And day by day the artlessness of this exotic humanity touches you more;—day by day this savage, somnolent, splendid Nature—delighting in furious colour—bewitches you more. Already the anticipated necessity of having to leave it all some day—the far-seen pain of bidding it farewell weighs upon you, even in dreams.
But before we go, we must learn how Nature must treat those who are not born under her suns.
Then at last reluctantly we board the Guadeloupe, and with Mademoiselle Violet-Eyes, who is leaving her country, perhaps for a very long time, to become a governess in New York, we realize that nowhere on this earth may there be brighter skies.
Farewell, fair city,—sun-kissed city,—many-fountained city!—dear yellow-glimmering streets,—white pavements learned by heart,—and faces ever looked for,—and voices ever loved! Farewell, white towers with your golden-throated bells!—farewell, green steeps, bathed in the light of summer everlasting!—craters with your coronets of forests!—bright mountain paths upwinding 'neath pomp of fern and angelin and feathery bamboo!—and gracious palms that drowse above the dead! Farewell, soft-shadowing majesty of valleys unfolding to the sun,—green golden cane-fields ripening to the sea!...
Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Pelée—so they vanish behind us. Shall not we too become Les Revenants?
Youma[28] (5) was written in Martinique, and also belongs to the New Orleans period. "I think you will like it better than 'Chita.' It is more mature and exotic by far,"—so Hearn wrote of the story in one of his letters. Later on, when living in Japan, he wrote:—
[ [28] Copyright, 1890, by Harper and Brothers.
It gave me no small pleasure to find that you like "Youma": you will not like it less knowing that the story is substantially true. You can see the ruins of the old house in the Quartier du Fort if you ever visit Saint-Pierre, and perhaps meet my old friend Arnoux, a survivor of the time. The girl really died under the heroic conditions described—refusing the help of the blacks and the ladder. Of course I may have idealized her, but not her act. The incident of the serpent occurred also; but the heroine was a different person,—a plantation girl, celebrated by the historian Rufz de Lavison. I wrote the story under wretched circumstances in Martinique, near the scenes described, and under the cross with the black Christ.
An English notice says:—
"It is an admirable little tale, full of local characteristics with curious fragments of Creole French from Martinique, and abundance of wide human sympathy. It deserves reprinting for English readers more than three-fourths of the fiction which is wont to cross the Atlantic under similar circumstances." (294.)