La
Vérette.
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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 burying the dead two together : the cemeteries are overburdened. . . . XXV. . . . I N 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 outstretched leg to the tip of its opposite fellow, as they cling to the wall. I never heard of any one 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 the door-way quite a host of these monster insects. Manm-Robert is quite dismayed:——"jfesis-Maïa!—ou 'lè malhè encb 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!—goubs conm ça fil zagrignin, et moin pa menm mangé! Epi laverette encb. . . . Moin couè toutt ça ka pbté malhè!" ( N o 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.) — " A h ! 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 tchouê yo; moin chassé yo—ké vini encb." (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. . . .