, manioc-flour, "macadam " (a singular dish of rice stewed with salt fish—diri épi coubouyon lamori), akras, etc.; but her bouts probably bring her the largest profit—they are all bought up by the békés. Manm-Robert is also a sort of doctor: whenever anyone in the neighborhood falls sick she is sent for, and always comes, and very often cures,—as she is skilled in the knowledge and use of medicinal herbs, which she gathers herself upon the mornes. But for these services she never accepts any

remuneration: she is a sort of Mother of the poor in immediate vicinity. She helps everybody, listens to everybody's troubles, gives everybody some sort of consolation, trusts everybody, and sees a great deal of the thankless side of human nature without seeming to feel any the worse for it. Poor as she must really be she appears to have everything that everybody wants; and will lend anything to her neighbors except a scissors or a broom, which it is thought bad-luck to lend. And, finally, if anyybody is afraid of being bewitched (quimboisé) Manm-Robert can furnish him or her with something that will keep the bewitchment away. …

II.

February 15th.

… ASH-WEDNESDAY. The last masquerade will appear this afternoon, notwithstanding; for the Carnival is in Martinique a day longer than elsewhere.

All through the country districts since the first week of January there have been wild festivities every Sunday—dancing on the public highways to the pattering of tamtams,—African dancing, too, such as is never seen in St. Pierre. In the city, however, there has been less merriment than in previous years;— the natural gaiety of the population has been visibly affected by the advent of a terrible and unfamiliar visitor to the island,—La Vérette: she came by steamer from Colon.

… It was in September. Only two cases had been reported when every neighboring British colony quarantined against Martinique. Then other West Indian colonies did likewise. Only two cases of small-pox. "But there may be two thousand in another month," answered the governors and the consuls to many indignant protests. Among West Indian populations the malady has a signification unknown in Europe or the United States: it means an exterminating plague.

Two months later the little capital of Fort-de-France was swept by the pestilence as by a wind of death. Then the evil began to spread. It entered St. Pierre in December, about Christmas time. Last week 173 cases were reported; and a serious epidemic is almost certain. There were only 8500 inhabitants in Fort-de-France; there are 28,000 in the three quarters of St. Pierre proper, not including her suburbs; and there is no saying what ravages the disease may make here.

III.

… THREE o'clock, hot and clear. … In the distance there is a heavy sound of drums, always drawing nearer: tam!—tam!— tamtamtam! The Grande Rue is lined with expectant multitudes; and its tiny square,—the Batterie d'Esnotz,—thronged with békés. Tam!—tam!—tamtamtam! … In our own street the people are beginning to gather at door-ways, and peer out of windows,—prepared to descend to the main thoroughfare at the first glimpse of the procession.

—"Oti masque-à?" Where are the maskers?

It is little Mimi's voice: she is speaking for two besides herself, both quite as anxious as she to know where the maskers are,—Maurice, her little fair-haired and blue-eyed brother, three years old; and Gabrielle, her child-sister, aged four,— two years her junior.

Every day I have been observing the three, playing in the door-way of the house across the street. Mimi, with her brilliant white skin, black hair, and laughing black eyes, is the prettiest,—though all are unusually pretty children. Were it not for the fact that their mother's beautiful brown hair is usually covered with a violet foulard, you would certainly believe them white as any children in the world. Now there are children whom everyone knows to be white, living not very far from here, but in a much more

silent street, and in a rich house full of servants, children who resemble these as one fleur-d'amour blossom resembles another;—there is actually another Mimi (though she is not so called at home) so like this Mimi that you could not possibly tell one from the other,—except by their dress. And yet the most unhappy experience of the Mimi who wears white satin slippers was certainly that punishment given her for having been once caught playing in the street with this Mimi, who wears no shoes at all. What mischance could have brought them thus together?—and the worst of it was they had fallen in love with each other at first sight! … It was not because the other Mimi must not talk to nice little colored girls, or that this one may not play with white children of her own age: it was because there are cases. … It was not because the other children I speak of are prettier or sweeter or more intelligent than these now playing before me;—or because the finest microscopist in the world could or could not detect any imaginable race difference between those delicate satin skins. It was only because human nature has little changed since the day that Hagar knew the hate of Sarah, and the thing was grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son. …

… The father of these children loved them very much: he had provided a home for them,—a house in the Quarter of the Fort, with an allowance of two hundred francs monthly; and he died in the belief their future was secured. But relatives fought the will with large means and shrewd lawyers, and won! … Yzore, the mother, found herself homeless and penniless, with three children to care for. But she was brave;—she abandoned the costume of the upper class forever, put on the douillette and the foulard,— the attire that is a confession of race,—and went to work. She is still comely, and so white that she seems only to be masquerading in that violet head-dress and long loose robe. …

—"Vini ouè!—vini ouè!" cry the children to one another,— "come and see!" The drums are drawing near;—everybody is running to the Grande Rue. …

IV.

TAM!—tam!—tamtamtam! … The spectacle is interesting from the Batterie d'Esnotz. High up the Rue Peysette,—up all the precipitous streets that ascend the mornes,—a far gathering of showy color appears: the massing of maskers in rose and blue and sulphur-yellow attire. … Then what a degringolade begins!— what a tumbling, leaping, cascading of color as the troupes descend. Simultaneously from north and south, from the Mouillage and the Fort, two immense bands enter the Grande Rue;—the great dancing societies these,—the Sans-souci and the Intrépides. They are rivals; they are the composers and singers of those Carnival songs,—cruel satires most often, of which the local meaning is unintelligible to those unacquainted with the incident inspiring the improvisation,—of which the words are too often coarse or obscene,—whose burdens will be caught up and re-echoed through all the burghs of the island. Vile as may be the motive, the satire, the malice, these chants are preserved for generations by the singular beauty of the airs; and the victim of a Carnival song need never hope that his failing or his wrong will be forgotten: it will be sung of long after he is in his grave.

