2 8 3
Martinique
Sketches.
they have moved away. . . . Towards evening, passing by Manm-Robert's, I ask about them. The old woman answers me very gravely :—
—"Atb, 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 vêrette 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 békês 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