Grand Anse is just a little town, gone rather to decay, on a cliff forever swept by the sun and the trade wind.
It is the most lonely place in the world and the most quaint.
At St. Pierre, on the west side of the island, the sea is deep and still, morning comes late because of the shadow of the mountains, and the sunset blazes up the streets like a conflagration. The first rays of sunlight touch Grande Anse, morning rushes on the town across great wastes of violet-coloured sea; the dawns are immense here, what you see is the lighting up of a world; on the one side, all the world of ocean quivering and leaping in light, on the other, all the island world. Mountains springing to life against a sky still showing a trace of stars, the cloud turban of Pelée, first a luminous haze like some vast nebula just born, then a burning fleece of gold. Then, just as though the shadows of night were a garment unloosed and let slip, the great mountain undrapes itself and stands a cone of emerald green, a pyramid of colour in the blue and voiceless sky.
St. Pierre is still in shadow, but the whole eastward side of the island is burning in the sun. St. Pierre has its feet in the Caribbean Sea, but Grande Anse is washed by the Atlantic. The south equatorial current and the trade wind keep the shore forever booming with waves.
Marie, as she came along the national road, could hear the sea like the breathing of a vast shell, before the first houses of the town came in sight. She entered the main street, which is a continuation of the road, stopped at the shop of M. Carbet, an old sun-dried Creole trader, who could remember the time when Grande Anse was prosperous with sugar mills and plantations worked under the old regime of slavery. M. Carbet inspected the goods sent him by M. Sartine, loaded the tray with other goods to be returned, and invited the girl to sit down and rest and have some refreshment.
When she had rested herself, having still an hour before she would start on her return to St. Pierre, she left the old man to take his siesta and came out to look at the sea.
Always, when she came to Grande Anse, she would, if she had time, come to the cliff edge to look at the sea.
It is a wonderful sight, for the emerald waves come racing in on a soot-black beach. Nowhere else is there a beach like that or such curious colour effects; white foam, white gulls, blue sea, curving emerald waves, black sand. Over all the sunlight and the boom of the water.
As she stood, the trade wind blowing in her face and fluttering her robe, she saw by the sea edge two white figures, the figure of an old man and a young man.
The old man was M. Seguin, the young man was Gaspard.