… Ten minutes more, and the entire length of the street is thronged with a shouting, shrieking, laughing, gesticulating host of maskers. Thicker and thicker the press becomes;—the drums are silent: all are waiting for the signal of the general dance. Jests and practical jokes are being everywhere perpetrated; there is a vast hubbub, made up of screams, cries, chattering,

laughter. Here and there snatches of Carnival song are being sung:—"Cambronne, Cambronne;" or "Ti fenm-là doux, li doux, li doux! " … "Sweeter than sirup the little woman is";—this burden will be remembered when the rest of the song passes out of fashion. Brown hands reach out from the crowd of masks, pulling the beards and patting the faces of white spectators. … "Moin connaitt ou, chè!—moin connaitt ou, doudoux! ba moin ti d'mi franc!" It is well to refuse the half-franc,—though you do not know what these maskers might take a notion to do to-day. … Then all the great drums suddenly boom together; all the bands strike up; the mad medley kaleidoscopes into some sort of order; and the immense processional dance begins. From the Mouillage to the Fort there is but one continuous torrent of sound and color: you are dazed by the tossing of peaked caps, the waving of hands, and twinkling of feet;—and all this passes with a huge swing,—a regular swaying to right and left. … It will take at least an hour for all to pass; and it is an hour well worth passing. Band after band whirls by; the musicians all garbed as women or as monks in canary-colored habits;—before them the dancers are dancing backward, with a motion as of skaters; behind them all leap and wave hands as in pursuit. Most of the bands are playing creole airs,—but that of the Sans-souci strikes up the melody of the latest French song in vogue,—Petits amoureux aux plumes ("Little feathered lovers" *). Everybody now seems to know this song by heart; you hear children only five or six years old singing it: there are pretty lines in it, although two out of its four stanzas are commonplace enough, and it is certainly the air rather than the words which accounts for its sudden popularity.

V.

… EXTRAORDINARY things are happening in the streets through which the procession passes. Pest-smitten women rise from their beds to costume themselves,—to mask face already made unrecognizable by the hideous malady,—and stagger out to join the dancers. … They do this in the Rue Longchamps, in the Rue St. Jean-de-Dieu, in the Rue Peysette, in the Rue de Petit

Versailles. And in the Rue Ste.-Marthe there are three young girls sick with the disease, who hear the blowing of the horns and the pattering of feet and clapping of hands in chorus;—they get up to look through the slats of their windows on the masquerade,—and the creole passion of the dance comes upon them. "Ah!" cries one,—"nou ké bien amieusé nou!—c'est zaffai si nou mó!" [We will have our fill of fun: what matter if we die after!] And all mask, and join the rout, and dance down to the Savane, and over the river-bridge into the high streets of the Fort, carrying contagion with them! … No extraordinary example, this: the ranks of the dancers hold many and many a verrettier.

VI.

… THE costumes are rather disappointing,-though the mummery has some general characteristics that are not unpicturesquel—for example, the predominance of crimson and canary-yellow in choice of color, and a marked predilection for pointed hoods and high-peaked head-dresses, Mock religious costumes also form a striking element in the general tone of the display,—Franciscan, Dominican, or Penitent habits,—usually crimson or yellow, rarely sky-blue. There are no historical costumes, few eccentricities or monsters: only a few "vampire-bat" head-dresses abruptly break the effect of the peaked caps and the hoods. … Still there are some decidedly local ideas in dress which deserve notice,—the congo, the bébé (or ti-manmaille), the ti nègue gouos-sirop ("little molasses-negro"); and the diablesse.

The congo is merely the exact reproduction of the dress worn by workers on the plantations. For the women, a gray calico shirt and coarse petticoat of percaline with two coarse handkerchiefs (mouchoirs fatas), one for her neck, and one for the head, over which is worn a monstrous straw hat;—she walks either barefoot or shod

with rude native sandals, and she carries a hoe. For the man the costume consists of a gray shirt of Iuugh material, blue canvas pantaloons, a large mouchoir fatas to tie around his waist, and a chapeau Bacoué,—an enormous hat of Martinique palm-straw. He walks barefooted and carries a cutlass.

The sight of a troupe of young girls en bébé, in baby-dress, is really pretty. This costume comprises only a loose embroidered chemise, lace-edged pantalettes, and a child's cap; the whole being decorated with bright ribbbons of various colors. As the dress is short and leaves much of the lower limbs exposed, there is ample opportunity for display of tinted stockings and elegant slippers.

The "molasses-negro" wears nothing but a cloth around his loins;—his whole body and face being smeared with an atrocious mixture of soot and molasses. He is supposed to represent the original African ancestor.

The devilesses (diablesses) are few in number; for it requires a very tall woman to play deviless. These are robed all in black, with a white turban and white foulard;—they wear black masks. They also carry boms (large tin cans), which they allow to fall upon the pavement and from time to time; and they walk barefoot. … The deviless (in true Bitaco idiom, "guiablesse") represents a singular Martinique superstition. It is said that sometimes at noonday, a beautiful negress passes silently through some isolated plantation,—smiling at the workers in the cane-fields,—tempting men to follow her. But he who follows her never comes back again; and when a field hand mysteriously disappears, his fellows say, "Y té ka ouè la Guiablesse!" … The tallest among the devilesses always walks first, chanting the question, "Fou ouvè?" (Is it yet daybreak?) And all the others reply in chorus, "Jou pa'ncó ouvè." (It is not yet day.)

—The masks worn by the multitude include very few grotesques: as a rule, they are simply white wire masks,

having the form of an oval and regular human face;—and disguise the wearer absolutely, although they can be through perfectly well from within. It struck me that this peculiar type of wire mask gave an indescribable tone of ghostliness to the whole exhibition. It is not in the least comical; it is neither comely nor ugly; it is colorless as mist,—expressionless, void,—it lies on the face like a vapor, like a cloud,—creating the idea of a spectral vacuity behind it. …

VII.

… NOW comes the band of the Intrépides, playing the bouèné. It is a dance melody,—also the name of a mode of dancing, peculiar and unrestrained;—the dancers advance and retreat face to face; they hug each other, press together, and separate to embrace again. A very old dance, this,—of African origin; perhaps the same of which Père Labat wrote in 1722:—

—"It is not modest. Nevertheless, it has not failed to become so popular with the Spanish Creoles of America, so much in vogue among them, that it now forms the chief of their amusements, and that it enters even into their devotions. They dance it even in their Churches, in their Processions; and the Nuns seldom fail to dance it Christmas Night, upon a stage erected in their choir and immediately in front of their iron grating, which is left open, so that the People may share in the manifested by these good souls for the birth of the Saviour." … *

VIII.

