Two years in the French West Indies

by Lafcadio Hearn

—"Aïe ya yaïe!... No, true!... where art thou going now?"

—"Love is gone: I go after love."

—"Ho! thou hast a Wasp [lover]—eh?"

—"The zanoli gives a ball; the maboya enters unasked."

—"Tell me where thou art going, sweetheart?"

—"As far as the River of the Lizard."

—"Fouinq!—there are more than thirty kilometres!"

—"What of that?—do t thou want to come with me?"

VI

... None ever saw her by night. Her hour is the fulness of the sun's flood-tide: she comes in the dead hush and white flame of windless noons,—when colors appear to take a very unearthliness of intensity,—when even the flash of some colibri, bosomed with living fire, shooting hither and thither among the grenadilla blossoms, seemeth a spectral happening because of the great green trance of the land....