It is over. The verandahs and shop doors are emptying, pretty faces are turned up to the sky as if to test the truth of its blueness, and white umbrellas are opening against the sun.
Gaspard leaving shelter set out to find the Rue du Morne.
His mind was still filled with the image of the girl, the girl with the face of a beautiful child and the eyes of a woman, but the business he was on soon drove her picture from his mind.
“Monsieur, can you direct me to the Rue du Morne?”
Monsieur, an old Creole gentleman under a white umbrella, can and does, but his directions are given in the Creole patois, and so rapidly that what he says seems one word. Gaspard making out that the Rue du Morne lies somewhere below finds a side street leading downward to the blue dream of the harbour.
One could almost tumble into the harbour from here, at least in imagination. Never was there so steep a street, it is mostly steps, foot-worn, moss-grown, murmurous with water, for the side runnels are in spate after the rain.
“Madame, can you direct me to the Rue du Morne?”
In the street below an old Creole lady under a white umbrella, the female replica of the old gentleman in the street above, replies to the question volubly, and also seemingly in one word.
He gathers that it lies somewhere up above, but too lazy to climb he pursues his way along the street which is a replica of the Rue Victor Hugo. It is now getting towards the drowsy time of day. The streets are emptying. He enquires his way as he goes and everyone is delighted to direct him. Sometimes it seems the Rue du Morne lies above, sometimes below; he comes to the conclusion that all these delightful people do not know in the least what they are talking about. In another city he would now be irritable, in St. Pierre he is only drowsy, mesmerised by the hopeless search; it does not seem to matter a bit, he would just as soon sleep under that coloured sky when it is filled with stars, as in a room in the Rue du Morne, No. 3.
A banana-coloured baby eating a banana at a doorway draws his attention, he is fond of children, and this thing, stark naked like a honey-coloured cupid, attracts him.