… EVERY year, on the last day of the Carnival, a droll ceremony used to take place called the" Burial of the Bois-bois,"—the bois-bois being a dummy, a guy, caricaturing the most unpopular thing in city life or in politics. This bois-bois, after having been paraded with mock solemnity through all the ways of St. Pierre, was either interred or "drowned,"—flung into the sea. … And yesterday the dancing societies had announced their intention to bury a bois-bois laverette,—a manikin that was to represent the plague. But this bois-bois does not make its appearance. La Verette is too terrible a visitor to be made fun of, my friends;— you will not laugh at her, because you dare not. …

No: there is one who has the courage,—a yellow goblin crying from behind his wire mask, in imitation of the màchannes: "Ça qui lè quatóze graines laverette pou yon sou?" (Who wants to buy fourteen verette-spots for a sou?)

Not a single laugh follows that jest. … And just one week from to-day, poor mocking goblin, you will have a great many more than quatorze graines, which will not cost you even a sou, and which will disguise you infinitely better than the mask you now wear;— and they will pour quick-lime over you, ere ever they let you pass through this street again—in a seven franc coffin! …

IX.

AND the multicolored clamoring stream rushes by,—swerves off at last through the Rue des Ursulines to

the Savane,—rolls over the new bridge of the Roxelane to the ancient quarter of the Fort.

All of a sudden there is a hush, a halt;—the drums stop beating, the songs cease. Then I see a sudden scattering of goblins and demons and devilesses in all directions: they run into houses, up alleys,—hide behind door-ways. And the crowd parts; and straight through it, walking very quickly, comes a priest in his vestments, preceded by an acolyte who rings a little bell. C'est Bon-Dié ka passé! ("It is the Good-God who goes by!") The father is bearing the "viaticum" to some victim of the pestilence: one must not appear masked as a devil or a deviless in the presence of the Bon-Die.

He goes by. The flood of maskers recloses behind the ominous passage; —the drums boom again; the dance recommences; and all the fantastic mummery ebbs swiftly out of sight.

X.

NIGHT falls;—the maskers crowd to the ball-rooms to dance strange tropical measures that will become wilder and wilder as the hours pass. And through the black streets, the Devil makes his last Carnival-round.

By the gleam of the old-fashioned oil lamps hung across the thoroughfares I can make out a few details of his costume. He is clad in red, wears a hideous blood-colored mask, and a cap of which the four sides are formed by four looking-glasses;—the whole head-dress being surmounted by a red lantern. He has a white wig made of horse-hair, to make him look weird and old,—since the Devil is older than the world! Down the street he comes, leaping nearly his own height,— chanting words without human signification,—and followed by some three hundred boys, who form the chorus to his chant—all clapping hands together and giving tongue with a simultaneity that testifies how strongly the sense of rhythm

enters into the natural musical feeling of the African,—a feeling powerful enough to impose itself upon all Spanish-America, and there create the unmistakable characteristics of all that is called "creole music."

—"Bimbolo!"

—"Zimabolo!"

—"Bimbolo!"

—"Zimabolo!"

—"Et zimbolo!"

—"Et bolo-po!"

—sing the Devil and his chorus. His chant is cavernous, abysmal,—booms from his chest like the sound of a drum beaten in the bottom of a well. … Ti manmaille-là, baill moin lavoix! ("Give me voice, little folk,—give me voice!") And all chant after him, in a chanting like the rushing of many waters, and with triple clapping of hands:—"Ti manmaille-là, baill moin lavoix!" … Then he halts before a dwelling in the Rue Peysette, and thunders:—

—"Eh! Marie-sans-dent!—Mi! diabe-là derhó!"

That is evidently a piece of spite-work: there is somebody living there against whom he has a grudge. …

"Hey! Marie-without-teeth! look! the Devil is outside!"

And the chorus catch the clue.

DEVIL.—"Eh! Marie-sans-dent!" …

CHORUS.—"Marie-sans-dent! mi!—diabe-là derhó!"

D.—"Eh! Marie-sans-dent!"' …

C.—"Marie-sans-dent! mi!—diabe-à derhó!"

D.—"Eh! Marie-sans-dent!" … etc.

The Devil at last descends to the main street, always singing the same song;—follow the chorus to the Savanna, where the rout makes for the new bridge over the Roxelane, to mount the high streets of the old quarter of the Fort; and the chant changes as they cross over:—

DEVIL.—"Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?" (Where

did you see the Devil going over the river?) And all the boys repeat the words, falling into another rhythm with perfect regularity and ease:—"Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?"

DEVIL.—"Oti ouè diabe?" …

CHORUS.—"Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?"

D.—"Oti ouè diabe?"

C,—"Oti ouè diabe-làp passé lariviè?"

D,—"Oti ouè diabe? … etc.

About midnight the return of the Devil and his following arouses me from sleep:—all are chanting a new refrain, "The Devil and the zombis sleep anywhere and everywhere!" (Diabe épi zombi ka dómi tout-pàtout.) The voices of the boys are still clear, shrill, fresh,—clear as a chant of frogs;—they still clap hanwith a precision of rhythm that is simply wonderful,—making each time a sound almost exactly like the bursting of a heavy wave:—

DEVIL.—"Diable épi zombi." …

CHORUS.—"Diable épi zombi ka d'omi tout-pàtout!"

D.—"Diable épi zombi."

C.—"Diable épi zombi ka dómi tout-pàtout!"

D.—Diable épi zombi." … etc.

… What is this after all but the old African method of chanting at labor, The practice of carrying the burden upon the head left the hands free for the rhythmic accompaniment of clapping. And you may still hear the women who load the transatlantic steamers with coal at Fort-de-France thus chanting and clapping. …

Evidently the Devil is moving very fast; for all the boys are running;—the pattering of bare feet upon the pavement sounds like a heavy shower. … Then the chanting grows fainter in distance; the Devil's immense basso becomes inaudible;—one only distinguishes at regular intervals the crescendo of the burden,— a wild swelling

of many hundred boy-voices all rising together,— a retreating storm of rhythmic song, wafted to the ear in gusts, in raifales of contralto. …

XI.

February 17th.

… YZORE is a calendeuse.

