In the cities and towns the Church indeed appears to retain a large place in the affection of the poorer classes;—her ceremonies are always well attended; money pours into her coffers; and one can still witness the curious annual procession of the "converted,"—aged women of color and negresses going to communion for the first time, all wearing snow-white turbans in honor of the event. But among the country people, where the dangerous forces of revolution exist, Christian feeling is almost stifled by ghastly beliefs of African origin;—the images and crucifixes still command respect, but this respect is inspired by a feeling purely fetichistic. With the political dispossession of the whites, certain dark powers, previously concealed or repressed, have obtained formidable development. The old enemy of Père Labat, the wizard (the quimboiseur), already wields more authority than the priest, exercises more terror than the magistrate, commands more confidence than the physician. The educated mulatto class may affect to despise him;—but he is preparing their overthrow in the dark. Astonishing is the persistence with which the African has clung to these beliefs and practices, so zealously warred upon by the Church and so mercilessly punished by the courts for centuries. He still goes to mass, and sends his children to the priest; but he goes more often to the quimboiseur and the "magnetise." He finds use for both beliefs, but gives large preference to the savage one,—just as he prefers the pattering of his tamtam to the music of the military band at the Savane du Fort.... And should it come to pass that Martinique be ever totally abandoned by its white population,—an event by no means improbable in the present order of things,—the fate of the ecclesiastical fabric so toilsomely reared by the monastic orders is not difficult to surmise.
VI
From my window in the old Rue du Bois-Morin,—which climbs the foot of Morne Labelle by successions of high stone steps,—all the southern end of the city is visible as in a bird's-eye view. Under me is a long peaking of red-scaled roofs,—gables and dormer-windows,—with clouds of bright green here and there,—foliage of tamarind and corossolier;—westward purples and flames the great circle of the Caribbean Sea;—east and south, towering to the violet sky, curve the volcanic hills, green-clad from base to summit;—and right before me the beautiful Morne d'Orange, all palm-plumed and wood-wrapped, trends seaward and southward. And every night, after the stars come out, I see moving lights there,—lantern fires guiding the mountain-dwellers home; but I look in vain for the light of Père Labat.
And nevertheless,—although no believer in ghosts,—I see thee very plainly sometimes, thou quaint White Father, moving through winter-mists in the narrower Paris of another century; musing upon the churches that arose at thy bidding under tropic skies; dreaming of the primeval valleys changed by thy will to green-gold seas of cane,—and the strong mill that will bear thy name for two hundred years (it stands solid unto this day),—and the habitations made for thy brethren in pleasant palmy places,—and the luminous peace of thy Martinique convent,—and odor of roasting parrots fattened upon grains de bois d'Inde and guavas,—"l'odeur de muscade et de girofle qui fait plaisir"...
Eh, Père Labat!—what changes there have been since thy day! The White Fathers have no place here now; and the Black Fathers, too, have been driven from the land, leaving only as a memory of them the perfect and ponderous architecture of the Perinnelle plantation-buildings, and the appellation of the river still known as the Rivière des Pères. Also the Ursulines are gone, leaving only their name on the corner of a crumbling street. And there are no more slaves; and there are new races of colors thou wouldst deem scandalous though beautiful; and there are no more parrots; and there are no more diablotins. And the grand woods thou sawest in their primitive and inviolate beauty, as if fresh from the Creator's touch in the morning of the world, are passing away; the secular trees are being converted into charcoal, or sawn into timber for the boat-builders: thou shouldst see two hundred men pulling some forest giant down to the sea upon the two-wheeled screaming thing they call a "devil" (yon diabe),—cric-crac!—cric-crac!—all chanting together:—
"Soh-soh!—yaïe-yah!
Rhâlé bois-canot!"
And all that ephemeral man has had power to change has been changed,—ideas, morals, beliefs, the whole social fabric. But the eternal summer remains,—and the Hesperian magnificence of azure sky and violet sea,—and the jewel-colors of the perpetual hills;—the same tepid winds that rippled thy cane-fields two hundred years ago still blow over Sainte-Marie;—the same purple shadows lengthen and dwindle and turn with the wheeling of the sun. God's witchery still fills this land; and the heart of the stranger is even yet snared by the beauty of it; and the dreams of him that forsakes it will surely be haunted—even as were thine own. Père Labat—by memories of its Eden-summer: the sudden leap of the light over a thousand peaks in the glory of tropic dawn,—the perfumed peace of enormous azure noons,—and shapes of palm wind-rocked in the burning of colossal sunsets,—and the silent flickering of the great fire-flies through the lukewarm darkness, when mothers call their children home.... "Mi fanal Pè Labatt!—mi Pè Labatt ka vini pouend oi!"
