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, [24] who, falling in love with a handsome colored girl, spent all his father's money in buying her presents and a wedding outfit:--

"Moin descenne Saint-Piè Acheté dobannes Auliè ces dobannes C'est yon _bel-bois_ moin mennein monté!"

("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 mò 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. [25] 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 pòtrait-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:--

--"_Atò, mon chè, c'est Yzore qui ni laverette!_"

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