The calendeuses are the women who make up the beautiful Madras turbans and color them; for the amazingly brilliant yellow of these head-dresses is not the result of any dyeing process: they are all painted by hand. When purchased the Madras is simply a great oblong handkerchief, having a pale green or pale pink ground, and checkered or plaided by intersecting bands of dark blue, purple, crimson, or maroon. The calendeuse lays the Madras upon a broad board placed across her knees,—then, taking a camel's-hair brush, she begins to fill in the spaces between the bands with a sulphur-yellow paint, which is always mixed with gum-arabic. It requires a sure eye, very steady fingers, and long experience to do this well. … After the Madras has been "calendered" (calendé) and has become quite stiff and dry, it is folded about the head of the purchaser after the comely Martinique fashion,—which varies considerably from the modes popular in Guadeloupe or Cayenne,—is fixed into the form thus obtained; and can thereafter be taken off or put on without arrangement or disarrangement, like a cap. The price for calendering a Madras is now two francs and fifteen sous;—and for making-up the turban, six sous additional, except in Carnival-time, or upon holiday occasions, when the price rises to twenty-five sous. … The making-up of the Madras into a turban is called "tying a head" (marré yon tête); and a prettily folded turban is spoken of as "a head well tied" (yon tête bien marré). … However, the profession of calendeuse is far from being a lucrative

one: it is two or three days' work to calender a single Madras well. …

But Yzore does not depend upon calendering alone for a living: she earns much more by the manufacture of moresques and of chinoises than by painting Madras turbans. … Everybody in Martinique who can afford it wears moresques and chinoises. The moresques are large loose comfortable pantaloons of thin printed calico (indienne),—having colored designs representing birds, frogs, leaves, lizards, flowers, butterflies, or kittens,—or perhaps representing nothing in particular, being simply arabesques. The chinoise is a loose body-garment, very much like the real Chinese blouse, but always of brightly colored calico with fantastic designs. These things are worn at home during siestas, after office-hours, and at night. To take a nap during the day with one's ordinary clothing on means always a terrible drenching from perspiration, and an after-feeling of exhaustion almost indescribable—best expressed, perhaps, by the local term: corps écrasé. Therefore, on entering one's room for the siesta, one strips, puts on the light moresques and the chinoise, and dozes in comfort. A suit of this sort is very neat, often quite pretty, and very cheap (costing only about six francs);—the colors do not fade out in washing, and two good suits will last a year. … Yzore can make two pair of moresques and two chinoises in a single day upon her machine.

… I have observed there is a prejudice here against treadle machines;—the creole girls are persuaded they injure the health. Most of the sewing-machines I have seen among this people are operated by hand,—with a sort of little crank. …

XII.

February 22d.

… OLD physicians indeed predicted it; but who believed them? …

It is as though something sluggish and viewless, dormant and deadly, had been suddenly upstirred to furious life by the wind of robes and tread of myriad dancing feet,—by the crash of cymbals and heavy vibration of drums! Within a few days there has been a frightful increase of the visitation, an almost incredible expansion of the invisible poison: the number of new cases and of deaths has successively doubled, tripled, quadrupled. …

… Great caldrons of tar are kindled now at night in the more thickly peopled streets,—about one hundred paces apart, each being tended by an Indian laborer in the pay of the city: this is done with the idea of purifying the air. These sinister fires are never lighted but in times of pestilence and of tempest: on hurricane nights, when enormous waves roll in from the fathomless sea upon one of the most fearful coasts in the world, and great vessels are being driven ashore, such is the illumination by which the brave men of the coast make desperate efforts to save the lives of shipwrecked men, often at the cost of their own. *

XIII.

February 23d.

A COFFIN passes, balanced on the heads of black men. It holds the body of Pascaline Z—, covered with quick-lime.

She was the prettiest, assuredly, among the pretty shopgirls

of the Grande Rue,—a rare type of sang-mêlée. So oddly pleasing, the young face, that once seen, you could never again dissociate the recollection of it from the memory of the street. But one who saw it last night before they poured quick-lime upon it could discern no features,—only a dark brown mass, like a fungus, too frightful to think about.

… And they are all going thus, the beautiful women of color. In the opinion of physicians, the whole generation is doomed. … Yet a curious fact is that the young children of octoroons are suffering least: these women have their children vaccinated,— though they will not be vaccinated themselves. I see many brightly colored children, too, recovering from the disorder: the skin is not pitted, like that of the darker classes; and the rose-colored patches finally disappear altogether, leaving no trace.

… Here the sick are wrapped in banana leaves, after having been smeared with a certain unguent. … There is an immense demand for banana leaves. In ordinary times these leaves—especially the younger ones, still unrolled, and tender and soft beyond any fabric possible for man to make—are used for poultices of all kinds, and sell from one to two sous each, according to size and quality.

XIV.

February 29th.

… THE whites remain exempt from the malady.

One might therefore hastily suppose that liability of contagion would be diminished in proportion to the excess of white blood over African; but such is far from being the case;—St. Pierre is losing its handsomest octoroons. Where the proportion of white to black blood is 116 to 8, as in the type called mamelouc;—or 122 to 4, as in the quarteronné (not to be confounded with the quarteron or quadroon);—or even 127 to 1, as in the

sang-mêlé, the liability to attack remains the same, while the chances of recovery are considerably less than in the case of the black. Some few striking instances of immunity appear to offer a different basis for argument; but these might be due to the social position of the individual rather than to any constitutional temper: wealth and comfort, it must be remembered, have no small prophylactic value in such times. Still,—although there is reason to doubt whether mixed races have a constitutional vigor comparable to that of the original parent- races,—the liability to diseases of this class is decided less, perhaps, by race characteristics than by ancestral experience. The white peoples of the world have been practically inoculated, vaccinated, by experience of centuries;—while among these visibly mixed or black populations the seeds of the pest find absolutely fresh soil in which to germinate, and its ravages are therefore scarcely less terrible than those it made among the American-Indian or the Polynesian races in other times. Moreover, there is an unfortunate prejudice against vaccination here. People even now declare that those vaccinated die just as speedily of the plague as those who have never been;—and they can cite cases in proof. It is useless to talk to them about averages of immunity, percentage of liability, etc.;—they have seen with their own eyes persons who had been well vaccinated die of the verette, and that is enough to destroy their faith in the system. … Even the priests, who pray their congregations to adopt the only known safeguard against the disease, can do little against this scepticism.

XV.

March 5th.

… THE streets are so narrow in this old-fashioned quarter that even a whisper is audible across them; and after dark I hear a great many things,—sometimes sounds

of pain, sobbing, despairing cries as Death makes his round,—sometimes, again, angry words, and laughter, and even song,—always one melancholy chant: the voice has that peculiar metallic timbre that reveals the young negress:—

I want to know who little Lélé was, and why she had pains "all over";— for however artless and childish these creole songs seem, they are invariably originated by some real incident. And at last somebody tells me that "poor little Lélé" had the reputation in other years of being the most unlucky girl in St. Pierre; whatever she tried to do resulted only in misfortune;—when it was morning she wished it were evening, that she might sleep and forget; but when the night came she could not sleep for thinking of the trouble she had had during the day, so that she wished it were morning. …

More pleasant it is to hear the chatting of Yzore's childlren across the way, after the sun has set, and the stars come out. … Gabrielle always wants to know what the stars are:—

—"Ça qui ka clairé conm ça, manman?" (What is it shines like that?)

And Yzore answers:—

—"Ça, mafi,—c'est ti limiè Bon-Dié." (Those are the little lights of the Good-God.)

—"It is so pretty,—eh, mamma? I want to count them."

—"You cannot count them, child."

—"One-two-three-four-five-six-seven." Gabrielle can only count up to seven. "Moin peide!—I am lost, mamma!"

The moon comes up;—she cries:—"Mi! manman!—gàdé gouôs difé qui adans ciel-à! Look at the great fire in the sky."

—"It is the Moon, child! … Don't you see St. Joseph in it, carrying a bundle of wood ?"

—"Yes, mamma! I see him! … A great big bundle of wood!" …

But Mimi is wiser in moon-lore: she borrows half a franc from her mother "to show to the Moon." And holding it up before the silver light, she sings:—

"Pretty Moon, I show you my little money;—now let me always have money so long as you shine!" *

Then the mother takes them up to bed;—and in a little while there floats to me, through the open window, the murmur of the children's evening prayer:—

†

I can only catch a line here and there. … They do not sleep immediately;—they continue to chat in bed. Gabrielle wants to know what a guardian-angel is like. And I hear Mimi's voice replying in creole:—

—"Zange-gàdien, c'est yon jeine fi, toutt bel." (The guardian-angel is a young girl, all beautiful.)

A little while, and there is silence; and I see Yzore come out, barefooted, upon the moonlit balcony of her little room,—looking up and down the hushed street, looking at the sea, looking up betimes at the high flickering of stars,—moving her lips as in prayer. … And, standing there white-robed, with her rich dark hair loose-falling, there is a weird grace about her that recalls those long slim figures of guardian-angels in French religious prints. …

XVI.

March 6th

THIS morning Manm-Robert brings me something queer,—something hard tied up in a tiny piece of black cloth, with a string attached to hang it round my neck. I must wear it, she says,

—"Ça ça ye, Manm-Robert?"

—"Pou empêché ou pouend laverette," she answers. It to keep me from catching the verette! … And what is inside it?

—"Toua graines maïs, épi dicamfre." (Three grains of corn, with a bit of camphor!)…

XVII.

March 8th

… RICH households throughout the city are almost helpless for the want of servants. One can scarcely obtain help at any price: it is true that young country-girls keep coming into town to fill the places of the dead; but these new-comers fall a prey to the disease much more readily than those who preceded them, And such deaths en represent more than a mere derangement in the mechanism of domestic life. The creole bonne bears a relation to the family of an absolutely peculiar sort,—a relation of which the term "house-servant" does not convey

the faintest idea. She is really a member of the household: her association with its life usually begins in childhood, when she is barely strong enough to carry a dobanne of water up-stairs;—and in many cases she has the additional claim of having been born in the house. As a child, she plays with the white children,—shares their pleasures and presents. She is very seldom harshly spoken to, or reminded of the fact that she is a servitor: she has a pet name;—she is allowed much familiarity,— is often permitted to join in conversation when there is no company present, and to express her opinion about domestic affairs. She costs very little to keep; four or five dollars a year will supply her with all necessary clothing;—she rarely wears shoes;—she sleeps on a little straw mattress (paillasse) on the floor, or perhaps upon a paillasse supported upon an "elephant" (lèfan)—two thick square pieces of hard mattress placed together so as to form an oblong. She is only a nominal expense to the family; and she is the confidential messenger, the nurse, the chamber-maid, the water-carrier,—everything, in short, except cook and washer-woman. Families possessing a really good bonne would not part with her on any consideration. If she has been brought up in the house-hold, she is regarded almost as a kind of adopted child. If she leave that household to make a home of her own, and have ill-fortune afterwards, she will not be afraid to return with her baby, which will perhaps be received and brought up as she herself was, under the old roof. The stranger may feel puzzled at first by this state of affairs; yet the cause is not obscure. It is traceable to the time of the formation of creole society—to the early period of slavery. Among the Latin races,—especially the French,—slavery preserved in modern times many of the least harsh features of slavery in the antique world,—where the domestic slave, entering the familia, actually became a member of it.

XVIII.

March 10th.

… YZORE and her little ones are all in Manm-Robert's shop;— she is recounting her troubles,—fresh troubles: forty-seven francs' worth of work delivered on time, and no money received. … So much I hear as I enter the little boutique myself, to buy a package of "bouts."

—"Assise!" says Manm-Robert, handing me her own hair;—she is always pleased to see me, pleased to chat lith me about creole folk-lore. Then observing, a smile exchanged between myself and Mimi, she tells the children to bid me good-day:—"Alle di bonjou' Missié-a!"

One after another, each holds up a velvety cheek to kiss. And Mimi, who has been asking her mother the same question over and over again for at least five minutes without being able to obtain an answer, ventures to demand of me on the strength of this introduction:—

—"Missié, oti masque-à?"

—"Y ben fou, pouloss!" the mother cries out;—"Why, the child must be going out of her senses! … Mimi pa 'mbêté moune conm ça!—pa ni piess masque: c'est la-vérette qui ni." (Don't annoy people like that!—there are no maskers now; there is nothing but the verette!)

[You are not annoying me at all, little Mimi; but I would not like to answer your question truthfully. I know where the maskers are,—most of them, child; and I do not think it would be well for you to know. They wear no masks now; but if you were to see them for even one moment, by some extraordinary accident, pretty Mimi, I think you would feel more frightened than you ever felt before.] …

—"Toutt lanuite y k'anni rêvé masque-à," continues Yzore. … I am curious to know what Mimi's dreams are like;—wonder if I can coax her to tell me. …

XIX.

… I HAVE written Mimi's last dream from the child's dictation:— *

—"I saw a ball," she says, " I was dreaming: I saw everybody dancing with masks on;—I was looking at them, And all at once I saw that the folks who were dancing were all made of pasteboard. And I saw a commandeur: he asked me what I was doing there, I answered him: 'Why, I saw a ball, and I came to look—what of it?' He answered me:—'Since you are so curious to come and look at other folks' business, you will have to stop here and dance too!' I said to him:—'No! I won't dance with people made of pasteboard;—I am afraid of them!' … And I ran and ran and ran, —I was so much afraid. And I ran into a big garden, where I saw a big cherry-tree that had only leaves upon it; and I saw a man sitting under the cherry-tree, He asked me:—'What are you doing here?' I said to him:—'I am trying to find my way out,' He said:—'You must stay

here.' I said:—'No, no!'—and I said, in order to be able to get away:—'Go up there!—you will see a fine ball: all pasteboard people dancing there, and a pasteboard commandeur commanding them!' … And then I got so frightened that I awoke." …

… "And why were you so afraid of them, Mimi?" I ask.

—"Pace yo té toutt vide endedans!" answers Mimi. (Because they were all hollow inside!)

XX.

March 19th.

… THE death-rate in St. Pierre is now between three hundred and fifty and four hundred a month. Our street is being depopulated. Every day men come with immense stretchers,— covered with a sort of canvas awning,—to take somebody away to the lazaretto. At brief intervals, also, coffins are carried into houses empty, and carried out again followed by women who cry so loud that their sobbing can be heard a great way off.

… Before the visitation few quarters were so densely peopled: there were living often in one small house as many as fifty. The poorer classes had been accustomed from birth to live as simply as animals,—wearing scarcely any clothing, sleeping on bare floors, exposing themselves to all changes of weather, eating the cheapest and coarsest food. Yet, though living under such adverse conditions, no healthier people could be found, perhaps, in the world,—nor a more cleanly. Every yard having its fountain, almost everybody could bathe daily,—and with hundreds it was the custom to enter the river every morning at daybreak, or to take a swim in the bay (the young women here swim as well as the men). …

But the pestilence, entering among so dense and unprotected a life, made extraordinarily rapid havoc; and bodily cleanliness availed little against the contagion. Now all

the bathing resorts are deserted,—because the lazarettos infect the bay with refuse, and because the clothing of the sick is washed in the Roxelane.

… Guadeloupe, the sister colony, now sends aid;—the sum total is less than a single American merchant might give to a charitable undertaking: but it is a great deal for Guadeloupe to give. And far Cayenne sends money too; and the mother-country will send one hundred thousand francs.

XXI.

March 20th.

… THE infinite goodness of this colored population to one another is something which impresses with astonishment those accustomed to the selfishness of the world's great cities. No one is suffered to go to the pest-house who has a bed to lie upon, and a single relative or tried friend to administer remedies;— the multitude who pass through the lazarettos are strangers,— persons from the country who have no home of their own, or servants who are not permitted to remain sick in houses of employers. … There are, however, many cases where a mistress will not suffer her bonne to take the risks of the pest-house,— especially in families where there are no children: the domestic is carefully nursed; a physician hired for her, remedies purchased for her. …

But among the colored people themselves the heroism displayed is beautiful, is touching,—something which makes one doubt all accepted theories about the natural egotism of mankind, and would compel the most hardened pessimist to conceive a higher idea of humanity. There is never a moment's hesitation in visiting a stricken individual: every relative, and even the most intimate friends of every relative, may be seen hurrying to the bedside. They take turns at nursing, sitting up all night, securing medical attendance and medicines, without ever

a thought of the danger, —nay, of the almost absolute certainty of contagion. If the patient have no means, all contribute: what the sister or brother has not, the uncle or the aunt, the godfather or godmother, the cousin, brother-in-law or sister-in-law, may be able to give. No one dreams of refusing money or linen or wine or anything possible to give, lend, or procure on credit. Women seem to forget that they are beautiful, that they are young, that they are loved,—forget everything but sense of that which they hold to be duty. You see young girls of remarkably elegant presence,—young colored girls well educated and élevées-en-chapeau * (that is say, brought up like white creole girls, dressed and accomplished like them), voluntarily leave rich homes to nurse some poor mulatress or capresse in the indigent quarters of the town, because the sick one happens to be a distant relative. They will not trust others to perform this for them;—they feel bound to do it in person. I heard such a one say, in reply to some earnest protest about thus exposing herself (she had never been vaccinated);—"Ah! quand il s'agit du devoir, la vie ou la mort c'est pour moi la même chose."

… But without any sanitary law to check this self-immolation, and with the conviction that in the presence of duty, or what is believed to be duty, "life or death is same thing," or ought to be so considered,—you can readily imagine how soon the city must become one vast hospital.

XXII.

… BY nine o'clock, as a general rule, St. Pierre becomes silent: everyone here retires early and rises

with the sun. But sometimes, when the night is exceptionally warm, people continue to sit at their doors and chat until a far later hour; and on such a night one may hear and see curious things, in this period of plague. …

It is certainly singular that while the howling of a dog at night has no ghastly signification here (nobody ever pays the least attention to the sound, however hideous), the moaning and screaming of cats is believed to bode death; and in these times folks never appear to feel too sleepy to rise at any hour and drive them away when they begin their cries. … To-night—a night so oppressive that all but the sick are sitting up—almost a panic is created in our street by a screaming of cats;—and long after the creatures have been hunted out of sight and hearing, everybody who has a relative ill with the prevailing malady continues to discuss the omen with terror.

… Then I observe a colored child standing bare-footed in the moonlight, with her little round arms uplifted and hands joined above her head. A more graceful little figure it would be hard to find as she appears thus posed; but, all unconsciously, she is violating another superstition by this very attitude; and the angry mother shrieks:—

—"Ti manmaille-là!—tiré lanmain-ou assous tête-ou, foute! pisse moin encó là! … Espéré moin allé lazarett avant metté lanmain conm ça!" (Child, take down your hands from your head … because I am here yet! Wait till I go to the lazaretto before you put up your hands like that!)

For it was the savage, natural, primitive gesture of mourning,— of great despair.

… Then all begin to compare their misfortunes, to relate their miseries;—they say grotesque things,—even make jests about their troubles. One declares:—

—"Si moin té ka venne chapeau, à fóce moin ni malhè,

toutt manman sé fai yche yo sans tête." (I have that ill-luck, that if I were selling hats all the mothers would have children without heads!)

—Those who sit at their doors, I observe, do not sit, a rule, upon the steps, even when these are of wood. There is a superstition which checks such a practice. "Si ou assise assous pas-lapóte, ou ké pouend doulè toutt moune." (If you sit upon the door-step, you will take the pain of all who pass by.)

XXIII.

March 30th.

GOOD Friday. …

The bells have ceased to ring,—even the bells for the dead; the hours are marked by cannon-shots. The ships in the harbor form crosses with their spars, turn their flags upside down. And the entire colored population put on mourning:—it is a custom among them centuries old.

You will not perceive a single gaudy robe to-day, a single calendered Madras: not a speck of showy color visible through all the ways of St. Pierre. The costumes donned are all similar to those worn for the death relatives: either full mourning,—a black robe with violet foulard, and dark violet-banded headkerchief; or half-mourning,—a dark violet robe with black foulard and turban;—the half-mourning being worn only by those who cannot afford the more sombre costume. From my winndow I can see long processions climbing the mornes about the city, to visit the shrines and crucifixes, and to pray for the cessation of the pestilence.

… Three o'clock. Three cannon-shots shake the hill: it is the supposed hour of the Saviour's death. All believers—whether in the churches, on the highways, or in their homes—bow down and kiss the cross thrice, or, if there be no cross, press their lips three

times to the ground or the pavement, and utter those three wishes which if expressed precisely at this traditional moment will surely, it is held, be fulfilled. Immense crowds are assembled before the crosses on the heights, and about the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde.

… There is no hubbub in the streets; there is not even the customary loud weeping to be heard as the coffins go by. One must not complain to-day, nor become angry, nor utter unkind words,—any fault committed on Good Friday is thought to obtain a special and awful magnitude in the sight of Heaven. … There is a curious saying in vogue here. If a son or daughter grow up vicious,—become a shame to the family and a curse to the parents,—it is observed of such:—"Ça, c'est yon péché Vendredi-Saint!" (Must be a Good-Friday sin!)

There are two other strange beliefs connected with Good Friday. One is that it always rains on that day,—that the sky weeps for the death of the Saviour; and that this rain, if caught in a vessel, will never evaporate or spoil, and will cure all diseases.

The other is that only Jesus Christ died precisely at three o'clock. Nobody else ever died exactly at that hour;—they may die a second before or a second after three, but never exactly at three.

XXIV.

March 31st.

… HOLY SATURDAY morning;—nine o'clock. All the bells suddenly ring out; the humming of the bourdon blends with the thunder of a hundred guns: this is the Gloria! … At this signal it is a religious custom for the whole coast-population to enter the sea, and for those living too far from the beach to bathe in the rivers. But rivers and sea are now alike infected;—all the

linen of the lazarettos has been washed therein; and to-day there are fewer bathers than usual.

But there are twenty-seven burials. Now they are ring the dead two together: the cemeteries are over-burdened. …

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. …

XXVI.

April 5th.

—"Toutt bel bois ka allé," says Manm-Robert. (All the beautiful trees are going.) … I do not understand.

—"Toutt bel bois—toutt bel moune ka alle," she adds, interpretatively. (All the "beautiful trees,"—all the handsome people,—are passing away.) … As in the speech of the world's primitive poets, so in the creole patois is a beautiful woman compared with a comely tree: nay, more than this, the name of the object is actually substituted for that of the living being. Yon bel bois may mean a fine tree: it more generally signifies a graceful woman: this is the very comparison made by Ulysses looking upon Nausicaa, though more naively expressed. … And now there comes to me the recollection of a creole ballad illustrating the use of the phrase,—a ballad about a youth of Fort-de-France sent to St. Pierre by his father to purchase a stock of dobannes, * who, falling in love with a handsome colored girl, spent all his father's money in buying her presents and a wedding outfit:—

("I went down to Saint-Pierre to buy dobannes: instead of the dobannes, 'tis a pretty tree—a charming girl—that I bring back with me")

—"Why, who is dead now, Manm-Robert?"

—"It is little Marie, the porteuse, who has got the verette. She is gone to the lazaretto."

XXVII.

April 7th.

—TOUTT bel bois ka allé. … News has just come that Ti Marie died last night at the lazaretto of the Fort: she was attacked by what they call the lavérette-pouff,—a form of the disease which strangles its victim within a few hours.

Ti Marie was certainly the neatest little màchanne I ever knew. Without being actually pretty, her face had a childish charm which made it a pleasure to look at her;—and she had a clear chocolate-red skin, a light compact little figure, and a remarkably symmetrical pair of little feet which had never felt the pressure of a shoe. Every morning I used to hear her passing cry, just about daybreak:—"Qui 'lè café?—qui 'lè sirop?" (Who wants coffee?—who wants syrup?) She looked about sixteen, but was a mother. "Where is her husband?" I ask. "Nhomme-y mó laverette 'tou." (Her man died of the verette also.) "And the little one, her yche?" "Y lazarett." (At the lazaretto.) … But only those without friends or relatives in the city are suffered to go to the lazaretto;—Ti Marie cannot have been of St. Pierre?

—"No: she was from Vauclin," answers Manrn-Robert. "You do not often see pretty red girls who are natives of St. Pierre. St. Pierre has pretty sang-mêlées. The pretty red girls mostly come from Vauclin. The yellow ones, who are really bel-bois, are from Grande Anse: they are banana-colored people there. At Gros-Morne they are generally black." …

XXVIII.

… IT appears that the red race here, the race capresse, is particularly liable to the disease. Every family employing capresses for house-servants loses them;—one family living at the next corner has lost four in succession. …

The tint is a cinnamon or chocolate color;—the skin is naturally clear, smooth, glossy: it is of the capresse especially that the term "sapota-skin" (peau-chapoti) is used,—coupled with all curious creole adjectives to express what is comely, —jojoll, beaujoll, etc. * The hair is long, but bushy; the limbs light and strong, and admirably shaped. … I am told that when transported to a colder climate, the capre or capresse partly loses this ruddy tint. Here, under the tropic sun, it has a beauty only possible to imitate in metal. … And because photography cannot convey any idea of this singular color, the capresse hates a photograph.—"Moin pas nouè," she says; —"moin ouôuge: ou fai moin nouè nans pótrait-à." (I am not black: I am red:—you make me black in that portrait.) It is difficult to make her pose before the camera: she is red, as she avers, beautifully red; but the malicious instrument makes her gray or black—nouè conm poule-zo-nouè ("black as a black-boned hen!")

… And this red race is disappearing from St. Pierre—doubtless also from other plague-stricken centres.

XXIX.

April l0th.

MANM-Robert is much annoyed and puzzled because the American steamer—the bom-mangé, as she calls does not come. It used to bring regularly so many barrels of potatoes and beans, so much lard and cheese garlic and dried pease—everything, almost, of which she keeps a stock. It is now nearly eight weeks since the cannon of a New York steamer aroused the echoes the harbor. Every morning Manm-Robert has been sending out her little servant Louis to see if there is any sign of the American packet:—"Allé ouè Batterie d' Esnotz si bom-mangé-à pas vini." But Louis always returns with same rueful answer:—

—"Manm-Robert, pa ni piess bom-mangé" (there is not so much as a bit of a bom-mangé).

… "No more American steamers for Martinique:" that is the news received by telegraph! The disease has broken out among the shipping; the harbors have been delared infected. United States mail-packets drop their Martinique mails at St. Kitt's or Dominica, and pass us by. There will be suffering now among the canotiers, the caboteurs, all those who live by stowing or unloading cargo;—great warehouses are being closed up, and strong men discharged, because there will be nothing for them to do.

… They are burying twenty-five verettiers per day in city.

But never was this tropic sky more beautiful;—never was this circling sea more marvellously blue;—never were the mornes more richly robed in luminous green, under a more golden day. … And it seems strange that Nature should remain so lovely. …

… Suddenly it occurs to me that I have not seen Yzore nor her children for some days; and I wonder if

they have moved away. … Towards evening, passing by Manm-Robert's, I ask about them. The old woman answers me very gravely:—

—"Ató, mon chè, c'est Yzore qui ni lavérette!"

The mother has been seized by the plague at last. But Manm-Robert will look after her; and Manm-Robert has taken charge of the three little ones, who are not now allowed to leave the house, for fear some one should tell them what it were best they should not know. … Pauv ti manmaille!

XXX.

April 13th.

… STILL the vérette does not attack the native whites. But the whole air has become poisoned; the sanitary condition of the city becomes unprecedentedly bad; and a new epidemic makes its appearance,—typhoid fever. And now the békés begin to go, especially the young and strong; and the bells keep sounding for them, and the tolling bourdon fills the city with its enormous hum all day and far into the night. For these are rich; and the high solemnities of burial are theirs—the coffin of acajou, and the triple ringing, and the Cross of Gold to be carried before them as they pass to their long sleep under the palms,—saluted for the last time by all the population of St. Pierre, standing bareheaded in the sun. …

… Is it in times like these, when all the conditions are febrile, that one is most apt to have queer dreams?

Last night it seemed to me that I saw that Carnival dance again,—the hooded musicians, the fantastic torrent of peaked caps, and the spectral masks, and the swaying of bodies and waving of arms,—but soundless as a passing of smoke. There were figures I thought I knew;—hands I had somewhere seen reached out and touched me in silence;—and then, all suddenly, a Viewless Something seemed to scatter the shapes as leaves

are blown by a wind. … And waking, I thought I heard again,—plainly as on that last Carnival afternoon,—the strange cry of fear:— "C'est Bon-Dié ka passé!" …

XXXI.

April 20th.

VERY early yesterday morning Yzore was carried away under a covering of quick-lime: the children do not know; Manm-Robert took heed they should not see. They have been told their mother has been taken to the country to get well,—that the doctor will bring her back. … All the furniture is to be sold at auction to debts;—the landlord was patient, he waited four months; the doctor was kindly: but now these must have their due. Everything will be bidden off, except the chapelle, with its Virgin and angels of porcelain: yo pa ka pè venne Bon-Dié (the things of the Good-God must not be sold). And Manm-Robert will take care little ones.

The bed—a relic of former good-fortune,—a great Martinique bed of carved heavy native wood,—a lit-à-bateau (boat-bed), so called because shaped almost like a barge, perhaps—will surely bring three hundred francs;—the armoire, with its mirror doors, not less than two hundred and fifty. There is little else of value: the whole will not fetch enough to pay all the dead owes.

XXXII.

April 28th.

—TAM-tam-tam!—tam-tam-tam! … It is the booming of the auction-drum from the Place: Yzore's furniture is about to change hands.

The children start at the sound, so vividly associated in their minds with the sights of Carnival days, with the fantastic mirth of the great processional dance: they run to the sunny street, calling to each other.—Vini ouè!—

they look up and down. But there is a great quiet in the Rue du Morne Mirail;—the street is empty.

… Manm-Robert enters very weary: she has been at the sale, trying to save something for the children, but the prices were too high. In silence she takes her accustomed seat at the worn counter of her little shop; the young ones gather about her, caress her;—Mimi looks up laughing into the kind brown face, and wonders why Manm-Robert will not smile. Then Mimi becomes afraid to ask where the maskers are,—why they do not come, But little Maurice, bolder and less sensitive, cries out:—

—"Manm-Robert, oti masque-à?"

Manm-Robert does not answer;—she does not hear. She is gazing directly into the young faces clustered about her knee,—yet she does not see them: she sees far, far beyond them,—into the hidden years. And, suddenly, with a savage tenderness in her voice, she utters all the dark thought of her heart for them:—

—"Toua ti blancs sans lesou!—qutitté moin châché papaou qui adans cimétiè pou vini pouend ou tou!" (Ye three little penniless white ones!—let me go call your father, who is in the cemetery, to come and take you also away!)